Could have been a neat personal story, "hey you know I wrote the ending text to Minecraft?" Instead, it's this.
I sympathize with him. I loved this piece. I hope he truly did let go of all the hangups he described. And it does seem that he actually did sell the the rights of use to microsoft, making this whole text a weird misunderstanding. But that does not mean that the text is bad, or boring, or uninteresting. Rather the opposite.
Exactly the picture/cover/person I thought of while reading this (nicely written but still a) rant.
He didn't file a wacky lawsuit like Wyn Cooper's friend from "I Wanna Be Yours", instead he's reflected on a brush with greatness, and he's still doing art. Seems ok.
Perhaps he is better off not having Notch's riches considering that the guy went full QAnon?
Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into millions of dollars or whatever he thinks a "fair" contribution is.
Contributing an asset doesn't give you any entitlement to share in the company. If you want some equity in the company you better ask for it up front, because they probably won't give it to you and would just hire someone else and you can save your hard work. 20k seems fair and helped the author out a lot at the time. Posting a long rant about it probably hurts his future work opportunities.
I'm fairly sure that no credible lawyer would give him the time of the day if he did try to get more now. He did work, he accepted money for that work and only later he thinks he's entitled to more and wants to re-negotiate.
I don't know about his jurisdiction, but here even as a layman I'm confident that doing the work and accepting the money would be seen as acceptance:
"As well as using words, a contract could be implied by conduct of the parties, for example, by jumping into a black cab and stating your destination, this conduct would be taken as an agreement that the taxi driver will take you to your destination and that you will pay a price for it."
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/notes/division/...
The idea that just because there isn't a written contract that he magically retains the rights is magical thinking and I'm surprised that no-one he's previously told this story to has pointed that out to him.
And that's the kicker - his agent could have negotiated 100k, which would have been more than fair for that moment in time. But still be wayyy underpaid for eventually what the game would sell for.
But of course, it's not about money. I understand his point - and I wish I could find it now, but I can't, so I'll just describe it.
I saw some meme a while back with a kid sitting next to and hugging a giant frog. The text read, "Beware, the people you love don't always love you back". The second panel showed the frog swallowing the child. I've certainly had these sort of one-sided friendships, and periodically reflect on them. It sucks. It's probably worse if you're a very emotionally deep person (which writers and other artists frequently are), but I still understood well what he was talking about.
The epic-length post is like those movies that would've been 10 minutes if the people just talked with each other.
In this case, if the artist had just told the agent what they wanted, agent would've gotten to do their job, and artist would've avoided years of turmoil.
He kinda (but not fully) admits that he had a parasocial relationship with Notch and really though he cared about him (although for Notch the author was probably just a random contactor who would fill the writing for the ending to justify an official release.) Seriously, who thought making the text unscrollable was more than just a light joke? It's probably a jab at the frustrated player who wants to desparately skip the poorly-written wall of text, not a well-thought appreciation of its artistic integrity! He really thought that Notch really liked him as a friend, even though the only time he met him in person was in a random game jam two years ago.
I think the lesson here is: even when the famous person you admire notices you and gives you positive attention, don't assume too far that they really genuinely like you, or even worse, that you two are already "friends". Maybe this is a bit cynical... but in an age where poor artists need to fight to the death on social media for any recognition to sell their work I kinda understand how people would fall for this.
Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would.
But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to whether you think the original payment was really good. The copyright sits with the artist, not those that commission it, unless the artist signs it away. That didn't happen. That's Mojang's fault not the artist. And the fact they were trying to pressure the artist into doing that shows that that is the real issue.
This post is not about the money or the jealously. It is about the emotional journey the author went on, with their human emotions, and what they thought of as friends. And the different stages of said journey.
If I was more cynical about this piece I would suggest that releasing the poem under CC was easily the worse thing the author could have done from MS/Mojangs point of view. Clearly a decision was made by them that should a lawsuit come about they weren't worried. Releasing it as it has been side steps this completely, leaving the power with the author.
Ultimately though I enjoyed the story.
Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.
He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed.
I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.
b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any different about it after the author 'releasing the poem under CC'. His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. He seems erratic and will probably go on to perform other stunts and legalistic trolling before he gets bored.
However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement.
> So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I got for writing the actual ending
Did the twenty-five staff put in 5x or 6x the work? It seems likely. I understand that to some the end story may be deemed to be essential to the experience and talent was required to write this story - but that attitude just undermines the hard work of everyone else involved. Who knows how much effort those staff members poured into perfecting things that were essential to the experience that made Minecraft?
> Bear in mind, here we were a couple of weeks before the official launch, and Minecraft was already a phenomenon: in its unfinished state, it had already sold five or six million copies, in beta, at $15 a copy. So it was, at that point, already a hundred-million-dollar game, but with no ending
It certainly doesn't seem like the ending provided disproportionate value to Mojang compared to the work of their staff.
I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set.
That said, the rant, while much too long is interesting and explains well the misunderstanding between business people and artists. Some artists are good at business (Picasso) but most aren't because they speak a different language, and because, like this guy, they cultivate and probably enjoy ambiguity, or the protection and shadows it brings.
All that is to say that if my interpretation is correct then Julian is legally entitled to do what he wants with the work including selling it to someone else or in this case release it under a creative commons license.
I get that he feels like he was given a small amount relative to the great success of Minecraft, but I would hope he also realizes that it was risk free cash.
