The Tragic Tale of Notch (Markus Persson, Minecraft)

On the 15th of september 2014 notch sold minecraft to microsoft for a price of 2.5 billion dollars not exactly a bad day at the office after purchasing a 70 million l.a mansion and forming relationships with some of the most influential and famous people in the world the expectation of life following such

Might have been happiness fulfillment and freedom however the reality for minecraft’s founder was actually quite the opposite within less than a year of selling minecraft marcus notch a person’s life had become lonely unfulfilled and disordered expressed to his relationships with other well-known influences we used to be like let’s

Hang out with notch all the time we would call him we and me personally but without justin i would reach out and say hey let’s hang out and every time i would reach out it was just like a hard no various tweets relating to the meaninglessness in his life and

Microsoft’s attempt to remove notch from minecraft’s history despite having it all from an outsider’s perspective notch appears to have very little from an insider’s perspective but it wasn’t always like this there was one point at which notch was considered a god amongst men i kinda always knew that i wanted to make games

And i said so in school to my like career counselor thing and she said uh well that’s probably not gonna happen notch had been programming since the age of eight but had little success until the idea of minecraft would come along in early 2009 and after an incredibly short

Development period of only two months the game went live and was advertised on internet forums and in youtube videos what i’m playing with is a little java applet called minecraft it’s a work in progress so not all the features in it are fully implemented yet however in the

Beginning minecraft was so basic that a community was formed around the game with one simple goal learning how to play it there were no tools no health no mobs no caves you could build yourself a dirt or cobblestone house but that was basically all notch would notice this and begin to

Implement various challenging elements into the game providing minecraft with some depth ultimately leading to an explosion in popularity by 2010 approximately one year after its unofficial release in may 2009 the game had sold 1 million copies likely making notch a millionaire at minimum after only a year of development

The popularity of minecraft began to snowball further as friends invited friends to try it out youtube videos brand new servers a multitude of game-changing updates making minecraft more and more appealing to the diverse gaming community on the 7th of november 2011 notch would tweet 4 million yay in reference to having

Sold 4 million copies of the game only 2 and a half years after its significantly basic release a company with this milestone was the announcement that minecraft was about to be launched out of beta into an official game and a week later at minecon 2011 not should be given the honours of doing

So notch is going to officially release minecraft minecraft sales had hit 9 million by the end of 2012 then 33 million by the end of 2013 notch earned himself 101 million dollars in 2012 taking from 150 million in total yearly profit on top of this he had racked up a

Whopping 1.4 million followers on twitter displaying his popularity amongst the minecraft fanbase also implementing a temple of notch adventure map some videos displaying such having gained upwards of 17 million views to this day by 2014 sales had once again jumped up past the 50 million mark and things were looking

Bright for both notch and the game minecrafter generated almost a billion in revenue since 2009 had been launched as a mobile and xbox 360 game giving it further access to a new category of gamers also having more players than ever but while the popularity of minecraft had hit an all-time high

For notch it would be around the same time that its popularity would go from a blessing to a curse but people still get very upset with like me personally even though i wasn’t even working on it anymore i just figured like i don’t know if i want to

Put up with this anymore notch explained that by 2014 he was barely working on minecraft anymore as jens bergensten had taken over as the lead developer following the game’s official release in late 2011. here was the issue since notch was known to be the original creator of minecraft

And was also still the main shareholder of mojang he was getting the majority of hate for every single negative aspect of the game not to describe this experience to be it’s very stressful it really got to me i didn’t want to work on the project anymore because i wanted to just

Write prototypes for new games and stuff that the stuff i actually get happy from doing and on the 16th of june 2014 while sitting with a cold in his swedish penthouse apartment he would impulsively tweet out anyone want to buy my share of mojang so i can move on with my life

Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig notch explained that the tweet was somewhat of a joke however within only a day he had a 2.5 billion offer from microsoft for a 71 share of mojang not stated and i thought about it for a

While and i said yeah maybe it’s time and that following the sale he planned on working on new prototype games as that’s where his happiness was derived from after deducting taxes and other various expenses from the sale notch ended up with 1.3 billion in cash placing him in the top 2 000 richest

People in the entire world in a final blog post relating to the sale of the game notch would state that it’s not about the money it’s about my sanity however it’s not exactly like notch was gonna sit back and do nothing with his newly found fortune approximately two months after the sale

Of minecraft notch would set an la property sale record after the purchase of an extravagant 70 million dollar beverly hills mansion apparently outbidding the likes of jay-z and beyonce for the home from this point onwards notch began to live like a king partying with famous individuals like zed

Selena gomez and dylan francis also beginning to host weekly parties at his new 23 000 square foot mansion he does have this crazy parties like every friday he should at least be self aware of what he’s doing he’s known i mean people know him in l.a in the partying scene

As the crazy beverly hills party guy notch was quite literally living the 16 year old fantasy lifestyle a mansion more than a billion dollars cash in the bank accompanied by a completely free schedule what many would consider to be the ultimate life however unsurprisingly it wouldn’t be

Long before notch would reveal the truth behind how depressing such a life truly is over the weekend the man behind minecraft the online game broadcast his stress on twitter in a string of melancholy tweets marcus person wanted the world to know that it’s just really hard being a billionaire

On the 29th of august 2015 approximately one year after selling the game notch would tweet hanging out in ibaza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people able to do whatever i want and i’ve never felt more isolated this tweet seemed to be a catalyst for releasing a

Bunch of notches bottled up emotion as he would then tweet out the problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance in sweden i will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do

Watching my reflection in the mirror when we sold the company the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of and they all hate me now not only did these tweets refer to how lonely not should become but one tweet referenced his marriage that had ended in divorce another

