Why Microsoft Betrayed C418 (+ HUGE Discovery!)

This shows how C418 was stabbed in the front by Microsoft just for wanting to own the rights to the music that he made for Minecraft how could they be so unreasonable but more importantly is it actually true what we do know is that C418 has finished producing an entire

Album of Music he wanted to release for Minecraft and also that Mojang has been deliberately not releasing that and instead producing music from Lena rain and Kuma this is a really interesting situation and how did we get here and what is actually happening let’s dive into the full story starting with the

Proof that Daniel Rosenfeld or C418 really has produced new music for minecraft is there still a third volume of the soundtrack in the works or are you still you know if you just kind of moved on other things uh that’s hard to say uh I have something I consider it

Finish but things have become complicated especially because Minecraft is now a big property so I don’t know the answer is I don’t know so he does have the third version of the Minecraft soundtrack presumably called Delta or full release you be The Pick of well be a better pick for this third album

However he cannot release it and in fact he says that he can’t even really talk about it very much and I think I can’t talk much more than that about that so he’s obviously avoiding making a big deal of a public statement because presumably the deals he’s talking about

With Mojang are very much uh nd8 he’s not allowed to go public and talk about them however he has made these comments on his Discord hinting even more that yes he still wants to do stuff for Minecraft but he’s just not managed to get an agreement with the big guys and

Then even more directly saying that he has nightmares about this like once a month but the good thing about the change of pace are you not working on Minecraft is that he’s working on cool that is creatively fulfilling and doesn’t involve talking to 10 lawyers he

Does say that Mojang is still good people and nothing about this has to do with them implying it is uh very much something he sees as a Microsoft problem and then also says that this whole experience has been traumatizing to say the least this is awful the person who

Is responsible behind making some of the most iconic sounds in Minecraft the reason that this is a beautiful sight wow rather than being still beautiful but sounding just a bit off by being like this foreign it’s just a massive shame they haven’t managed to come to an agreement with one

Of the people who are undoubtedly important in making Minecraft successful especially in the sound department and you might think wow Microsoft are being super unreasonable however if you look at the caliber of you know people they have to replace it Lena rain and Kumar honestly I would say that this is not

Like they are giving such unreasonable terms that people don’t want to do it because if they can attract an industry-leading composer like Lena Rayners she’s famous for making the soundtrack to one of the other best Indie Games in the last couple decades and so to see uh you know like them

Actually getting super high quality composers uh does imply that what is it that C418 wants that these people do not are they giving these people better deals than they trying to give super 18 I actually highly doubt it in fact I would say that these people are likely

Hired on industry standard terms maybe being compensated above the normal because they’re working on the literal biggest video game of all time you know these aren’t a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars here or there they’re likely being paid big five digit amounts per song however it doesn’t

Matter how well they’re paying per song and we don’t know what the actual rate is it might be different for all of the composers uh but no matter how high it is this is likely not the point of contention in the contract uh usually these sorts of deals especially when it

Comes to Microsoft and Minecraft are not about the amounts being involved but about the rights that come with it because Microsoft’s screwing over the people who help make the game successful isn’t a new thing I mean Julian GAO made one of the most iconic parts of

Minecraft as we know it today the end poem it’s one of the weirder wackier parts that makes defeating the game uh truly one of the best feelings however despite that fact he only got paid once twenty thousand Euros and based on this blog post where he jealously followed

Mojang and uh sore every time that Notch got paid billions and uh you know the staff all got paid hundreds of thousands he expected to be paid more at some point but Microsoft rather than uh paying him this larger amount basically just ignored him because they legally

Figured they didn’t have to pay him anything and the same thing could be to say argued for 4J Studios they made the best console Port of any game for years but despite that they were relegated to being a Marketplace team on par with these people and honestly this all looks

Bad this looks like you know big Corporation by small Indie studio and then starts stabbing people in the back but I think you could see this from a different angle like if you were to buy Minecraft today maybe you would be super holistic about it but ultimately they

Did give Mojang a lot of money the shareholders which mostly were Notch and his other co-founders but still they all got a lot of money in exchange for their share and so then they work on making a better product ideally speaking uh you know better is definitely loose but they

