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Markus Persson

Creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history.

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He sold his company Mojang to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion, making him a billionaire.[1] Since 2016, his controversial social media posts have led Microsoft to distance itself from him.[2] The survival sandbox game Minecraft, which Persson created, was first made publicly available on 17 May 2009.[3]

Key facts and history

In September 2010 Persson turned down a job offer from Valve to continue work on Minecraft.[4] Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects and founded companies including Rubberbrain AB and Bitshift Entertainment.[5] At the beginning of 2025 he decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, but shortly after chose to develop a roguelike titled Levers and Chests instead.[6] Markus Alexej Persson came into the world on 1 June 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden; his mother Ritva was Finnish and his father Birger was Swedish.[7]

At age seven he started writing code on his dad's Commodore 128, and by age eight he had created his first game, a text-based adventure.[8] By January 2011 the number of registered Minecraft accounts had hit one million.[9] On 11 December 2011 Persson handed over creative authority for Minecraft to Jens Bergensten.[9]

What the cited sources add

A 2018 TechRadar article notes that Persson's early prototype RubyDung was inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, and RollerCoaster Tycoon.[10] The same source reports that within a month of Minecraft's initial release it sold over 1,000 copies and gained over 20,000 registered players.[10] An Ars Technica article from 2019 states that Microsoft excluded Persson from Minecraft's tenth anniversary celebration due to his "comments and opinions" on Twitter.[11] A Den of Geek article from 2020 reports that Persson deleted his Twitter account after asking a game journalist to "drop the politics"[12]

An LGBTQ Nation article from 2019 describes Persson's transphobic tweets and his subsequent partial retraction.[13]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 2015; Cox, "The history of Minecraft", TechRadar, 13 June 2018; Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 2015 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gartenberg, "Minecraft update removes most references to original creator: Persson's name still appears in the credits, but not in main menu splash texts", The Verge, 28 March 2019 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Minecraft was released 10 years ago. Do you feel old?", Tampa Bay 10 News, 17 May 2019 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Notch turned down job offer at Valve to create Mojang", Engadget, 11 December 2013; Johnson, "Book Excerpt: How Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Almost Took a Job at Valve", AllThingsD, 9 December 2013 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Tamburro, "Notch Could be Working on a Minecraft Successor", GameRevolution, 14 January 2018; "Rubberbrain AB", bolagsverket.se, 23 June 2014; Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 2015; Pettersson, "nota för nya studion: 60 miljoner kronor", Aftonbladet, 4 August 2021; "Bitshift Entertainment, LLC", Open Corporates, 28 March 2024; Obedkov, "Minecraft creator Notch teases new studio Bitshift Entertainment and first-person roguelike Levers and Chests", Game World Observer, 3 April 2 en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Serin, "OG Minecraft creator "basically announced Minecraft 2" in the oddest way, but he won't "sneakily infringe" on Mojang's work", GamesRadar+, 4 January 2025; Fischer, "Minecraft Spiritual Successor Announced by Creator ("Basically Minecraft 2")", ComicBook.com, 3 January 2025; Blake, "Notch has "basically announced" Minecraft 2", Eurogamer, 4 January 2025; Selway, "Why Minecraft 2 Isn't Real, and Likely Never Will Be", Game Rant, 15 January 2025 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 2015; Johnson, "Book Excerpt: How Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Almost Took a Job at Valve", AllThingsD, 9 December 2013; "Markus Persson", Biography, 21 April 2015; Cat_Fernim, "20 Things You Might Not Know About Notch", IGN, 21 September 2011; Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 2015; Mac, "Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson", Forbes, 3 March 201 en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Creator", 5 April 2013; Handy, "Interview: Markus 'Notch' Persson Talks Making Minecraft", Gamasutra, 23 March 2010; "Minecraft: The Story of Mojang", 2 Player Productions, 8 November 2013; Handy, "Interview: Markus 'Notch' Persson Talks Making Minecraft", Gamasutra, 23 March 2010 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Markus Persson" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Makuch, "Minecraft passes 10 million registered users", GameSpot, 1 July 2011; Downin, "Minecraft beta cracks 4 million", GameSpot, 7 November 2011; Cox, "The history of Minecraft", TechRadar, 13 June 2018; Peisner, "The Wizard of Minecraft", 7 May 2014; Grant, "Notch steps down as lead developer on Minecraft to focus on 'new project'", Joystiq, 2 December 2011 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Cox, "The history of Minecraft", TechRadar, 13 June 2018. facts only, no text reused. techradar.com
  11. "Minecraft creator Notch unwelcome at 10th anniversary due to online conduct", Ars Technica, 29 April 2019. facts only, no text reused. arstechnica.com
  12. Saavedra, "Minecraft Creator Notch Deletes Twitter Account After Asking GMTK to "Drop the Politics"", Den of Geek, 28 August 2020. facts only, no text reused. denofgeek.com
  13. Smith, "The Minecraft creator went on a transphobic rant & Twitter wasn't having it", LGBTQ Nation, 12 March 2019. facts only, no text reused. lgbtqnation.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Markus Persson (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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