Opinions on Microsoft buying Mojang

[Dorque]

You're correct, Steve Jobs was a notably selfish man throughout his life, and his biography made no attempt to hide that fact. Bill on the other hand never cared to make a fool of himself for internal Microsoft videos, promotional events, or random things like the ice bucket challenge, and always had his wallet open to charity. I've always had a lot of respect for him.

To be completely fair, Gates basically started his career with an act of IP theft and Jobs did give a significant amount to charity through Project Red (no, not the mod.) Bill (and Melinda) very much believed in direct philanthropy, while Jobs followed a philosophy of "reinvesting back into the world".

Now THAT being said, not once have I ever given Apple so much as a bent nickel, I think of them as arrogant and anti-consumer, among other things.

Sent from my Toaster using Tapatalk

 

[FyberOptic]

To be completely fair, Gates basically started his career with an act of IP theft and Jobs did give a significant amount to charity through Project Red (no, not the mod.) Bill (and Melinda) very much believed in direct philanthropy, while Jobs followed a philosophy of "reinvesting back into the world".

Gates was making money long before Windows though, if that's what you're referring to. And whether there was any actual IP theft involved with Windows/Apple/Xerox has been debated for decades. After Apple sued Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple for the exact same thing. Apple lost their case against Microsoft, but the Xerox case was dismissed without be ruled on. So if anything, Microsoft was cleared, with Apple being the one with the questionable actions.

And this is completely separate from the list of generally awful things Jobs did as a human being, many of which were touched on in the book, others from Wozniak in interviews and talks. He just wasn't a nice guy. And in regards to philanpthropy, there was literally no comparison between Gates and Jobs. Various reports covered his absence from various lists of charitable individuals, while people tried to laughably justify that his contribution to society was Apple's products.

I can't even muster a small amount of respect for Jobs. It only worsens the more you find out about him.

 

[jdog1408]

Guys remember when google bought twitch and people started freaking out saying it would be destroyed, then what happened, oh yeah absolutely nothing

 

[Bigpak]

Guys remember when google bought twitch and people started freaking out saying it would be destroyed, then what happened, oh yeah absolutely nothing

Actually amazon bought twitch.

 

[PODonnell]

Guys remember when google bought twitch and people started freaking out saying it would be destroyed, then what happened, oh yeah absolutely nothing

Isn't it a bit early to declare amazons purchase of twitch a non-issue. I'm not saying the sky is falling, in fact what I'm hearing sounds positive. That said, changes within corporate structures can take time, and I for one choose to reserve judgement.

 

[RJS]

This basically sums my attitude to everything right now. I may be proven wrong in time, but there's some very fair points in this.

 

[DoomSquirter]

On the flipside, I concur. At least EA didn't buy it. Then I'd not be able to contain the doom and gloom. With M$, you have to take the pessimistic choice to start and work your way up because of it's size and track record. Yes, things could work out better, but people have to think in terms of the long game in regards to them. The monetization, etc... I don't see how that would go over well no matter how they play it. How it affects places like FTB or people like DW20 and the LP'ers, etc... I don't know. It's their legal department that worries me more than the company itself. Usually, they have a habit of mismanaging their own internal organizations. I guess it depends on how long it takes them to suck the employees @ mojang into their sphere of influence, but I saw they had a 2 year clause to keep the office open or suffer a undisclosed monetary infraction of some sort. So 2 years. that's essentially how long it'll probably last as status quo.

 

[Dorque]

Gates was making money long before Windows though, if that's what you're referring to. And whether there was any actual IP theft involved with Windows/Apple/Xerox has been debated for decades. After Apple sued Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple for the exact same thing. Apple lost their case against Microsoft, but the Xerox case was dismissed without be ruled on. So if anything, Microsoft was cleared, with Apple being the one with the questionable actions.

Actually, I was referring to BASIC.

It's a little hard to track down the information these days, but... well, watch the movie Antitrust. They never say it flat out but it's basically the Bill Gates story, except that the protagonist actually doesn't become the richest man in the world at the end, because moral lessons.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

So, CPW's ragequitting because Microsoft bought Mojang? ...Okay, can't help it, I have to laugh. That's the most hilarious shit I've heard in a long damned time.

He's not ragequitting, he doesn't like Microsoft, and does not want to support them by having a Microsoft product on his computer.

 

[trajing]

The rage is strong in this thread. Could we realize that there are people who will make minecraft clones if Microsoft screws up? It isn't time to panic and break out the lifeboats yet.

 

[sqitchy]

I know. I'm just tired of people so pissed about this that they would quit just like the creator did. Screw that, I won't quit. We have to remain here and make sure MS doesn't mess up. And we will make sure they don't.

 

[trajing]

Let's wait and see. There is always the chance that Microsoft won't screw up, as much as there is that they will. We just need to see what happens.

 

[PODonnell]

Yeah, the sky isn't falling. I have a hard time imagining Ms not trying to wring some profit out of it's dedicated long term player base....... I mean I can't recall a pass time in which I invested so little capital yet got so many hours of entertainment. That said it's far to early to say for sure what they intend to do or how they intend to do it. That said...... unless you bought vanilla a month ago I think it'd be pretty hard for most of us to argue that we didn't get a huge return on our initial investment....... hell, my library fees have cost me far more over the years then Mc has.

There are plenty of other options out there, and Ms knows this. I'm sure they intend to attract players, not drive them away. There may be some changes, particularly for the modded community, but there isn't exactly allot we can do about it today, and throwing a hissy fit isn't going to help anyone/thing.

 

[trajing]

Plus anyone who bought MC before Beta can sue if MS doesn't give them every update for free after that.

 

[DoomSquirter]

The rage is strong in this thread. Could we realize that there are people who will make minecraft clones if Microsoft screws up? It isn't time to panic and break out the lifeboats yet.

