Just a short walk away from the festivities at MineCon in Orlando, a group of people was sitting down for lunch together. In the room were a number of representatives from Mojang, although neither Jens nor Markus, Jakob, or Carl was there. The others at the table all came from the ecosystem of server owners that had sprung up around Minecraft. Some of them managed multiplayer Minecraft servers on which others could play with their friends. Others worked as builders, designing and constructing the impressive buildings that helped attract new players to their worlds. The one common denominator was that they all made money from Minecraft. In some cases, a lot of money.
The mood around the table was tense. Everyone knew a conflict was brewing.
Just as the Let’s Play phenomenon had created a new breed of professional Minecraft video makers, a whole economy had been growing around the fact that anyone could host a Minecraft server for others to play on. At its simplest, people would offer access to multi-player servers at a price, a hassle-free alternative for those who didn’t have time to configure their own at home. Such servers consisted of “empty” game worlds, and the gameplay experience was no different from playing Minecraft on your own.
Others had taken their business in another direction. By enlisting some of the world’s greatest Minecraft builders they had created fantastic worlds for others to explore. Many even offered games of their own, playable within Minecraft. Among the more popular were remakes of other video games: Quake, Dota, and Team Fortress 2 have all been recreated on commercial Minecraft servers. Add to that countless other games, challenges, and obstacle courses to discover and attempt to master.
On the server belonging to Hypixel, a well-known Minecraft builder, was a paintball game, a vampire game, and one where players had to navigate a floor made of explosive TNT blocks. On the PlayMindcrack server, the games on offer had names such as Dwarves vs. Zombies, Pajama Jam Time, and Revenge of the Cookie. What they all had in common was that they used the fundamental gameplay mechanics of Minecraft to create new challenges and adventures for players.
Many argue that Minecraft should not be understood simply as “a game.” Markus’s creation can just as well be seen as a social network, or perhaps as a platform for collaboration and creativity. The many games, adventure maps, and challenges constructed within Minecraft are wonderful proof of this: players coming together to repurpose the game and to bring their own creative ideas to how it is played.
But just as million-dollar YouTubers like the Yogscast had built their businesses from humble beginnings, so too had the Minecraft server scene matured over time. A key development took place when entrepreneurial server owners figured out how to charge players for access to certain features. Some asked for a fee simply for logging on, others asked for money in exchange for certain benefits in the games they offered. A few dollars might buy you a better gun, better graphics, or additional features that others had to make do without. On some servers, players who paid a fee gained the ability to fly while those who did not remained firmly on the ground. On others, paying players had access to otherwise locked VIP areas. Some went so far as to offer their own virtual currencies that could be traded for various features and goods in-game. Bright, cheerful advertising would demonstrate the latest features and encourage players to spend more.
It was, for server owners at least, a brilliant business model. Since everything was still essentially Minecraft, most of the development work had been done already.
There was just one problem. Many of their customers didn’t fully understand the distinction between Minecraft itself and the services offered by a server. Not least parents of Minecraft-obsessed kids. Many had handed over their credit cards so that their kids could buy their way onto a popular server, but few understood that the charges were to companies and individuals distinct from Minecraft. When things didn’t work as promised—and given the millions of Minecraft players worldwide, this happened a lot—they naturally turned to Mojang for a refund. But the money in question hadn’t gone to Mojang in the first place.
Some called or e-mailed the Stockholm office. Others turned directly to the person they saw as Minecraft personified: Markus.
Not surprisingly, these conversations often turned sour. Mojang had a difficult time explaining to distraught parents that whatever their kids had spent money on, it had nothing to do with them. Yes, it had all still happened within Minecraft. But not really, and not the part of it that Mojang was responsible for. It was, to say the least, a difficult point to argue.
