The Tangled Life Of Minecraft's Creator

For the first seven years of his life, Markus Persson lived in Edsbyn, a rural, sparsely populated community in the interior of Sweden situated about 180 miles north of Stockholm. His mother worked as a nurse, and his father for a railroad company. Young Persson spent much of his leisure time just walking around the abundant natural areas and absorbing the sights, much of which would later inform the untouched biomes that make up "Minecraft." "We lived in this area that was basically two circular roads next to each other," Persson told Rolling Stone. "There were forests and pastures and stuff. I remember walking around the forest quite a bit."

The playing grounds of "Minecraft" resemble the areas surrounding Edsbyn, Sweden, in the 1980s. Persson believes that the game embodies "a very Swedish perception of what these things are supposed to look like."

Markus Persson was introduced to gaming and programming while he was elementary school age in the 1980s. His father bought the family a Commodore 128 home computer and connected it to other hobbyists via a modem he built himself. After his parents divorced and Persson moved with his mother to the Stockholm suburbs, he brought the Commodore and started playing his father's collection of pirated game titles. By the time he was eight, Persson was learning to write software. His younger sister would read him lines of code printed in computing magazines, and he'd type it into his console. Within a year, he'd built a text-based adventure game, but, not knowing how to program a save feature, he'd have to re-type the entirety of the code every time he wanted to play it again.

At 16, he began attending secondary school and became lonely and withdrawn and had but one friend. "I started spending time at home, just programming, just games. I was obsessed with 'Doom.' I wanted to replicate it," Persson told Wired. He did, in fact, re-create 'Doom' himself, but would drop out of school before finishing.

By 2009, Markus Persson had settled into a position as a programmer at jAlbum, a Stockholm-based internet photo-storing service. To pass the time at home in his apartment, he started coding a game, by himself, on his own computer. That game was "Minecraft," notable for its simplistic, pixelated graphics depicting a human character using basic tools to mine the scenery for blocks of material used to build structures and fight cubist monsters. If it looks like it didn't take long to build "Minecraft," that's because it didn't — Persson completely programmed the game in less than a week, a result of the designer's desire to move on quickly. "I just wanted to make a game that could make enough money to make another game," Persson told Rolling Stone. Shortly after sharing the news of his game on the online forum TIGSource in May 2009, Persson started charging others €10 (about $10) to digitally purchase "Minecraft." In its first weekend, Persson sold 40 downloads.

Persson didn't release any instructions, which, instead of frustrating players, forced them to reach out to one another on online channels. That spread the news of the game and drummed up interest. Within a year, 20,000 people had bought "Minecraft." At the end of 2010, "Minecraft" moved about that many each day, on average.

Markus Persson uploaded the first, early edition of "Minecraft" to the internet in 2009, and kept tweaking and updating it at will. All the while, word of mouth increased the game's profile, and hundreds of thousands of people downloaded "Minecraft." Those who wanted to download it simply paid the designer electronically through a funds transfer, depositing the nominal fee directly into Persson's PayPal account. In late 2010, Persson entertained but then ultimately rejected an offer to work at software publisher Valve, a process that raised the profile of both creator and game. At one point, around 23,000 copies of "Minecraft" were electronically purchased in a single 24-hour period.

That's when PayPal contacted Persson to let him know that they'd issued a temporary freeze on his account. The company assumed that such a large and sudden influx of funds from around the world indicated the buying and selling of something illegal or clandestine. It wasn't — Persson was just sitting on about $860,000 in "Minecraft" payments. It was so much money that Persson could comfortably quit his programming job at jAlbum, and he did so on his 31st birthday in 2010.

[Featured image by Official GDC via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0 DEED]

The early popularity of "Minecraft" came about organically, via word of mouth on Internet forums like TIGSource. Another effective exposure tool is user-made gameplay and instructional videos. The first-ever "Minecraft" video hit YouTube only a few hours after Markus Persson first offered "Minecraft" for downloading in May 2009. Millions of "Minecraft" videos have since been produced and shared, commanding more than a trillion YouTube views.

All those clips can earn a lot of advertising revenue for their creators, and they all technically use intellectual property belonging to, at various points in history, Persson, Mojang AB, and Microsoft. Recognizing the community-building and marketing potential of the videos, Persson met with YouTube officials in 2013 and decided to not ask for a portion of the ad revenue generated by others' "Minecraft" videos, money to which he was by all means entitled. In doing so, Persson rejected countless millions of dollars.

"Minecraft" made Markus Persson a very wealthy man, even before he sold the rights to the game (and the company that produced it, Mojang), to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014. That sense of financial security, and a deep and abiding love of video games, and wanting to share their joys with the world, may have influenced his casual support of software piracy.

In a since-deleted January 2012 post on Twitter, now known as X, a gamer with the handle of @AndresLeay reached out to Persson. "I really like the game but lack the money to buy it," the individual wrote, regarding "Minecraft" (via Reddit). "I thought I might at least ask for a free account before piracy." Persson, via his handle @notch, replied within minutes. "Just pirate it," Persson wrote. "If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then. Also don't forget to feel bad." Several other Twitter users and "Minecraft" fans weighed in, admitting to Persson that they similarly downloaded and played illegal copies of the game. The creator of "Minecraft" seemed nonplussed. "It's a minor offense in the scale of things. We seem to be doing ok."