Work on making bedrock and they also welcome making it a better monetized product so this is where the marketplace comes in this is where all the merch Deals they do come in and presumably this is also where they look at things like contracts with composers and say

Wait a minute wait we we make this music famous you know c418’s music is famous because it is included in Minecraft just as much as Minecraft music is famous because it’s from C418 but they take this music which they make Famous by being in one of the biggest games of all

Time and then C418 is the one making all the residuals on it if you don’t know if you listen to c418’s music on YouTube or Spotify or you buy it on Amazon you are buying it from C418 himself because he owns the rights to the music this is a

Deal that would make sense for the indie game uh that Minecraft was when it was composed that had a few tens of thousands of copies sold but now that it’s selling hundreds of millions of copies and the soundtrack is a huge uh you know Revenue driver for that game uh

Why are they just giving this money away to someone they’re also presumably going to pay to make the tracks this would perfectly explain why it’s a conversation that needs to be had with lawyers C418 is probably just saying I would like to make the same uh your

Music under the same terms that we had back in 2011 it was a very loose agreement where he just made stuff for the game whereas Microsoft is saying no we’re an entirely different property now we want you to agree to these commercial agreements and give us these rights to

What you make will pay you money money for what you do but you can’t expect to have those rights because we’ll find other people who are perfectly happy with just the money whereas C418 is saying in return no I’m an artist I deserve to own the rights to what I make

You can actually see C418 side from what he said regarding how uh Minecraft expected him to make midi game music there’s a whole fun Revelation about that we’ll have to come back to towards the end of the video uh but you can see Microsoft side because when you work for

A company when you are a Minecraft developer and you make a new feature you don’t own those features Minecraft does in the same way that when a Minecraft developer makes a new feature whether that’s the warden or whether that’s the cherry blossom biome or whether that’s just abandoned mine shafts on the

Surface they don’t say yeah as a developer you get to own that portion of Minecraft forever we’ll always only use it with your permission they say yeah well we paid you for your time we’ll pay you to make the feature but then it belongs to ask us as a part of our game

And obviously there’s a big debate about like well what should corporations own from you and your time should they own your side projects Etc but I think it’s at the very least fair to say that if Corporation is paying for your time and while you’re on their time the things

You make sort of belong to them because they’re paying you under the prediction that you can make those things the only thing that changes and gets a lot Messier is when those people are used to being paid for not just their time or maybe not their time at all but instead

For their contribution and especially when they made a really good bet on saying yeah I’ll just sell the music to this little indie game you have and it turns out to be a much bigger thing you can see how this would go very differently I think it’s easy to be

Critical of this but try and see it from Microsoft’s perspective or even your perspective as an end user you want Minecraft to be the best game that it can be you want the most people possible or the most amount of man hour possible going into making this game better and

So if Microsoft overpays as far as they’re concerned instead of giving someone uh you know a few thousand dollars like they think it’s worth they pay millions of dollars by a lost uh Revenue uh that is a bad way of spending money because if they get that Revenue

They could theoretically spend it on hiring more people I mean right now according to LinkedIn Mojang has 730 asking employees that is a ridiculous payroll Bill and presumably uh you know you don’t want to then be giving up your sources of revenue and instead you want

To be stacking all the way on that honestly uh there’s an interesting debate here about like yeah who should own the rights to what you make should it be the person making the thing or should it be the corporation who pays you to do so in an ideal Society you

Could have some version of split rights where you owned it you know but they just couldn’t have certain commercial rights to it uh but ultimately that is a big debate that comes up however I think that Microsoft is missing the beat a bit here obviously this has benefited us as

The end users because we wouldn’t have had Pig step or any of the other amazing hits that have come out of Minecraft over the last few updates if it weren’t for this happening however I do think that Minecraft and Microsoft should start looking at this sort of stuff and

Saying that yeah this is happening far too often not only is this affecting people who made key parts of the game entire Studios and writers and their composer but also a lot of Minecraft employees who were pivotal in making the Minecraft we know today have stepped back from or just left the company

Altogether do you remember tomasso as well as Argo major uh two cubital parts of Minecraft Pocket Edition from back in the day uh do you remember Maria lemon and Henrik nieberg and uh honestly the list is ridiculous if you look at how many employees have left and some of

Those employees are just going on to bigger and better things but if they’re not retaining some of their best talents then that’s a sign they’re doing something wrong ultimately if you’re not compensating people fairly enough that they want to do something for you that is bad for you as well as for them

Especially when you’re talking about some of the people who have worked on some of the craziest features that exist in Minecraft I mean Dawn geek was pivotal to Minecraft on the phones Ever Getting Any for multiplayer and Johann birdson was the person who worked on making breeding work among alongside a

Whole host of other features when you have super productive super key players and you’re losing them when you’re losing a whole volume of music from C418 solely because you can’t uh you know agree that because as he started making things earlier maybe he should have a different deal or even you just can’t

Agree on an amount of money to pay him maybe you just gotta say look this is worth a half million dollars a full million dollars your Mojang you literally have millions of dollars pouring in every single day it is worth spending the money to make a better

Product and that is something that they get in some ways with staff salaries but it’s something they don’t get in many other ways and we’re gonna have to wait and see how that actually ends up for them for now though I’m just going to enjoy my favorite Minecraft music by my

Favorite transgender furry that is a true fact by the way for now I just like to give you the reminder that no matter what happens of all of this Minecraft will eventually die someday just like we all will die someday and there’s a beautiful mug you can buy at

Ibxtcat.store that will commemorate that and I do think this is one of the very few experiences where you can get a mug and then buy one and then get one totally for free it’s not just a mug that you get for your purchase you get two mugs that remind you we’re gonna die

Someday so you can die with someone you love uh speaking of dying with someone you love I want to come back to the mini game a situation because it didn’t perfectly fit into this video but it is a fun reminder of the you know the C418 Minecraft situation the art versus

Business debacle because as it turns out Minecraft 4J Studios approached C418 to make the minigame music first this is something you actually can’t technically confirm but in the exact same interview where he’s talking about the contract uh disputes very close to the end he spoke about another company that asked him to

Make minigame music and although we could argue there are other companies involved in Minecraft that have midi game music it seems very likely that it’s 4J Studios because the then men mentions that the person who did make it was Gareth Coker what are your thoughts on Gareth coker’s uh Minecraft uh music

See I haven’t listened to it there you go that’s B that’s beef right there that’s just right the reason why Gareth wrote the music is because uh the company in charge of Minecraft at the time which wasn’t Mojang with some different company they wanted to make two different DLC and they wanted to

Like I have a full soundtrack for each and I I am an enemy of crunch like crunch I think is the worst thing that has is in this games industry so like I I wrote uh like the soundtrack from one DLC but I refused to write anything else

With the other and then they hired Gareth so C418 hints that he made the music for one set of tracks and then after they asked to make two in quick succession he said he can’t do that so quick and it does does seem when you look at the dates for the battle mini

Game uh early releases that they were releasing them quite quickly and he was not happy with that and you can also see that those same Maps released with Gareth coca music which is now public and has an official name however the first four Mini-Game tracks are you know

Public but they don’t have an artist officially attached and also they don’t have an official name yet this makes it extremely likely uh that the uh four battle mini game tracks that we first saw were actually made by C418 this is something that is not very widely known

About and so these four tracks made by C418 probably don’t have a name yet because they’re part of Minecraft’s uh volume 3 the you know the Charlie the Delta the gamma album The the next Minecraft album contains these four battle mode tracks and so if you want to

Listen to it a bit early then the the music’s on YouTube go back and watch some battle mini game you know we all want to you know that’s a we’ve got to do honestly this is making me nostalgic I want to go back and play some mini

Games if you want to play some mini games then you can do so by hitting the Subscribe button I lied to you that’s how you subscribed my channel but what I’m not lying to you about is the fact that this video is over I hope you

Enjoyed it and I hope you found this little tidbit about mini games interesting because wow did you know that c480 made the music I didn’t anyway yeah have a good day goodbye Thank you