41 ms·

I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

• pfoof 4y ago
  Well, and karma apparently works, as notch's life after becoming billionaire doesn't seem to be too positive
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    What negatives were there? From what I know he bought a mansion and became a twitter shitposter.
    • gary_0 4y ago
      And that's the pinnacle of what anyone would want out of life?
      • lelanthran 4y ago
        > And that's the pinnacle of what anyone would want out of life? No one claimed that it was. Buying a mansion and shitposting on twitter isn't exactly the sign of being a failure, is it? By all measureable metrics, I'd assume that his life is better than 90% of people that started life in the same socioeconomic class that he did.
        • bobsmooth 4y ago
          Money doesn't buy happiness. Having Tony Hawk and Skrillex at your housewarming party is cool but they're not the same as friends.
          • lelanthran 4y ago
            > Money doesn't buy happiness. I didn't say it does, but the clear fact of the matter is that there is literally no evidence that being rich leads to being miserable. People saying "money doesn't buy happiness" don't realise that money doesn't bring unhappiness either. You can't use that statement for asserting that some rich person must be unhappy.
          • LudwigNagasena 4y ago
            Sounds far better than being popular among Twitter journos, to be honest.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
  • CodeArtisan 4y ago
    I don't see any wrongdoing from Notch in this.
    • meibo 4y ago
      That's not what he said, and no, Notch didn't do anything wrong here. He's referring to everything about current day Notch(sad, alone, transphobe in billion $ mansion that panders to the right on Twitter all day and hasn't had anything creatively interesting to say since 2015).
      • LudwigNagasena 4y ago
        Where does that narrative that he is sad and alone come from?
  • ipaddr 4y ago
    What happened to him? The story mentions vegas but is otherwise vague
    • thomasz 4y ago
      He got incredibly lonely, lost all his friend, and got ostracized over posting some alt right and Q shit on twitter.
      • dcow 4y ago
        In other words, he finally grew up and, instead of dealing it in his 20s, is dealing with it in his 30s. He'll come around.
        • deanCommie 4y ago
          What a strange thing to say. Most of us don't lose all our friends, or go in the deep end alt-right in our 20's...
          • bobsmooth 4y ago
            Most of us don't become overnight billionaires.
          • dcow 4y ago
            My point is that he's in a shared melodramatic phase. It seems bad now, no doubt. But time heals all wounds. He'll find his friends again. He'll realize that Twitter isn't the right forum for posting batshit crazy stuff if you're sensitive to criticism. He'll repair things. He'll find his peace. Or he'll go insane. I'm hoping the former as a fellow human.
            • karmakurtisaani 4y ago
              Well, he also has all the money in the world to be distracted and surrounded by people who are in for the wrong reasons. So, let's see.
• hohohmm 4y ago
  Just want to say, it's definitely not THE most popular game of all time... Candy crush could be a strong candidate, though they probably never use that term on themselves.
  • pavlov 4y ago
    Tetris and Windows Solitaire had a multi-decade head start though.
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Snap, with real cards is up there.
    • mongol 4y ago
      What about Pacman?
  • javawizard 4y ago
    I mean we can squabble about what the definition of "most popular game of all time is", but if you're going with "the game that has sold the most units ever", it literally is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_g... (TFA links to that page toward the end.)
    • hohohmm 4y ago
      you make the same mistake of the op.
      • javawizard 4y ago
        Which is?
        • hohohmm 4y ago
          Which is mistaking the most sales for the most popularity. There is a universe of games that have huge number of users, but doesn't sell copies.
• TeaDude 4y ago
  Huh. I thought we'd run out of bizarre Minecraft development stories by now. It has to be one of the most documented ganes in history. Anyway, I've personally always thought that the ending was rubbish but now that I know it was directly responsible for all those animated text effects I dislike it slightly less.
• osigurdson 4y ago
  >> Since gone off the deep end I had not heard this before. What is the story there?
• ralusek 4y ago
  This person is absolutely delusional. They received $20k compensation for their poem, a poem which did not exist during Minecraft's original meteoric rise, and had no impact whatsoever on its trajectory. Notch was not your friend. You were overpaid for an insane poem and never were entitled to ownership of this product.
• dihydro 4y ago
  The writer of the poem, or short story, when you beat the ender dragon in Minecraft, never signed the contract releasing his copyright on it. That means Microsoft doesn't actually own the ending to Minecraft.
  • firecall 4y ago
    Thankyou!
  • shp0ngle 4y ago
    However, the author now released it to public domain.
  • antiterra 4y ago
    Microsoft probably doesn’t own the ending to Minecraft, since my non-lawyer understanding is that assignment must be done a particular way unless it is done in very specific terms as a ‘work for hire.’ However, his acceptance of the money, things written in his emails, the poem itself or other behaviors, could possibly form a case that he implicitly assigned a transferable non-exclusive license to Mojang for it to be used in MC. (not a lawyer caveat applies) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license (It looks like Irish law requires a written agreement for any non-exclusive license, but Swedish law looks a bit vague and it’s possible to assign ownership via implicit license.)
    • sacrosancty 4y ago
      In some countries, commissioned work belongs to the buyer by default, even without an explicit agreement for payment and even if the buyer never pays anything. This can be a nasty surprise. Probably not applicable to him but with all those other factors, I hope he checked with a lawyer before declaring that he owns it!
    • gary_0 4y ago
      The author acknowledges that he gave implicit permission to Notch/Mojang, and goes so far as to mention that the permission only extended to the original PC version of the game (which is all that existed at the time).
• kenjackson 4y ago
  I never even knew Minecraft had an ending until now.
  • pie_flavor 4y ago
    Sounds like it's time to play it!
    • lostlogin 4y ago
      Making a server is surprisingly terrible for such a ‘mature’ game. However playing it with your kid is so excellent. Farming, fighting, building, raiding, landscaping, tunnelling, rowing, flying, whatever. Pick your path and it is great fun.
      • bdn_ 4y ago
        > Making a server is surprisingly terrible for such a ‘mature’ game. The official Minecraft server software is exceptionally unoptimized, but a number of independent open source forks exist, some of which can substantially improve performance. Unless you're talking about maintaining the community aspect, which is definitely not so easy... :) For anyone getting into Minecraft for the first time, be sure to check out the mod Optifine [1]. A substantial portion of the Minecraft community uses it for its UI and performance improvements to the base game. It also allows the use of custom shaders [2], which totally change the feel of the game by adding realistic effects like long shadows, wavy water, and swaying plants. I personally stick with the base game's appearance, but shaders can be really fun for exploring caves and other places with unique lighting. [1]: https://optifine.net/home https://optifine.net/home [2]: https://www.pcgamer.com/best-minecraft-shaders/ https://www.pcgamer.com/best-minecraft-shaders/
        • 63 4y ago
          I don't see why it can't be as easy as Multiplayer -> Host -> Select World. The average player shouldn't need to download a server jar, accept a eula, edit the config, run the jar with command line arguments for ram allocation, and set up port forwarding just to play block game with their friends.
• nl 4y ago
  This is a great (long!) piece. I think one important thing for people on HN here is this: > I think Carl, with his background as a Corporate Finance guy, seeing the world through that filter, must have believed that I was trying to blackmail them; trying to maximise my revenue, like the “rational agents” that populate economics textbooks; that I was refusing to sign it to hold up the deal, because I wanted to get paid off. And I totally get how he could see it that way, given where he was coming from; but that wasn’t really what the issue was. There are many people on HN (and elsewhere) who see behaving as a rational economic actor as a default state and - worse - many believe economics is a zero sum game. Neither of these things is true, and it's a big mistake to think so. People do things for diverse motivations, and money is only one.
  • claaams 4y ago
    Money is often one of the more boring and predictable ones too.
  • mgrthrow 4y ago
    The number of times I've been told I don't believe my beliefs because they don't make rational economic sense is innumerable. I'm happy when my tax rate goes up. This apparently really bothers people. (Me being happy about it.)
    • rippercushions 4y ago
      Would you be happy if only your tax rate went up, or is that tied to other people in your tax bracket also paying out more and thus, presumably, benefiting society more than they would by hoarding/wasting the money?
      • mgrthrow 4y ago
        The latter. I make something like 750k a year, people in my income range can afford more and still live very comfortably.
    • LudwigNagasena 4y ago
• plodman 4y ago
  The irony, it’s now in the public domain but I can only access the bottom of the post if I have a Substack account.
  • hoten 4y ago
    I thought the same, but you can just click out. Kinda hard to notice on mobile.
  • pinkcan 4y ago
    reader mode?
• hoten 4y ago
  Certainly there's a world where the author just knew, at some point in this process, "let me just give this giant stressor of a problem to a lawyer"—without losing whatever it means to "be an artist" or opportunities at growth he attributes to only occurring because he was awful at business.
  • jchw 4y ago
    They do express regret for not simply doing this, so I guess you are right. But, the story wouldn't be very interesting if it had played out that way, so I guess here we are.
  • a257 4y ago
    Such a world sounds unappealing, if not naive and silly - why can't people be motivated by multiple reasons anyways? The author doesn't claim that they are a great at business in the first place.
  • jesterman 4y ago
    There definitely was, as they mentioned in the article. They choose not to though, opting instead to just sit on it for a long time I guess? Hopefully they talked to a lawyer before releasing this though, and hopefully Microsoft doesn’t go after this guy.
    • krisoft 4y ago
      > hopefully Microsoft doesn’t go after this guy Let’s not spread FUD, what would they go after for this guy and why?
      • rippercushions 4y ago
        It would not be too hard for Microsoft to argue that they did come to an agreement with the artist to transfer the rights in exchange for 20,000 euros, so they do now own the copyright to the End Poem and will sue for damages if the artist reneges on the deal and starts claiming it's public domain. I hope they don't, but they definitely could. It would be a PR nightmare though, and there's not all much to be gained either (how much money can you make with the poem if you can't mention Minecraft?), so with any luck that will stop them.
• jesterman 4y ago
  This was a great article. It was absolutely not what I excepted going in. Hats off to Julian here, for doing what they think is “good” in the end.
