Markus “Notch” Persson has “basically announced” a spiritual successor to Minecraft.
Over the New Year, Notch invited his millions of X followers to indicate what project they would like him to focus on in 2025. Aside from a “tile-based first-person dungeon crawler”, the other option was a “spiritual successor” to Minecraft.
In the post asking for “honest and legitimate […] feedback for once”, Persson explained briefly what his dungeon crawler would entail, but then admitted, “but then I gots to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft, and I mean sure, I’d take that cash”.
As of the time of this post, an overwhelming 78% of voters chose Minecraft 2 in favor of the alternative.
“My intentions are to be clear and honest about it, saying that spiritual successors are usually kind of… you know… washed up. Tragic,” he added. “The things I’m fearing my next game is going to be anyway and try to push myself to avoid. So why not do the thing that people DO want and are willing to give me, somehow, even MORE cash for.
“I intend for the money to the [sic] spent for good, but my God, have I learned I fail a lot. Winning is failing until you make yourself succeed.”
Although Notch acknowledged that using the Minecraft name “would be super illegal”, he added that there was no non-compete clause in the sale of Minecraft to Microsoft.
“Instead, I’d make a new original game of the same type as Minecraft and call it something else,” he said. “These are traditionally sometimes referred to as ‘spiritual successors’, but usually kinda mostly feel a bit flat.
“But, like, if that’s actually what people want, I would LOVE to make that game. It’d be my Gremlins 2.”
Notch also said that as “a man of [his] word”, he intended “to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing.”