As the majority shareholder, the acquisition made Persson a billionaire.
Persson left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft for a reported US$2.5 billion. In September 2014, Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he '', that he had 'become a symbol', and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. After this point, Persson stood down as lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies.
He achieved critical success upon the publishing of an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. He is best known for creating the sandbox video game Minecraft, which has since become the best-selling video game in history and for founding the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Markus Alexej Persson ( / ˈ m ɑːr k ə s ˈ p ɪər s ən/ ⓘ, Swedish: ⓘ born 1 June 1979), also known as ' Notch', is a Swedish video game programmer and designer.