Element of what you might call notre’s tragic life i found a great girl but she’s afraid of me in my lifestyle and went with a normal person instead on the 13th of august 2011 notch married fellow programmer elon zetterstrand the sister of christopher zetastrand who created some of the

Popular artwork seen around minecraft notch and elon had a daughter together however by july 2012 only 11 months into their marriage marcus and aelin had filed for divorce on the 15th of august 2012 one year and two days after getting married notch would tweet out as of today

I am single mixed emotions it’s hard to figure out exactly what to make of both notch’s tweet and his short marriage but it seemed to reveal that notch wasn’t very good at handling adversity he sold a 2.5 billion game just because he was tired of being attacked on twitter and perhaps this is

A bit of a low blow but he couldn’t even stick it out in a marriage for more than 12 months i’ll give further examples later of why this is important but for now it’s just an interesting thing to consider following the previously mentioned twitter rant about feeling isolated and

Lonely notch laid relatively low in the media continuing to program small indie games while hosting his extravagant yet lonely parties at his la mansion however in 2017 notch began to appear in the mainstream media once again this time for his political opinions mr minecraft not himself has descended from the heavens to give

Us his beautiful opinion in the beginning not just political tweets were somewhat mild in flavor and on the 13th of june 2017 he would tweet out most people who proclaim to be feminist online these days are overtly sexist against men now obviously this tweet received backlash because well

I mean it’s twitter need i say anymore but politics aside you’d think that perhaps the backlash from this tweet would have prompted notch to avoid controversial topics however within two weeks of this initial tweet he would turn up the heat with some slightly more controversial tweets if you’re against the concept of

Heterosexual pride day you’re a complete and deserved to be shot accompanied by it’s okay to be white and privileged is a made-up metric used to silence and repress we are all different and that is okay we listen to individuals and help each other based on individual strengths and

Needs we do not generalize based on skin color bigot these tweaks would prompt replies such as wow i thought you’re a cool person with interesting things to say what a disappointment it’s not okay to couch your racism in statements like it’s okay to be white it’s not okay to post seemingly

Innocuous statements in an attempt to rile people up so you can have your ego flattered i’ve said it before marcus your problem is that you became successful notch had basically gotten his life into a position where he could say whatever he wanted at the end of the day

He had sold minecraft had billions of dollars and was always going to be remembered as minecraft’s creator right well microsoft had a different idea in march 2019 following the deterioration of notch’s public image microsoft would remove the home page splashes referencing notch specifically made by notch the work of

Notch and 110813 the date on which notch had been married now the reasoning for this seemed somewhat obvious youtuber ibx toycat created a video on the topic titled minecraft removes all references to notch stating that microsoft had now owned the game for longer than notch ever had so

That means that it’s been roughly six years now since we’ve had notch working on any front line part of the game and also it means interestingly as of this year would have had the game be in microsoft’s hands longer than it was ever in notch’s hands himself meaning that the work of notch

Comment wasn’t as relevant anymore however the removal of notch from the game was also without a doubt a result of his strong political opinions broadcasted to his twitter feed big companies don’t like controversy and notch is not just a little bit of controversy he’s a lot of controversy on a whole bunch of

Different levels perhaps another reason microsoft had done this was because only one day prior to his removal someone tweeted it notch asking notch what do you think the golden year of minecraft was to which he would respond 2019 nah just kidding this year sucked for it to worried fans

Remember it’s yours not theirs you make your own adventures in there and anywhere else you go microsoft’s distaste for notch would then resurface one month later in april 2019 when notch wouldn’t be invited to celebrate minecraft’s 10-year anniversary the creator of minecraft notch is not allowed to attend this 10-year anniversary party

Let’s see why he’s not allowed to attend it in an interview with variety a spokesperson for microsoft would state his comments and opinions do not reflect those on microsoft or mojang and are not representative of minecraft in a somewhat abstract display of maturity notch wouldn’t respond to microsoft for this decision and instead

Decided to stay quiet on the topic since this event not seems to have matured slightly being a little wiser about what topics he discusses on twitter however there are still many prominent elements relating to notch’s fairly lonely life he’s decided not to marry again with his relationship status unknown he assumably

Still resides in his 23 000 square foot la merchant solo and it’d be hard to say a shift in the opinion of human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance when his net worth is increased by 500 million dollars since making this tweet in a bizarre kind of way notch’s life became

Exactly like the very first version of minecraft there were no mobs no love and no danger and you could just kind of do whatever while the lack of challenge provides complete freedom and safety it also made the game kind of boring the game only blew up and became popular

When a creeper had the potential to blow up your house or you could lose your diamonds that you spent so long finding simply because you weren’t careful and decided to dig straight down the challenge is what made the game worth playing as is the case with many aspects of daily life

Notch stated that the reason he sold minecraft was because he was tired of being blamed for things that weren’t his fault but in a weird way this was the challenge sustaining him when he sold minecraft he had no game to fix no people to deal with no one telling

Him what to do and his ultimate problem became his eventual lack of problems a billion dollars and nothing to do is minecraft classic all over again there’s no challenge it’s an extravagant dirt house without the potential for a creeper to come and blow it up it’s having a portal to the nether while

Playing in peaceful mode it’s playing sky block if the chess were to already have hundreds of resources ready for you to use each situation sounds incredibly awesome in theory but when played out in reality you’re bored after 10 minutes this was best highlighted in notch’s tweet stating the problem with getting

Everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying the challenge is what makes a game worth playing and a life worth living and it seems as though notch discovered this the hard way after renouncing all of the difficult aspects in his life exchange for what he assumed would be

The dream life but unfortunately being greeted with loneliness unfulfillment and despair on the other side of the equation you