Minecraft’s spiritual successor has been teased – but it doesn’t come without controversy.
On New Year’s Day, Minecraft’s original creator Notch (i.e. Markus Persson) teased making a new game in a post on X.
According to Notch, the new game he’s working on is set to be a traditional roguelike mixed with a tile-based first-person dungeon crawler. “But then I got to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia,” Notch wrote, “and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft, and I mean sure, I’d take that cash.”
His follow-up poll has, at the time of writing, received 272,149 votes, with three days remaining. “Make Minecraft 2 boomer” has taken a large lead with 79.1% of the current vote.
“I basically announced Minecraft 2,” he confirmed in reply to a query on his original post.
Notch hasn’t been involved with Minecraft since 2014 when he sold the rights to it, and so this new game won’t be officially connected to Minecraft, Microsoft, or Mojang in any way – and Notch has stated he has no intention of infringing on Mojang or Microsoft’s work.
Even disregarding potential issues of “copycatting” (depending on how close to the original this new game will be) “Minecraft 2” is sure to come with a generous helping of controversy. Notch has repeatedly come under fire for his various posts on X (formerly Twitter) about race, sex, and LGBTQ+ topics. These posts are likely what led to Microsoft removing all mentions of his name, besides his role in the end credits, from the game.
“His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Variety in an exclusive interview with them in 2019.
With Minecraft being the best-selling game in the world, it’s likely that Notch’s new game will be a success regardless of any potential backlash. The topic of whether art can be separated from the artist, and whether the game should be boycotted (like we saw for Hogwarts Legacy in 2023 due to J.K. Rowling’s transphobic beliefs) will likely be widely discussed by the community in the coming months.
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