The reason is because in most cases (this is ~1 decade old personal research/opinion) unless specified the client is paying for access and use to the final product you make, not necessarily for anything else. This is the sane thing though, but in business in many cases you might want to also receive the blueprints, source code, assets, copyright, etc. This might be "obvious" depending on the industry and case, but that means it's not obvious at all in a general sense.
For example here, the company (and that might be why Microsoft backed up) might be happy with just being able to use the work, even if they don't have an exclusive contract or are the copyright holders of that particular bit. I do agree that it seems Mojang had implicit permission at least to use it, but not exclusive/full copyright/etc.
> I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
By accepting this premise, these are examples of when he expected to be treated as a friend, but was instead treated as an outsider. As for the legality, I don't think a vague agreement can clarify if the work is licenced or if the licence was transfered.
I'm usually on the writer's side in these kinds of things, but I have to agree. I've played dozens of hours of that game and have never even considered that it might have an end
For what it's worth, this often comes as a surprise even to many German creators who are not aware of this because intuitively if you get paid to create something "for" someone, you sell them your rights to it. But in reality that requires an explicit contract spelling this out. A typical example is professional photographers actually only selling you prints of the photos they take for you, or a design agency not giving you the source files for designs they create for you.
Notch’s choice to make it hard to skip/speed up the text scrolling suggests that he thought it had disproportionate value.
> And I finally got round to reading the original contract, the one I didn’t sign.
> And… Jesus Christ. It was worse than I’d even imagined. It was horrible.
> The contract was for a comprehensive buyout, signing away all my rights forever, which was exactly the thing I’d told Carl that I never did with my work.
So the fact that he kept the money does say that he agreed to write the piece for that amount of money, but it doesn't say anything about under which terms, and the terms is where they disagree. The money transfer says nothing about what rights do Mojang have over the piece and what rights the writer have over the piece.
It sounds like an awful, muddy mess that would take a great deal of time and money to litigate if the author decided to take that path. Without an explicit contract, even determining which court (and which nation) has jurisdiction for this kind of international transaction sounds like a nightmare.
I agree that in most jurisdictions I have any familiarity with, some kind of contract likely exists for usage of the text, but that is a fundamentally different question from ownership of the text. And I imagine that the text has subsequently been used by Mojang and Microsoft for other purposes, which may or may not be found to be covered by the original agreement.
In short, it's exactly the kind of ambiguity that big corporations hate when it comes to intellectual property.
Ah, if only we were paid proportionate to how hard we worked. Stay-at-home moms and janitors would be billionaires.
Just gonna say it, the game was better without the rushed ending anyway and the amount it sold before it had one is testament to that.
Which is super interesting! The most successful game dev of all time was only 20% actual game devs. As if it's not about making the game but about everything else (comms, community engagement)
This might help talking about fairness when in fact MP3 build the foundation of streaming music. ;)
Same goes for iPad silhouette girl: contract work, nothing else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_advertising
Or the nike logo, or...
It is hard. There won't be so many George Lucas opportunities: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/george-l...
That's why I think MS did not need to pay him off; they thought they had a license, even if they didn't own the IP. And that's also why it's totally legit for him to republish his own work under a free license.
Where do you see that? I went back and re-read the section and it still seems to say that the negotiations failed and no agreement was reached.
So it seems Julian should have been able to get a similar deal. I bet Jakob had no power to actually go through with the threat of taking out the end poem - Notch would have intervened if it came to that.
I'm sure others working on other parts of the game, graphics and gameplay (which have become very well known outside the game) put in far more work for less.
If Microsoft replace the poem, I'm not sure anyone would notice except the author wouldn't have a fun fact for his bio.
Beware that this is very dependent on jurisdiction. There are places where such informal agreements are completely non binding. IP laws vary quite a lot as well. So your intuition might be completely wrong. Just sorting this out would be a nightmare (the author was working in Germany for a Swedish company; which law should apply? Then there is Microsoft).
> If Microsoft replace the poem, I'm not sure anyone would notice except the author wouldn't have a fun fact for his bio.
He would still have it: this happened and whatever happens next won’t make it un-happen retroactively.
I would give it one, maybe two months before the backlash forced them into a retreat.
I think I played the ending only once, in Creative Mode, to see what the fuss was about. I never cared for the ending, because to me Minecraft never had an ending. We had a Survival server in our university computer science lab and we mostly played on there, just hanging out and building cool stuff.
Reading TFA, I feel like the author is gaslighting me into feeling guilty because he did not manage to cash out big time like the rest? He amplifies his contribution making it sound like this big thing when it's not really a big thing. Other than the ending, I don't recall there being any other story in MC? What purpose does a poetic ending have if the journey up until that point has no real impact? The ending of Portal 1 is significantly more poetic in my eyes, and it's left a lasting impression on me that makes me sad when I realize that I can't share it with anyone else.
Going on and on about how much the game was sold for, how nice Notch's new house is, how Notch made so much money that he could just hand it out to his team, how the author thought they were all friends reads to me like someone who is very bitter and jealous. Writing more than 12k words to bring is point across does not help. Then claiming loudly that he's made peace with the universe and his lot after a magic mushroom trip in the middle of the forest just kind of puts the cherry on top for me. He comes across as an insufferable "artist" and maybe that's why he was pushed out/excluded like this.
The entire article is just egoistic/greedy nonsense.
I understand "gaslighting" as "manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality."
Is that what you mean, or something else?
This person seems to think that because they wrote some albeit meaningful copy for a game, that the team owed them involvement in strategic high level multi-million dollar conversations. That’s not how this works.
There’s what I call a diva effect happening and it’s what happens with artists when they see their work absorbed by popular culture (ie tattoos) in relation to another work (ie game, movie, tv show, etc.) it’s an illusion.
