Markus Persson

He is best known for creating the sandbox video game Minecraft, which has since become the best-selling video game in history; and for founding the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson is currently working on new games under the banner of Bitshift Entertainment.

Markus Persson
Persson at the 2016 Game Developers Conference
Born	Markus Alexej Persson (1979-06-01) 1 June 1979 (age 44) Stockholm, Sweden
Other names	Notch
Occupations	Video game programmer designer
Known for	Creating Minecraft, founding Mojang
Spouse	Elin Zetterstrand ​ ​ (m. 2011; div. 2012)​
Children	1

Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. He achieved critical success upon the publishing of an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point, Persson stood down as lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten.

In September 2014, Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. Persson left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft for a reported US$2.5 billion. As the majority shareholder, the acquisition made Persson a billionaire.

Since 2016, public criticism of several of Persson's Twitter posts in which he wrote of his beliefs that transgender women are not women, that the QAnon conspiracy theory is "legit", and that those critical of a heterosexual pride day "deserve to be shot", has arisen. In 2019, Persson's tweets were censured by Microsoft, who subsequently removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration.

In 2015, he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was publicly relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment.

Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has a sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until age 7, before his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends.

When Persson was around age seven, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce.

According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home.

He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game.

By 1994, Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18.

Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly only had one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014^[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student.

Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB.

Between 2004 and 2009, Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum.

Minecraft and Mojang

Inspiration for Minecraft

Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers.

One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode.

In 2009, Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game.

RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson.

Release and success of Minecraft

On 17 May 2009, Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010, Persson released the game's Alpha version.

While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year.

In September 2010, Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft.

On 20 December 2010, Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18–19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013.

In 2013, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million.

Leaving Mojang

Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and the company.

In June 2014, Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets.

In September 2014, Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November.

Activities after leaving Mojang

Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. Around 2015, he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain, but the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities.

Since leaving Mojang, Persson has criticized the direction of Minecraft on several occasions. He described Minecraft as a "dead game" in 2021.

In 2011, Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid 2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012, he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized later that year. He has not since remarried.

On 14 December 2011, Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father:

When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him.

Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood.

Persson has criticized the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft," viewing unauthorized downloads as potential future customers.

Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011.

He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised $458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011, he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees.

According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around US$1.2 billion. In 2014, Persson was one of the biggest tax payers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014, Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, Beverly Hills, CA for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property.

Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016.

In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now."

In 2017, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called video game developer and feminism supporter Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white" stating his belief that privilege was a "made up metric", although he denounced generalisations and differential treatment solely on the basis of skin colour.

In 2017, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted in support of QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media."

On 10 March 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm".

In 2019, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10th anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang".

Minecraft

Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion.

Caller's Bane

Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011, Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011, Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane.

Cliffhorse

Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as a honorware early access game the start day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins.

0x10^c

Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day, Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10^c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game.

Shambles

In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine.

Ludum Dare entries

Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions.

• Breaking the Tower was a game Persson developed for the entry to the Ludum Dare No. 12 competition. The game takes place on a small island, where the player must gather resources, construct buildings, and train soldiers in order to destroy a large tower on this island. The game received brief gaming media attention.
• Metagun is a 2D platformer created for Ludum Dare No. 18.
• Prelude of the Chambered is a game Persson developed for the entry to the Ludum Dare No. 21 competition. Prelude of the Chambered is a short first-person dungeon crawler video game.
• Minicraft is a game developed for Ludum Dare No. 22, held 16–19 December 2011. It is a small top-down survival game with similarities to Zelda and influenced by Minecraft. It is written in Java.