Quick answer: Markus "Notch" Persson created Minecraft in 2009 and sold his studio to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in September 2014. The hostility toward him has nothing to do with the game. It comes from years of posts on Twitter after he left, including statements about transgender people that were widely condemned, endorsements of the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories, and racially charged slogans. In March 2019 Microsoft removed his name from the game's splash screens, and in April 2019 it confirmed he would not be invited to Minecraft's 10th anniversary.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
The sentence that explains everything
In September 2014, as he handed his company to Microsoft and walked away from the biggest game ever made, Markus Persson posted a farewell note. One line in it has aged into something close to prophecy.
"I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."
He was telling the truth, and nobody was really listening. Twelve years later, the opinions on Twitter are the only thing a lot of people know about him.
If you came here because you saw his name mentioned with a lot of anger attached and you weren't sure why, this is the full story with dates, quotes and sources. We've also cut one claim that circulates constantly and that we could not verify, because getting this right matters more than making it dramatic.
What he actually built
Markus Alexej Persson was born in Sweden on 1 June 1979. He was a working programmer, not a studio veteran, and he built the first version of Minecraft largely by himself. The earliest prototype came together in about a week, under the working title Cave Game.
He released it publicly on 17 May 2009 while it was still rough, charged money for an unfinished game, and kept updating it in the open. That approach was unusual then and is standard now. Half of what we call early access traces back to what he did with Minecraft.
The game itself was almost absurdly simple. Break blocks, place blocks, build whatever you want. No story, no objectives worth mentioning, no hand-holding. It turned out that was the entire appeal.
| Milestone | Detail |
|---|---|
| Public release | 17 May 2009, still in alpha |
| Copies sold when Microsoft bought it | About 54 million |
| First game ever to pass 300 million | October 2023 |
| Copies sold today | 350 million+, certified by Guinness World Records in April 2025 |
| Monthly players | Estimated 170 to 200 million |
| A Minecraft Movie box office | About $957 million worldwide, 2025 |
It is, by a wide margin, the best selling video game in history. Grand Theft Auto V is second at around 230 million. Nothing else is close, and that includes the sequel arriving this November, which would need to roughly triple GTA V's lifetime sales to catch it.
One figure we are not using. A 2026 source claims Minecraft has now passed 400 million copies. We could only trace it to a single publication, so we've stuck with the Guinness-certified 350 million until Mojang confirms a new number.
For a long stretch, Persson was the most beloved figure in independent games. He was living proof that one person with a good idea could out-sell studios with hundreds of staff and budgets to match. That reputation was real, and it's worth remembering before getting to the rest.
Why he sold, in his own words
The usual version of this story is that he took the money and ran. The actual record is sadder than that.
Three months before the deal, in June 2014, he posted this:
"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 has said the sale was about his sanity rather than the money. In his farewell post he wrote that he had "become a symbol", adding: "I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on."
Microsoft bought Mojang on 15 September 2014 for $2.5 billion. Persson sold alongside co-founders Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh, and as the largest shareholder he took the biggest share. Forbes estimated his personal fortune at around $1.3 billion in April 2025.
He bought a 23,000 square foot house in Beverly Hills for about $70 million. Then, roughly a year later, he posted about what that was actually like. He described hanging out with famous people, being able to do anything he wanted, and never having felt more isolated in his life.
You don't have to feel sorry for a billionaire to notice that this is a person who said very clearly that he was not built for the role he'd been handed, got out, and then got worse rather than better.
What he said, and when
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Most articles on this subject say "controversial comments" and move on. That's not useful, so here is the documented record, with dates. These were posted to an account with roughly 3.7 million followers, many of them children who played his game.
We've summarised rather than reproduced the worst of the wording, and censored the profanity exactly as the original news coverage did.
| Date | What he posted |
|---|---|
| June 2017 | "Most people who proclaim to be feminist online these days are overtly sexist against men." |
| 2017 | Said that anyone against the idea of a "Heterosexual Pride Day" was a "complete f***ing c***" who "deserve to be shot". Later deleted |
| 30 Nov 2017 | "It's ok to be white", a slogan associated with white nationalist messaging online, alongside a post arguing that acknowledging racial privilege is itself racism |
| 2017 | "(pizzagate is real)", endorsing a conspiracy theory that falsely claimed a Washington pizza restaurant hosted a child abuse ring tied to US politicians |
| Feb 2019 | "(global warming is a hoax)" |
| 11 Mar 2019 | Responding to "trans women are women": "No. They feel like they are." Followed by "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" |
| Mar 2019 | "Q is legit", endorsing the QAnon conspiracy theory |
| 19 Mar 2019 | "I'd rather be a fascist c*** than have a feminine d***, so gladly!" Later deleted |
He also repeated a false claim that people in some countries face fines for using the wrong pronouns, told followers to "punch a commie" before walking it back three hours later, and wrote "If you're still on the left, PLEASE wake up. You are evil."
A correction to something you'll see repeated everywhere. Many articles and videos state that Persson supported Gamergate. We went looking for a source and could not find one in any of the major reporting on him. We are not repeating it. Gamergate also wasn't a conspiracy theory, it was an online harassment campaign, so the two things often get bundled together incorrectly. If you see that claim, treat it as unverified.
