Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time.
Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios.
As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD.
History
Background and formation (2009–2010)
Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time.
Games developed
Game jam games
Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising US$458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games.
Unreleased games
In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers.
Games published
Legal disputes
Scrolls naming dispute
In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names.
Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB
On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version
External links
References
- Andrew Webster. Elder Scrolls vs. Minecraft dev: "scrolls" is our word Ars Technica, 10 August 2011, retrieved 17 January 2019^
- Ryan Paul. Minecraft developer sued by aggressive litigator over DRM patent Ars Technica, 21 July 2012, retrieved 17 January 2019^
- Joe Mullin. Patent that cost Microsoft millions gets invalidated