Rumour turned to reality, Microsoft just bought Mojang for 2.5 billion!

You can read all here: https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

Now what the real question is what does this mean to projects like Bukkit, Spigot, Canarymod and the upcoming sponge? After all Microsoft is a lot more strict on copyright than any other company. Might not matter, with Microsoft coding muscle there might be an official API soon?

 

I suspect they'll lock down the Terms/Conditions to protect the IP while they hatch out a plan. Technically server mods have always been in a dangerous area of copyright breach (depending on how you look at it) and even "clean room" server creation could still breach the end-games EULA ..(you can attach a EULA to the client much like Flash does with SWF... you can only use Flash Player to play SWF files but the SWF itself is open source.....redundant but loop closed"

That sort of thing.

 

I imagine this is why Mojang was cracking down on the EULA in the first place 2 months ago. This Microsoft deal didn't just happen yesterday, it's been in the works longer than that in one way or the other. The founders of Mojang were looking to sell the company before Microsoft made the offer that won. Without showing that they were protecting their IP and enforcing their EULA, they would have shown potential buyers that they didn't care what was happening to it. So they cracked down and made the company look better to sell.

 

This will kill the one thing that made MC so enjoyable. Who the heck plays vanilla MC? Yes, mobile devices do it, but if those that I know are indicative of the larger community, the mobile client is a secondary interest. Its all thick client, all bukkit.

In my opinion, M$ will spend more time migrating Realms to Azure than they will fostering the community that made this game so popular. I'm very sad. I hope I'm wrong.

I just can't see them embracing a process that essentially gives them LESS control over what they just paid billions for...

 

Hopefully they don't let 2.5 billion dollars go to waste and ruin it. As I and many others have said before the different aspects of the community are what makes this game popular. YouTubers, Modders, server owners, and everyone else who contributes to this wonderful community. It would be a shame for Microsoft to ignore this obvious fact and destroy it all because they are blinded by money.

 

Maybe... maybe not. I've noticed a few times on Twitter Notch's attitude towards "in-game purchases" in games as being a cancer to the soul of games of some sort. In that I suspect the line was drawn on the Eula when people were basically being encouraged to spend monthly $$ to keep a server alive... so with that I think came a chain reaction of events, namely the birth of Realms as away to combat that and keep it a little more civil and uniform - .....for the sake of the kids... - ...

As a father of a 11yr & 7yr old kids who play Minecraft every Saturday, I can honestly say it did annoy me to be pestered into "paying" for extra access to a server for the game. I didn't have a problem with the $11-20 a month, what made me a little uneasy is how the solicitation worked and moreover how dependable the server became to retain uptime(s) and be there months later. The thing here is i don't mind letting my kids "invest" in helping form a community in the server and gain the social kudos that comes with that, but it just needed a bit more discipline and cleaner strategy is all.

Some parents however just flat out disliked the $$ monthly fee thing and miscommunication + ignorance is a hard fuel source to nerf.