• adzm 4y ago
  > And so: you are free to set it to music; dramatise it; animate it. Mash it up with whatever you think it would go well with. Whatever you’re inspired to do. (Ideally inspired by love, but that’s on you.) Beautiful. I hope this brings him peace.
• pearjuice 4y ago
  When so much money is involved very few friendships or relationships will survive. You can't morally steer someone into the "right" direction by sending frustrated emails when there's generational wealth on the line for the other parties involved. The author should have put his feelings aside and involved a lawyer.
  • simmerup 4y ago
    If they were really friends this conversation would have been had candidly in a social setting
• automatoney 4y ago
  I love the idea of the public domain so much - the idea that these bits of culture may have been created by a single person, but that they ultimately belong to everyone as members of the culture. I've always wanted to host a New Years Public Domain Day party to celebrate everything already in and entering the public domain, but I'm not sure my friends are quite as excited by the idea as I am...
  • wesapien 4y ago
    The public domain has no culture. It's everyone in the planet. The planet has no specific culture.
    • matkoniecz 4y ago
      Human culture in general exists and is also something (hard to compare with other ones right now, but I bet that aliens - if existing - would have a different ones)
  • RugnirViking 4y ago
    I quite like that idea of a party haha. I also don't know that my friends would appreciate it, but I'd love to see a website or something that lists works that belong to us now
  • kqr 4y ago
    I've always thought of new year's celebrations as kind of silly so thanks for making them meaningful to me!
• Joel_Mckay 4y ago
  Rule #7: When people say it is "not about the money", than it is 100% about the money. And a CEO is 100% liable for employee misconduct while on the job. =)
• shp0ngle 4y ago
  I am absolutely not a lawyer, but I would guess his implicit agreement together with accepting the money gives Microsoft at least some right to use the poem?
  • AndrewDucker 4y ago
    Plus him placing it in the public domain and explicitly giving them permission to use it.
  • hnbad 4y ago
    Mojang yes. Microsoft... eh... that's more difficult and depends on a number of factors. As I understand it, Mojang was acquired by Microsoft, i.e. Microsoft inherits all contracts Mojang held. IANAL but in this case they would probably be able to use the poem under the same implied limited license. But I'm not sure how this works when Minecraft itself was moved out of Mojang in any way (i.e. if this is formally a Microsoft game and no longer a Mojang, now subsidiary of Microsoft, game). Anyhow, the CC0 license also applies to Microsoft going forward so unless he wants to challenge their rights prior to this, Microsoft is apparently in the clear now. They just can't sue anyone who wants to also use the poem because they don't have standing.
• rippercushions 4y ago
  Anybody have a pointer to the "iHole" story mentioned in the article? It seems to have been purged not just from the author's website, but archive.* as well. https://www.juliangough.com/the-ihole-in-original-apple-fl/ https://www.juliangough.com/the-ihole-in-original-apple-fl/
  • mrslave 4y ago
    https://archive.ph/Wac0r https://archive.ph/Wac0r
    • rippercushions 4y ago
      That's the post-takedown version. "Yes my short story, The iHole, was here. No, it's not here now..."
  • larsbrinkhoff 4y ago
    Is this it, further down the page? https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2684207-an-open-letter-to-jonathan-ive-and-apple https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2684207-an-open-...
    • larsbrinkhoff 4y ago
      Another copy. https://pasteboss.com/ihole-game/ https://pasteboss.com/ihole-game/
    • rippercushions 4y ago
      That's it, thank you! Really worth a read, both thought-provoking and funny.
• Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
  I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I got for writing the actual ending Did the twenty-five staff put in 5x or 6x the work? It seems likely. I understand that to some the end story may be deemed to be essential to the experience and talent was required to write this story - but that attitude just undermines the hard work of everyone else involved. Who knows how much effort those staff members poured into perfecting things that were essential to the experience that made Minecraft? > Bear in mind, here we were a couple of weeks before the official launch, and Minecraft was already a phenomenon: in its unfinished state, it had already sold five or six million copies, in beta, at $15 a copy. So it was, at that point, already a hundred-million-dollar game, but with no ending It certainly doesn't seem like the ending provided disproportionate value to Mojang compared to the work of their staff.
  • Natsu 4y ago
    I wonder if it counts as a work for hire then? Otherwise copyright vests with the author and requires a written memorandum of transfer as I understand it.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • asperous 4y ago
    If he actually received $20,000 that still seems like a lot? Especially in a world where freelance writing is $0.01-$0.50 (pre-GPT3). And it sounds like at the time it was good money for the artist. I get that he feels like he was given a small amount relative to the great success of Minecraft, but I would hope he also realizes that it was risk free cash.
• rosywoozlechan 4y ago
  That's a lot of anger, negativity and bitterness, and entitlement (one of the game's creators for writing the ending text?). Reminds me of the kid on the cover of the Nevermind album and other people that are kinda tangentially connected to something massively successful, but not connected enough to benefit materially, and they let that define who they are and ruin their lives. Could have been a neat personal story, "hey you know I wrote the ending text to Minecraft?" Instead, it's this.
  • croo 4y ago
    If you read the whole story you may realize that it was not the lack of material benefits that made him bitter but the distrust and a false friendship caused by miscommunication by flawed humans.
  • whatshisface 4y ago
    How can you call asking for nothing entitlement?
    • dcow 4y ago
      It's the attitude espoused in the writing. The outcome was literally his way of not letting his own frustration consume him and only available to him after doing heavy doses of psychedelics. I'm glad he was able to let go because his attitude of being entitled to something when he was, in fact, not, is what has been causing him all the pain.
      • dr_dshiv 4y ago
        I think we all can empathize with the guy. He was close to massively successful people and he clearly contributed something soulful. It is the end jewel of the most successful game of all time! I feel for him and think this was a really nice outcome for everyone. (I just wish the essay was edited down by 1/3, but that’s me)
    • ohbtvz 4y ago
      Is he asking for nothing? Half of the post is about how Mojang got millions then billions and he got nothing. If he's not asking for what he considers to be his share of the pie, then I don't know what the whole post is about.
• causi 4y ago
  so I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was If he said that in an e-mail, doesn't that constitute a written agreement to transfer copyright to Mojang?
  • colonwqbang 4y ago
    If not transfer copyright, a at least a licence of some kind. They must reasonably have acquired something for their consideration of 20000€ which the author accepted from them.
  • n2d4 4y ago
    For usage rights, probably so. But a transfer has stricter requirements in most countries, and it doesn't mean he agreed to all the other clauses in the contract that he hadn't even seen at the time.
    • causi 4y ago
      Indeed this is quite messy. Julian was a fool for agreeing to something he hadn't read, and Carl was a fool for paying him before he signed it.
      • europeanguy 4y ago
        Carl was the smart one, by the sound of it they still would be going back and forth on the meaning of fair.
        • causi 4y ago
          Yeah, I don't understand how this could've taken more than a couple of e-mails when the work was already done. Why the heck wouldn't Julian ask Markus to step in once he became uncomfortable with e-mailing Carl? Why didn't he just say "ok this took me X hours, so X euros is fair compensation"? It's very hard for me to read this in a way where Julian doesn't come off as, at best, an idiot, and at worst, an asshole who thinks writing two pages of text is equivalent to the thousands of hours of labor the five Mojang employees had put into the project at the time.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• krisoft 4y ago
  The author missed the primary tenet of life: figure out what you want. If you yourself don’t know what you want how do you think other people will know, let alone make it happen somehow?
• vintermann 4y ago
  An interesting thing is that C418 (Daniel Rosenfeld) did not sign away all his rights. That is why Minecraft: Volume Alpha and Minecraft: Volume Beta are copyright C418 on Spotify, whereas the later albums are copyright Microsoft Studios Music - and it's also why all new music to Minecraft is made by people other than Daniel Rosenfeld. So it seems Julian should have been able to get a similar deal. I bet Jakob had no power to actually go through with the threat of taking out the end poem - Notch would have intervened if it came to that.
  • asddubs 4y ago
    That's interesting, I was passively wondering about that. So I suppose we won't get any more C418 songs in Minecraft, that's kind of a shame.
    • 63 4y ago
      It is a bit of a shame but it seems like it's been used as an opportunity to bring in new people and ideas to the game and I appreciate that. Pigstep is a banger.
      • vintermann 4y ago
        Agreed on Pigstep, but I bet Raine would have liked to have kept the extended rights Rosenfeld got, only she can't afford to refuse, probably. I also got to say, although Pigstep as a record is great, and Raine's music for Celeste is terrific, the new in-game ambient music doesn't hold up to Rosenfeld's.
        • the_gipsy 4y ago
          Some of the new pieces do hold up, but some sound obviously out of place - IMHO.
• eps 4y ago
  This needs another side of the story.
  • ninth_ant 4y ago
    Notch wanted a freelance writer to write a funky written piece for after the player defeats the ender dragon. He finds one and they agree on a price via email. Notch likes the result, integrated the writing into the game and pays the writer the agreed-upon amount. During due diligence of the MS purchase, the lawyers want the contract formalized. The freelancer erratically responds, writing self-contradictory emails to various people in the company. Company lawyers don’t want to deal with the nonsense and decide they can win a legal challenge if it ever comes to that, based on the initial agreements between notch and the freelance writer. The game releases and gets more popular. One day the freelancer writes a substack article. The end.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • qup 4y ago
    I'm gonna guess it's something like: this guy is using a "friendship" narrative because it's his best argument, but it's not the reality. He accepted, via email, a deal for what Mojang thought was a nice sum for writing an ending to their game. Later he wouldn't sign the contract stating what he accepted in email. Markus was seemingly very generous to everyone he felt was important to the success of Mojang. I sincerely doubt he didn't consider this guy. Markus is not so selfish that he wouldn't make the guy a millionaire if he felt his contribution was important. Or shout out his stuff. The guy thought he was cozying up with the big boys, but he was a fiverr hire.
• Lindalee51 4y ago
• boosteri 4y ago
  There's and ending to Minecraft? There goes my perception (acquired over the years of reading bits and bobs about it) of it being an endless world building game.
  • Quillbert182 4y ago
    There's an "ending" in terms of there is an event that gets the credits to play, but you can continue to play afterwords, and there is a not insignificant amount of content unlocked by triggering the event. You can also easily play forever without achieving this ending.