The poem is good but people love it because it comes at the end of an emotional journey created by the product itself. Had this person simply posted it on a website, it’s demonstrably true very few would’ve noticed.
There are not 1,700 Microsoft lawyers reading his post. There’s maybe one marketing intern rolling their eyes and logging in a spreadsheet of mentions and moving on.
This person probably put themselves in more legal hot water, if at all, by giving away something they don’t really own (sorry!).
The fact that he admits that he sat on this for eight years (regardless of reason) means he was not actively defending his intellectual property.
To make matters worse, this would be a matter of international copyright law, which is a mess.
If you’re reading this Julian, you gotta move on bud. Maybe writing this was an important step. Great. You did it. Now you’re better off deleting the post because it’s going to cause anyone who makes any deals in writing walk the opposite direction.
He did move on. He is at peace, finally.
He's the opposite of a diva and has humbly accepted that his reward for his work doesn't take monetary form.
I'm not sure what this means. Copyright doesn't need to be defended. In any case copyright is a big mess without a signed contract. This just muddles the waters even more.
> Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I got for writing the actual ending.
> Which was a lovely thing to do, but as I wasn’t staff at Mojang, and therefore got nothing… well, I was a bit hurt that I didn’t get even a token acknowledgement from Markus that I was one of the five people who had helped create this strangest of games.
Notice how it's never about the author's own negotiation. It's always about what he "feels he's owed". Any sort of contractual agreement or unambiguous statement of what is owed is illegitimate in his eyes. Just some vague sense of entitlement and a couple of donation links
This is like my babysitter observing some windfall in my life and, despite my transaction with them already paid at the rate they negotiated, expecting me to share more with them while using language like “I was a cornerstone of his family but that apparently wasn’t enough” because they watched DVDs with my kid.
Notch was friendly with this author but I doubt he ever considered him a friend, just someone he was paying for a job. This has very strong Jim Carrey in “Cable Guy” vibes to me.
> I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
At what point are he and Notch friends and not just people who were introduced over Twitter for work purposes?
It’s a type of love close to a friendship than a romance, so it’s an apt metaphor.
The frustrating part is the self-sabotage. Each story starts out with work done as an act of love, exploration, friendship. Typical for artists and in many ways charming.
Then, reality keeps telling them that this is not how it works. Reality tells them that artists need to settle on contracts before handing over output. That any contractual gap is to be resolved soon, and to not let it linger for years. And to not have a weak opening bid like: what do *you* think I should get paid?
All these points are admitted as personal shortcomings, and then still not acted upon despite endless opportunities to do so. Even to the point of not being able to feed your family.
Even when everybody else is snorting coke in some Beverly Hills mansion does crude reality not set in: that he never was a core team member nor was there friendship. It's crushing to read, like telling a kid that Santa isn't real.
Still, I respect the consistency. This is a proper artist in every way.
I think one important thing for people on HN here is this:
> I think Carl, with his background as a Corporate Finance guy, seeing the world through that filter, must have believed that I was trying to blackmail them; trying to maximise my revenue, like the “rational agents” that populate economics textbooks; that I was refusing to sign it to hold up the deal, because I wanted to get paid off. And I totally get how he could see it that way, given where he was coming from; but that wasn’t really what the issue was.
There are many people on HN (and elsewhere) who see behaving as a rational economic actor as a default state and - worse - many believe economics is a zero sum game.
Neither of these things is true, and it's a big mistake to think so. People do things for diverse motivations, and money is only one.
I'm happy when my tax rate goes up. This apparently really bothers people. (Me being happy about it.)
Well, when most of the essay contains references to how much money Mojang made, how much Notch went home with, the many billions thrown around, the bonuses paid out per employee, the dividends from Mojang, over and over again, one gets the strong impression that he is concerned about how much money he didn't get.
On HN, a place probably filled with technical guys, people are generaly putting themselves in dev shoes. They are accusing the author of feeling entitled to more money because he felt like he was part of the team and that he think his work is equaly important as the work of everyone else. Devs being devs generaly know that coding is hard and long, and generaly don't know if writing a poem is difficult or not.
On the subreddit, a place probably filled with long time minecraft player, people are putting themselves in the artist shoes. They support the author and are thanking him for creating one of the key moment during a minecraft game : the end.
Rationality versus Emotion. Who is right, who is wrong ? Is anyone right ? Maybe both side are blinded by their beliefs ?
Although the end poem has received criticism here, it's obvious from the thread that it's touched a lot of people.
Being friends and known a small number of "artists", the difference in mindset was extremely apparent - some of them just think and see the world fundimental very differently from the way I do. Many actions and explanations here are not that of a piece to convince or persuade, but of an individual sharing their raw self and their struggles. Thus its been interesting to see the reaction from HN, who are obviously different in another way. HN is the Carl of the story, who also misses what the author considers the "broader point" of wanting to be treated as a friend.
This comment by him.. seems to be honestly something that explains quite a bit as to where he's coming from.
Beautiful. I hope this brings him peace.
However, his acceptance of the money, things written in his emails, the poem itself or other behaviors, could possibly form a case that he implicitly assigned a transferable non-exclusive license to Mojang for it to be used in MC. (not a lawyer caveat applies)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license
(It looks like Irish law requires a written agreement for any non-exclusive license, but Swedish law looks a bit vague and it’s possible to assign ownership via implicit license.)
Most of the comments are reflecting on whether it really was or wasn't unfair.
