Microsoft acquired Mojang for $2.5 billion, according to a blog of Swedish company website.
Last week, rumors appeared that Microsoft was going to buy Mojang for $2 billion. Allegedly, the founder of the company Marcus Persson himself turned to Microsoft with an offer. Now the parties have confirmed the deal, but the amount has grown by $500 million.
Founders Mojang will leave Marcus Persson, Karl Manneh and Jacob Porser. The company’s website assumes that the remaining employees will retain their places. MineCraft will not be turned into an exclusive Xbox and PC: the game will continue to be released on other platforms. The MineCon festival dedicated to the game will be held next year, as it was assembled earlier.
The Mojang website claims that Persson was bothered by how large the company became and therefore he decided to sell it.
Mojang is a Swedish company founded in September 2010 by game designer Marcus Persson and his friends Karl Manneh and Jacob Porser. The studio took up the sandbox game Minecraft, the Apple version of which Persson released a year earlier. The full game was released on PC, Android and iOS in 2011. Later versions for the Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, and Xbox One followed. Minecraft scored an average score of 83.54% (Xbox 360) on the GameRankings review aggregator and by June 2014 had sold over 54 million copies. Since 2012, the LEGO Minecraft Constructor Kits have been released. Mojang plans to release a feature film based on Minecraft. The company is also preparing a Cobalt action and Scrolls card strategy. Mojang employs 40 people. In 2013, the studio's net revenue was about $128 million.
Update: Marcus Persson confirmed on this blog that he was leaving Mojang. According to him, he is an ordinary programmer, not a CEO. The game designer will continue to participate in the Ludum Dare Developer Contest and will work on small network experiments.