    • p1necone 4y ago
      I've probably played a few hundred hours of minecraft and never tried to reach the ending because I spend all my time building slight variations of the same cool wizards spire, and designing redstone minecart subways.
    • zimpenfish 4y ago
      > You can also easily play forever without achieving this ending. I played from 2013 to 2020 before I visited the End and killed the dragon. Then I realised how OP elytra are and now it's an early game goal to grab a pair.
      • mcv 4y ago
        I still haven't killed the dragon. My son can kill it in under 20 minutes and loves showing me the elytra, but I've never gotten myself one. I just get stuck exploring, digging tunnels, building houses and castles and collecting animals.
        • zimpenfish 4y ago
          > My son can kill it in under 20 minutes If that's "20 minutes from start of game to end", that's pretty good going. Get him a YouTube channel and get him grinding towards the World Record!
• naet 4y ago
  I kinda feel like this guy is overstating his contribution to Minecraft. It's nice to have an end screen message, but that isn't what drove the value of the game and could have easily been replaced by something else. Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into millions of dollars or whatever he thinks a "fair" contribution is. Contributing an asset doesn't give you any entitlement to share in the company. If you want some equity in the company you better ask for it up front, because they probably won't give it to you and would just hire someone else and you can save your hard work. 20k seems fair and helped the author out a lot at the time. Posting a long rant about it probably hurts his future work opportunities.
  • xnorswap 4y ago
    Indeed, the odd twist in this story was that he was paid for his work. I was expecting a story about how he was still chasing his money to this day. I'm fairly sure that no credible lawyer would give him the time of the day if he did try to get more now. He did work, he accepted money for that work and only later he thinks he's entitled to more and wants to re-negotiate. I don't know about his jurisdiction, but here even as a layman I'm confident that doing the work and accepting the money would be seen as acceptance: "As well as using words, a contract could be implied by conduct of the parties, for example, by jumping into a black cab and stating your destination, this conduct would be taken as an agreement that the taxi driver will take you to your destination and that you will pay a price for it." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/notes/division/3/1?view=plain https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/notes/division/... The idea that just because there isn't a written contract that he magically retains the rights is magical thinking and I'm surprised that no-one he's previously told this story to has pointed that out to him.
    • jack_pp 4y ago
      I don't think there's any doubt that Mojang / Microsoft are entitled to use his work. But I don't think it's clear whether he has the rights to the work or not.
• bulbosaur123 4y ago
  GPT probably
• subradios 4y ago
  Good and bad post. Getting mad at "the corporations" for being dirty middlemen is common, but Ticketmaster hires staffers, organizes purchases, handles refunds alllllllll the way down the line. The infrastructure to do that takes real work by real people who also need to be paid, and yes - there is a structural inequality between the company that does all the organizing and the individual person doing the work. This is both problematic and excellent. The best part though, really - is that because of the way modern corporations work, anyone can be at the very very top of the corporate structure, above even the CEO. Regular, average humans can be shareholders, the most preferred class of all modern capitalist corporations.
• helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  I'm no literary critic and I don't know how many people finish Minecraft and how many get to read the poem but $20K for that seems a pretty good deal (and the exchange of emails and payment sound like some kind of contract). I'm sure others working on other parts of the game, graphics and gameplay (which have become very well known outside the game) put in far more work for less. If Microsoft replace the poem, I'm not sure anyone would notice except the author wouldn't have a fun fact for his bio.
  • kergonath 4y ago
    > the exchange of emails and payment sound like some kind of contract Beware that this is very dependent on jurisdiction. There are places where such informal agreements are completely non binding. IP laws vary quite a lot as well. So your intuition might be completely wrong. Just sorting this out would be a nightmare (the author was working in Germany for a Swedish company; which law should apply? Then there is Microsoft). > If Microsoft replace the poem, I'm not sure anyone would notice except the author wouldn't have a fun fact for his bio. He would still have it: this happened and whatever happens next won’t make it un-happen retroactively.
    • jaywalk 4y ago
      Well, Microsoft's legal team obviously came to the conclusion that the emails and payment were at least sufficient to grant Mojang a license to the artist's work. So there's that. They could have been wrong, sure. But absent further legal judgement, I'm willing to side with the decision reached by the team of lawyers over random Internet commenters.
      • ectopod 4y ago
        Not necessarily. They might have concluded that the potential liability from non-ownership was insignificant compared to the upside. Even when courts find against corporations who have massively screwed artists the compensation tends to be modest, and this case isn't clear cut.
      • kergonath 4y ago
• xwdv 4y ago
  Why would Microsoft want to own this particular ending to Minecraft? It’s just not very good IMO.
• papa2034 4y ago
  I have a strong feeling MS will put out a statement that they own the end poem and it is not public domain. The author talks about how big the game was/became, but it’s actually irrelevant because no one bought the game because of the poem.
  • kergonath 4y ago
    > I have a strong feeling MS will put out a statement that they own the end poem and it is not public domain. I don’t think they would do that. That would be unbelievably stupid from a legal department. The funny thing with this sort of IP in most of Europe (though this could be different in Sweden but I really doubt it) is that nobody except the author can own it. All they can have is an exclusive license. If they are convinced of this and wanted to clear things up, they will sue. But they probably won’t because the guy is probably right. > it’s actually irrelevant because no one bought the game because of the poem. That’s a very wrong take. IP laws deal with copying and distributing works. You won’t get out of a lawsuit saying that it was not significant (unless you are pleading fair use, but it clearly was not the case here). Whether the work is important or not does not matter before we talk about compensation. And then, an insignificant fraction of a few billions is still quite a bit of money.
    • warbler73 4y ago
      In the US for copyright to transfer he'd need to be an employee and writing part of his work duties, in which case it is work for hire, or if he is a contractor they'd need a signed contract saying the contractor was performing this as work for hire, or a contract explicitly transferring ownership. They did pay him for it so Mojang had an implied license to use it but he retains ownership. When Mojang sold Minecraft to Microsoft, they did not own the copyright and did not have a contract saying they have the right to transfer their implied license, therefore Microsoft actually is violating copyright here. Source: I went through exactly this same legal scenario and won.
      • hnbad 4y ago
        Wait, I thought Minecraft bought out Mojang, not bought Minecraft from Mojang? If they really did just buy the game and not the entire company, I think you're right and Microsoft may be in violation. If they bought the company, they would have inherited the license as I understand it. EDIT: IANAL but as long as Minecraft continues being sold by Mojang, not Microsoft, it shouldn't matter whether Microsoft owns the company or not as long as the implied contract was with Mojang, not e.g. Notch.
• throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  what a fascinating sob story about a guy who got paid 20k for a few days of work
• djmips 4y ago
  So many future billionaires in the comments. Of course I expected that from HN.
• holoduke 4y ago
  I play minecraft a lot with my sons. We actually never cared to finish it. I dont even know how to finish it. The game isnt made to be finished. Its a large maker playgarden. I think hardly anyone saw this ending.
  • epse 4y ago
    You get it by killing the Ender Dragon, which pretty much everyone does at some point? If you want to go exploring End Cities and get Elytra, you need to kill it to get back home
• lelanthran 4y ago
  • cobertos 4y ago
    He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_? Notch, C418 (music), Jeb (only coder at launch), Kristoffer Zetterstrand (ingame paintings), and him (ending). He said only 25 people were staff at the time as well. I am truly curious who they were and what their roles were.
    • lelanthran 4y ago
      > He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_? How would he know? From his own account, he was nothing more than a contract supplier who supplied one single thing. He claims that they were friends, but his own account of the whole mess shows that that isn't true.
      • Jarwain 4y ago
        It was reasonably public knowledge at the time, iirc. The dev team was not very big at launch. That said, I'm kinda curious about what roles the other ~25 staff had in such a small team. HR and legal and such I guess?
        • cobertos 4y ago
          I'm super curious on this too. I imagine at least a couple community managers and a PR person. So much of game dev is your community. Maybe a branding artist. Web dev for the website/java applet integration. It sounds like they were pretty well structured capital wise so definitely someone in payroll/accounting. But that's _still_ not 25.
          • Ekaros 4y ago
            I suppose someone had to be running servers, payment systems and so on as well. It is not exactly trivial to distribute and process as many copies as they sold.
• rkagerer 4y ago
  Not unusual for those passionate about their work and with limited business experience to just want to get on with doing what they're good at and not get bogged down in the contractual stuff. I've had acquaintances who've wanted to do work for me try to skip that. Best thing you can do for them is be diligent (in a sense on their behalf) and make them go through the paperwork before commencing the project (certainly before getting too deep in). There's a reason those conversations can be tough, as they surface details the parties diverge on. Dealing with them early keeps them from festering. Some people experience a great deal of anxiety when it comes to negotiation, and I often find everyone feels better once that stage is behind us and we've achieved a mutual understanding of the expectations, remuneration, etc. I think part of the beef here was he felt he never agreed to what ensued (indeed in negotiations he was shy to express what he felt was fair - which must have drove Carl nuts). If they'd arrived at and signed a contract, even if in retrospect it turned out to be the steal of the century for the company and a huge ripoff for him, at least he'd have been able to say "well, I agreed to it" and gotten some closure from that. All that said, I can't help but cheer the underdog here. The company was presumably more experienced and shared a responsibility to get their i's dotted and T's crossed. Yes, the guy was a pain in the ass. But just because a contract is so-called "standard" doesn't mean you should expect the other party is blindly willing to consent to it, or be angry at them for rejecting terms they find onerous. I see that happening all too often today with heavy-handed ToS's websites are foisting on users who can't be bothered to read them. The lawyers are all copying verbiage off each other and it's a race to the bottom where one side has all the rights, the other has none whatsoever, and then regulators need to step in as referees thus deteriorating free markets. If the IP really does remain his (which I'm not convinced is cut and dry), then good for him for standing his ground, fending his principles and gifting this beautiful work of art to the world.
• operator-name 4y ago
  This has also been posted to the Minecraft subreddit, where is has received a lot of positive attention from the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/zf8ye0/i_wrote_the_end_poem_i_also_own_it_because_i https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/zf8ye0/i_wrote_t...