So I'd say it's also an interesting worldview that you make a claim about fairness and then dismissed any conversation about fairness (the topic _you brought up_) with a glib statement asserting that anyone who ponders this as being "blind to any emotional" concerns.
Even if Carl and Notch considered you their best friend, at the point of the Microsoft buyout, they will still have to a) Keep their mouth shut and can’t tell you about that (yes, it was leaked, but they might still can’t talk about it) and b) force you to sign the paperwork. The alternative is risk letting the deal falling through, hurting everyone involved, owners or employees.
It’s not heartless or emotional-less, just purely ultilitarian. Anyone who has to deal with management of some capacity will have to think of the same sort. Carl might have thought a lot about emotion and friendship, but it’s not just yours. He has to make sure everyone’s are considered too. It just happened your priority is different
> Reading the post and then HN comments makes me realize the average HN user lacks a lot of emotional intelligence.
> People are criticizing the post based on the cold hard mistakes the author made while completely glossing over the emotional introspection the author went through to acknowledge all their mistakes and finally close this chapter of their lives.
> Stop treating this post like you are code reviewing a PR.
I suppose it is to be somewhat expected from the target audience of HN to fixate on the logical parts and completely ignore the artistic and emotional parts, but in this case that means they are ignoring the whole point of your post.
You write a several thousand word screed (mostly about money), talk about payouts to Mojang staff and Notch's house, post a donation link under the heading "THIS IS WHERE YOU GET TO SAVE MY LIFE", and then come here with pointed comments about people disregarding your "emotions" in this situation because there isn't unanimous agreement on your own "rightness" in this situation
I don't really need to comment on any of this, because anyone with eyes can see it for what it is
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation
Rejecting their offer wasn't the one true path for you to feel happiness and love. It was actually one of many outcomes that you are able to adapt to for feeling happy and loved.
Justification: in your piece you avoid mentioning that copyright can be merely licensed, not transferred, hiding this by portraying yourself as a naive artist who does not understand the law.
Dream Sequencer System Offline
The zeitgeist of our times is categorization, valuation, discrimination... This is good or bad, valid or invalid. There is very little space for the flaws of the real world. To divide the world so clearly, violence is necessary. Be the clinical wording of the surgeon or the hate of the mob...
There is so much hate on the internet; Remember it is not personal, they do not know you.
Thank you for your reply and for taking the time to read our comments. We appreciate your perspective and the insight you have provided on the situation.
However, I must say that your message feels very confrontational and pointy, and dismissive of the legal aspects of the situation. While we understand that the emotional and artistic aspects are important, the legalities of the situation must also be considered and discussed.
I hope that you can understand our perspective and engage with us on the legal aspects of the situation as well.
All of his problems could have been solved if he just did the sensible normal thing any person would do and have a lawyer help him figure it out.
Then again, maybe that's all that's happening anyways.
It’s not just some capitalism v art thing either. It’s communicating and promising and accountability.
To anyone reading, if you’ve got a business partner and you think he’s given you 50% of a business because he said it one night at dinner, saying you’re cofounders— get it on paper in terms you both agree to. Go halfsies on a lawyer who helps you both accurately match terms (copyright assignment is one of those things where particular wording, intent and employment arrangement are important.) If you have doubts, maybe watch The Social Network or read about Hoefler&Co. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoefler_%26_Co.)
Still, thought this was very well written, and he's not assigning them the blame.
I don't think Notch ever was his friend though.
People are criticizing the post based on the cold hard mistakes the author made while completely glossing over the emotional introspection the author went through to acknowledge all their mistakes and finally close this chapter of their lives.
Stop treating this post like you are code reviewing a PR.
*Emotional intelligence is the recognition of your emotions, the emotions of others, how your actions influence the emotions of others, and how to regulate your own emotions. Ironically, by this definition, the author is the one lacking emotional intelligence. They didn't understand why they were angry, why others were frustrated or how to mitigate it. They still don't understand that just saying that you are at peace doesn't mean that you are. To me, the author is still brimming with hurt, anger, jealousy, greed, and pride, and because of these last three, I don't have much sympathy.
The common critique is not that the author made mistakes, it's that he's self-centered, a diva, etc for feeling like he deserves a huge chunk of the worth of minecraft for writing the end-poem on a contract. He thinks he should get more, people disagree because $20k is much more that you would have expected for such a thing anyways.
As an engineer, I understand the importance of logic, precision, and efficiency. But as an artist, I also know the value of creativity, expression, and intuition. These two ways of thinking are often at odds with each other, and it can be challenging for an engineer to understand the artistic mindset and for an artist to grasp the engineering perspective.
Despite the differences, both engineers and artists play important roles in the world and can learn from each other. By combining their unique perspectives and skills, they can create truly amazing things.
That said, even that is an oversimplification. There are lawyers, sales people, management, etc., thrown into the mix.
Another example is that guy who threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin wallet on it, now worth $200 million or something like that. He can’t move on. Last I heard he was trying to finance a plan to exhume an acre of landfill and sort through it all by hand.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Sapkowski#Legal_disp...
Talking about why I'm not hard at work... Nothing mentioned on the list motives me towards money at all. Just take a look of the photo of the house, I don't want to live in a place like that even if I have the money. And the motorbike? Dude, have you read the news about organ donations today?
The End Poem (https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/End_Poem) was the only text in the game that I completely read through. It rolls up, and I sat there read the entire thing. I'm the kind of guy who starts to load another game while the ending cut scene is still playing. GLaDOS starts to sing again? Time to load up Left 4 Dead and find a server. And yet, I read the entire End Poem of Minecraft.
