[SmellyGeekBoy]

I'd agree, but remember that the others weren't all in it from the beginning. Notch had already done all the groundwork and the game was massively successful before "Mojang" was even a thing. I think $240,000 bonus on top of their (I assume at least competitive) salaries seems incredibly generous to me - not to mention that they're all still gainfully employed after the sale.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a fan and don't have any loyalty either way, it would be good to hear from someone on the inside.

[elixerprog9]

I'm not trying to hate on Notch, just observing that even a small % of equity would have been enough to cover his employees.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I certainly see your point of view, I'm a big believer in equity. Just mulling over the other side of the argument out loud I guess.

[rootlocus]

From what I heard, his "groundwork" was a terrible mess of spaghetti code that was awfully hard to work with. Most likely the only thing he left behind was the IP and fan base.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I meant more the initial marketing and community involvement that helped the game get popular in the first place. Much as it pains me to say it as a developer, code quality isn't everything...

[rootlocus]

You're right. I'm positive that every time a large company acquires a small one, it's because of their community and IP. Code is easily rewritten, and startups aren't making breakthroughs in algorithms. It's not like microsoft didn't have engineers capable of making a minecraft clone. They didn't have the rights to do so.

[andrepd]

Exactly. Obviously MS didn't pay 2.5bil for a messy Java codebase. They paid for the brand, the IP, and the fanbase.

[mikekchar]

If you go look at my githb account you will see lots of spaghetti code that will never be sold for $2.5 billion ;-) It doesn't matter how poor the code was, it was incredibly valuable before anyone else joined the company.

[tomjen3]

So? It obviously did its job well enough and if it no longer does then you refactor it.

It is so, so much more difficult to make a game successful than to make successful game.