  • operator-name 4y ago
    It's quite intersting seeing the difference in focus and tone between HN and the Minecraft subreddit. Although the end poem has received criticism here, it's obvious from the thread that it's touched a lot of people. Being friends and known a small number of "artists", the difference in mindset was extremely apparent - some of them just think and see the world fundimental very differently from the way I do. Many actions and explanations here are not that of a piece to convince or persuade, but of an individual sharing their raw self and their struggles. Thus its been interesting to see the reaction from HN, who are obviously different in another way. HN is the Carl of the story, who also misses what the author considers the "broader point" of wanting to be treated as a friend.
    • FamosoRandom 4y ago
      I find it hilarious that we both wrote the same idea pratically at the same time, are you me from another universe ? or maybe I am you ?
      • xyzelement 4y ago
        You are both pure love. (In ten years, I will complain about you. I wrote you this poetic line because I thought we are friends)
    • Kiro 4y ago
      Not really. If this was the post on HN I'm sure people would be more sympathetic because it leaves out all the important details, like the fact that he actually received €20k for it and the pompous idea that he's one of the creators of Minecraft.
• larsnystrom 4y ago
  This is a bit of tangent, but I see this: > Let a thousand flowers bloom. This phrase is sorely misunderstood. This was a way to lure out opponents of Mao Zedong, by opening up for public criticism of his rule. Then, when he knew who opposed him, he could brutally suppress and/or execute them. I don't think that is what the author of the this article wants to convey. Or maybe it is, and his next step will be to launch a massive legal campaign against Microsoft and all others involved?
  • sgu999 4y ago
    Tangent to your tangent, I had Adam Curtis' voice in my head while reading this post. "... and Julian Gough found himself there, at the corner of the 21st century, thinking he had made a friend while his emotions were crushed by limitless capital growth" Curtis, whose coverage of the cultural revolution is a work of art.
• iepathos 4y ago
  The person who really got screwed in all this is poor Charlie, the agent. Here he is managing deals for Julian getting a percentage of those deals and Julian it sounds like is not making much, so Charlie probably isn't making much off Julian either. Julian goes and basically gives away his most successful work to ruthless Mojang and Charlie gets nothing for it at all because Julian keeps Charlie in the dark. Charlie probably would've been able to get a significant sum from either Mojang or Microsoft for both of them, but instead gets cut out completely by Julian for no good reason.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • 3np 4y ago
    Sounds like there was no exclusivity agreement.
    • iainmerrick 4y ago
      But the point is, assuming Charlie is a good agent, Julian would also have made more money (and with less effort) because Charlie would have put in the work to ensure Julian got a good deal.
      • 3np 4y ago
        The point I was replying to was that OP screwed over their agent, which is not fair. Your point that OP would have been way better of if they did let their agent handle it from the beginning was made quite clear already: > Looking back, I can see that I should, at this point, have handed the conversation over to my agent, Charlie, who negotiates my book deals with publishers, and who is a complete darling, and good at this sort of stuff. But I got stuck. I think I thought that bringing in my agent would potentially mess up this pure art relationship. Maybe he would be too ruthless, and it would all fall apart! Of course, now I can see that it would have had the opposite effect; Markus and I could have talked art, and Carl and Charlie could have talked money, and everyone would have been much happier.
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  This guy sure as hell likes to read his own writing, my god that post is way too long to end up just saying "me want money". On a side note I have played Minecraft hundreds of hours and have "finished" it hundreds of times, and never noticed a poem at the end. Like everyone I skip the credits because I'm playing Minecraft to... play Minecraft? Not to read a wall of text.
• Gatsky 4y ago
  Well I enjoyed the piece. But it evinces a kind of derangement unique to modern life. Minecraft became so popular, and worth so much money, that the author couldn’t get over it. Another example is that guy who threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin wallet on it, now worth $200 million or something like that. He can’t move on. Last I heard he was trying to finance a plan to exhume an acre of landfill and sort through it all by hand.
  • wikfwikf 4y ago
    An even better example is the Australian guy who was Bitcoin-adjacent in the early days, and has now convinced himself, apparently, that he created Bitcoin. He has spent years making both resentful accusations and meaningless grandiose gestures (for example, that he was going to give billions from his secret wallet 0 to pay for STEM education in Africa).
    • Gatsky 4y ago
      Yes, also a good example, although he seems more delusional than merely deranged.
  • CodeArtisan 4y ago
    Another example closer to this is The Witcher. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Sapkowski#Legal_dispute_with_CD_Projekt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Sapkowski#Legal_disp...
• bearmode 4y ago
  So he was commissioned to write 9 minutes of scrolling text (but which would undoubtedly be able to be read quicker if just presented with the prose all at once), and was paid around €20,000? And he thinks something's unfair here for some reason? Also he appears to think the ending was even particularly important in Minecraft, that writing 9 minutes of text is worth years of art and development work. That's odd. >The friendship is more important than the money. This is insane, he didn't know these people!
• Scaevolus 4y ago
  Contracts, eh? Three people got a cut of the $2B buyout, some random contractor doing a bit of writing for the game isn't going to get anything. I made the game _playable_ for a huge number of people by optimizing the save format (MCRegion) and doing the first implementation of Unicode text, probably affecting the exponential growth rate a bit, but I understand that my contribution amounted to a few weeks of work, explicitly agreed on not doing it for money, and moved on with life.
  • awb 4y ago
    These small but meaningful contributions to successful companies can be amazing resume builders too.
    • mrguyorama 4y ago
      Literally "Do it for the exposure" jeeze
  • _gabe_ 4y ago
    Thanks for your work! Minecraft is literally the game that inspired me to learn coding (through Redstone and stuff). I also dabble in making my own minecraft clones now and I've realized how the smallest details can have a significant performance impact: from saving space on disk to speeding up loading times etc. Anyways, it's cool that you had a hand in the early efforts of the game!
  • neycoda 4y ago
    You don't understand art, you probably didn't finish reading what Julian wrote, you'll likely never understand what he did, and that poem probably has less meaning for you than most who would read it having never played the game.
    • fastball 4y ago
      Are you replying to the right comment? Pretty sure OP played the game, given that they worked on it.
• Kiro 4y ago
  Mojang could remove this poem today and not a single person would care or even notice.
• account-5 4y ago
  I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out. Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would. But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to whether you think the original payment was really good. The copyright sits with the artist, not those that commission it, unless the artist signs it away. That didn't happen. That's Mojang's fault not the artist. And the fact they were trying to pressure the artist into doing that shows that that is the real issue. This post is not about the money or the jealously. It is about the emotional journey the author went on, with their human emotions, and what they thought of as friends. And the different stages of said journey. If I was more cynical about this piece I would suggest that releasing the poem under CC was easily the worse thing the author could have done from MS/Mojangs point of view. Clearly a decision was made by them that should a lawsuit come about they weren't worried. Releasing it as it has been side steps this completely, leaving the power with the author. Ultimately though I enjoyed the story.
  • wikfwikf 4y ago
    a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any different about it after the author 'releasing the poem under CC'. His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. He seems erratic and will probably go on to perform other stunts and legalistic trolling before he gets bored.
    • account-5 4y ago
      a) I'm not the author so can't comment on what they really expect. But since they released the work under CC I'd suggest nothing, other than recognition, and based on the post after they finally realised their true reason for being hurt, I think it was also about being treated correctly and with respect. b) INAL, but in the UK: "you automatically get copyright protection when you create: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography original non-literary written work... ". Assuming it's similar around the world there's nothing dubious about their claim, they didn't sign it away. Regardless of your opinion of the person or their motives it seems they are within their rights to do what they've done.
• pfoof 4y ago
  Although 20k€ is still better deal than Sapkowski selling rights to Witcher to CDProjekt for 40k PLN (10k€)
  • Ekaros 4y ago
    10k€ is not bad amount of money for work that probably wouldn't not have ended up as anything big outside books. Just try to think how many other fantasy works there are that never got outside books or small derivative works. Surely he made decent chunk from increased sales of books and now the TV series.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • pfoof 4y ago
      Yes, but he could literally take half of this in shares and be much better off now
• nmca 4y ago
  Future notch-es will just ask chatGPT for a poem and avoid the drama.
• isitmadeofglass 4y ago
  This reads like someone who had a friend win the lottery and is now extremely mad that he didn’t ask for and get millions of dollars that one time when he helped him move, but “only” got 20k
• theharrychen 4y ago
  Wow a lot of HN commenters are so cynical of the writer and very quick to discount the value of the End poem.
  • whywhywhywhy 4y ago
    It’s hard to ascribe value to it when you know the whole ending was rushed in as Notch walked out the door and the brief for the poem was literally just something long and nonsensical that appears out of nowhere and doesn’t mean anything. Like it’s not a good ending to Minecraft, the game was maybe better off not having an ending.
• theharrychen 4y ago
  Many of the commenters are so quick to discount the value of the End Poem, but from the replies of the writer's tweet it's pretty clear that many players have read the poem and been positively impacted by it. https://mobile.twitter.com/juliangough/status/1600465673557143554 https://mobile.twitter.com/juliangough/status/16004656735571...
  • dwaltrip 4y ago
    It had an emotional reaction to the poem when I first beat the game. I find it to be beautiful.
• Jarwain 4y ago
  Never before has the HN hive mind bubble been so clear to me as in this comment thread, and I find it kinda fascinating. What I find really interesting, though, are parallels to complaints I've heard from artsy friends about Lensa (which is trending on social media for being a stable diffusion (variant?) model used for generating portraits of a person in various styles). Essentially, the problem is that the model was trained on a bunch of copyrighted art scraped off the internet. Essentially, the same problem with github's copilot being trained on open source copy left code.
• IncRnd 4y ago
  > I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you You already sold it in 2011.
• LightHugger 4y ago
  It is hilarious that he criticizes notch for being weird on twitter right before going on a bizzare telling of his mushroom fueled hallucinations. Like, let people be weird, if you're going to be so weird yourself.
  • mort96 4y ago
    Telling a story about your bizarre mushroom fuelled hallucinations is a cute kind of weird, tweeting in support of QAnon shit and other alt-right stuff is a not-cute kind of weird.