That text makes me feel that somebody behind Minecraft actually cares, understands and put hopes in their game to make people inspired. It's kind sad that the truth comes up to be this.
Farewell, dear player, as you venture forth,
Leaving this world of blocks and pixels behind.
But know that the memories you've made here
Will stay with you, etched in your mind.
For in this game, we built and explored,
Creating our own little universe.
But now it's time to move on,
To face new challenges and opportunities.
As you go, remember the lessons you learned,
The friendships you forged, and the adventures you had.
And know that, though this game may end,
The universe itself is vast and ever-changing.
So go forth, brave player, and make your mark,
For the universe is yours to discover. To Tim, the brave and bold,
Who built a well so deep and cold,
And filled it with water clear and bright,
But then, in an instant, lost his sight.
You drowned in the depths, so deep and dark,
But in your life, you left your mark.
You built a house of diamond bricks,
A shining beacon, a sight to fix.
But now you're gone, your time has passed,
Your legacy will forever last.
Farewell, Tim, may you rest in peace,
Your memory will never cease.I wonder if this guy saw that and figured he'd try something similar.
The difference is that Mick Gordon worked his ass off for years and that the music is a significant element to the Doom games, where as the ending poem in Minecraft is pretty insignificant.
As for the legal fantasies, the email discussion about using the poem in the game and him accepting the €20k payment would constitute an agreement in most jurisdictions. But without a proper contract, the terms of said agreements are poorly defined, and since it was made between a Swedish company and someone apparently residing outside Sweden, which jurisdiction applies is even in question.
So his theory about the poem still belonging to him and Microsoft owing him millions of dollars are exceedingly speculative and would likely take years of wrangling to sort out. So yeah, renouncing your claims is probably the best option here.
A good lesson to all freelancers: Make sure you get a proper contract before you deliver the goods.
I think that most would say that $20k for a poem in the end credits is a fair deal and you were not taken advantage of. You accepted the deal it by taking the money. Not signing a contract is moot. Be happy that your work will live on.
I hope he can use this post as way to clear the air and let it go. I think the 20K was totally fair for the effort put in, but I do sympathize with being so close to a veritable fortune!! It must be so hard see it and not be jealous on some level. It's like having all but 1 of the winning lottery numbers (I realize that you would still get something nice in most lotteries for that). To be so close yet so far is a true test of letting go. Think Pete Best or Ronald Wayne. SO HARD.
The thing to realize, which, of course, sounds like sour grapes, is that having all that money is just picking a different set of problems and worries. No one gets to "have it all" in the sense of living in the world with no problems/fears/misery.
> Let a thousand flowers bloom.
This phrase is sorely misunderstood. This was a way to lure out opponents of Mao Zedong, by opening up for public criticism of his rule. Then, when he knew who opposed him, he could brutally suppress and/or execute them.
I don't think that is what the author of the this article wants to convey. Or maybe it is, and his next step will be to launch a massive legal campaign against Microsoft and all others involved?
"... and Julian Gough found himself there, at the corner of the 21st century, thinking he had made a friend while his emotions were crushed by limitless capital growth"
Curtis, whose coverage of the cultural revolution is a work of art.
As a legal story, it’s fascinating, and I’d love to see it go to court, for no other reason than to
There’s some passages in there that could be understood as implied consent — them using the text after the author explicitly tells Carl that copyright assignment is off the table implies Mojang accepts that condition. The author’s failure to respond to the contract in a timely manner once it was sent probably also implies consent, but maybe not?
Then there’s the matter of jurisdiction, as you have a Swedish company dealing with an Irishman (probably irrelevant) living in Germany (definitely relevant). Probably a fair few more complications in there that I failed to notice.
I don’t think they would do that. That would be unbelievably stupid from a legal department. The funny thing with this sort of IP in most of Europe (though this could be different in Sweden but I really doubt it) is that nobody except the author can own it. All they can have is an exclusive license. If they are convinced of this and wanted to clear things up, they will sue. But they probably won’t because the guy is probably right.
> it’s actually irrelevant because no one bought the game because of the poem.
That’s a very wrong take. IP laws deal with copying and distributing works. You won’t get out of a lawsuit saying that it was not significant (unless you are pleading fair use, but it clearly was not the case here).
Whether the work is important or not does not matter before we talk about compensation. And then, an insignificant fraction of a few billions is still quite a bit of money.
I hope that makes it clear.
I always thought that it was just some thing some programmer threw together at the last minute since it sucked so hard and I've always wondered why Mojang hasn't updated it.
EDIT: oh wow, I actually kept reading and this guy is one greedy mf.
How do you think making a poem is even remotely equal to "making the game". Then all this bitching about how people who actually literally working at Mojang getting money that he - some stranger who again only wrote one poem and nothing else - didn't get. Why didn't he join Mojang as a writer or something if he believed in the project and wanted to work on their games - because he didn't believe or want to work there.
Dude is just angry he didn't get rich on a chance encounter.
Contracts do not have to be in writing to be binding. Nor do they have to be fair. Signing the contract is one way to prove acceptance, but failing to sign the contract yet carrying it out and taking the money from the other party is also quite a valid proof of acceptance of the contract.
If he wanted to argue that he didn't accept the contract, he should not have accepted the money. I can sympathize with his regret and his feeling of being railroaded... but he took the money.
For anyone in a situation like this, where the contract comes after the work, you don't argue about whether or not to sign some paper. You reject the money until you have an actual agreement.