Exactly. When things are at a somewhat level state, not much energy is left to really trigger anything good or bad. It takes a reactant to fuel that mixture and propel it in one direction or another. Something terrible can cause something truly awesome as a byproduct. (god, I'm not trying, but I am totally sounding like I'm talking about a mod or something ). If M$ does cause a ton of controversy for whatever reason, hopefully that will be the correct catalyst to bring in the next game changer (pun intended).

We live and die by precedent. We govern our future by establishing whether this 'thing' has happened before, what did we do then, what will we do now. Whether we choose to see a situation as defining a new precedent or establishing a trait that we've already visited is really up to what happens. Either way, we gauge the future based on past precedents, and sometimes we establish new ones based on mistakes we made in the past.

Microsoft, and other large companies has a well deserved air of fucking up a lot of the things that they touch. Some moreso than others. The bad sticks in our minds more than the good, thus we are all biased to see only bad when the majority of things that they do are bad. I hate M$ but I use their products every day. I'm a linux/bsd user for a couple decades. I hate mac's/apple, but have an ipad. I don't subscribe wholly to my beliefs in that I know that every product has value of some sort or some things are a necessary evil to use what you have.

Do I boycott certain companies that I feel deserve it? Hell yes. When I have an alternative to use/buy, and / or I can do without the thing in general. There is no other game like Minecraft. A lot of games are similar, but none have the momentum and drive from the COMMUNITY at large like this does. It's awesome. Without the community that drives minecraft, minecraft is just another game. period. If M$ doesn't see that, they are very very narrow minded and they will be writing a huge loss in revenue from that 2.5 billion.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Have an historical anecdote!

Once upon a time, quite possibly before some of you were born, there was a BBS door game called Legend of the Red Dragon. It was quite possibly the most popular door game of all time, and had a plugin system which provided for quite a lot of third-party content, allowing for each BBS to potentially offer a slightly different experience despite it being the same game. The author made other games as well, including a sequel to LORD, all of which popular and robust but still not quite as liked as LORD itself. Well one day, after several years of development, he decided to sell and move on. It was a pretty disappointing time, and a sign that the BBS world was being left behind for the internet. The company that took them over basically only did so for the money on residual sales, and eventually let some other guy continue to develop them briefly under their label, just enough to put the company and his names on it along with some bug fixes and that was pretty much it. The company has now faded into obscurity and nobody can even contact them in regards to buying copies of it, let alone buying the rights to it, which even the original author has tried to do in recent years, but to no avail.

Yet it never completely died. BBSes still exist, even over the internet, and run LORD. I ran my own DOSEmu-based one with custom scripts and everything for a little while myself. People cloned the game, too, as you may have heard of a web-based game called Legend of the Green Dragon. And similar to Minecraft, it's another of those games that I loved so much that I completely took it apart (a pre-buyout version) just to see if I could find any secrets, even though it was written in Turbo Pascal for DOS, which was a bit more difficult to do than Java code. I even ported a bit of it to C++ (but can't legally release it). But like with modding, it's a labor of love, and no matter what Microsoft ever plans to do to the game, I think there will always be those of us who still want to play it and even develop stuff for it, including years from now. Nostalgia is always a good source of inspiration.

Fun fact: The original LORD dev, Seth Robinson, is on the Ludum Dare staff these days.

tl;dr version: Minecraft isn't going anywhere, no matter how bad Microsoft could ever manage to screw it up.

If the company is gone, you might as well release your code. They can't do anything, they're gone. That means no one owns the rights at all, right?

 

[Hambeau]

Yeah, the sky isn't falling. I have a hard time imagining Ms not trying to wring some profit out of it's dedicated long term player base....... I mean I can't recall a pass time in which I invested so little capital yet got so many hours of entertainment. That said it's far to early to say for sure what they intend to do or how they intend to do it. That said...... unless you bought vanilla a month ago I think it'd be pretty hard for most of us to argue that we didn't get a huge return on our initial investment....... hell, my library fees have cost me far more over the years then Mc has.

There are plenty of other options out there, and Ms knows this. I'm sure they intend to attract players, not drive them away. There may be some changes, particularly for the modded community, but there isn't exactly allot we can do about it today, and throwing a hissy fit isn't going to help anyone/thing.

As I have seen in several industry reports whose guesses have a bit more veracity than some I've seen in this thread, one of the prevailing theories is that Microsoft hopes to bolster XBox and Windows Phone sales by bundling Minecraft with them. Both of these are "also ran" products in their respective markets, and there is speculation that such a bundling could help sales. They might even be thinking of bundling MC with the Surface and licensing out to other PC/laptop/tablet/phone manufacturers. Microsoft has made a buttload of money licensing Windows to manufacturers for as little as $10 per system, after all...

Then again, there is the planned MC movie, and I've heard rumors of a possible animated TV series... I could see Element Animation doing something like this (fingers crossed).

 

[asb3pe]

I guess having every child in the world who is "computer-capable" know your product ("Microsoft Minecraft") is worth $2.5 billion. The word is "imprinting". I have to believe that the people who run Microsoft think that having such easy access to impressionable younger children's brains is worth ANY amount of money. I bet Notch basically named his price (didn't he famously tweet about "$2 billion" asking price a year ago?) and they paid it, that's probably how much they value this "opportunity". Doesn't it all seem just a little creepy when you look at it that way?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

"if this has been said" is not an excuse to just not read any of the past 30 pages.

It takes like, 3 hours to read all that. I contend that it IS an excuse.

 

[dothrom]

It takes like, 3 hours to read all that. I contend that it IS an excuse.

You're aware there's this thing called a search bar at the top right section of the page right? It has this cool option to search only in this thread.
So I stand behind my position that no, it is not.