    • LightHugger 4y ago
      In both cases some empathy for the person involved is probably warranted, qanon stuff is mental illness and accusing people of "alt right" is reductio ad hitlerum with extra steps. Compare to being a bit of a druggie. It strikes me as "give me empathy for my unique oddity even though i won't give it to others".
      • mort96 4y ago
        Sorry, I don't have much empathy for people who tell their audience of many millions of people, many of them children because of the nature of what Notch is famous for, that the democrats have a satanic pedophile ring with a meeting place in some pizzeria in New York and other similarly fucked up shit. Not until they at least own up to the fact that what they did was messed up. And comparing it to a fucking mushroom trip? Saying that both are "weird" but should be accepted? Come on man.
• HenriTEL 4y ago
  As long as there is a substantial financial transaction ($20k here) you're pretty much in a business relationship. Julian wish he was above the rules of capitalism but he's not. If he was he would have no issues talking about money and dealing with contracts. He would not be jealous that the late employees received money from the Microsoft deal. But yeah, fortunately it was just an issue of blockage in the flow of love that could be solved with a few psilocybin mushrooms. His former family and his agent Charlie must be reassured now.
• pdpi 4y ago
  As a human story, this is kind of tragic. I feel for the guy. As a legal story, it’s fascinating, and I’d love to see it go to court, for no other reason than to There’s some passages in there that could be understood as implied consent — them using the text after the author explicitly tells Carl that copyright assignment is off the table implies Mojang accepts that condition. The author’s failure to respond to the contract in a timely manner once it was sent probably also implies consent, but maybe not? Then there’s the matter of jurisdiction, as you have a Swedish company dealing with an Irishman (probably irrelevant) living in Germany (definitely relevant). Probably a fair few more complications in there that I failed to notice.
• beAbU 4y ago
  I've had Minecraft since before the pre-alpha days. I think I had a pirated copy of Alpha late in 2010 and some time in 2011 or shortly thereafter I actually bought the game. I might have easily sunk 1000s of hours into this game. I think I played the ending only once, in Creative Mode, to see what the fuss was about. I never cared for the ending, because to me Minecraft never had an ending. We had a Survival server in our university computer science lab and we mostly played on there, just hanging out and building cool stuff. Reading TFA, I feel like the author is gaslighting me into feeling guilty because he did not manage to cash out big time like the rest? He amplifies his contribution making it sound like this big thing when it's not really a big thing. Other than the ending, I don't recall there being any other story in MC? What purpose does a poetic ending have if the journey up until that point has no real impact? The ending of Portal 1 is significantly more poetic in my eyes, and it's left a lasting impression on me that makes me sad when I realize that I can't share it with anyone else. Going on and on about how much the game was sold for, how nice Notch's new house is, how Notch made so much money that he could just hand it out to his team, how the author thought they were all friends reads to me like someone who is very bitter and jealous. Writing more than 12k words to bring is point across does not help. Then claiming loudly that he's made peace with the universe and his lot after a magic mushroom trip in the middle of the forest just kind of puts the cherry on top for me. He comes across as an insufferable "artist" and maybe that's why he was pushed out/excluded like this.
  • jrochkind1 4y ago
    What do you mean by "gaslighting" there? I understand "gaslighting" as "manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality." Is that what you mean, or something else?
    • beAbU 4y ago
      I might be using the term incorrectly, I realize that. The author's behaviour is that of the spouse that's "totally not mad, honey" but you still feel uneasy afterwards. I'm not sure what term to use to describe this behaviour. English is not my native language.
• bovermyer 4y ago
  Reading this, I was reminded of how I used to think when I was in art school and the world seemed limitless. At some point in the last twenty years, I became thoroughly grounded in the capitalist, entrepreneurial mindset. My world view became locked on the lens of monetary compensation, property ownership, and proper assignment of assets. Unlike many of the commenters here, I have no interest in the legal or monetary ramifications of this post. Instead, this gives me pause. I need to reexamine some of the assumptions I've built up over the past two decades. It would, I think, do me good to reconsider how I think about things. I need to think.
• ifdefdebug 4y ago
  Just came here to say that I gifted a small amount of money to thank him for this excellent morning read! Of course the gift is not the money, an almost meaningless amount for me. The gift is the time and attention it took me to actually click that link, sign into paypal and send the money, instead of just clicking away for the next story. Thank you Julian, you already made my day.
• nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  I guess art is subjective, but the Minecraft's End crawl is pretty cringe-y. I always thought that it was just some thing some programmer threw together at the last minute since it sucked so hard and I've always wondered why Mojang hasn't updated it. EDIT: oh wow, I actually kept reading and this guy is one greedy mf. How do you think making a poem is even remotely equal to "making the game". Then all this bitching about how people who actually literally working at Mojang getting money that he - some stranger who again only wrote one poem and nothing else - didn't get. Why didn't he join Mojang as a writer or something if he believed in the project and wanted to work on their games - because he didn't believe or want to work there. Dude is just angry he didn't get rich on a chance encounter.
• thret 4y ago
  I'm hoping Notch responds to this, or at least reconnects with Julian in some way. I remember when he purchased that mansion because the story was posted to HN and Notch answered some questions about it.
• codingdave 4y ago
  IANAL, but clearly neither is this guy. Contracts do not have to be in writing to be binding. Nor do they have to be fair. Signing the contract is one way to prove acceptance, but failing to sign the contract yet carrying it out and taking the money from the other party is also quite a valid proof of acceptance of the contract. If he wanted to argue that he didn't accept the contract, he should not have accepted the money. I can sympathize with his regret and his feeling of being railroaded... but he took the money. For anyone in a situation like this, where the contract comes after the work, you don't argue about whether or not to sign some paper. You reject the money until you have an actual agreement.
• Reason077 4y ago
  Wait, you can win Minecraft?!
  • detaro 4y ago
    leaving the End after killing the Ender Dragon apparently counted as "the ending".
• nirui 4y ago
  > Infinity pool; car lift; cinema; iPad-controlled fountains; a full-size replica of James Dean’s motorbike; candy room… The toilets (in all fifteen bathrooms) cost over five grand each. (Featuring Tornado Flushing! Just $5,600!) Talking about why I'm not hard at work... Nothing mentioned on the list motives me towards money at all. Just take a look of the photo of the house, I don't want to live in a place like that even if I have the money. And the motorbike? Dude, have you read the news about organ donations today? The End Poem (https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/End_Poem https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/End_Poem) was the only text in the game that I completely read through. It rolls up, and I sat there read the entire thing. I'm the kind of guy who starts to load another game while the ending cut scene is still playing. GLaDOS starts to sing again? Time to load up Left 4 Dead and find a server. And yet, I read the entire End Poem of Minecraft. That text makes me feel that somebody behind Minecraft actually cares, understands and put hopes in their game to make people inspired. It's kind sad that the truth comes up to be this.
• possiblydrunk 4y ago
  It's easy to confuse politeness with friendship if that's what you're seeking. It's a sad story, to me.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bartwe 4y ago
  You did a few weeks of work and made 20K, sounds like a good deal. The folks getting the bonusses worked for years.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• DonHopkins 4y ago
  Years ago when Minecraft was new, I used to really respect and admire and root for Markus Persson because of his work, but then he opened his mouth, showed the world who he really was, lost all my respect, and totally disgusted me. It would have been so easy for him to just keep his big mouth shut, count and spend all his money, and retain all the hard earned respect and admiration that so many people including myself had for him, but then we would have been delusionally admiring a truly terrible Q-Anon supporting, GamerGate promoting, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, racist bigot, who called video game developer and feminism supporter Zoë Quinn a "cunt". "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Maya Angelou Oh course he tried to walk back some of his worst tweets, but what kind of person tweets that kind of shit in the first place? I believe what he showed about himself the first time, not his pathetic attempt at damage control. So I guess it's better that we all now know what kind of a horrible person Notch really is thanks to his own words, so we're not wasting our money, energy, and respect on somebody who certainly doesn't deserve it. Let him serve as an anti-hero for exposing other bigots who choose to carry his water and show everyone who they really are by defending him. I'd much rather spend my money and admiration on wholesome deservingly beloved game developers like Tarn and Zach Adams, who've worked so hard and creatively on Dwarf Fortress, and are decent human beings who totally deserve to reap the benefits of their fine dedicated work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversial_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversial_v... Markus Persson: Controversial views Persson has received criticism for political and social opinions he has expressed on social media since around 2017. Many of his comments have seen by others as misogynistic, racist, and homophobic.[52] He claimed feminism was a "social disease", and called video game developer and feminism supporter Zoë Quinn a "cunt".[53][54] He took offence to gay pride celebrations, asserting there should be heterosexual pride days and stating that opponents to his ideas "deserve to be shot".[54][55] 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."[56] Persson said in social media that "It's okay to be white"[57] and that he believed privilege is a "made up metric".[58] He has promoted claims that people are fined for "using the wrong pronoun".[52] Persson has also faced criticism for tweeting in support of QAnon, stating that "Q is legit. Don't trust the media."[59] In March 2019, a Minecraft update removed all mentions of Persson from the game's menu, though his name is still in the credits.[60] Microsoft did not explain this action, but its timing led multiple news outlets to conclude it was related to the controversies associated with him.[60][61] Persson was not invited to the game's tenth anniversary event later in 2019, with Microsoft saying that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang".[52][62] [52] "Minecraft creator Notch unwelcome at 10th anniversary due to online conduct". Ars Technica. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2022. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves-markus-notch-persson-out-of-minecraft-10th-anniversary/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves... [53] Bonazzo, John (13 June 2017). "Minecraft Creator Tells Women on Twitter 'Act Like a Cunt, Get Called a Cunt'". Observer. Archived from the original on 19 August 2019. Retrieved 18 June 2019. https://observer.com/2017/06/minecraft-gamergate-markus-persson-notch-zoe-quinn/ https://observer.com/2017/06/minecraft-gamergate-markus-pers... [54] Kane, Vivian (29 April 2019). "Minecraft's Creator Excluded From the Game's 10th Anniversary Due to Racist, Sexist, Transphobic Comments". The Mary Sue. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 18 June 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190516071226/https://www.themarysue.com/notch-minecraft-bad-comments-and-opinions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190516071226/https://www.thema... [55] "Minecraft creator Notch unwelcome at 10th anniversary due to online conduct". Ars Technica. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 9 April 2022. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves-markus-notch-persson-out-of-minecraft-10th-anniversary/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves... [56] Morris, David Z. (2 July 2017). "Minecraft Creator Sparks Cries of Homophobia". Fortune. Time Inc. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 3 December 2017. http://fortune.com/2017/07/02/minecraft-markus-persson-homophobia/ http://fortune.com/2017/07/02/minecraft-markus-persson-homop... [57] Crecente, Brian (29 April 2019). "'Minecraft' Creator Excluded From Anniversary Due to 'Comments and Opinions' (Exclusive)". Variety. Archived from the original on 17 June 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2019. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-excluded-from-anniversary-due-to-comments-and-opinions-exclusive-1203200050/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu... [58] "The Creator of 'Minecraft' Tweeted Some Dumb Stuff About Race". GQ. Archived from the original on 25 July 2019. Retrieved 25 July 2019. https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets [59] "From Q-Anon to transphobia, the creator of 'Minecraft' has takes". Newsweek. 11 March 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2022. https://www.newsweek.com/minecraft-notch-controversy-twitter-transphobic-q-1359020 https://www.newsweek.com/minecraft-notch-controversy-twitter... [60] Thubron, Rob (28 March 2019). "Microsoft removes references to game creator Notch in latest Minecraft update". TechSpot. Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020. https://www.techspot.com/news/79403-microsoft-removes-references-game-creator-notch-latest-minecraft.html https://www.techspot.com/news/79403-microsoft-removes-refere... [61] Lanier, Liz (28 March 2019). "Some References to 'Minecraft' Creator Notch Removed From Game". Variety. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/notch-removed-minecraft-1203174964/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/notch-removed-minecraft... [62] Arif, Shabana (29 April 2019). "Minecraft creator Notch won't be included in the game's 10 year anniversary event". VG247. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 29 April 2019. https://www.vg247.com/2019/04/29/minecraft-creator-notch-absent-from-anniversary-due-to-opinions-and-comments/ https://www.vg247.com/2019/04/29/minecraft-creator-notch-abs...
