The creator of the mega-hit Minecraft, which has sold more than 30 million copies through the Java version on PC alone, has no doubt been a huge success. The game has gone through a ton of changes over the years, even before Markus Persson, aka ‘Notch’ sold the property to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014.
One recent example of these many changes is of course the new Village and Pillage update which massively tweaked villager behavior and made the worlds of Minecraft feel just a bit more alive. And with the tenth anniversary of the full launch of the game approaching, fans are eager to see what Microsoft has in mind.
To that end, Microsoft plans to kick off a major birthday bash of sorts for the open-world adventure title. Mojang will hold a press event in Stockholm to talk about the past, present and future of the game. The event will take place May 17th.
One thing that’s a bit strange, but entirely predictable, is the attitude the company has taken towards the game’s creator, Notch. “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Variety.
Since he sold the game in 2014, Persson has had no involvement or input on development of the game, so it should be fairly easy to exclude the controversial figure from the celebration. Now for those that don’t know, let us recap some of the things that Notch has said over the years and explain why it’s pretty obvious that Microsoft wants nothing to do with these statements or the person making them.
His open promotion of transphobic nonsense is pretty obvious. With tweets like, “If you’re against the concept of heterosexual pride day, you’re a cunt and deserve to be shot,” it gets worse when combined with multiple tirades trying to demonstrate that he knows trans issues better than anyone, when he clearly doesn’t and really cannot be bothered to care. That’s offensive enough, but it gets so much worse.
But with his more infamous tweets”There clearly is an agenda against white men.” and “it’s ok to be white,” there’s a much more insidious and dangerous political bent to his ranting. He’s even alluded to openly racist nonsense with tweets like the ones below:
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1070439313698041857
It’s very clear that Notch has fallen in very hard with the far-right, anti-semite and white nationalist crowd. And when other controversial figures like Pewdiepie are openly calling this stuff out, it’s very easy to understand why Microsoft doesn’t want to associate with such vile drivel.
