As one of the greatest success stories in the history of video games, Minecraft creator Markus Persson, better known as Notch, has also attracted his fair share of criticism. That criticism mostly revolves around his decision to not make a successor to Minecraft, and instead disappear into a $70 million mansion in Beverly Hills. But why shouldn’t he?
I understand that people want to see another game from Notch. Who wouldn’t? He created Minecraft, one of (if not the) most beloved game of this generation. But no one is entitled to another Minecraft game, nor are they entitled to any game from Notch. It’s his money that he earned from injecting a little bit of joy into the world, and he can do with it as he chooses. But according to indie developer Amber Coal, he should be using his money to fund her to create her own games, an offer she laid out on the table after calling him a c***.
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The following series of tweets were summarized by Notch on his Twitter account, and they speak volumes of the kind of ludicrous sense of entitlement that has followed Notch all the way into his new home in LA:
Amber then went on to post the following video, titled ‘The day Notch killed me,’ which you can view below:
Essentially what Amber is saying is that Notch should distribute some of his wealth to her, as she believes that he doesn’t really need it and that it would make a vast amount of difference to her life. While those last statements are probably true (Amber claims that she is in $100,000 of debt, a number that Notch’s estimated net worth of $1.5 billion would probably be able to cover pretty swiftly), if Notch was to indulge in random charitable acts – which, for all we know, he might do – it’s unlikely that an indie dev that called him a c*** on Twitter would be his first port of call.
Amber followed up her comments to Notch by posting two tweets regarding the sudden influx of criticism that she had received, tweeting: “The best part about that, is that he KNEW he was introducing me to millions of his followers who are kids.”
She added: “He was pretty much willfully and knowingly being ableist, shaming someone he considers mentally unwell to children.”
Now while there is absolutely no doubt that suddenly being greeted by a huge influx of negative comments wouldn’t be the best way to start a morning, launching an attack on another human’s character and then criticizing them for responding isn’t exactly a productive way of improving one’s image.
This incident is a prime example of the entitled opinions of those who believe that Notch owes indie developers, the industry at large or the “gaming community” just because he made a thing that sold well. Notch has every right to take a bath of melted gold every day for the rest of his life (though that wouldn’t be advisable) if he wanted to, so he certainly doesn’t need to support Amber Coal or any other indie dev financially, or make another video game.