What I find really interesting, though, are parallels to complaints I've heard from artsy friends about Lensa (which is trending on social media for being a stable diffusion (variant?) model used for generating portraits of a person in various styles).
Essentially, the problem is that the model was trained on a bunch of copyrighted art scraped off the internet.
Essentially, the same problem with github's copilot being trained on open source copy left code.
As the game comes to an end, you reflect on all that you have experienced and accomplished. You have journeyed to far-off lands, battled fierce enemies, and overcome incredible challenges. And through it all, you have felt the love of the universe guiding you and supporting you every step of the way.
As you stand at the brink of victory, you are filled with a sense of awe and wonder. The universe is a vast and complex place, full of mysteries and secrets that may never be fully understood. But in this moment, you feel a deep connection to it, and you know that its love is with you always.
You take a deep breath and savor the moment. The universe has brought you to this point, and you are grateful for the journey you have undertaken. You know that there will always be new challenges and adventures ahead, but you are ready to face them with courage and determination, knowing that the universe will be with you every step of the way.
As you prepare to move on to your next adventure, you take a moment to offer thanks and gratitude to the universe for all that it has given you. You know that its love is a precious gift, and you will treasure it always. And as you set out on your next journey, you are filled with a sense of excitement and hope, knowing that the universe will be with you, loving and guiding you always.
The thing is, just because he (or myself) would be bitter, does not make the bitterness right. It doesn't make it sensible, and it absolutely does not make any part of this a good move. Burning bridges as publically as possible, over what is almost certainly going to be your most well known piece of work for the rest of your entire professional career, is not going to win you any friends. It will make people see you as a backstabber (which you are), a bitter, money-hungry person (which you are), and someone who is willing to try and hurt the public credibility of others, in order to enact some petty revenge (which you have done).
No part of this is good. No part of this is right. "Giving the story" to the public in some nebulous gesture of posterity does not absolve any of what has been done. Instead, it taints the only thing you had invested into the project - the only claim you had.
Again, I'd probably be upset over this too. I might even have attempted to do something similar. Knowing that, however, does not excuse the action. It does not change right and wrong. This is wrong.
I wish this person luck, and more importantly, the opportunity to learn from this error-upon-error that they have stacked on their own shoulders, and branded to their name.
To put it simply: It is not worth throwing away public perception and credibility in hopes of receiving financial gain, regardless of how validated or "wronged" you might feel in your own egocentrism.
If he said that in an e-mail, doesn't that constitute a written agreement to transfer copyright to Mojang?
That said, I think a lawyer could make a strong claim that later accepting the $20k (presumably he had to provide some sort of payment info for this) gave Mojang at a minimum the rights to use it in the game.
But I'm not sure how this works when Minecraft itself was moved out of Mojang in any way (i.e. if this is formally a Microsoft game and no longer a Mojang, now subsidiary of Microsoft, game).
Anyhow, the CC0 license also applies to Microsoft going forward so unless he wants to challenge their rights prior to this, Microsoft is apparently in the clear now. They just can't sue anyone who wants to also use the poem because they don't have standing.
And a CEO is 100% liable for employee misconduct while on the job. =)
Also, a lot of people are saying that the end poem wasn't a big part of Minecraft objectively speaking, which I think is false. Personally, as a kid, reading the poem gave me shivers and is a pretty big part of why I continued playing the game for so long and got so invested in it - it did give it meaning and gave it a sense that it was a piece of art made with love. It also inspired me to make my presentation on video games as art in elementary school and I got in a great debate about it with my art teacher which was a great learning experience for me, so it definitely had a solid impact on me and I imagine at least a million other people. It's a sizeable part of the game for me and I'd say it definitely was worth at least 5% of the experience for me.
The ending speaks to me like religious books due, when read with a certain eye you can see the universe truely is speaking to us through this poem.
Money doesn't exist, atleast not forever and always the way it does today.
Love is forever
Of course the gift is not the money, an almost meaningless amount for me. The gift is the time and attention it took me to actually click that link, sign into paypal and send the money, instead of just clicking away for the next story.
Thank you Julian, you already made my day.
Anyway, I've personally always thought that the ending was rubbish but now that I know it was directly responsible for all those animated text effects I dislike it slightly less.
-Meet Markus at a con
-Markus best friend now
-Play Minecraft for days
-Write poem
-Markus says "I ain't reading all that, ship it! We have a deadline!"
-Take the money and run
-Enjoy cold hard cash instead of speculating on royalties
-Trip on shrooms on squatted land
-Try to squat poem
-"Dear Microsoft I don't care about laws. Love love love."
-Love love love
-Money money money plz
-Love love loveThough I've come to understand that in this world you have to be ruthless when it comes to your interests. And I don't mean it in the "wolf of wall street level of ruthlessness" sense – all I'm saying is that you shouldn't allow others to walk all over you, even for things that are relatively small.
It can be difficult for some of us, but it will end up feeling very liberating in the end.
"I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was."
"Because we hadn’t really agreed on anything. We’d simply had a failed attempt to find a fair price for using my work as part of Minecraft."
"Carl decided the answer was €20,000 (and a vague promise to help promote my other work), and in all the confusion someone sent me the money, even though we still didn’t have a contract worked out."
Wat
I've had acquaintances who've wanted to do work for me try to skip that. Best thing you can do for them is be diligent (in a sense on their behalf) and make them go through the paperwork before commencing the project (certainly before getting too deep in).
There's a reason those conversations can be tough, as they surface details the parties diverge on. Dealing with them early keeps them from festering. Some people experience a great deal of anxiety when it comes to negotiation, and I often find everyone feels better once that stage is behind us and we've achieved a mutual understanding of the expectations, remuneration, etc.
