Mojang

Independent era (2009–2014)

Following a paid trip and employment offer from Valve Corporation in early September 2010, Markus Persson founded Mojang alongside Jakob Porsér, with Carl Manneh later brought in as a CEO, as Persson desired to run a self-made independent studio for the continued development of Minecraft. Within a year, the company grew to a size of twelve employees, with their second video game, Scrolls, in development, as well as serving as the publisher of Cobalt. In 2011, Napster founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker offered to invest in Mojang, but was declined. By March 2012, the company had accumulated revenues of over $80 million.

In September 2012, Mojang began a partnership with United Nations Human Settlements Programme called "Block by Block", which entails having Minecraft players constructing sites in-game to use as a basis for assisted development of the village of Kibera in the Nairobi area of Kenya.

Microsoft subsidiary (2014–present)

On 15 September 2014, Microsoft announced a deal to acquire Mojang for $2.5 billion in a deal made official on 6 November 2014. With their stakes in the company bought out, the three founders, Markus Persson, Carl Manneh and Jakob Porsér left the company.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that a major reason for acquiring Mojang was HoloLens.

Mini-games

Mojang began its tradition of developing smaller projects for the Humble Bundle Mojam with a shoot 'em up strategy game with steampunk and Ancient Egypt themes called Catacomb Snatch. 81,575 bundles were sold, raising US$458,248.99, of which all proceeds were given to four charities and non-profit organizations, including charity: water, Child's Play, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and American Red Cross. Both the genre and theme were picked by a survey on Mojang's website (combination of the highest and lowest voted of each). The following year, three mini-games were simultaneously developed for the Humble Bundle Mojam 2.

Unreleased games

Until July 2012, Mojang was co-developing a video game codenamed Rex Kwon Do alongside an undisclosed developer. Before the title had reached a significant stage of development, Mojang cancelled the collaboration, due to their lack of involvement and influence on the project.

In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a space sandbox game. Although Mojang teased with an April Fools' Day website based around Mars Effect (citing the Bethesda lawsuit), it was confirmed that the game was indeed in development, albeit with a different name. On 4 April, Mojang revealed the game's title to be 0x10c, set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD of a parallel universe. In April 2013, Persson announced that the game was shelved, due to a creative block. In August of that year, he claimed that the game was indefinitely postponed, with the incentive that other Mojang staff members could continue its production should they desire.

Block by Block project

In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block charity project in cooperation with UN-Habitat to create and design real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see and involve them in urban planning. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding that "the three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat’s Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016". Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi’s informal settlements, and is in the planning phase. The Block By Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. By 2016, 300 of the areas UN-Habitat plans to remodel will be recreated in Minecraft.

ZeniMax Media v. Mojang AB

ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, filed a lawsuit against Mojang on 27 September 2011, claiming that Mojang's planned trademark of the title, Scrolls, infringed upon Bethesda's trademark of The Elder Scrolls series. On 18 October, Markus Persson announced that Mojang had won the interim injunction, but that Bethesda still had the option to file an appeal. In March 2012, Mojang and Bethesda reached a settlement, in which Mojang would not trademark Scrolls, but Bethesda would not contest Mojang's naming of Scrolls, so long as it would not be a direct competitor against The Elder Scrolls. During this time, Persson jokingly asked if Bethesda was willing to play a game of Quake 3 to settle the dispute.

Uniloc USA v. Mojang AB

On 20 July 2012, Uniloc filed a lawsuit against Mojang, citing the Minecraft - Pocket Edition as an infringement upon patents that give Uniloc exclusive rights to license checks on Android devices. In response to an overwhelming amount of hate mail, Uniloc inventor Ric Richardson denied his own personal involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent and that the lawsuit against Mojang was not by his doing, although endorsed the security of the patent.

Awards