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

491–500 of 778 posts

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

#491

Post by bena »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #442
mikkom wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why he paid 20000 euros for it, right? I don't understand what this guy is complaining about to be honest.

I can't recall the details but wasn't it $20k under a $15M total valuation? Proportionally that would be $3.3M of a $2.5B valuation.

He wasn't offering a portion of the game's profits or a portion of the company. He was offering money for a work-for-hire.

At a $15M valuation, the work was worth $20k to them. At a $2.5B valuation, the work was $20k to them.

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

#492

Post by kabes »

ballenf wrote: post #451
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.

I read the whole post and he doesn't give me the impression of being at piece. If you're truly at piece you wouldn't be writing such a long and bitter post to begin with. He pretends he doesn't care for money, but all the examples where he felt he's not being treated fairly revolve around money. And he clearly still sees himself as one of the original Minecraft creators while he's not.

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

#493

Post by Tijdreiziger »

hnbad wrote: post #201
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…

I don't know about Swedish law but in German law works created outside of an employment contract do not automatically assign an exclusive copyright to the buyer, so at best Mojang had a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, limited usage right for the poem for the use in Minecraft and nothing else. As I understand it, this makes his claim that Microsoft may not have the right to use it questionable but it confirms his ma…

> Given that the author is German, this seems relevant.

The author appears to be Irish, but living in Germany.

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

#494

Post by TomBombadildoze »

warinukraine wrote: post #466
ballenf wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know much about this person, other than that he did NOT move on.

"Moving on" and recounting a story can be, and often are, entirely different things.

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

#495

Post by zimpenfish »

microsoftdoes wrote: post #487
zimpenfish wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope this guy agreed to it in email. Can you quote the bit of the article which says that? All I can see is that he said "ok, what's your offer?", Carl returned with "€20k", and "in all the confusion someone sent me the money, even though we still didn’t have a contract worked out " - no contract, no license.

“and so I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was.” Edit: I’m rate limited, but Microsoft doesn’t need a transfer. They bought the entire company. Just like you buying some shares on the stock exchange, except they bought all of the shares in a private transaction. Had they done an asset purchase instead, your point might be valid.

Which is an implied contract, yes. Which a court would probably find that Mojang have an implied license to use the poem, yes.

But the terms of that license are unknown - a court may well decide that it did not apply to Microsoft since he didn't sign that contract. And it also means that he did not assign copyright to Mojang or Microsoft which removes that avenue of them claiming they can use it for free.

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

#496

Post by plastiquebeech »

krisoft wrote: post #387
mcv wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> he'd have missed out on his subsequent personal growth Maybe. Maybe not. People say these kind of things, but it is often a retcon aimed to help them deal with some emotion. Maybe he would have asked his agent to agree on a deal. The agent would have got him a tiny percentage and he would have spent the money to bring something wonderfull to the world. During which process he would have attained even more personal…

Call it what you want. If you spend all your time whinging about misfortune, you'll never grow.

As Marcus Aurelius wrote sometime around 170CE:

>It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. ...

>So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

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

#497

Post by neilv »

simmerup wrote: post #485
neilv wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like both the agent and the artist got scrod. The epic-length post is like those movies that would've been 10 minutes if the people just talked with each other. In this case, if the artist had just told the agent what they wanted, agent would've gotten to do their job, and artist would've avoided years of turmoil.

If the artist told them 20k wasn’t good enough he probably would have lost the job. This was he gets the job and the what if musing

Or the agent goes and says "He's an artist who loves your game -- like it's a triumph of human expression -- he can see the heart of it, and he done something pretty special that's worthy to be a capstone for the player's experience. You understand true art is about more than money. What do you think about these couple changes I've marked up, to show he's valued in a way that's meaningful to him? In addition to the shout-out, I thought a few shares would help him feel his contribution was appreciated as a valuable part, but let me know if that's a problem."

(I'm sure a real agent could negotiate much better than I could; I'm only suggesting that an agent could straighten this out and maybe get better terms, without threatening the deal.)

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

#498

Post by LudwigNagasena »

operator-name wrote: post #170

This has also been posted to the Minecraft subreddit, where is has received a lot of positive attention from the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/zf8ye0/i_wrote_t...

The posts are very different. "I made my work public domain" sounds a lot more positive than whatever that screed was trying to convey.

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

#499

Post by password1 »

Jarwain wrote: post #272
ohbtvz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he asking for nothing? Half of the post is about how Mojang got millions then billions and he got nothing. If he's not asking for what he considers to be his share of the pie, then I don't know what the whole post is about.

To me the post is about how he wrote a story for a friend, that friend didn't treat him like a friend, and how he was hurt by that. It sounds like the post was about letting him vent his pain and frustration and reach some level of emotional catharsis, as well as officially releasing the story to the public domain.

But they were never friends to begin with, which is one of the many flawed premises of this author thoughts.

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

#500

Post by mort96 »

LightHugger wrote: post #470
mort96 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling a story about your bizarre mushroom fuelled hallucinations is a cute kind of weird, tweeting in support of QAnon shit and other alt-right stuff is a not-cute kind of weird.

In both cases some empathy for the person involved is probably warranted, qanon stuff is mental illness and accusing people of "alt right" is reductio ad hitlerum with extra steps. Compare to being a bit of a druggie. It strikes me as "give me empathy for my unique oddity even though i won't give it to others".

Sorry, I don't have much empathy for people who tell their audience of many millions of people, many of them children because of the nature of what Notch is famous for, that the democrats have a satanic pedophile ring with a meeting place in some pizzeria in New York and other similarly fucked up shit. Not until they at least own up to the fact that what they did was messed up.

And comparing it to a fucking mushroom trip? Saying that both are "weird" but should be accepted? Come on man.

Post reply on HN