During the summer of 2013, the pile of complaints had grown so large that Mojang found it difficult to ignore any longer. It was probably just a matter of time before more serious fraudsters realized that Minecraft was a prime target, the thinking went. As it was, it would have been a simple matter for someone to sell virtual goods that didn’t exist, and Mojang would essentially have been powerless to stop it. But regardless of the legal situation, Mojang would be the ones blamed for the whole mess.
Perhaps one reason why Mojang was fairly slow to react was that rules were already in place, at least sort of, to deal with situations like these. As detailed in the end-user license agreement, or EULA for short (a term that would later become synonymous with disaster in the Minecraft world), Mojang did not permit the sale of in-game items in Minecraft. The only problem with the rules was that nobody had bothered to enforce them. For years, Mojang had simply looked the other way. There hadn’t been any problems so far, they’d reasoned, so why make a fuss? It was a policy that rhymed well with the independent spirit on which the company was founded, and Markus’s general hands-off approach toward what players did with his game. After all, user-generated content in the form of impressive builds and astronomically successful YouTube films were partly what the company’s fortunes were built on. In addition, the conflict with the Yogscast had taught Markus and the others a hard-earned lesson: going against the wishes of the community was not a decision to take lightly.
Since Mojang hadn’t really bothered with the issue, most server owners had taken for granted that whatever they did was de facto permitted. Sure, some may have read through the Minecraft EULA before setting up their services, but few took the words in it seriously. Ridiculously long-winded and obsessively detailed user agreements are the norm for computer software. For example, whoever agrees to the EULA for iTunes also agrees not to use the software to create nuclear or biological weapons. Usually, companies happily add whatever unlikely eventualities their lawyers can think of, to cover as many hypothetical bases as possible. Almost everyone clicks “I agree” without a second thought.
End-user license agreements are, in other words, pretty boring things. When Markus was first developing Minecraft, he’d handled that fact in his own way. The early versions of the EULA were written by him, addressing the player directly. The tone of voice was friendly and relaxed. In essence, it all boiled down to one simple rule: Don’t steal what I’ve created. “In order to maintain control of the project, I need all game downloads to come from a single central source. I hope you understand,” Markus wrote. “I’m not going to put up a huge EULA. I’m trying to be open and honest, and I hope people treat me the same way back.”
But over time and as Minecraft grew, the wording in the user agreement changed. Markus’s original headline, “Copyright Information,” gave way to a more formal-sounding “Terms of Use.” The “I” of the original text was changed to a “we,” representing Mojang as a company rather than Markus as an individual. A section headlined “Privacy Policy” was added. Little by little, the laid-back, easy-to-follow, and personal tone of the original message disappeared. The text was soon many times longer than what Markus had originally written. Finally, “Terms of Use” was again replaced. This time, despite what had been said previously, by the phrase “End-User License Agreement,” or EULA.
The final paragraph of the text carried a certain symbolic weight, as it brought up Markus’s close contact with players during the early phases of Minecraft’s development. His constant interactions with the community and his ability to pick up on promising suggestions had been key ingredients in shaping the game. Markus’s open, collaborative attitude was also, arguably, a driving force in fostering the friendly and welcoming attitude of the Minecraft community as a whole.
But now, in the EULA, it was all described as nothing more than a cold and calculating, some would say cynical, business transaction. “If you come to us with a suggestion for any one of our Games, that suggestion is made for free. This means we can use your suggestion in any way we want and we don’t have to pay you for it.”
Despite the increasingly formal words, Mojang was yet to lift a finger to make sure server owners followed the rules. As time progressed, what had started out as modest experiments turned into very profitable businesses. Several Minecraft server operations soon counted their revenues in hundreds of thousands of dollars. They managed game worlds that had taken countless hours to build and were backed by powerful and expensive hardware to handle the steady stream of new customers. In short: many people invested plenty of time, effort, and money into their server operations. They were not prepared to give everything up because Mojang suddenly had a change of heart.