I think part of the beef here was he felt he never agreed to what ensued (indeed in negotiations he was shy to express what he felt was fair - which must have drove Carl nuts). If they'd arrived at and signed a contract, even if in retrospect it turned out to be the steal of the century for the company and a huge ripoff for him, at least he'd have been able to say "well, I agreed to it" and gotten some closure from that.
All that said, I can't help but cheer the underdog here. The company was presumably more experienced and shared a responsibility to get their i's dotted and T's crossed. Yes, the guy was a pain in the ass. But just because a contract is so-called "standard" doesn't mean you should expect the other party is blindly willing to consent to it, or be angry at them for rejecting terms they find onerous.
I see that happening all too often today with heavy-handed ToS's websites are foisting on users who can't be bothered to read them. The lawyers are all copying verbiage off each other and it's a race to the bottom where one side has all the rights, the other has none whatsoever, and then regulators need to step in as referees thus deteriorating free markets.
If the IP really does remain his (which I'm not convinced is cut and dry), then good for him for standing his ground, fending his principles and gifting this beautiful work of art to the world.
$20k for what amounts to a short story is an insanely good and fair price, compared to the market rate. I know he says he negotiated badly but I don't know how much more he could have obtained, as $20k _is_ a great sale. It does suck to see Minecraft later get sold for billions and "only" have your $20k but I have a feeling (and he basically admits) he was happy with the $20k at the time.
And he thinks something's unfair here for some reason?
Also he appears to think the ending was even particularly important in Minecraft, that writing 9 minutes of text is worth years of art and development work. That's odd.
>The friendship is more important than the money.
This is insane, he didn't know these people!
If you yourself don’t know what you want how do you think other people will know, let alone make it happen somehow?
I didn’t even know it had an ending, and thought the headline to this story was meant to be a joke about it not having an ending.
Poetry is cool, man, but writing this absolute tome of a blogpost about how bitter you are for not getting rich off of a poem is a little bit pathetic. Move on with your life and write more poems.
It might be difficult to honestly confront your difficulties with confrontation/communication, but I imagine it’s more worthwhile than stewing, rationalizing, etc.
On a side note I have played Minecraft hundreds of hours and have "finished" it hundreds of times, and never noticed a poem at the end.
Like everyone I skip the credits because I'm playing Minecraft to... play Minecraft? Not to read a wall of text.
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2684207-an-open-...
Minecraft is a simple game where you build the experience alone or with friends, the only reason the poem is meaningful for people is because of those experiences. Dude let his ego get out of check.
But later
> And I sent them a reply basically saying, Can you just treat me fairly? Do what you think is fair under these circumstances. And we’ll work something out.
What's constantly frustrating reading this sort of thing is that wanting a certain amount for work you chose to do is capitalism.
It's not the state telling you what to do and giving you an allocated house, or a lord letting you work his land, or anything like that. It's individuals and groups forming agreements that, as much as is possible, are just between them.
The problem with "fair" is it implies there's an absolute standard, and it happens to be what you want to get, not what they want to give. There's no standard, other than what minimum wage sets for salaried workers. There's just agreements.
This seems consistent with the level of egotism on display in the post. The author repeatedly includes himself as a core member of "we" for the group that created the game, but what this author calls the ending appears to have very much been an afterthought.
Nuggets of egotism are spread throughout in a variety of ways:
>perhaps the largest copyright offence of all time
I'd take that as hyperbole except the tone of the rest of the article supports an interpretation where the author believes this.
>If I had trouble paying for my kid’s clothes and shoes, that was on me
This in the context of his marriage breaking down, so, really? None of the responsibility was on his wife? All of the importance in that situation is on him? I wouldn't think so.
>Friendship
This seems a very Facebook-era definition of friendship. He met Persson once and then a little time later they wrote some emails back and forth. This is inflated into a friendship wherein the Gough feels he was an integral part of that creative team behind the game.
>1,700 MS Legal Affairs people
I'm sure this thing will catch the attention of someone in MS legal, but I suspect it's barely a blip on their radar, much less something that will garner the focus of the entirety of Microsoft's legal juggernaut.
At least Gough's egotism isn't large enough that he doesn't, on some level, realize that he's blowing things out of proportion. Throughout the piece there's a bit of a conflicting tone where he seems to understand that his contribution really wasn't of the magnitude he makes it out to be. Reading this though, that just introduced a bit of cognitive dissonance with a strange mixture of self-aggrandizement and self-aware/self-deprecation, e.g., "A lot of people didn’t want to read nine minutes of narrative scrolling up the screen, no matter how good it was; they didn’t give a shit. They just wanted to go and play the game again."*
A fantastic quote for money management. You either manage your money, or let the lack of it manage you. Full stop.
You already sold it in 2011.
I had not heard this before. What is the story there?
...oh you put it part in the n and made money, buaah buaaah i want money also! buaaahh
At some point in the last twenty years, I became thoroughly grounded in the capitalist, entrepreneurial mindset. My world view became locked on the lens of monetary compensation, property ownership, and proper assignment of assets.
Unlike many of the commenters here, I have no interest in the legal or monetary ramifications of this post. Instead, this gives me pause. I need to reexamine some of the assumptions I've built up over the past two decades. It would, I think, do me good to reconsider how I think about things.
I need to think.
Julian wish he was above the rules of capitalism but he's not. If he was he would have no issues talking about money and dealing with contracts. He would not be jealous that the late employees received money from the Microsoft deal.
