Yeah, so I'm all for making "lol what wouldn't you do for a $2.5 billion Klondike Bar" joke, but since everyone in this thread seems a bit confused (not to pick on this specific quote):

Personally, unless you're a bond villain, I really don't think anyone needs that kind of money. Notch was already a multi-millionaire, he had more than enough money to live well for the rest of his life without working another day.

That's not what happens in these cases. /Mojang/ was bought for $2.5 billion, not Notch. Share holders such as they are certainly get a healthy chunk of that but these kinds of agreements generally stipulate that the purchasing company invests much of the purchase amount into the purchased company. In other words, on paper Microsoft bought something for $2.5 billion but the actual cash that trades hands is far less. And it's very unlikely to be cash but rather other non-liquid assets like stock.

Then let's not forget taxation, which may well be part of why Microsoft put forth such a high dollar mark. There's business reasons to spend money you otherwise don't need to. Remember when Microsoft bought Skype for a mere $2 billion and everyone lost their minds?

There can also sometimes be advantages to buying a company that's operating in the red and liquidating it right after (not likely what's going on here). Buy a company, inherit its debt, pay less taxes that period, liquidate acquisition, settle its debt, move on. Rememebr when EA bought <insert game studio> and shut them down right after?

Most likely Notch personally is only a few hundred percent richer than he already was. The vast majority of that $2.5 billion is never going to go anywhere near his personal coffers.

There have been some Swedish articles stating that the sum translates to something like 17.8 billion SEK, out of which 11 or so goes to Notch himself, 3 and 1 billions respectively to the two other founders of Mojang.

Markus Persson is no longer my god. Oh well. I don't really believe in gods anyway.

wow dude, he'd be a fool not to take it. your honestly telling me if someone offered you 2.5 billion dollars, you woudn't take it?

Of course I would, don't be silly . But then I'm not a world famous guru with an indie reputation to maintain, and I don't already have a hundred million in the bank.

Wonder if Microsoft will pull an EA and shut it down after they buy it.

For what purpose would they spend 2.5 billion just to shut it down? Companies acquire-and-shut-down when all they want are the patents. I don't think Mojang has much in the way of patents that Microsoft would care about.

Most likely they just want to port it to Windows-based mobile devices to drive adoption (they're almost single-mindedly focusing on phones and tablets right now and really need to do everything they can just to stay in the market). It's also highly likely that they'll attempt some kind of platform-exclusive thing - either a sequel or something, but they're going to mess up their public image EVEN MORE if they do that. Which I am betting they will do, because they have a track record of really dumb marketing and being really good at screwing up their public image. They're almost to IBM levels of how-little-the-Average-Joe-actually-cares-about-them.

If it stays profitable, they'll keep maintaining it. If it stops being profitable, that's when people can start worrying.

That's a probable scenario.

Of course, theycould be trying to use it as a 'showcase' of sort, like they did years ago when tried to acquire id Software to showcase their then-new DirectX (I don't think they called it that back then. Anyone remembers?). This time, they might want to showcase their cloud prowess.

Remember Nadella's new mantra: "Mobile-first and cloud-first".

http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/15/6151813/microsoft-minecraft-mojang-purchase

That article states the scenario I was thinking of when I said shut them down.

No company spends $2.5 billion for what amounts to a single game without a plan on recouping that investment, and helping many aspects of its core businesses. That's hard to do when the product being sold exists on so many competing devices in so many markets.

While Microsoft wouldn't dare shut down Minecraft on other consoles or mobile devices anytime soon, they have to decrease the value of the game on those devices while increasing the value on their own hardware and software platforms. How they do that, and on what timetable, is the real question, and it's hard to imagine a situation that would make current players of the game happy.

Though, I read another article that said Microsoft was going to integrate the team into their internal game studio, which I took as them moving buildings and possibly shutting down Mojang's current studio.

EDIT: On a fun side note, apparently they did a Sony update to add the ability to save your games between PS3, PS4, and PS Vita and apparently broke the code so that now the bottom layer plane that was bedrock is not drawing bedrock, but is just blue now...Oops!