• anonymous344 4y ago
  always the same cry; here is this work of my, you welcome. ...oh you put it part in the n and made money, buaah buaaah i want money also! buaaahh
• donatj 4y ago
  I feel like the author falls deeply into the trap of confusing someone being friendly with someone being your friend. Notch was friendly with this author but I doubt he ever considered him a friend, just someone he was paying for a job. This has very strong Jim Carrey in “Cable Guy” vibes to me.
  • paulcole 4y ago
    Yes, this confused me as well. > I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt. At what point are he and Notch friends and not just people who were introduced over Twitter for work purposes?
  • elondaits 4y ago
    I don’t think he means friends in that literal sense. Someone you feel kinship and can make a gesture out of love for someone, even if you barely know them. Sometimes you’re right and the other person sígnals back that you’re indeed in the same frequency. It’s a type of love close to a friendship than a romance, so it’s an apt metaphor.
• kif 4y ago
  I have a tendency to "avoid conflict" which I kind of hate about myself, although I try to push myself to stand up more about myself. It's very pleasing to see the author has made peace with himself about this. Though I've come to understand that in this world you have to be ruthless when it comes to your interests. And I don't mean it in the "wolf of wall street level of ruthlessness" sense – all I'm saying is that you shouldn't allow others to walk all over you, even for things that are relatively small. It can be difficult for some of us, but it will end up feeling very liberating in the end.
• Ikatza 4y ago
  This reads like a giant, very long, tantrum.
• superultra 4y ago
  I work in intellectual property, though I am not a lawyer. If this person were my client I’d diplomatically tell them that they’re clean out of luck on this one. All the documents that come as a shock to the author are boiler plate NDA and work for hire arrangements, and outside of being a famous author who’s “brand” would bring something of marketing value to the table, at no point really would anyone be able to negotiate anything other than a work for hire arrangement. This person seems to think that because they wrote some albeit meaningful copy for a game, that the team owed them involvement in strategic high level multi-million dollar conversations. That’s not how this works. There’s what I call a diva effect happening and it’s what happens with artists when they see their work absorbed by popular culture (ie tattoos) in relation to another work (ie game, movie, tv show, etc.) it’s an illusion. The poem is good but people love it because it comes at the end of an emotional journey created by the product itself. Had this person simply posted it on a website, it’s demonstrably true very few would’ve noticed. There are not 1,700 Microsoft lawyers reading his post. There’s maybe one marketing intern rolling their eyes and logging in a spreadsheet of mentions and moving on. This person probably put themselves in more legal hot water, if at all, by giving away something they don’t really own (sorry!). The fact that he admits that he sat on this for eight years (regardless of reason) means he was not actively defending his intellectual property. To make matters worse, this would be a matter of international copyright law, which is a mess. If you’re reading this Julian, you gotta move on bud. Maybe writing this was an important step. Great. You did it. Now you’re better off deleting the post because it’s going to cause anyone who makes any deals in writing walk the opposite direction.
  • ballenf 4y ago
    I'm going to charitably guess you didn't read most of the post. He did move on. He is at peace, finally. He's the opposite of a diva and has humbly accepted that his reward for his work doesn't take monetary form.
    • warinukraine 4y ago
      I don't know much about this person, other than that he did NOT move on.
• pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  So, here the question I haven't now, will Microsoft go after him so they can claim the copyright for themselves?
• microsoftdoes 4y ago
  He even says he agreed to the first offered price. That’s it. Offer and acceptance. Binding contract. Better luck not being such a pushover next time.
• bombcar 4y ago
  If you like the ending story of Minecraft you might be interested in Leaf by Niggle (Tolkien) which it reminds me of.
• sieste 4y ago
  How do you end minecraft?!
• mikl 4y ago
  €20'000 for a poem sounds like a pretty reasonable deal. Not sure why this guy thinks he deserves more. It’s not like it made a massive difference to the experience of playing Minecraft. I’ve finished the game several times, and I don’t remember a single word of the poem, just vaguely that there was a wistful poem there. As for the legal fantasies, the email discussion about using the poem in the game and him accepting the €20k payment would constitute an agreement in most jurisdictions. But without a proper contract, the terms of said agreements are poorly defined, and since it was made between a Swedish company and someone apparently residing outside Sweden, which jurisdiction applies is even in question. So his theory about the poem still belonging to him and Microsoft owing him millions of dollars are exceedingly speculative and would likely take years of wrangling to sort out. So yeah, renouncing your claims is probably the best option here. A good lesson to all freelancers: Make sure you get a proper contract before you deliver the goods.
  • bitexploder 4y ago
    Never knew there was an end poem. I just build on servers with my kids. Played for about 13 years now. Author is delusional about his value vs minecraft’s value. It probably didn’t need the end and definitely didn’t need the end poem.
    • tokai 4y ago
      Fisnished mc some months ago with friends. When the poem rolled over the screens cheering was exchange for confused silence.
• thesausageking 4y ago
  I asked ChatGPT to come up with an ending poem for Minecraft. Here's what it wrote: Farewell, dear player, as you venture forth, Leaving this world of blocks and pixels behind. But know that the memories you've made here Will stay with you, etched in your mind. For in this game, we built and explored, Creating our own little universe. But now it's time to move on, To face new challenges and opportunities. As you go, remember the lessons you learned, The friendships you forged, and the adventures you had. And know that, though this game may end, The universe itself is vast and ever-changing. So go forth, brave player, and make your mark, For the universe is yours to discover.
  • 1970-01-01 4y ago
    I like this ending better.
  • burkaman 4y ago
    If Minecraft were made today, Markus would probably have used GPT just like this to generate the end text, rather than trying to find a human writer. I think it's important for all of us to ask ourselves if we think this is a good thing or not. I'm not going to give my opinion because I don't feel like starting an argument this morning, but I think this is an objectively interesting ethical question especially given the context we've all just been given by this post.
    • thesausageking 4y ago
      I do think Julian's poem is way better and, given Notch already had a huge hit on his hands, paying €20k is definitely worth it even if it's just a tiny improvement in the game. What I think makes ChatGPT interesting is being able to dynamically generate ending poems that are based on the player and what happened in the game. I replied above with one simple example.
  • thesausageking 4y ago
    Imagine if the poem were written on demand to you specifically and referred to things you had done in the game. I prompted asking for it to "make reference to Tim drowning in a well he had just built and the time he built a house out of diamond bricks": To Tim, the brave and bold, Who built a well so deep and cold, And filled it with water clear and bright, But then, in an instant, lost his sight. You drowned in the depths, so deep and dark, But in your life, you left your mark. You built a house of diamond bricks, A shining beacon, a sight to fix. But now you're gone, your time has passed, Your legacy will forever last. Farewell, Tim, may you rest in peace, Your memory will never cease.
• stavros 4y ago
  Does anyone know where his story, the iHole, can be found? It won a ton of awards, apparently, but it seems to be gone from everything?
• OOPMan 4y ago
  Kinda interesting this comes out not too long after Mick Gordon called out iD. I wonder if this guy saw that and figured he'd try something similar. The difference is that Mick Gordon worked his ass off for years and that the music is a significant element to the Doom games, where as the ending poem in Minecraft is pretty insignificant.
• Bonesdog 4y ago
  The ending is gold, I do not think the writer wrote this to convince us he wants more money 'now' (Perhaps during the entire proccess of seeing MC gain popularity) The ending speaks to me like religious books due, when read with a certain eye you can see the universe truely is speaking to us through this poem. Money doesn't exist, atleast not forever and always the way it does today. Love is forever
• fleddr 4y ago
  This story is so frustrating to read. It reminds me of that other guy that composed audio for a Doom game and failed to get properly paid for it. The frustrating part is the self-sabotage. Each story starts out with work done as an act of love, exploration, friendship. Typical for artists and in many ways charming. Then, reality keeps telling them that this is not how it works. Reality tells them that artists need to settle on contracts before handing over output. That any contractual gap is to be resolved soon, and to not let it linger for years. And to not have a weak opening bid like: what do *you* think I should get paid? All these points are admitted as personal shortcomings, and then still not acted upon despite endless opportunities to do so. Even to the point of not being able to feed your family. Even when everybody else is snorting coke in some Beverly Hills mansion does crude reality not set in: that he never was a core team member nor was there friendship. It's crushing to read, like telling a kid that Santa isn't real. Still, I respect the consistency. This is a proper artist in every way.
