While Minecraft is certainly a hugely popular and additive little title (and I use the term “little” very loosely) even it can face negative feedback from the gaming community from time to time.
Markus Persson (aka Notch) recently addressed fan’s backlash at Mojang for allowing server owners to begin charging a premium (allowing them to reap some measure of financial benefit from the gaming traffic they acquire). On his blog, Notch states, “Mojang does not exist to make as much money as possible for the owners. As the majority shareholder, I’d know. Every time a big money making deal comes up that would make a lot of money, it’s of course very tempting, but at the end of the day we choose to do what either makes the most sense for our products, or the things that seem like fun for us at Mojang.”
However, Persson does acknowledge the huge resource those running servers provide, thus giving ‘crafters an outlet to create their worlds. In what eventually led to a “big meeting,” Notch explains they came to the logical conclusion that “…they need to be able to pay for the servers. So we came up with all sorts of ways this could be done without ruining the “you don’t pay for gameplay” aspect…There are new rules…All of these make the rules more liberal than things were before.”
Notch also says gamers have called for a return to the old way of doing things (by throwing out the new EULA and readopting the old one) which he says makes him “feel sad.”