How Microsoft responded
This is the part that made it permanent, and it happened fast.
March 2019. A Minecraft update quietly removed three pieces of splash text, the random yellow messages on the main menu. The deleted ones were "Made by Notch!", "The Work of Notch!" and "110813!", which was the date of his wedding. 4J Studios made the same change to the console editions. Microsoft gave no reason at the time.
April 2019. Minecraft's 10th anniversary event was scheduled for 17 May at Mojang's Stockholm studio. Asked whether the game's creator would attend, a Microsoft spokesperson told Variety:
"His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft."
He wasn't invited to the tenth birthday of the thing he made. For a company to say that out loud, about the person who built its single most valuable gaming asset, is genuinely rare.
One detail usually gets missed, though, and it's worth knowing: he is still credited in the game's end credits as its creator. Microsoft removed the celebration, not the attribution. That's a narrower decision than "erasing him", and the distinction matters if you want to be accurate about what happened.
The erasure became complete in a different way in April 2025, when A Minecraft Movie arrived and made roughly $957 million. Persson had nothing to do with it. He was fairly relaxed about that, saying he was "not connected to it in any way" and that he'd been "expecting way worse" from the trailer. Whatever else is true, he does not seem to feel he was robbed.
So does playing Minecraft support him?
This is the question most people are actually here for, and the answer is clean.
No. Persson sold Mojang and all its assets outright in 2014. He holds no stake, receives no royalties from new sales, and has no involvement in development. Every rupee spent on Minecraft today goes to Mojang Studios and Microsoft. The hundreds of people who've built the game over the past twelve years, which is now far more of it than he ever wrote, are the ones being paid.
If you were feeling guilty about the game you've put hundreds of hours into, you can stop. Whatever you think of him, the transaction doesn't touch him.
The harder question
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Separating art from artist is one of those debates that never resolves, and we're not going to pretend to settle it in a blog post.
What we'd offer instead is that Minecraft is an unusually easy case, for a reason that has nothing to do with ethics. The game genuinely isn't his any more, in the most literal sense. He wrote the first version alone in 2009. What exists in 2026 is the work of hundreds of people across twelve years, plus an enormous amount of unpaid work by players who built the mods, servers, maps and tutorials that kept it alive. If you learned Minecraft from a YouTube video, you learned it from someone who has never met him.
There's also something worth sitting with in how this went. A person who was obviously uncomfortable with attention became extremely famous, said so repeatedly, sold everything to escape it, got very rich and very isolated, and then spent years posting into a void that rewarded him most when he was at his worst. That isn't an excuse for anything he said. Plenty of lonely people manage not to endorse QAnon. But "he became a villain" and "the system around him was broken" aren't mutually exclusive, and pretending the first explains everything is lazy.
He's still making things, incidentally. A project called Levers and Chests has been mentioned, with no release date. An earlier space game, 0x10c, was abandoned years ago. It's fair to say nothing he's built since 2014 has gone anywhere.
If you want the clearest counter-example of a creator legacy going the other way, it's Hollow Knight: Silksong, a tiny team that let the work speak and stayed almost entirely out of the discourse. And if you want the version where a beloved series dies without anyone to blame at all, we wrote about what happened to EA Cricket, where no villain exists and the game vanished anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Why do people hate Notch?
Because of what he posted after leaving Mojang in 2014, not because of anything to do with Minecraft. The record includes statements about transgender people in March 2019 that were widely condemned, endorsements of the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories, the slogan "It's ok to be white", climate change denial, and a 2017 post saying people who opposed a "Heterosexual Pride Day" deserved to be shot, which he later deleted.
Did Microsoft remove Notch from Minecraft?
Partly. In March 2019 an update removed three splash text messages referencing him from the main menu, including "Made by Notch!" and his wedding date. He remains credited as the game's creator in the end credits. In April 2019 Microsoft confirmed he would not be part of the 10th anniversary celebrations, saying his "comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang".
Did Notch support Gamergate?
We could not verify this. The claim circulates widely but does not appear in the major reporting on him by Ars Technica, Variety, Business Insider, Eurogamer or The Verge. Treat it as unconfirmed. Gamergate was also a harassment campaign rather than a conspiracy theory, and the two often get incorrectly grouped together.
How much money did Notch make from Minecraft?
Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion in September 2014. Persson sold alongside co-founders Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh and, as the largest shareholder, received the biggest share. Forbes estimated his net worth at roughly $1.3 billion in April 2025. He also bought a 23,000 square foot Beverly Hills home for about $70 million.
Does buying Minecraft give money to Notch?
No. He sold Mojang and all its assets outright in 2014, keeps no stake and earns no royalties on sales. Money spent on Minecraft today goes to Mojang Studios and Microsoft.
Is Notch still making games?
He has mentioned working on a project called Levers and Chests, with no release date announced. An earlier game, 0x10c, was abandoned. Nothing he has made since 2014 has been released commercially.
How many copies has Minecraft sold?
More than 350 million, confirmed by Mojang and certified by Guinness World Records in April 2025, making it the best selling video game of all time. Grand Theft Auto V is second at roughly 230 million.