Microsoft confirms purchase of Minecraft for $2.5B

The team at Mojang will be coming to work at Microsoft, minus the company's three founders

The rumors turned out to be true: in an effort to expand both its gaming and mobile capabilities, Microsoft has bought Mojang, the gaming studio behind mega-hit Minecraft. And for a hefty sum as well.

In all, Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for the studio, it was announced on Monday. The deal is expected to close before the end of this year.

First released five years ago, in 2009, Minecraft allows players to build structures with blocks in order to protect against monsters. The game has been a huge hit, spawning massive amounts of merchandise, from books to toys to even a potential movie.

The game is described in the press release as "one of the top PC games of all time, the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for iOS and Android in the US." So it's easy to see why Microsoft would be so keen to add it to its gaming roster: the game, which has been sold more than 54 million times, potentially adds a huge roster of new players to Microsoft's game division.

"At Microsoft, we believe in the power of content to unite people. Minecraft adds diversity to our game portfolio and helps us reach new gamers across multiple platforms. Gaming is the top activity across devices and we see great potential to continue to grow the Minecraft community and nurture the franchise," Phil Spencer, Head of XBox, wrote in a blog post.

That, he said, is why the company plans to continue to have Minecraft be available across multiple platforms; not just XBox, but iOS, Android PlayStation and PC as well.

As of April, Microsoft had shipped 5 million XBox One units since it was released in November of last year. 

As for Mojang, selling to Microsoft will allow it to scale in a way that it simply could not have with Mojang in control, the company wrote in its own blog post on Monday. 

"There are only a handful of potential buyers with the resources to grow Minecraft on a scale that it deserves. We’ve worked closely with Microsoft since 2012, and have been impressed by their continued dedication to our game and its development. We’re confident that Minecraft will continue to grow in an awesome way,"

While the Mojang team will be joining Microsoft Studios, which includes the studios behind franchises like “Halo,” “Forza,” and “Fable” at least three member will not be coming over: Mojang's co-founders Markus "Notch" Persson, Carl Manneh and Jakbok Porser.

"Though it’s too early to confirm which of us will continue working on Minecraft or other projects, we predict that the vast majority (if not all) Mojangstas will continue to work at Mojang for the time being," the company wrote in its own blog post on Monday. 

"The founders: Notch, Carl, and Jakob are leaving. We don’t know what they’re planning. It won’t be Minecraft-related but it will probably be cool."

For Persson in particular, getting out of the Minecraft business will allow him to get back to his passion.

"Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we’re massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch’s intention for it to get this big," the company said.

"He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that."

Founded in 2010, Mojang saw $291 million in revenue in 2013, making a profit of $115 million.

The purchase of Mojang would be the biggest purchase made yet by CEO Satya Nadella, who officially took over the position from Steve Ballmer in February. So far, under his leadership, the company has purchased cloud computing company GreenButton; mobile app management platform Capptain: SyntaxTree, the developers of the UnityVS plugin for Visual Studio; and InMage Systems, a cloud-based business continuity company. 

Prior to Nadella taking over, Microsoft also purchased Parature, a customer service SaaS provider. 

(Image source: culturemob.com)