So recently I heard that Notch sold Minecraft and he is getting a lot of hate for it. I was wondering why its such a bad thing to sell you game.
I feel like I would never sell my game to anyone, it’s my baby, it’s my identity. But for 2.5 billion dollars I think we could make a deal.
So would you guys sell out and if so, for how much?
Enough to fund my next game.
Actually he didn’t sell minecraft for the money… He actually asked people on twitter if anyone wanted to buy his game…
He sold his game because he didn’t want to be known as ‘Minecraft’… People where getting angry at him because:
When he didn’t want all this because most of this he had nothing to do with or didn’t even know about… So he sold his game off hoping that it would get the attention away from him… I guess it didn’t work…
Depends on your definition of “sell out” and why you did it.
Personally, if someone offered me millions for RPC there’s a very high chance that it’s already worth (or has made) millions. So I would turn them down and use my already existing wealth to just work on my next title and live out my life happy and financially secure. But I’m not motivated by greed and I don’t need a bazillion dollars. The most I would ever want is enough to never have to worry.
So, bottom line, I wouldn’t sell out. There’s just no logical reason for me to because in any situation where someone could offer me enough money to make me consider it (millions) I would probably have already have made more than I ever would need for the rest of my life anyway, else that offer never would have existed in the first place.
I believe Notch simply just wanted to exit the entire industry, it has nothing to do with the actual money. He was just done, and said screw it and sold the company instead of handing it off to the Mojang team. This goes back to my old rant about how 2 billion dollars is a meaningless number when you have hundreds of millions already. 
Wave a few million in front of me and I’ll sell you whatever you want. I’ll even chuck in my soul for free.
Well, obviously, if somebody offers you millions, by definition it’s worth millions (to the buyer).
On another note: if you get offered X, then your company’s potential is worth that much. Minecraft didn’t make billions, yet it was worth billions to Microsoft. When you get a multi million dollar offer for your game, it might have earned you 200k. But whatever it grossed it not really that important. It’s about potential for whoever invests in it.
Long story short, you should take those millions and run. 
“Selling out” is what the sheeple describe the entire purpose of a business to be, thus betraying the sheer depth of their ignorance within the Matrix.
Snarky comments aside at the clueless youth of today, the whole purpose of a business beyond a “lifestyle” is something called an “exit strategy”, which in practice is one of two things. You either float the company on the stock exchange (about 20% of businesses?), or you sell the business to someone else (the rest) for what you think you can get for it, and use the money to do something else. Typically if you’re a serial entrepreneur, that’s start another business with a new idea.
I’d sell Puppygames in a trice, except it’s almost worthless as all of its value is locked up inside thems of us what works there. So we’re stuck in a “lifestyle” business. Or in reality, no business at all. Until we can escape working at the coal face.
Cas
“selling-out” usually is used to describe when some professed believes are contradicted by some action (almost always money related). But I ask you to think about this. In an example like Markus should we respect him less for this? If he had prevented the deal from going through it would be “my believe systems trumps that of everyone else involved”. That’s very egotistical. That’s the kind of inflexibility that makes humans at their worst. I, for one, respect him more for selling…not because of the money…but because it shows he does care about the desires/rights of others and is willing to go against his own personal desires for their sake even when he knows he’s going to catch hell for it some ignorant people.
Oh of course, no arguing that at all. I completely agree.
I just meant if in this wild theory RPC was somehow worth millions to someone else, it probably has or had a pretty large chunk of change in profits already. I figure that selling a company, game, or asset of any kind for exactly what you could get out of it on your own (and still get to own it) would be foolish. So any buyer would have to offer you more than what your profit potential is in hopes they have the resources to make it worth more than you’re capable of and maximize profits. But really though, if someone were to offer me millions for RPC, there’s a good chance it already made quite a large chunk of change, and if RPC ever made millions I probably wouldn’t sell it simply because by that point I don’t need the money. I would just take my X millions I made already, buy a dozen houses and live off the rental income. Then, play around making more games.
Would I have less money overall? Sure… But there’s a point where ownership of my intellectual property is worth more to me if I’m already financially set for life. Not to say if someone didn’t offer me a million for RPC right now I wouldn’t seriously consider it. It has a lot of profit potential, but it’s just potential right now. If it’ll be realized is an entirely different story.
