[Minecraft] Microsoft Bought Mojang. Your thoughts and feelings?

[_Shadow_]

First off, let me mention that this thread has no intention to create drama or flaming.

So let's keep this conversation in a good and polite level.
Everyone has his/her own likes and dislikes, thus many opinions might differ.

What I ask, is everyone to respect everyone else's opinion.

This can be a nice thread for thougts about Indie game industry, and indie developers and success.

So, Mojang was bought by Microsoft.

For 2.5 Billion Dollars.

Wow!

Feelings are mixed.

I am happy for Notch, worried for Minecraft.

I am happy that indie developers can succeed.

I am worried for one of the best games in the world.

Seems that 1.8 was a free gift from what Jeb was on the last few months. At least now we have enough content to feel really nice for a legendary game.

What are your thoughts on these all?

 

[Ralpf]

I was never able to get into Minecraft.

But that is a serious mistake on MSs part. No way they will ever see that money again.

 

[EternalShadow]

Well, it's not like it was actually that much money to MS...

But if MS leave the game alone and focus on fixing it technically, they're free to monetize Realms for all I care, lol.

Though they may just start charging for updates. Like, $5. Not too unreasonable though, considering how many man hours go into them.

 

[FleetingInfinity]

Well Notch has not even been involved in the actual development of Minecraft for quite a while, so it's not exactly an issue for him.  He's actually going to be leaving the company once it belongs to Microsoft.   I think it's a good thing for him, since he really was not comfortable with dealing with something that grew to such a large scale, and he didn't enjoy being in the public eye so much and feeling beholden to the fans. 

Microsoft on the other hand has departments dedicated to handling the customer base and public relations.   Honestly, I have no feelings on it beyond that since I did not really enjoy Minecraft all that much, but I'm happy for the developer because hopefully now he'll be able to leave the public eye within a few years like he wants to and just focus on developing small things like he wants to.

 

[bluebird]

I play minecraft from time to time and my feelings are a bit mixed as well.  Happy for Notch, even though he's going to be leaving the company after- at least he achieved the indie game develop dream.  I actually hope he might use that money to make more indie games so he can keep on doing what he loved.

As for minecraft...meh, I feel Microsoft bought it to benefit off of the merchandise that sells like crazy.  I work at a department store and not a day goes by when there isn't someone asking for more Minecraft toys.  That being said, I hope they don't enforce random fees.  Minecraft was a one-time buy, and while it is a great game, it should really stay that way.  I'm sure parents appreciate the fact that Minecraft isn't like Skylanders where you have to buy different figures to unlock things..

 

[GraveBusta]

Microsoft this time isn't in it entirely for profit this is an experiment to get themselves more familiar with working as a community honestly this could make minecraft alive again.

 

[EternalShadow]

As for minecraft...meh, I feel Microsoft bought it to benefit off of the merchandise that sells like crazy.  I work at a department store and not a day goes by when there isn't someone asking for more Minecraft toys.  That being said, I hope they don't enforce random fees.  Minecraft was a one-time buy, and while it is a great game, it should really stay that way.  I'm sure parents appreciate the fact that Minecraft isn't like Skylanders where you have to buy different figures to unlock things..

Good point actually, forgot about the merch. I suppose monetizing MC out of MC itself is actually the better route.

 

[Ralpf]

Well, it's not like it was actually that much money to MS...

But if MS leave the game alone and focus on fixing it technically, they're free to monetize Realms for all I care, lol.

Though they may just start charging for updates. Like, $5. Not too unreasonable though, considering how many man hours go into them.

Their investors will beg to differ, I think they are getting fed up with the XBox division as it is (which may only be tangentially related).

I also didn't think about the merchandise though, that may be enough to make this a profitable venture for MS.

Assuming they don't screw stuff up for the players.

 

[Milennin]

I play Minecraft every few months on a server with friends and I'm very worried about Microsoft buying Minecraft. If things like modding, private servers are going away and micro-transactions are going to be added then I'm done with Minecraft for good. And honestly it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they're going to do just that. I mean, why else would they invest 2,5B in it? To monetise the hell out of it is the likely answer. I'm not convinced this deal is a good thing for Minecraft. But I guess I'll wait and see.

 

[EternalShadow]

To be honest, if it does happen, likely Terraria, Survivalcraft, etc will take its place.

 

[GraveBusta]

To be honest, if it does happen, likely Terraria, Survivalcraft, etc will take its place.

It already happened.

 

[EternalShadow]

It already happened.

I meant the concept of Minecraft's community crashing if Microsoft mishandles it, I just forgot to quote the post.

 

[whitesphere]

I think it could be a good thing for Minecraft, but Microsoft will need to handle this very carefully.  As others pointed out, if they go too far trying to monetize the base game, the community and interest in Minecraft will fall apart.  This will, in turn, render their 2.5 billion dollar investment worthless.  So I don't think they'll be that reckless with their investment.

The investors may want Microsoft to monetize Minecraft more rapidly, but they'll get much more bang for their buck by tapping into the huge demand for Minecraft merchandise. 

It could be a good thing because, in theory, Microsoft could put a lot more effort into improving Minecraft.