A few months before MineCon 2013, Mojang let slip the first signals that things were about to change. There were rumors of impending adjustments to the EULA, and that the hands-off policy toward enforcing it would be made stricter. Some server owners were contacted officially, and panic started to spread. Was all their work about to be rendered worthless?
Besides, the timing was suspect. Mojang was about to launch its own hosting service, known as Minecraft Realms. From a business perspective, this was perhaps the most important update to the game since the beginning. For years, Carl Manneh had brought it up whenever someone pointed to the inherent weakness of the Minecraft business model—that users paid a one-time fee and were then given all future updates to the game without extra cost. Sooner or later the market would saturate, people argued. There would simply not be enough gamers left in the world to sustain Mojang’s profits. Given Minecraft’s explosive growth, that point was likely to arrive sooner rather than later.
That is precisely why Realms was so important. The idea was pretty simple: gamers would pay a fixed monthly sum to Mojang in exchange for having their Minecraft world hosted on the company servers. It was a quick and easy way to get started with multiplayer Minecraft, and it meant that players themselves no longer had to keep their computers running day and night (or, for that matter, worry about losing everything when their systems crashed). Much like Gmail takes care of your e-mail and Facebook takes care of your holiday photos, the thinking went, Mojang would make sure your Minecraft world remained online for as long as you wanted it to.
In Carl Manneh’s eyes, it was a clever way of sidestepping the biggest financial weakness of the company he was managing. Mojang wasn’t in need of money, quite the opposite, but as CEO it was his responsibility to keep the financials as sound as possible.
Competing server owners saw the situation differently. To them, Minecraft Realms meant Mojang was offering a service that was largely the same as what they had been doing for years. Did this mean their own subscriber bases would dwindle at the same rate as Mojang’s grew? And, more importantly, were the tougher rules for in-game transactions merely a way for Mojang to sabotage the competition?
Anyone who had followed Minecraft’s development could easily dismiss this conspiracy theory. The server ecosystem had done wonders for the success of the game. The rich tapestry of worlds to explore and amazing builds to gawk at improved the gameplay experience exponentially. This was something that Carl, Markus, Jakob, and everyone else at Mojang was keenly aware of. But the way in-game payments were developing was worrying, to say the least. Not just because Markus didn’t enjoy phone calls from angry parents, but because it went against the ideological foundations on which Minecraft had been built.
Some servers offered items for sale that made players stronger, for example more powerful swords or rare potions. This meant players who parted with real-world money had a different, arguably better, experience than others. The same approach was common in many other games, perhaps most famously one released by Markus’s previous employer Midasplayer. Shortly after he’d left, the company had changed its name to King. It had also released a new title for the iPhone, which had quickly grown to become one of the most popular games of all time: Candy Crush Saga. Just like when Markus worked there, King released new games at a staggering rate. Candy Crush Saga was at its core a variation on tic-tac-toe and thus a clear evolution of tried and tested mechanics. The real genius was to be found in the business model. Candy Crush levels are deceptively simple to begin with. The difficulty is cranked up slowly to make sure players are hooked by the gameplay. Soon, it reaches a level where most are inevitably stuck. But there’s an easy way out of the frustration: A click is all it takes to purchase an item—with real money of course—that will make the level just a bit easier.
Such games, of which Candy Crush Saga is just one of thousands, are usually referred to as “free-to-play,” sometimes stylized as “free2play.” They are free to download and, well, play. But after a while the inevitable reminders that you can spend a little money to enhance your experience make themselves known. Sometimes the player pays for new weapons. Other times for help in overcoming a seemingly insurmountable task. The free-to-play model has proven itself time and time again, especially on mobile platforms. Many if not most of the top-grossing games on the App Store belong to the category.
