I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by elondaits » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #420

I feel like the author falls deeply into the trap of confusing someone being friendly with someone being your friend. Notch was friendly with this author but I doubt he ever considered him a friend, just someone he was paying for a job. This has very strong Jim Carrey in “Cable Guy” vibes to me.

I don’t think he means friends in that literal sense. Someone you feel kinship and can make a gesture out of love for someone, even if you barely know them. Sometimes you’re right and the other person sígnals back that you’re indeed in the same frequency.

It’s a type of love close to a friendship than a romance, so it’s an apt metaphor.

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

#612

Post by intrepidhero » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #583

spritefs wrote: post #576

What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-f…

You’d think with his attitude he made the game rather than just write a poem (which he was paid $20k for). This is like my babysitter observing some windfall in my life and, despite my transaction with them already paid at the rate they negotiated, expecting me to share more with them while using language like “I was a cornerstone of his family but that apparently wasn’t enough” because they watched DVDs with my kid.

There are cultures in the world where the babysitter would expect to share in your windfall and everyone would think it a perfectly reasonable thing. Also, neighbors and extended family. This transactional, one and done sort of thinking that makes perfect sense in the capitalistic west, is not a mathematical, universal truth.

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

#613

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #515

wikfwikf wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any di…

> Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties.

The author says it's not about the money, but money was only one half of the verbal contract, the half that was actually delivered, and the author spends the entire article talking about the money half.

For me, the real issue for an artist that is actually not talking about the money would be the part of the verbal contract that was not fulfilled: Some type of promotional support for the author's other works. Exposure of that work the hundreds of millions of people seems like it would have a staggeringly massive non-monetary value (and in fact could have led to significant monetary gain). Instead though, the author goes to great pains to say it wasn't about the money while mostly talking about the money.

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

#614

Post by aschearer » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

A lesson for anyone making indie games, you're either an owner or not. If you want to say "I made the game" you need to be an owner. Any other relationship puts that at risk. "Super important contractor, critical to the game's creation" is quickly lost in the shuffle.

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

#615

Post by kramerger » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

dicroce wrote: post #578

spritefs wrote: post #576

What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-f…

I think you're being too hard on him here. It looks to me like both sides fucked up in a number of ways.

How did Mojang fuck up?

Their gave their "friend", a completely inexperienced unknown writer, 20.000 for a poem. This "friend" took the money, spent it but refused to sign the contract on some bogus pseudo spiritual objection. Later he became more and more upset that notch and team made a ton of money.

To me this sounds like jealousy and greed.

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

#616

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

spritefs wrote: post #576

What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-f…

[deleted]

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

#617

Post by Spivak » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #536

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 we…

> Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.

Absolutely 100% would stand up. If the US and UK have one thing it's strong copyright protections that favor the copyright holder. You can't accidentally transfer owner of your copyright with an off-handed remark and this is well established. If I commission an artist for a work the artist retains the copyright unless it's explicitly transferred to me or if the artists is my employee -- contractor isn't enough.

> his poem could be removed

That wouldn't stop it in general. It comes down to the specific license terms. Copyright deals with performances and his work has already been performed millions of times. That can't be undone. Pirating a movie, watching it, and then deleting your copy doesn't make it not copyright infringement. If the contract said only for use in Minecraft then any merchandise or Minecraft: Bedrock. Worse, licenses aren't by default transferable. If I give your band a license to play a song I wrote and you leave to join another band it doesn't follow you unless it was explicitly stated in the contract. So if Microsoft did something with the licensed work that wasn't under its legal subsidiary Mojang that might also be a problem.

I'm not saying any of this happened but hopefully it's enough to demonstrate that "obviously a judge would rule that a reasonable person would have assumed the work came with copyright assignment" is very unlikely doubly because the fact that they asked him for assignment later means they knew.

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

#618

Post by spritefs » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

JCharante wrote: post #608

spritefs wrote: post #576

What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-f…

I liked the post as it revealed stuff I didn’t know. However I think the logic is flawed. Yes he’s one of the five people and Notch gave money to a bunch of staff, but what about people who worked on the JRE? Surely they contributed more to the game as a whole than someone who wrote the ending.

> but what about people who worked on the JRE?

On an unrelated note, these guys are awesome, whoever they are

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

#619

Post by sbst32 » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #503

wokwokwok wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. Whether you care for him as a human or not is entirely irrelevant to the rights to his work. If there was no legal agreement, he retains the rights to it. It’s not ambiguous.

E-mail chains, or even verbal discussions are binding legal agreements as well. They are just much less clean and safe than a proper contract.

And? He never agreed to transfer his rights.

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

#620

Post by elondaits » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

FamosoRandom wrote: post #195

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...

This is really interesting to compare both general opinion on HN and on this subreddit. On HN, a place probably filled with technical guys, people are generaly putting themselves in dev shoes. They are accusing the author of feeling entitled to more money because he felt like he was part of the team and that he think his work is equaly important as the work of everyone else. Devs being devs generaly know that coding…

A lot of people here are saying he was paid “for a poem”, as if it’s a fungible piece of text and not a meaningful part of the experience providing meta-narrative closure to the game.

For anyone buying one of the posters, t-shirts, totes, etc. with the text of the poem or a part of it, it means a lot.

“May the force be with you” could have been anything else, and Star Wars wouldn’t be anything less than it is… yet, it’s an invaluable bit of writing!