Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

theeggandtherock.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 778 posts

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#451

Post by ballenf »

superultra wrote: post #447

I work in intellectual property, though I am not a lawyer. If this person were my client I’d diplomatically tell them that they’re clean out of luck on this one. All the documents that come as a shock to the author are boiler plate NDA and work for hire arrangements, and outside of being a famous author who’s “brand” would bring something of marketing value to the table, at no point really would anyone be able to neg…

I'm going to charitably guess you didn't read most of the post.

He did move on. He is at peace, finally.

He's the opposite of a diva and has humbly accepted that his reward for his work doesn't take monetary form.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#452

Post by [deleted] »

Gigachad wrote: post #363
mananaysiempre wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if all the developers expected to both be paid to write code and still own the rights to the code. Developers are accustomed to giving up all artistic agency and authorship, and those who can’t bring themselves to do so give up on being developers. (I’m partly in the latter category.) Thankfully, that isn’t (yet?) as ubiquitous among writers.

What other profession expects to be paid for producing work and expects to keep the result of the work? The guy got £20,000 for some pages of babel. He should be elated.

[deleted]

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#454

Post by armada651 »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #263
mcv wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He certainly seems to struggle with talking about money. Like he said: he should have let his agent handle it. But he didn't, because he saw this as something other than what it was: a friendship instead of contract work. It was an awkward relationship because both sides had a completely different view of what the relationship was, and didn't really communicate that with each other. It's great that he was finally abl…

Sure, it's possible that's true, but I don't see how that reflects poorly on anyone but himself. He asked for their offer, Mojang offered $20k, and he took the money. We can write justifications for why he did this, but that he seems to believe he was entitled to more money than the offer he accepted is entirely a problem of his own creation. Expecting Mojang to deal with his communication and mental health issues is…

Ultimately this is simply where ape brains and business economics collide. It reminds me of the experiment with two monkeys where one gets a cucumber and the other a grape.

As he said in his writing he simply assumed that whoever he is dealing with would give him what is fair. So he accepted the $20K and he was probably perfectly happy with his cucumber. Then later after a bunch of extra money is funneled into the company he sees a bunch of other people getting grapes for what he perceives as a similar effort to his own. Now the deal stops being fair in our monkey brains and we are hard-wired to demand equivalent payment.

However business economics has an entirely different concept of what is fair. It assumes everything is fair as long as promises are kept and deals are honored. There is no concept in business of renegotiating compensation of old contracts if someone else gets more compensation for a similar effort. This is why collective bargaining by unions is the only way for everyone to get equal pay for equal work.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#455

Post by philipov »

bambax wrote: post #315
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

That last quote is damning. The game works well without an ending poem -- or an ending, for that matter. I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set. That said, the rant, while much too long i…

Minecraft has an ending because people complained to Notch over twitter that it's not really a game if it doesn't have an ending.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#456

Post by ballenf »

mcv wrote: post #226
spuz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of the legal status is that the author is entitled to accept the €20k as payment for his time but that amount doesn't constitute payment for the copyright of the work. Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. Julian believed the copyright was worth more and so rejected the offer. All that is to say that if my interpretation is co…

> Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it. And he'd have missed out on his subsequent persona…

Strategically, you don't do that because that triggers the other side to realize that they should lawyer up.

Blowing it off with a token amount just says "this is a tiny formality, a dotting of an 'i'".

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#457

Post by rollcat »

bambax wrote: post #315
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

That last quote is damning. The game works well without an ending poem -- or an ending, for that matter. I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set. That said, the rant, while much too long i…

> I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set.

There is no real ending in Minecraft. "The End" is just the name of another dimension - where of course you have to battle the big bad dragon and get the "end credits" afterwards and so on. But the dimension is literally just called "The End" and is indeed just a pun - you can mine, build, explore, and play there just like in the Overworld or in the Nether, and go back & forth between the three at any time.

In fact, most of us consider visiting The End as the real beginning of the game - exploring it gives you access to two items (shulker boxes and the Elytra), that we consider about as fundamental and essential to the game as the pickaxe or the crafting table.

"Wait what? You can craft a pickaxe? I've been punching rocks all this time!"

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#459

Post by microsoftdoes »

zimpenfish wrote: post #250
jack_pp wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any doubt that Mojang / Microsoft are entitled to use his work. But I don't think it's clear whether he has the rights to the work or not.

> But I don't think it's clear whether he has the rights to the work or not. He owns the copyright, hasn't transferred the copyright, he clearly owns the rights in the work. > I don't think there's any doubt that Mojang / Microsoft are entitled to use his work. I think you're right that there's an implied license for them to use it but the scope of that license was never specified and I'd guess a clever lawyer could…

Nope this guy agreed to it in email. It’s over. License didn’t need to transfer since Microsoft bought Mojang, not just specific property of Mojang.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#460

Post by ClarityJones »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

> an agreed upon offer

Where do you see that? I went back and re-read the section and it still seems to say that the negotiations failed and no agreement was reached.

Post reply on HN