Of course, that’s all crazy talk, I somehow doubt RPC will be worth millions. I can dream though.
A vague formula we used back in the days of my working at a startup was that for the first 10 years or so of a company’s life, its worth could be roughly calculated as 2 x revenues. As the company matured this figure sort of lerps into 5 x profits.
This is sort of predicated on the fact that you have an actual business not just “some guys that make games” like what we have
Cas
I think, in general, taking the money is a better strategy.
Yes if someone offers you X amount of money for your idea it might be worth even more.
But you are ignoring a lot of facts:
so if you are alone or in a small group, you would be a fool not to take a considerable amount of money
I’m so super authentic and for-real I never bought in, so I can’t sell out!
You feel like that now - you’ll even feel like that the first year or two supporting the released game (it’s fun to make a living maintaining your own code!) But in a while trust me you’ll start to begrudge spending time keeping your baby alive (the damn thing keeps getting bugs!!) when you could be developing new stuff - making new babies. Somebody taking over the maintenance is a win-win-win. They get whatever revenue they can extract, the baby stays alive, and you get some cash to finance other work.
Or even if you just get time back to work on new stuff and no cash! I would love it if somebody saw a revenue stream in my free code and took the maintenance off my hands 
But anyway all this is just selling. Selling “out” means if the original success of a product was in some way based on promises not to sell it later. Like if you build up a client base by saying “this will always be free”, or “this prototype will get finished eventually, honest”, then once you’ve got them hooked, renege on the deal.
I feel like this is exactly the reason Notch doesn’t want the public attention of a game like Minecraft. People making topic after topic talking about every decision he or even his company makes.
I am always a believer in the old motto: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there”
I’d only consider someone is “selling out” if they fail to fulfill their prior agreements to get more money. For example, if Notch’s sale of Mojang had resulted in existing players (clients) losing access to the game they payed for (which didn’t happen).
My guess is that, since people get emotionally attached to their idea of a company (or a music group, or whatever), they feel changes are betrayals, and as such bring forth the “selling out” card.
In reality, people are people, and asking anyone to give up the chance for a better life is unreasonable.
When it comes to selling out (per Wikipedia): “Selling out is the compromising of integrity, morality, authenticity or principles in exchange for personal gain, such as money.”
Notch gets a lot of heat for selling Minecraft (not “selling out” as neither his integrity, morality etc. have been compromised), I probably would have kept it even if it meant I would make less money in the long run, because I wouldn’t really know what to do with my life otherwise. :clue:
He hasn’t worked on minecraft for quite some time, he passed it over to jeb 2(?) years ago.
That does raise the question “I wonder what he does in his free time?” but that’s not really our business. I think he just plays games all day though, judging by his twitter feed.
I also think he just sold because of all the upcoming issues, and the apparent ‘hate’ he received for it.
But, i also think that he has had his time with his Minecraft ‘baby’, and made more money with it that one could ever imagine, and pretty
much had to devote himself to this game, and nothing else. (Without making some kind of compromise between)
I guess the fame and the resulting ‘responsibility’, to keep working on it, to continue and continue, for the fans etc. broke him.
I’d say that if he had sold millions of copies, without becoming a star, he would have continued longer.
If you asked me this questions a few years ago, i’d tell you that i would never everr sell, since ‘it’s my baby’, but nowadays i would want to walk away from a
project and do something else.
The worst thing about it is, IMHO, that Microsoft bought it.
But Minecraft will always stay what the fans make of it, nothing else, and strongly suppose that Microsoft won’t (and also will not be stupid enough), to try and change it.
I actually found the original tweet here and I noticed two things:
[quote]Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.
[/quote]
2. One person offered to buy minecraft with a lot of bad puns, I would’ve taken the bad puns, I like bad puns…
IMO the sell outs are the consumers who buy into franchises, not the individuals who sell the franchises to mega-corps.
Judging products based upon their brand, rather than individual merit is a betrayal of the system & the greatest cancer of the games industry.
Without these lazy & ignorant consumers, the Minecraft IP would be nowhere near as valuable to Microsoft’s milking department.