Markus Persson

Markus Alexej Persson ( , ; born 1 June 1979), also known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of ''Minecraft'', which is the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.

Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of ''Minecraft'' in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. He left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire.

Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding homosexuality, race, and transgender-rights issues have caused public controversies. In 2019 Persson's tweets were censured by Microsoft, who subsequently removed mentions of his name from ''Minecraft'' (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Provided by Wikipedia