While it might have cost them a several billion dollars, Microsoft made one of the best business decisions in gaming history when they bought out an indie coder for $2,500,000,000, as they now own an industry behemoth.
Microsoft have been at the helm of many of the gaming world's biggest acquisitions, having picked up giants such as Bethesda and Activision Blizzard for staggering sums of money.
It's definitely a boon having industry-leading titles like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and the Elder Scrolls in your back pocket, but many would argue that the comparatively small purchase of one indie studio over ten years ago is by far Microsoft's best ever decision.
Having released three years prior to Microsoft's acquisition, Minecraft was already an incredibly popular title.
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It is estimated that by the end of 2014, the game had already sold 54,000,000 copies, and had generated roughly $702,000,000 in revenue in the same period, but the best was yet to come.
The last update indicated that the series has now sold over 300,000,000 copies, which is in part due to the fact that it's available on pretty much anything that can play games, making it by far the best selling video game of all time.
Based on sales reports, it's estimated that Minecraft has now made roughly $4,297,000,000, which more than pays back Microsoft's initial investment and will continue to do so as the years go on.
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However, this does appear to have come at a cost to the game's original creator, as Markus "Notch" Persson was vocal about how miserable the vast riches made his life in the year following Microsoft's purchase.
As reported by the Independent, Persson immediately welcomed himself into the life of luxury, having outbid Beyoncé and Jay Z for a $70,000,000 8-bedroom, 15-bathroom mansion in Beverley Hills, and regularly hosted expansive parties with countless celebrity guests.
While his initial reason for selling Minecraft came from his desire to 'move on with his life' as he felt bogged down by the business side of running Mojang, the staggering amount of money he earned from the Microsoft deal only seemed to make him feel more isolated.
"The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying," Notch wrote at the start of a now infamous post chain on Twitter less than a year after the Minecraft deal went through, adding that "human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance."
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He also claimed that he "never felt more isolated" despite hanging out with friends in Ibiza and partying with famous people, revealing that he'd spend his days 'watching his reflection in the monitor' while waiting for people to finish work or spend time with their families.
He even illustrated that "when we sold the company, the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of, and they all hate me now."
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In 2019, an update to Minecraft removed all references to Notch from the game, and Persson also made it abundantly clear that he was not involved at all in the recent film adaptation of the game, which outperformed all box office analyst expectations.
Despite walking away with over a billion dollars, Notch might genuinely regret ever selling Minecraft, yet Microsoft likely couldn't be happier that they now own the most successful game of all time.