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Minecraft's original and hugely controversial creator Markus "Notch" Persson has cancelled plans for a spiritual successor to the mammoth block-building phenomenon, six whole days after he "basically announced Minecraft 2."
"I basically announced Minecraft 2," he wrote at the time. "I thought that maybe people actually do want me to make another game that's super similar to the first one, and I'm loving working on games again." Notch had given his social media followers the choice between a Minecraft follow-up and a new "traditional roguelike" with first-person dungeon crawling via a poll, and of course, the successor to the best-selling video game of all time won out.
When I first wrote that article, I said chances that the game came out were slim. Notch hasn't released a single thing since he sold Minecraft and Mojang to Microsoft for the sum of $2.5 billion almost a decade ago, despite talking about theoretical projects he might make on social media. In a post from a couple of days ago, Notch did as I expected and effectively cancelled plans for a legally distinct Minecraft 2.
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"Talked to the fellas at the office," he tweeted. "Looks like we're making Levers and Chests!" In response to a "betrayed" fan, he then wrote that "the spiritual successor would be way less fun than the dungeon roguelike" because spiritual successors are "always kinda sad nostalgia dumps." When asked if a Minecraft 2 will ever happen, he simply said, "You'll have to ask Microsoft about that one."
Notch opened a new studio, Bitshift Entertainment, last year to work on some new games after having left Mojang Studios 10 years ago. His name has also since been scrubbed from the hit game following some pretty wild comments over the years, which included support for the cultish and plainly dumb QAnon conspiracy theory, calls for a straight pride month, inarguably transphobic statements, and other generally red-pill-brained ramblings.
Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.
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