Minecraft studio Mojang has confirmed that the rumors are true: The developer is being bought by Microsoft for a whopping $2.5 billion.
Reports have been circulating since last week, claiming that Mojang, and by extension the behemoth that is Minecraft, were about to be acquired by Microsoft.
In a blog post today, Mojang's Owen Hill confirmed that Microsoft has indeed purchased the company. He explained that, "Though we're massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch's intention for it to get this big."
Notch -- aka Markus Persson -- first created Minecraft back in 2009. Since then, it has become a cultural phenomenon, and sold millions of copies across a variety of platforms.
Hill was keen to stress that the future of Minecraft is still very much about the game's community, regardless of its new owner.
"Notch is the creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder at Mojang," he explained. "He's decided that he doesn't want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he's made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that."
With Persson leaving the company, Hill also confirmed that Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser are leaving Mojang.
Hill says that Microsoft is one of the only companies that Mojang believes can take Minecraft to the next level, and thus, says the acquisition will be highly beneficial to both the game and the company. With regards to Minecraft on other platforms, Mojang says that support will not stop anywhere, although it added, "Microsoft can't make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future.""It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity."