Minecraft to join Microsoft

[Skiver Veteran]

You run a company, you've just bought another company which employees thousands of people who's positions you already have filled in your company.. What are you going to do? It's business, a horrible decision which effects lives but that is business.

I'm also the same, but it was the greatest thing which happened to our company. It's depends with every case obviously. With the case of us, people complain about now and want the 'good old days' where we had a couple of thousand customers with financial insecurity. Now we're financially secure with a large backing and 700,000 customers and that's a bad thing because some little thing has changed in their office life. People like to complain about anything.

 

I don't think anyone would argue from a business point of view it makes sense, but the people who do get made redundant aren't going to take any comfort from that. 

 

I get that, my point was more around being part of a company with more money doesn't necessarily mean things will be better.

[JonnyLH]

I don't think anyone would argue from a business point of view it makes sense, but the people who do get made redundant aren't going to take any comfort from that. 

 

I get that, my point was more around being part of a company with more money doesn't necessarily mean things will be better.

Obviously, but at the end of the day the IT market is saturated. If your good at what you do, you'd be struggling to not find a job in a week or two. 

 

Of course it's not always going to be better, but when the owner of the company couldn't care less about one of the largest IPs in the world that they own, then something needs to change.

[dead.cell]

You run a company, you've just bought another company which employees thousands of people who's positions you already have filled into your company.. What are you going to do? It's business, a horrible decision which effects lives but that is business.

I get that, and I'm not arguing that at all...

 

What I don't get how Microsoft "wasting money" on Mojang is a blessing for them. Notch and the higher ups over there who may benefit, sure, I bet they're excited even if they don't show it. However rest of the employees which make up Mojang? That's where I don't think they'd be feeling the same way.

 

A blessing for Notch != a blessing for Mojang . . .

[Shadrack]

Not quite Mario no.

I see kids playing minecraft everywhere. Mario? No, not so much. so you are probably right.

[HawkMan]

The point I was making stands. The question was what value is there in Mojang with Notch and other execs leaving. I pointed out that Notch was not an active developer and that those that were actively developing Minecraft were still with the company. So there is value there. Of course things can change in the future, but right now, that is the reality.

 

The value is that Mojang the asses bring in more money from those 2.5B than having liquid assets in the bank for interest. And it can b e liquidated again at a later point. also it brings in over 50 million users. 

I see kids playing minecraft everywhere. Mario? No, not so much. so you are probably right.

 

a lot more people recognize Mario than the minecraft dude. 

[trooper11]

I'm not sure I follow.  I totally get your point that Notch specifically wasn't doing any Minecraft development and hasn't for some time so lets set that aside as we agree.  The question said "Notch and others" though.  My point is just that we don't know what those others are going to do.  You make it sound like you know they are going to stay but I'm saying I'm not even sure THEY even know that.  This deal came out of nowhere.  lt was kept secret from the rank and file with only the three execs who are leaving knew about it.  As such sure no one may have left yet because they didn't know it was coming to prepare (find a new job, etc.)  Again maybe they will all stay, my point isn't that they won't, it's that we just don't know one way or the other.

 

If your point is that they are all there today well MS doesn't own them today and again they JUST found out when everyone else did about the deal.  Buying companies doesn't happen over night so while the deal may be agreed upon they have lots of legal things to take care of which often takes months.  It's probably even worse being that there are international issues at play here. Maybe they all put out resumes when the deal was announced and over the next few weeks they all start accepting other job offers until by the time the deal is final no one is left.  I doubt that will happen but again my point is just that we don't know.  You seem to believe that because they all didn't walk out the door the second the deal was announced they will probably be there for the forseeable future, I'm not so sure that's a reasonable assumption to make.  It might not even be up to them.  Maybe when the deal is final Microsoft fires them all and puts their own C# developers on a rewrite instead of retaining a bunch of Java devs in a foreign country.  Again I don't think that's going to happen but we just don't know.

My point is that the people confirmed leaving are not the active developers of Minecraft anymore. Those that remain could all leave tomorrow, but as of now, they have not. I'm not making any predictions about how long they stay, or assuming anything. As of right now, they are there, we will see how MS moves forward. Do they keep everyone around or start bringing in different developers, etc, etc.

I'm not debating assumptions, since that would be pointless right now.

[Anthony Tosie Veteran]

I get that, and I'm not arguing that at all...

 

What I don't get how Microsoft "wasting money" on Mojang is a blessing for them. Notch and the higher ups over there who may benefit, sure, I bet they're excited even if they don't show it. However rest of the employees which make up Mojang? That's where I don't think they'd be feeling the same way.

 

A blessing for Notch != a blessing for Mojang . . .

Mojang was going to be purchased at some point, by someone. It had a product with massive appeal to key demographics, but it didn't have the infrastructure to take it to the next step. Yes, I'm sure there will be some redundancies that lead to some layoffs, but for the most part, the personnel at Mojang are nothing like the personnel at Nokia.

 

Nokia had massive groups of employees that served the same purpose as those Microsoft already employed. Mojang is a developer first and foremost, and that's where most of their headcount is going to be. Their business-oriented employees are obviously not as safe, but again, their headcount for that area is nothing like what Nokia's was, because of the type of company Nokia was.

 

So, no, it's not a blessing for those business-oriented employees, but it should benefit the developers. They get swooped up by a company that actually fits with what they are, instead of someone like Harmonix being purchased by MTV.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Video of MS Minecraft 2 (early beta):

 

 

:ninja: