The many Minecraft fans don't want to see ill intent

Sep 17, 2014 11:11 GMT  ·  By

After the confirmation that Microsoft is buying the Minecraft franchise alongside its creator, independent studio Mojang, an analyst has stepped forward to emphasize that the large corporation needs to treat the series with care in order to avoid a backlash from the huge community.

Minecraft is one of the biggest titles in gaming nowadays, selling well over 50 million units across all sorts of platforms, from PC, where it originally came out, to consoles like Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, or even mobile platforms like Android or iOS.

While the game raked in a lot of profit for its mastermind, Markus "Notch" Persson, and his team at Mojang, it seems that the stress was ultimately too much for the Swedish developer, who confirmed earlier this week that he was selling Mojang, alongside the Minecraft franchise, to Microsoft for a whopping 2.5 billion USD/EUR.

The move is good but risky

While the deal has already been praised by analysts, Piers Harding-Rolls has stepped forward, via GamesIndustry, to offer his insight about the deal, confirming that it's a good one and much less risky than other potential transactions Microsoft could have organized.

"Minecraft is arguably the best-positioned independently-owned IP across the games sector today," Harding-Rolls said. "While it has already generated over 54 million games sales and revenues approaching $500m, Minecraft is a franchise built to last, making the likely heavy investment required to secure Mojang significantly less risky than many other recent acquisitions within the games or app sectors."

The possibility of a backlash from the community is present

However, the large corporation has a tough task ahead of it, as the community can always abandon the game if it detects any wrong intent from Microsoft in regards to the precious game and extremely popular game.

"Part of this is related to the threat of exclusivity on Microsoft-related devices, or future changes to the Minecraft experience but it is also a response to the potential acquisition of a fervently independent developer by a company of the scale of Microsoft," Harding-Rolls said.

Considering Mojang is a small studio with just one major product, Microsoft needs to ensure that it won't just absorb the team and turn Minecraft into just another series.

"If the acquisition comes to fruition, Microsoft's challenge will be to maintain the spirit of Minecraft while developing the franchise in a commercially meaningful way. With around 40 employees at Mojang, this is the sort of acquisition which can easily get lost in a huge organization like Microsoft, and this factor is probably the main threat to longer term success."

For the short term, Microsoft has already pledged to keep Minecraft available on all current platforms. The future, however, is uncertain.