We’ve seen Twitter freakouts before, but this is one for the books.
The creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson, took to Twitter early Saturday with all sorts of torments and searching questions about his current life, and his former life as the creator and owner of one of the most important games in history, the Lego-like block-building game Minecraft.
Persson and the company he co-founded, Mojang AB, sold Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in September of 2014.
The deal made Persson rich, but a year later he doesn’t seem to be settling into post-Minecraft life as easily as he probably hoped.
The fun began in the wee hours Saturday with this tweet:
The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
And this one shortly after:
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563038258868224
A few minutes later, Persson talks despairingly about his new life back in his home country.
In sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
He obviously misses the days when he had his Sisyphean rock to roll up the hill.
When we sold the company, the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of, and they all hate me now.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
A couple minutes later. Persson’s life sounds a little crazy. Even keeping a girlfriend is hard.
Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
At 2:59 a.m. Uses “Musk” as a verb.
Again, Persson suggests that he regrets selling his creation, Minecraft.
I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of assholes that made me sell minecraft again.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
By 3:16, some (rich) friends have intervened and Persson starts to cool down.
People who made sudden success are telling me this is normal and will pass. That's good to know! I guess I'll take a shower then!
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
After a long, dark night, things are looking brighter at 9:39 a.m. this morning.
And just venting and not feeling like I had to hide made it feel a bit easier to cope with already. ❤
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
Then he gets stung by a jellyfish.
A jellyfish stung my knee. Surprisingly didn't hurt that much, and at least two people offered what I would consider a bad solution.
— notch (@notch) August 29, 2015
I probably shouldn’t make light of Persson’s problems. But there’s something superficial about a rich and relatively famous person spilling out his problems in 140-character blasts to all his fans and followers on Twitter. And sure enough, there were plenty of Twitter users to offer support.
There’s no doubting that Persson made a huge contribution to the gaming world. Across PC, consoles, and mobile, people have downloaded Minecraft more than 60 million times. Despite first coming on to the scene in 2009 and properly launching in 2011, the game continues to outsell most other software every month into 2015.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed in an interview with the New York Times that HoloLens was one of the major reasons his company bought Minecraft and developer Mojang. Now, Minecraft will serve as a centerpiece of the HoloLens platform moving forward.
Here’s to better days, Markus Persson. Get off Twitter and go start a new company.
