Microsoft reportedly close to acquiring Minecraft creator Mojang for more than $2 billion
Microsoft is said to be in advanced talks to acquire Mojang, the Swedish independent game developer best known for creating the popular sandbox game Minecraft.
News of the possible acquisition comes to us from The Wall Street Journal, which notes:
A sale would be a surprising turn for closely held Mojang, whose 35-year-old founder, Markus Persson, has shunned outside investment and is revered in the videogame community for railing publicly against big firms, including Microsoft.
According to the publication’s source, the deal may be signed as early as this week and priced at more than $2 billion. In light of this valuation, the following tweet by Persson from December 2012 has been widely retweeted since the news broke:
Anyway, my price is two billion dollars. Give me two billion dollars, and I'll endorse your crap.
— Markus Persson (@notch) December 18, 2012
Mojang has had great success with Minecraft since the game’s original launch for Microsoft Windows in 2009 and subsequent releases in other popular platforms including Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Xbox. Most notably, it has attracted more than 50 million Minecraft players, most of whom are of the young demographic that Microsoft is said to have struggled drawing toward its gaming products.
We’ll let you know if a deal does get finalized between Microsoft and Mojang.
In other acquisition rumors, Apple is said to be close to purchasing the photo-sharing and messaging startup Path in a bid to reinvigorate its social networking efforts.
