I’m really curious what this will mean to the modding community. I love the mods, and hope that won’t be something that they squash.
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I had thought this, but they’d have to be pretty mendacious to prevent it working on Linux. It’s just Java, after all. I wouldn’t put it past them, necessarily, and they may actually be right if they bet they could weather the inevitable hatestorm.
They may be nervously eyeing the 670-odd (and growing) Linux games on Steam, the Humble Bundle people, GOG offering Linux variants, etc. They’re probably also painfully aware of their lack of clout in the mobile space.
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It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.
http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/’
Also a little bit over, but done!
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Yeah, as long as it stays java it’ll run and be modifiable and if next year they would say henceforth minecraft will only be available in .NET… well, that would torpedo their investment in the community. So, really, why no mention of linux? It’s either that they value those users so little or - it’s what you say, they’re looking over their shoulder drenched in flop sweat.
To me, this is as if Han Solo sold Princess Leia to Darth Vader…
There is a hugely popular PC version that costs upwards of $20, and it has been downloaded zillions of times.
Maybe. But putting myself in his shoes - if Bill Gates comes to my door and offers me a couple billion to walk away from something I no longer enjoy doing, I am going to accept it. I’d quit my current job for about $25000 to be honest.
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My price would be significantly less.
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Very true (and I include myself among those zillions of downloads), but quite irrelevant when the statement I was complaining about read “It remains the most popular game on Xbox, iOS and Android.”
Rob was quick to edit for clarification.
No game, no matter how “game changing” is worth 2.5bn sighs
-cough- -skype- -cough- -skype-
are we talking about the same microsoft?
In the history of everything, has a large corporation ever bought something innovative from the original innovator and not made it crap in short order? or at the very least stagnated it and doomed it to eventual irrelevance? ever?
there is only two things MS is interested in mining…
- people’s wallets
- people’s attention
this will probably help them do both sadly enough.
Yeah, but your current job isn’t “doing whatever you want because you made Minecraft and have more money now than you know what to do with”. If you no longer had a need for that $25,000, why would you bother selling off something as valuable as Mojang?
Why not just disband Mojang? Why not just release Minecraft to the global community as Creative Commons or whatever? Why not just mothball the entire thing, shut the company down for a bit, and come back in five years or so after a recharge, just in time for people to be interested in “Minecraft 2” or whatever?
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I was using Skype over the acquisition and didn’t really notice much difference. It was annoying and had a horrible UI before, and was annoying and had a horrible UI afterwards. My experience was unchanged as far as I noticed. Maybe different if you were a paying customer. It’s been three years now, though, I can imagine it’s gotten worse since.
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I’m not sure about the other guys getting the payoff here, but Notch at least had literally more money than he knew what to do with before this. (Given that he sold $300 million worth of copies on the PC alone, twice as many on consoles and phones and have numerous merchandizing deals.) He talked about it in interviews. Money was not a motivation. He could have walked away from Minecraft at any point and done whatever he wanted (which it seemed like he was already doing), and do so in luxury. He could have spun Minecraft off into a separate company and never had to deal with anything related to it ever again (which it rather sounded like was already the case). I’m baffled as to his motivation for this.
I’m kinda hoping that Notch uses the money to buy Bethesda.
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On the level of personal finances, being worth $2.8B vs $300M is completely inconsequential…
Unless you want to change the world.
Even if you are tired of all that money can buy, that degree of additional money may be worthwhile if you can help stop ebola, or malaria, or pancreatic cancer, or whatever.
I don’t know this guy or his situation, but maybe he has reasons.
Or maybe he’s an ass.
No way for me to know.
I am a paying skype customer and use skype daily, and for me the quality has gone from excellent to almost unusable. it has gotten so bad that i have to hang up and call back once or twice per call, minimum. several of my family memebers and friends are also paying customers and have had similar experiences. on mac skype you used to be able to set how many rings before it went to voicemail, they removed that feature completely, it now only goes to voicemail if you are offline. They also removed the ability to have a completely private profile, and the ability to block non-invited contact requests. Pretty much everything they’ve done to the service has sucked and been a major step backwards.
ironically i actually like the UI, but i’d rather have a usable service and cruddy UI then the new UI and a barely usable service.
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Someone should, just to instil a culture of 'don’t release things when they’re still fucking broken.
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I cant say I am not impressed, or not jealous
Okay, clearly it’s gone downhill! They do destroy things in the long run.
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