But only time will tell how that plays out.

 

[Tsukihime]

Microsoft needs to prove that they aren't going to just ruin it.


That's probably their biggest barrier. At least, that's all I see in the comments sections.

 

[Seacliff]

To be honest, I don't think much will be different. Notch hadn't been involved in Minecraft for years and if you don't like the new updates from now on, just don't update minecraft.

The only real change I think we'll see is no more Minecraft for Sony Consoles.

 

[_Shadow_]

Well to talk a little more in detail, many of you people covered some stuff that worry me.

First off let me tell you that I am happy that it was NOT bought by EA.

We all know the disaster of Plants vs Zombies 2 after EA bought Popcap.

Buy flowers to fight zombies. LOL! What were they thinking? Oh wait! Profits as always.

Microsoft is not a very innocent company either. But at least they listen to what people have to say.

I mean, they tried for instance to erase desktop for good.

That was risky, and in my opinion stupid. But at the same time they took the risk so it was courageous.

I like the fact that Microsoft risked with that move and LEARNED from the reaction of the customers.

That said, what will happen is partly up to the people who play Minecraft. 

I bought Minecraft when it was still on beta. The deal was, Buy once the game, get all updates for free.

So I expect all next updates for free. I might sound like an idiot, but even if I will see a $5 update, I WILL send to MS a letter demanding it for free.

Every time. If they wanna benefit from Realms, well that's ok with me. Mojang did that too, why not MS? To be honest I expect them to continue give updates for free.

A second more technical worry. MS, as every other company, can become a control freak. Not only because of business models, but also because of Marketing etc etc. What worries me is the possibility of rewriting Minecraft in C# and abandon Java version updates. It sounds stupid, it has logic behind it, but it will take long to analyze why I worry about that. Yes I know about Netscape failure and that rewriting something might be a bad practice blah blah blah, but it's MS. MS CAN fail, because of the huge amount of resources that are available.

Third thing that worries me is a Minecraft 2 version and a freeze of Minecraft 1. This is really a possibility. Oh! You want the new incredible Minecraft features? Come to Minecraft 2. EULA then can not mention anything for... free future updates. And... here goes DLCs for $5 and customer can not complain about it. It's a NEW product.

Now I worry about potential bad things that might happen. There are also good things that might happen too. So I feel that I also have to express them, to balance my post a little.

MS might give Minecraft for free with a new Windows bought.

Other OS versions will have to pay for it of course.

Thus you give more value to your product, against competition.

That would actually be a smart move in my opinion.

There is always the possibility that nothing bad will happen.

As for Notch, I am happy for him. He has all the money he needs, without any business worries anymore,  so now he can focus on doing what he loves to do. Good games.   

 

[Imploded Tomato]

If you think about it, Minecraft did have does networking kinks in it and the game isn't fully optimized (takes up lots of ram that isn't necessary due to how the engine was programmed). I see Microsoft's purchase as a positive because they have all the necessary tools to have the settings fully optimized for the PC and Consoles. I can honestly say I'm looking forward to Microsoft's Minecraft 2; another reason why I see this as a positive is because Microsoft does on occasion listen to consumer feedback, and will take action to make things right if the game turns out to be a flop by correcting their mistakes. This is just my opinion of coarse.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

As far as I'm concerned, I'm worried for minecraft... but I'd say let's see what happens. Hopefully, microsoft won't ruin the game

 

[_Shadow_]

If you think about it, Minecraft did have does networking kinks in it and the game isn't fully optimized (takes up lots of ram that isn't necessary due to how the engine was programmed). I see Microsoft's purchase as a positive because they have all the necessary tools to have the settings fully optimized for the PC and Consoles. I can honestly say I'm looking forward to Microsoft's Minecraft 2; another reason why I see this as a positive is because Microsoft does on occasion listen to consumer feedback, and will take action to make things right if the game turns out to be a flop by correcting their mistakes. This is just my opinion of coarse.

You are right.

But thing is that Minecraft really needs RAM when locally generates the chunks and the new world parts.

If you play locally or using Ethernet LAN that would be no problem at all.

Issues emerge when you have to play online.

You got a client that must reproduce the world a server is running.

So the server must send a lot of generated at that time information.

This creates bad lag as the bottleneck is the not premade packs of the world.

What is needed, is a better algorithm.

Like... first sync with the server, you get a LOT of spawn point data.

I mean a lot!!!

Server always generates chunks ever far away from the users, is a circular way.

Next login will be after filling you with a lot of the world generated.

Minecraft is small really.

Generated world is the big stuff.

Now imagine that a player goes east.

The server has to keep a safe generated world distance, bigger than the local algorithm.

Now since MS is more experienced on networking stuff... there will be a great enhancement on that part.

The bad thing is that it will probably not be for free.

But yes, we will see about that.

I can not blame MS before doing anything.

Time will tell. 

 

[Kane Hart]

If they rewrote Minecraft that would be amazing. I know some people hate this idea but most of their dicking around is rewriting little bits and peices at a time. If they did it all once and took a 1 year MIA break things would be a lot better for the long run. Not only that they don't need to rewrite it twice since it would be in C# just like all the other platforms are written in now.