Markus hated it. He would never allow Minecraft to go down the same route. Not for as long as he had anything to say about it, at least. The business logic underpinning free-to-play steered game design down the wrong path, he believed. It changed the focus of the developer, away from making interesting games that were as fun as possible to play, toward making them just annoying enough and just a little bit too difficult. Why? For the simple reason that no one would agree to in-game payments otherwise. The art, if you can call it that, was all about hooking players with simple, addictive gameplay and then slowly, almost unnoticeably, making progress as annoying and difficult as possible for those who didn’t pay. It had to be done carefully—if it became too obvious that the developer was trying to push the player toward payment most people would lose interest. The most skillfully designed free-to-play games—like Candy Crush Saga—masterfully tread the balance between addiction and irritation.
Free-to-play was simply bad for games, Markus thought. It changed the game designer into a manipulative salesperson.
And still, this was precisely what was happening to Minecraft outside of Markus’s control. The items, skills, and features sold on Minecraft servers represented a move toward exactly what he despised the most. Minecraft in itself had a famously simple business model—pay once, play forever. But that didn’t amount to much as long as server owners could do as they pleased.
With this in mind, the tense atmosphere at the MineCon lunch table was no surprise. On one side were those who wanted to put an end to or at least severely limit in-game transactions on Minecraft servers. They saw it as a poison that was slowly corrupting the community from within. On the other side were those that regarded the server ecosystem as a cornerstone of the Minecraft culture. All the fantastic worlds that had been created, all the minigames and jaw-droppingly beautiful builds were what made the game so different and unique. Forcing in-game payments out of the ecosystem would likely mean that many of the most popular worlds would be closed down. Because what would be the point otherwise? Not even the most dedicated fan would be willing to put so much time and effort into something without getting some sort of compensation back.
It was easy to see that both sides had a point. Positions seemed irreconcilable, and as MineCon came to a close, the ticking time bomb of in-game payments remained an unsolved question. One that was about to blow up spectacularly.
It all started with a few throwaway tweets, as disgruntled players and server owners began to vent their worries over Mojang’s intention to start cracking down on in-game payments.
“Apparently, Mojang is attempting to remove donations to servers to help their Realms profits,” someone wrote.
“Good luck in your quest to alienate the majority of your player base,” someone else chimed in.
From there, the discussion spread to various Minecraft forums, then to Reddit. Within a few days, it had become the talking point of the entire Minecraft world. Would Mojang suddenly start enforcing rules that would effectively rob a large part of the community of their livelihood?
Well, yes, sort of. But not really in the way people feared the most. By mid-June, Mojang posted a short explanatory note online, meant to straighten things out and answer all remaining questions. The text can be summarized in two points:
Yes, from now on the rules are in effect.
No, we will not destroy the server ecosystem. “Let’s get one thing clear: we love it when Minecrafters host servers,” as the letter stated.
The idea was to sidestep the issue through an exception. Already, as a way to deal with the fact that popular Minecraft YouTubers were making tons of money through advertising, Mojang had added a clause exempting gameplay videos from the rule. This move had, in fact, helped reinforce Markus’s good-guy image in the gaming world. In spring 2013 he’d been invited to a meeting with YouTube. Its legal team had realized that the thousands upon thousands of Minecraft-themed videos available through the service existed in a legal gray area. Technically, they belonged at least in part to Markus and Mojang, given the fact that they’d be recorded in his game. This meant he had a legal right to claim a percentage of the ad money the films had brought in. Markus hesitated, but eventually turned the offer down. He told of it publicly and was applauded for his decision. Especially in contrast with game maker Nintendo, a company that had recently received a similar offer, said yes, and been vilified by gamers as a result.
It’s difficult to estimate how much money Markus passed on by declining the offer. In all likelihood, it would have amounted to notable sums even for someone as wealthy as he was at the time. Of course, the cynical take is that it was all a well-planned publicity stunt, or that Markus simply saw greater value in the fact that YouTube was chock-full of films promoting his game. But even then, there is no doubting the respect he gained through his decision.