In late 2011, game publisher Bethesda Games was about to release the blockbuster "Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." It was in that same timeframe that Persson's company, Mojang, filed to trademark the name of its new game, "Scrolls." When Bethesda's corporate parent ZeniMax got wind, it sent Markus Persson and Mojang a cease-and-desist letter, warning that if they didn't change the name of "Scrolls," they'd be sued for trademark infringement.

Persson and Mojang co-founder Jakob Porser offered to add a subtitle to "Scrolls" to limit the potential confusion between games, and to settle legal matters. In a public posting on his blog, Persson offered another way to handle the dispute: He suggested a video game showdown between the Mojang team and representatives of Bethesda. The game: the early 2000s first-person-shooter hit "Quake III." "Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors," Persson wrote (according to "Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus 'Notch' Persson and the Game That Changed Everything"). If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of 'Scrolls' to something you're fine with." No one at ZeniMax dignified the offer with a response.

In 2012, the two parties settled the matter out of court. ZeniMax ultimately would license to Mojang the right to use the name "Scrolls." Persson's company would later re-release "Scrolls" under a new name, "Caller's Bane."

The significant emotional turmoil surrounding his father's death in December 2011, coupled with his own mental health difficulties and his recent exit from Mojang, the software company he started, influenced how Markus Persson would follow-up "Minecraft." The first major software challenge Persson tackled was a new game, "0x10c." A complex game set in space, Persson kept fans and followers abreast of every development on the title (pronounced "ten to the C") via his Twitter and Tumblr accounts. Every time he posted, those stories became heavily discussed news items in the gaming media, and that resulted in more hype and expectation than Persson, working on the game by himself, could handle.

A reporter from Polygon inquired about a tentative release date for "0x10c" in April 2013, more than a year into the game's development process. "It depends if it's just going to be me and I'm going to still feel this kind of weird pressure," Persson said. "It's not really pressure, it's just some kind of weird creative block that's been going on for too long." As a result, Persson indefinitely suspended work on "0x10c," and he claimed he'd only ever release it once it's fun to play. As of 2023, "0x10c" remains unpublished.

In the game's early years of availability, "Minecraft" creator Markus Persson usually billed himself as "Notch." That was a nickname, or handle, that he used on the gaming forum and independent software developer meetup spot TIGSource, and the first place where he promoted and offered "Minecraft" in 2009. Persson further used Notch as his screen name on Tumblr, where he maintained a blog called "The World of Notch," and on social media sites like Twitter. As of 2023, Persson still uses the @notch handle on X, previously known as Twitter.

But with the explosive spread and success of "Minecraft," Persson emerged as a spokesperson for his game. In a professional capacity, he continued to use the name Notch, which evolved into a persona or alter ego clearly separate from his existence as Markus Persson. A black fedora is the indicator that Persson has gone into Notch mode. Friends, colleagues, and reporters say that Persson is soft-spoken and retreating, while Notch has a big, loud personality ideal for taking the stage at video game industry events. And while Persson likes to play video games and keep to himself, it's Notch who posts on social media, the site of many controversial jokes, remarks, and charged statements.

In June 2014, after "Minecraft" made Mojang potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Markus Persson tweeted his displeasure at the negative online reaction to his company's banning players from selling in-game upgrades to one another. "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?" Persson wrote. The same day he published the tweet, a Microsoft representative contacted Mojang CEO Carl Manneh and asked if Persson really did want to sell his stake — because Microsoft wanted it.

Persson had, in fact, been exaggerating, but Manneh continued to field calls from big software companies looking to buy the "Minecraft" maker. Activision, Blizzard, and Electronic Arts were all in the mix, but Mojang's board ruled them all out because they didn't care for the style of play of their games. Microsoft emerged as the winner, offering $2.5 billion. That American software company was stuck with $93 billion in money it couldn't use in the U.S. without paying out a large chunk for taxes, so it could afford to offer Mojang a bigger sum than most anyone. The sale was finalized in 2014; Persson exited Mojang entirely.

Following his father's suicide in December 2011, Markus Persson worried that he'd develop mental health issues, too. Some symptoms seemed to manifest over time. "The depression, I'm worried about," he told Rolling Stone in 2014. "I have the highs of being very productive and lows of being not productive. I have that in my moods as well."

Following the sale of his company, Mojang, and the rights to "Microsoft" for $2.5 billion, Persson took to Twitter to express in a series of tweets that all of his success and wealth hadn't left him particularly happy. "Hanging out in Ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated," Persson wrote (via The Guardian). He also tweeted, "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance."

Persson's thoughts on depression went viral, and the designer admitted that sharing his struggle had helped. "I'm feeling better and better since admitting in the most public way possible," he tweeted, "and realizing it's fairly common."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

"Minecraft" is published and distributed by software company Mojang Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft thanks to the computing giant buying it for $2.5 billion in 2014. Most of its titles are "Minecraft" spinoffs, and in 2019, Microsoft planned an event celebrating the tenth anniversary of the release of the original, franchise-starting game. On May 17, Mojang headquarters in Stockholm would host reporters for a look at the history and future projects of the game-maker.

Persson hadn't handled any "Minecraft" duties since the Microsoft purchase, but it stands to reason that the corporation would have involved the creator of the game whose origin it was honoring. Microsoft instead publicly and explicitly announced that Persson would have nothing to do with the celebration because of his frequent statements on social media about members of the LGBT community, transgender people specifically, and racially-charged remarks. "His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft,'" a Microsoft representative said in a statement to Variety.