Notch talks about the $101 million he earned in 2012
"It's weird as f***."
In 2012, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson earned $101 million (~£64 million).
It wasn't too long ago, in autumn 2009, that Persson's PayPal account was frozen and the internet discovered there was $750,000 within. We all gasped.
Notch showed up on Reddit to talk about his humongous earnings.
"It's weird as f***," he said. "I grew up in a relatively poor family, but once I got a decent job, I never really had to worry about money.
"My hobbies were playing games and programming, so there wasn't any real drain. I could eat out when I wanted to, and go to the movies without having to save up for it. I still had to save up for trips and to be able to buy computers or consoles, but that just felt normal.
"Now, all of the sudden, as a result of how modern society works, I managed to somehow earn a s***-tonne of money.
"I think the right way to use money like this," he added, "is to set a decent portion aside to make sure my family is comfortable, spend some on living out your dreams, and then try to put the rest towards making society a better place. For me, this includes charities that help children, and charities that help promote freedoms I think are vital in the coming dozens of years, such as the EFF."
Notch doesn't have a driving licence so no he doesn't have a fancy-pants car. He could afford more than one hat, though.
For a while it looked like Notch might fund a new Psychonauts game made by Tim Schafer's studio Double Fine. It came close but ultimately fell through. Notch talked a bit about it.
"I somewhat naively thought 'a couple of million' was two million," Notch wrote. "I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily.
"Turns out they wanted 18 million dollars, haha. I don't have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an eighteen million dollar deal. Perhaps in some distant future when I'm no longer trying to make games, I could get into angel investing.
"I've made one private investment into a game so far, at 100k, and it's frankly a lot more work than I thought."
Minecraft was rampant in 2012. Minecraft XBLA, Minecraft PC/Mac and Minecraft: Pocket combined to total more than 15 million sales.
Notch is no longer lead designer of the Minecraft although I'm sure he still has ultimate control. With his studio Mojang eyeing massive markets like Brazil for Minecraft, the question is how much higher can Notch's earnings get? Could he become a billionaire?
Notch is currently working on new project called 0x10c. It's a sandbox space game that aims to have spaceship fights, fights on spaceships, planetary exploration, trading, mining and probably just about anything you can do in space. It's not an MMO like Eve Online: there's a single-player game and separate multiplayer offering. Expect it to develop over time like Minecraft did as well.
The last 0x10c updates on the official website happened in the autumn. A video of the first multiplayer test was shared back then.