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

theeggandtherock.substack.com

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

#531

Post by robswc »

Really interesting story... but I think the age old adage of "as long as I'm happy" should apply here.

$20k for what amounts to a short story is an insanely good and fair price, compared to the market rate. I know he says he negotiated badly but I don't know how much more he could have obtained, as $20k _is_ a great sale. It does suck to see Minecraft later get sold for billions and "only" have your $20k but I have a feeling (and he basically admits) he was happy with the $20k at the time.

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

#532

Post by saalweachter »

neilv wrote: post #497
simmerup wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I mean, half the point of agents is to insert middle-men who won't get emotional about the deal while wringing as much value for their party out of it as possible.

If you're talking directly to someone about buying their house and you go, "your house is a piece of shit, everything is broken, knock $XX,000 off or I walk", they're going to tell you to go fuck yourself. Once you filter it through two agents they hear "well, the buyer is concerned about X, which is very reasonable, but Y is just being picky, we should come back to them with an offer for $ZZ0,000 and I think that's very fair." Sure, they're not happy about selling their house for less, and maybe no agreement can be reached, but the agents take a lot of the emotion and confrontation out of haggling so that you don't end up hating the other party before you can reach an agreement.

So it goes with all negotiations.

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

#533

Post by BlueTemplar »

mort96 wrote: post #295
Kiro wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely reads as if his contribution is significant enough that he should be be considered one of the creators. > giving money to back-office staff who had just arrived in the last year, and had zero creative input into the game [...] I had helped him create the actual game The way he puts down regular employees, making it sound like his poem is obviously more important than whatever a mere employee does.

Yes, he considers himself "one of the creators of Minecraft". Because he is one of the creators of Minecraft; he created a part of the game. He doesn't consider himself "the creator of Minecraft", as you claimed. You can think he puts down regular employees and makes himself seem more important than is warranted. You may think his contribution is tiny compared to the contribution of people who marketed the game or ma…

It's more complicated because he's one of the latecomers : by the point he was asked to do this work Minecraft had already been released and was already a massive success.

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

#534

Post by JohnBooty »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #519
bena wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I was in on early builds of Minecraft. I've never seen the end poem. Had no idea it even existed. The entire post reads like really sour grapes from someone who believes his contribution is way more important than it is. He thinks he deserves a significant higher chunk than what he was paid. He also acts like he has a leg to stand on and is magnanimously deciding not to bring the hammer down. No. He's going to…

It's a weird mix of buddhist "I was and am at peace with this", but with a "I feel like I missed out" mixed in. But he fully admits it's his own fault because he was up in his own world, instead of leaving the business end to his agent. But I don't believe this would stand up in court. There was a verbal agreement before he signed a contract. He was paid for his one-off contribution; I don't know how much work he del…

     iirc, copyright law only applies if you defend your copyright.
That's trademark law you're thinking of.

Copyright always applies and is automatically assigned at the time of creation. Belongs to the author by default unless created in the context of some other agreement (e.g. work for hire)

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

#535

Post by bo1024 »

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…

This is talking right past the important higher level message in the post. A lot of it is a rejection of the entire way of thinking you present here.

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

#536

Post by whywhywhywhy »

account-5 wrote: post #214

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out. Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would. But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to…

>But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it.

Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.

He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed.

I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.

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

#537

Post by roperj »

shmageggy wrote: post #441
robertlagrant wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The game would've made $0 less had the ending just said "The End".

You really think that a poem that people have tattooed on themselves, put onto tee shirts and mugs, inspired emotional emails to the author, and so on has inspired exactly zero excess recommendations to friends, zero dinnertime discussions or social media posts that have led to purchases?

Rounded it is still likely 0.

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

#538

Post by cmeacham98 »

mcv wrote: post #380
cmeacham98 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would it reflect poorly on anyone but himself? Well, I guess he has appearances going for him: he's a struggling artist while the other party is a wealthy corporation. But him being a struggling artist seems to be a clear choice, even if he hasn't quite made that choice explicit for himself. > He asked for their offer, Mojang offered $20k, and he took the money. The way I'm reading it is that he didn't even want…

Well, we're all here under a comment on HN asking why the article is getting such negative reactions. And when you describe the author's position as "I'm still not sure he really understands that he's mostly projecting his own issues on others", maybe you can understand why the author is getting such negative reactions.

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

#539

Post by sevenf0ur »

I hope that Julian has learned to let go. Worrying about things you can't change in the past is not a healthy state to be in.

I think that most would say that $20k for a poem in the end credits is a fair deal and you were not taken advantage of. You accepted the deal it by taking the money. Not signing a contract is moot. Be happy that your work will live on.

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

#540

Post by cmeacham98 »

3np wrote: post #476
cmeacham98 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the author says this in a few places, the picture he tries to paint is one of a grand misunderstanding. Both sides of the communication just weren't understanding each other. But the reality is that _all_ of the misunderstanding comes from him. There is no "mutual misunderstanding", Mojang understood the conversation perfectly well. The author asked for an offer, Mojang offered $20k, and the author accepted. It…

It was very much mutual. Mojang seemed to have been of the understanding that they paid for more than just the work done and the right to use the poem in the agreed initial release of the game, which was a major misunderstanding on their part. IP transfer was not part of the agreement. It is what it is, everyone involved probably learned some form of lesson, and I don't see why we need to create villains or victims i…

The author never attempts to communicate they didn't want to transfer the IP. I believe that if the author told Mojang "I don't want to sign this contract, I'll give you a license to use the poem instead." that Notch would have been entirely open to that - after all, that is the deal they had with C418.

Mojang, at a minimum, paid for a license to use the poem in the game. They wanted to have this on paper because it would make the deal with Microsoft easier, but they would have been right about that fact either way. The author, on the other hand, believes they are in a situation where Microsoft has no right to use the End Poem despite the fact they accepted $20k for it.

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