• robertlagrant 4y ago
  > They were simply obeying the rules of capitalism, the rules so many of us have internalised as though they are natural law, and were trying to maximise their economic return But later > And I sent them a reply basically saying, Can you just treat me fairly? Do what you think is fair under these circumstances. And we’ll work something out. What's constantly frustrating reading this sort of thing is that wanting a certain amount for work you chose to do is capitalism. It's not the state telling you what to do and giving you an allocated house, or a lord letting you work his land, or anything like that. It's individuals and groups forming agreements that, as much as is possible, are just between them. The problem with "fair" is it implies there's an absolute standard, and it happens to be what you want to get, not what they want to give. There's no standard, other than what minimum wage sets for salaried workers. There's just agreements.
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  "Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences." A fantastic quote for money management. You either manage your money, or let the lack of it manage you. Full stop.
• cyber_kinetist 4y ago
  Although I don't really like the ending text for Minecraft at all (and think the author is really too pretentious and self-centered), I like how this blog post reveals himself as an artist with human flaws. He kinda (but not fully) admits that he had a parasocial relationship with Notch and really though he cared about him (although for Notch the author was probably just a random contactor who would fill the writing for the ending to justify an official release.) Seriously, who thought making the text unscrollable was more than just a light joke? It's probably a jab at the frustrated player who wants to desparately skip the poorly-written wall of text, not a well-thought appreciation of its artistic integrity! He really thought that Notch really liked him as a friend, even though the only time he met him in person was in a random game jam two years ago. I think the lesson here is: even when the famous person you admire notices you and gives you positive attention, don't assume too far that they really genuinely like you, or even worse, that you two are already "friends". Maybe this is a bit cynical... but in an age where poor artists need to fight to the death on social media for any recognition to sell their work I kinda understand how people would fall for this.
  • pflenker 4y ago
    While I do agree with you overall, I think the author was right to assume that the non-skip feature was meant to appreciate his result. And calling it poorly-written is uncalled for, I think.
    • nearbuy 4y ago
      For what it's worth, I'll second that I thought the end poem wasn't very good.
      • yobert 4y ago
        I loved it! Just to represent the other side :)
    • isitmadeofglass 4y ago
      > And calling it poorly-written is uncalled for, I think. It was quite clearly phrased that the person thought it as poorly written. That’s their opinion and they are allowed to have it. Criticizing someone for sharing their opinion is what is uncalled for.
• newobj 4y ago
  see also: 2 hour hbomberguy about the "oof" sound from Roblox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0twDETh6QaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0twDETh6QaI
• robswc 4y ago
  Really interesting story... but I think the age old adage of "as long as I'm happy" should apply here. $20k for what amounts to a short story is an insanely good and fair price, compared to the market rate. I know he says he negotiated badly but I don't know how much more he could have obtained, as $20k _is_ a great sale. It does suck to see Minecraft later get sold for billions and "only" have your $20k but I have a feeling (and he basically admits) he was happy with the $20k at the time.
• sevenf0ur 4y ago
  I hope that Julian has learned to let go. Worrying about things you can't change in the past is not a healthy state to be in. I think that most would say that $20k for a poem in the end credits is a fair deal and you were not taken advantage of. You accepted the deal it by taking the money. Not signing a contract is moot. Be happy that your work will live on.
  • eludwig 4y ago
    I love this comment and and am in total agreement. I hope he can use this post as way to clear the air and let it go. I think the 20K was totally fair for the effort put in, but I do sympathize with being so close to a veritable fortune!! It must be so hard see it and not be jealous on some level. It's like having all but 1 of the winning lottery numbers (I realize that you would still get something nice in most lotteries for that). To be so close yet so far is a true test of letting go. Think Pete Best or Ronald Wayne. SO HARD. The thing to realize, which, of course, sounds like sour grapes, is that having all that money is just picking a different set of problems and worries. No one gets to "have it all" in the sense of living in the world with no problems/fears/misery.
• leach 4y ago
  I think I read that poem once thought it was cringe and just skip it to get wings at the end of minecraft now. Minecraft is a simple game where you build the experience alone or with friends, the only reason the poem is meaningful for people is because of those experiences. Dude let his ego get out of check.
• DrammBA 4y ago
  Reading the post and then HN comments makes me realize the average HN user lacks a lot of emotional intelligence. People are criticizing the post based on the cold hard mistakes the author made while completely glossing over the emotional introspection the author went through to acknowledge all their mistakes and finally close this chapter of their lives. Stop treating this post like you are code reviewing a PR.
  • rosywoozlechan 4y ago
    I read this post as a startup team member who's had to deal with similar problems with others once a startup makes money where people are under the misconception that they had an outsized impact on the whole thing when they contributed only a bit and now wanted more than they got, which they were happy with at the time. It's just after they see the success that their brain goes into an invalid state and suddenly feel entitled. Like you read about people's long lost relatives suing lotto winners. That's what this is.
  • Karawebnetwork 4y ago
    I say this with all the love in the world: it's hard for engineers to think like artists and vice-versa. As an engineer, I understand the importance of logic, precision, and efficiency. But as an artist, I also know the value of creativity, expression, and intuition. These two ways of thinking are often at odds with each other, and it can be challenging for an engineer to understand the artistic mindset and for an artist to grasp the engineering perspective. Despite the differences, both engineers and artists play important roles in the world and can learn from each other. By combining their unique perspectives and skills, they can create truly amazing things. That said, even that is an oversimplification. There are lawyers, sales people, management, etc., thrown into the mix.
    • sbst32 4y ago
      I totally agree with your points but parent is talking about empathy, not about thinking like each other. The author was trying to convey his thinking, his emotions, his struggles and his flaws. To me - he did that quite successfully.
• COGlory 4y ago
  I'm not sure I've ever met someone with this level of entitlement and whining. You missed out - I get it, that sucks. But you were paid $20,000 for a shitty poem. That's most people's dream.
• Villodre 4y ago
  I'm sorry to say this on this site but this post is unmanageably long, I can't bring myself to read it fully. Also, the entitlement and disregard for the work of others is unbearable. This is one of the most low key infuriating posts I've ever seen about something that could've been somewhat sympathetic to.
• spritefs 4y ago
  What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I got for writing the actual ending. > Which was a lovely thing to do, but as I wasn’t staff at Mojang, and therefore got nothing… well, I was a bit hurt that I didn’t get even a token acknowledgement from Markus that I was one of the five people who had helped create this strangest of games. Notice how it's never about the author's own negotiation. It's always about what he "feels he's owed". Any sort of contractual agreement or unambiguous statement of what is owed is illegitimate in his eyes. Just some vague sense of entitlement and a couple of donation links
  • dicroce 4y ago
    I think you're being too hard on him here. It looks to me like both sides fucked up in a number of ways.
    • kramerger 4y ago
      How did Mojang fuck up? Their gave their "friend", a completely inexperienced unknown writer, 20.000 for a poem. This "friend" took the money, spent it but refused to sign the contract on some bogus pseudo spiritual objection. Later he became more and more upset that notch and team made a ton of money. To me this sounds like jealousy and greed.
      • spritefs 4y ago
        Maybe because they sent the money before fully coming to an agreement and getting a signed contract
        • kramerger 4y ago
• ineedasername 4y ago
  I think this person created something they love, and then completely overestimated its importance. I remember first encountering the ending poem and thinking "Well that seems like a totally random thing to put here, but I suppose it's nice." The game was made & sold millions of copies without it, and I think it's possible that only a single digit # of copies, or maybe a few dozen, were sold as a result of it-- friends & family and a few fans of the author who would not have otherwise been exposed to the game. This seems consistent with the level of egotism on display in the post. The author repeatedly includes himself as a core member of "we" for the group that created the game, but what this author calls the ending appears to have very much been an afterthought. Nuggets of egotism are spread throughout in a variety of ways: >perhaps the largest copyright offence of all time I'd take that as hyperbole except the tone of the rest of the article supports an interpretation where the author believes this. >If I had trouble paying for my kid’s clothes and shoes, that was on me This in the context of his marriage breaking down, so, really? None of the responsibility was on his wife? All of the importance in that situation is on him? I wouldn't think so. >Friendship This seems a very Facebook-era definition of friendship. He met Persson once and then a little time later they wrote some emails back and forth. This is inflated into a friendship wherein the Gough feels he was an integral part of that creative team behind the game. >1,700 MS Legal Affairs people I'm sure this thing will catch the attention of someone in MS legal, but I suspect it's barely a blip on their radar, much less something that will garner the focus of the entirety of Microsoft's legal juggernaut. At least Gough's egotism isn't large enough that he doesn't, on some level, realize that he's blowing things out of proportion. Throughout the piece there's a bit of a conflicting tone where he seems to understand that his contribution really wasn't of the magnitude he makes it out to be. Reading this though, that just introduced a bit of cognitive dissonance with a strange mixture of self-aggrandizement and self-aware/self-deprecation, e.g., "A lot of people didn’t want to read nine minutes of narrative scrolling up the screen, no matter how good it was; they didn’t give a shit. They just wanted to go and play the game again."*
• thepasswordis 4y ago
  I have played hours upon hours upon hours of Minecraft. I’ve bought it multiple times for different platforms. I didn’t even know it had an ending, and thought the headline to this story was meant to be a joke about it not having an ending. Poetry is cool, man, but writing this absolute tome of a blogpost about how bitter you are for not getting rich off of a poem is a little bit pathetic. Move on with your life and write more poems.
• Pseudocrat 4y ago
  I've never wanted to downvote comments on YC more than this thread.
