Mojang, the Swedish developer behind the greatest indie game success story of all time, Minecraft, just sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.
Both Microsoft and Owen Hill, a spokesman for Mojang, have been fighting to reassure fans of the popular sandbox sim that this work on the game will remain unaffected.
In the statement, Hill claimed that the pressure of running the organization, which generated up to $326 million in 2013, became too much to bear for founders Markus “Notch” Persson, Jakob Porser, and Carl Manneh. Consequently, they are all leaving.
Since launching in 2009, still in early alpha, Minecraft has grown to become a global phenomenon, granting users the ability to explore procedurally generated environments to build, design, and share their worlds. It has sold more than 50,000,000 copies across PC, smartphones, and consoles.
Microsoft claimed that the game was downloaded 100 million times exclusively on PC since the game began, which includes free downloads. However, it also pointed out that Xbox 360 players have put in more than 2,000,000 hours into the game in just the past 2 years alone.
Mojang has stressed that the focus going forward will be on supporting Minecraft with new features and content. Furthermore, the company also said that just because Microsoft is acquiring it, doesn’t mean the ports on other platforms will be scrapped.