Now, the plan was for Mojang to attempt the same thing again. The new rules contained yet another exception, this time for in-game purchases of a “cosmetic nature.” This meant only items that changed the visual appearance of the game, but not the gameplay mechanics, would be allowed for sale. In other words, charging for a new hat was perfectly fine. Charging for a better gun, or a potion that made your avatar quicker or stronger than others, was not. It was an attempt at compromise. Mojang hoped it would allow them to get away with enforcing the rules as intended, while simultaneously avoiding the wrath of the community. But was it enough to let Markus and the others off the hook? Not by a long shot, as it turned out.
A reputation for generosity, it turns out, is a double-edged sword. It builds expectations, some of which can be impossible to fulfill. Through a series of clearly unselfish moves, not to mention his status as the god-creator of Minecraft itself, Markus’s fame had now risen to a point where fans expected nothing but absolute altruism from him at every turn. In all likelihood the situation would have been different had he simply acted like a businessman from the start, because no one expects anything but greed from a businessman. Instead, Markus was left to manage a community that seemed impossible to please. Every action he took that could in any way be interpreted as selfish was met with disdain from thousands of Minecrafters. And Mojang’s announcement of the new rules for in-game payments unleashed a flood of abuse. “Complete idiocy,” someone wrote. “TONS of loopholes,” another pointed out. “Notch has failed us.”
“I wouldn’t want to be Notch tomorrow,” said Stephen “Francis” Williams, a popular YouTube personality, in a cheerless update about the changes. “We’re going to see a lot of people closed down. We’re going to see a lot of people hurt. We’re going to see a lot of people have their money evaporate.”
It’s difficult to overstate the magnitude of the rift that was now tearing through the Minecraft world. Sure, there had been controversies in the past. Many people still remembered the breakup between Notch and the Yogscast a few years earlier. But that, like most other fights over Minecraft, had been symbolic. It had been an argument about behavior, attitude, and choice of words. What happened now was different—it was about survival. About which servers would be allowed to remain active and which would not. Millions of dollars were at stake. Not to mention the thousands of players who regarded servers at risk as their homes, in-game payments or not.
And, perhaps most importantly, Mojang and Markus were blamed for it all. “Wow . . . I thought Mojang were chill people . . .” as one player wrote in one of the many discussion threads about what had happened.
At that point, something snapped inside of Markus. Two days after the new rules had been posted, he sat down to write a blog post about the ordeal. His words convey disappointment and sadness.
“Mojang does not exist to make as much money as possible for the owners. As the majority shareholder, I’d know,” he wrote. It was an echo from years past, when Minecraft was just beginning to catch on and Markus, even before Mojang was founded, invited Carl Manneh aboard so that he would not have to manage the business himself.
Then, he went on to discuss the server community, and their methods for getting paid.
“Some of them even charge quite a lot. I don’t even know how many e-mails we’ve gotten from parents, asking for their hundred dollars back their kid spent on an item pack on a server we have no control over. This was never allowed, but we didn’t crack down on it because we’re constantly incredibly swamped in other work.”
Being blamed for essentially destroying the community around Minecraft was clearly hurtful to Markus. Someone went so far as to compare Mojang with Electronic Arts, the third-largest game publisher in the world and a common symbol for ruthless corporate greed in the gaming world: “A lot of people voiced their concerns. A few people got nasty. Someone said we’re literally worse than EA.” In fact, Markus argued, the new rules were more forgiving than they had been previously. “People are still asking me to change back to the old EULA. That makes me sad.”
His post did little to calm things down. Three days later, amidst constant abuse directed at him and Mojang, he made his frustration known to everyone.
“Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig,” he wrote on Twitter.
The tweet was classic Notch. Emotional, impulsive, and not something to be taken seriously.
Shortly thereafter, Carl Manneh replied publicly on Twitter: “aaand I’m already getting approached by potential buyers.”
“Good,” Markus replied.
Then, things went quiet. Most people dismissed the exchange as no more than sarcastic banter between friends. In fact, the first step had just been taken toward a deal worth billions.