  • elondaits 4y ago
    Same. Too much cynicism, too little empathy. I relate with the story. Many times in my life I put love in my work (passion for the work itself, going the extra mile) and I feel it was not acknowledged. The gap between ones commitment to the cause and a cold reception can be heartbreaking. … the hard lesson is that in these cases we need to acknowledge that we work from the heart because we want to create meaningful things in our lives. It is for us, in the end. We have to treasure and feel lucky for the times it’s acknowledged and reciprocated, but can’t base our happiness on the expectation of being seen every time.
• dbspin 4y ago
  As a writer I feel like lots of commenters on here are missing something important. Caveat, I know Julian slightly. We're not friends, but the writing world really is that small. This is not about how many hours he's speculated to have spent on the piece, or his overall contribution to the success of the game. It's clear that Minecraft was already phenomenally successful by the time the end text was written. It's also clear from other comments here that a) Julian was far from the only person who didn't get a 'share of the winnings', and that b) the person responsible for the music in the original version(s) of the game C418, by contrast did (likely due to having much more business savvy). Two points... 1) None of this is fair. Not how writing is paid for. Not how writing software is valued commercially over writing / scriptwriting / poetry. Not the Minecraft team making vast sums. Certainly not Notch making billions. It's all an absurd outgrowth of the economics of digital surplus, which are now so ubiquitous as to appear invisible. And network effects, which all of us on HN are aware of, but which are also deeply unintuitive. Is Minecraft a great, influential, fun game? Sure. It is so much greater than the other successful and brilliant games of its generation of indie titles - Fez, Super Meat Boy, Braid etc? Frankly no. It's just different. It's different in a specific way thats amenable to economic exploitation indefinitely. It's more like a toy than a game. It came out at a very specific time in the history of videogame culture and technology when something less graphically impressive could be appreciated. Initially by a generation who had come to find an appeal in retro graphics, before it caught fire with the kids. It was released at a time when the community and internet ubiquity existed for such a thing to go viral. Great things are created and ignored all the time. Minecraft hit at exactly the right moment. There are numerous other examples in the gaming space of titles that aren't necessarily so unique (Minecraft is extremely derivative of Infiniminer). A world exists - very close to this one, in which Zachtronics would have a legal right to some or all of its profits, had patent law shaken out even slightly differently. 2) Writing (like music) is non fungible. The story you write in 2013 is not the story you will or could write in 2022. It expresses a part of you, in a profoundly intimate way. Publishing is giving away something of yourself. It's irreducible to sharing an idea or emotion - because it's more than that. All creative writing is literally an expression of the self of the artist. Publishing is also a one strike deal usually. You can't often publish a story that is already public, virtually no short stories (or indeed novels) have a (commercial) value in adaptation. It's starkly different from say music - where you can tour your work, even if Spotify pays effectively nothing. You can't busk writing (well you can, but there's no audience for it beyond a novelty). Most commercial novelists (even ones you've heard of) subsist from teaching workshops and art grants. Most have second and third jobs. Which is all to say that this poem was a valuable part of Julian that he shared with the world. He tries to articulate it by the muse or automatic writing. Writing not equivalent to time spent coding or problem solving. It's an act of love. As is his sharing the final story for free in perpetuity.
• aschearer 4y ago
  A lesson for anyone making indie games, you're either an owner or not. If you want to say "I made the game" you need to be an owner. Any other relationship puts that at risk. "Super important contractor, critical to the game's creation" is quickly lost in the shuffle.
• billehunt 4y ago
  > write a long winded story for a game ending about the universe loving you that will never be seen by most players and is worth $20,000 As the game comes to an end, you reflect on all that you have experienced and accomplished. You have journeyed to far-off lands, battled fierce enemies, and overcome incredible challenges. And through it all, you have felt the love of the universe guiding you and supporting you every step of the way. As you stand at the brink of victory, you are filled with a sense of awe and wonder. The universe is a vast and complex place, full of mysteries and secrets that may never be fully understood. But in this moment, you feel a deep connection to it, and you know that its love is with you always. You take a deep breath and savor the moment. The universe has brought you to this point, and you are grateful for the journey you have undertaken. You know that there will always be new challenges and adventures ahead, but you are ready to face them with courage and determination, knowing that the universe will be with you every step of the way. As you prepare to move on to your next adventure, you take a moment to offer thanks and gratitude to the universe for all that it has given you. You know that its love is a precious gift, and you will treasure it always. And as you set out on your next journey, you are filled with a sense of excitement and hope, knowing that the universe will be with you, loving and guiding you always.
• Toobam 4y ago
• JulianPGough 4y ago
  Hi all. I'm Julian, the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft, and that Substack piece. I've read a fair few of your comments. (Not all; blimey, 600? You've crowdsourced a book!) Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Almost all the ones I've read are parsing the legalities; engaging with the law around copyright, rights agreements, etc. Arguing about legal specifics. Almost none of them engage with the artistic part of the story, or the emotional part. It's as though those things are simply not there, or were invisible. Fascinating! I particularly enjoyed the comments where blokes (so many blokes!) got angry at me for even HAVING emotions about this situation, when the law seemed, to them, to make such emotions invalid. Almost the opposite of the Reddit r/Minecraft comments, which are all about the emotions and the art. Anyway, thanks for this insight into a particular way of looking at the world. Very revealing, very interesting, very enjoyable. Have a great day!
  • GalahiSimtam 4y ago
    Emotions: disgusted Justification: in your piece you avoid mentioning that copyright can be merely licensed, not transferred, hiding this by portraying yourself as a naive artist who does not understand the law. Dream Sequencer System Offline
  • bobsmooth 4y ago
    HN is not the place to expect emotional intelligence. Reading your story was sad, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that happened. I hope releasing your poem gives you the peace you need.
    • mkeedlinger 4y ago
      Maybe you didn't intend to imply this, but I don't think it's primarily a lack of emotional intelligence on HN, but more so that logic perspectives is what people expect/want from this particular community. Seems reasonable to me that there would be times/places where the balance between emotional and logic leans one way or the other. I've certainly seen places where things leaned greatly towards emotional to large positive effect, I think HN is a logical counter-part to that.
    • deleted 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• glonq 4y ago
  Number of hours I've put into Minecraft: hundreds. Number of times I've seen (or cared to see) the ending: zero.
• hardwaregeek 4y ago
  This reminds me of the scene in Bojack Horseman, where Bojack attempts to apologize to his former friend Herb, who he screwed over by not supporting when Herb was fired. Herb basically says that he didn't care about the job or the money, he did alright in the end. What he needed was a friend, and Bojack wasn't there. The point of this is not the money or the legal issues. The point was that Notch treated this guy as a friend right up to when it became about business. And it makes me a little sad to see people act as if the author is at fault for feeling hurt.
• jerbearito 4y ago
  It seems the author defers to others, doesn’t communicate his own needs/desires, then gets upset when he doesn’t get what he wants. He explains it away by saying he was focused more on the art than the money — but clearly he’s focusing on the money a lot. It might be difficult to honestly confront your difficulties with confrontation/communication, but I imagine it’s more worthwhile than stewing, rationalizing, etc.
• sudosysgen 4y ago
  I feel like a lot of people here are also missing a huge claim that Mojang promised a lot of promotion to the author and did not make good on that promise. That would mean that Mojang did not, in fact, make good on their half of the contract. Also, a lot of people are saying that the end poem wasn't a big part of Minecraft objectively speaking, which I think is false. Personally, as a kid, reading the poem gave me shivers and is a pretty big part of why I continued playing the game for so long and got so invested in it - it did give it meaning and gave it a sense that it was a piece of art made with love. It also inspired me to make my presentation on video games as art in elementary school and I got in a great debate about it with my art teacher which was a great learning experience for me, so it definitely had a solid impact on me and I imagine at least a million other people. It's a sizeable part of the game for me and I'd say it definitely was worth at least 5% of the experience for me.
• thinkmcfly 4y ago
  The text is whatever, but deciding to put an end into Minecraft shows that notch didn't really get it
• registeredcorn 4y ago
  I'd like to think I'd be grateful for having helped put something into a famous game, and not get wrapped up in money. Honestly, I'd probably be bitter too. The thing is, just because he (or myself) would be bitter, does not make the bitterness right. It doesn't make it sensible, and it absolutely does not make any part of this a good move. Burning bridges as publically as possible, over what is almost certainly going to be your most well known piece of work for the rest of your entire professional career, is not going to win you any friends. It will make people see you as a backstabber (which you are), a bitter, money-hungry person (which you are), and someone who is willing to try and hurt the public credibility of others, in order to enact some petty revenge (which you have done). No part of this is good. No part of this is right. "Giving the story" to the public in some nebulous gesture of posterity does not absolve any of what has been done. Instead, it taints the only thing you had invested into the project - the only claim you had. Again, I'd probably be upset over this too. I might even have attempted to do something similar. Knowing that, however, does not excuse the action. It does not change right and wrong. This is wrong. I wish this person luck, and more importantly, the opportunity to learn from this error-upon-error that they have stacked on their own shoulders, and branded to their name. To put it simply: It is not worth throwing away public perception and credibility in hopes of receiving financial gain, regardless of how validated or "wronged" you might feel in your own egocentrism.
• vehementi 4y ago
  I hate almost every cynical reply in this thread.
• NavinF 4y ago
  "I never signed a contract giving Mojang the rights to the End Poem, and so Microsoft (who bought Minecraft from Mojang) also don't own it. I do." "I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was." "Because we hadn’t really agreed on anything. We’d simply had a failed attempt to find a fair price for using my work as part of Minecraft." "Carl decided the answer was €20,000 (and a vague promise to help promote my other work), and in all the confusion someone sent me the money, even though we still didn’t have a contract worked out." Wat
• neycoda 4y ago
  This is phenomenal. A famous poem to the best-selling game I've never played and never will, is now owned and reproduced in any forrn by everyone in the universe, against all contracts. Maybe it will be the End Poem of the universe, the last decipherable thing before it all flickers out.
• MacroChip 4y ago
  -Meet Markus at a con -Markus best friend now -Play Minecraft for days -Write poem -Markus says "I ain't reading all that, ship it! We have a deadline!" -Take the money and run -Enjoy cold hard cash instead of speculating on royalties -Trip on shrooms on squatted land -Try to squat poem -"Dear Microsoft I don't care about laws. Love love love." -Love love love -Money money money plz -Love love love