But yeah, fortunately it was just an issue of blockage in the flow of love that could be solved with a few psilocybin mushrooms. His former family and his agent Charlie must be reassured now.
Getting mad at "the corporations" for being dirty middlemen is common, but Ticketmaster hires staffers, organizes purchases, handles refunds alllllllll the way down the line. The infrastructure to do that takes real work by real people who also need to be paid, and yes - there is a structural inequality between the company that does all the organizing and the individual person doing the work. This is both problematic and excellent.
The best part though, really - is that because of the way modern corporations work, anyone can be at the very very top of the corporate structure, above even the CEO. Regular, average humans can be shareholders, the most preferred class of all modern capitalist corporations.
This is not about how many hours he's speculated to have spent on the piece, or his overall contribution to the success of the game. It's clear that Minecraft was already phenomenally successful by the time the end text was written. It's also clear from other comments here that a) Julian was far from the only person who didn't get a 'share of the winnings', and that b) the person responsible for the music in the original version(s) of the game C418, by contrast did (likely due to having much more business savvy).
Two points...
1) None of this is fair. Not how writing is paid for. Not how writing software is valued commercially over writing / scriptwriting / poetry. Not the Minecraft team making vast sums. Certainly not Notch making billions. It's all an absurd outgrowth of the economics of digital surplus, which are now so ubiquitous as to appear invisible. And network effects, which all of us on HN are aware of, but which are also deeply unintuitive. Is Minecraft a great, influential, fun game? Sure. It is so much greater than the other successful and brilliant games of its generation of indie titles - Fez, Super Meat Boy, Braid etc? Frankly no. It's just different. It's different in a specific way thats amenable to economic exploitation indefinitely. It's more like a toy than a game. It came out at a very specific time in the history of videogame culture and technology when something less graphically impressive could be appreciated. Initially by a generation who had come to find an appeal in retro graphics, before it caught fire with the kids. It was released at a time when the community and internet ubiquity existed for such a thing to go viral. Great things are created and ignored all the time. Minecraft hit at exactly the right moment. There are numerous other examples in the gaming space of titles that aren't necessarily so unique (Minecraft is extremely derivative of Infiniminer). A world exists - very close to this one, in which Zachtronics would have a legal right to some or all of its profits, had patent law shaken out even slightly differently.
2) Writing (like music) is non fungible. The story you write in 2013 is not the story you will or could write in 2022. It expresses a part of you, in a profoundly intimate way. Publishing is giving away something of yourself. It's irreducible to sharing an idea or emotion - because it's more than that. All creative writing is literally an expression of the self of the artist. Publishing is also a one strike deal usually. You can't often publish a story that is already public, virtually no short stories (or indeed novels) have a (commercial) value in adaptation. It's starkly different from say music - where you can tour your work, even if Spotify pays effectively nothing. You can't busk writing (well you can, but there's no audience for it beyond a novelty). Most commercial novelists (even ones you've heard of) subsist from teaching workshops and art grants. Most have second and third jobs. Which is all to say that this poem was a valuable part of Julian that he shared with the world. He tries to articulate it by the muse or automatic writing. Writing not equivalent to time spent coding or problem solving. It's an act of love. As is his sharing the final story for free in perpetuity.
It would have been so easy for him to just keep his big mouth shut, count and spend all his money, and retain all the hard earned respect and admiration that so many people including myself had for him, but then we would have been delusionally admiring a truly terrible Q-Anon supporting, GamerGate promoting, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, racist bigot, who called video game developer and feminism supporter Zoë Quinn a "cunt".
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Maya Angelou
Oh course he tried to walk back some of his worst tweets, but what kind of person tweets that kind of shit in the first place? I believe what he showed about himself the first time, not his pathetic attempt at damage control.
So I guess it's better that we all now know what kind of a horrible person Notch really is thanks to his own words, so we're not wasting our money, energy, and respect on somebody who certainly doesn't deserve it. Let him serve as an anti-hero for exposing other bigots who choose to carry his water and show everyone who they really are by defending him.
I'd much rather spend my money and admiration on wholesome deservingly beloved game developers like Tarn and Zach Adams, who've worked so hard and creatively on Dwarf Fortress, and are decent human beings who totally deserve to reap the benefits of their fine dedicated work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_Adams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversial_v...
Markus Persson: Controversial views
Persson has received criticism for political and social opinions he has expressed on social media since around 2017. Many of his comments have seen by others as misogynistic, racist, and homophobic.[52] He claimed feminism was a "social disease", and called video game developer and feminism supporter Zoë Quinn a "cunt".[53][54] He took offence to gay pride celebrations, asserting there should be heterosexual pride days and stating that opponents to his ideas "deserve to be shot".[54][55] After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now."[56] Persson said in social media that "It's okay to be white"[57] and that he believed privilege is a "made up metric".[58] He has promoted claims that people are fined for "using the wrong pronoun".[52] Persson has also faced criticism for tweeting in support of QAnon, stating that "Q is legit. Don't trust the media."[59]
In March 2019, a Minecraft update removed all mentions of Persson from the game's menu, though his name is still in the credits.[60] Microsoft did not explain this action, but its timing led multiple news outlets to conclude it was related to the controversies associated with him.[60][61] Persson was not invited to the game's tenth anniversary event later in 2019, with Microsoft saying that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang".[52][62]
[52] "Minecraft creator Notch unwelcome at 10th anniversary due to online conduct". Ars Technica. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2022.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves...
[53] Bonazzo, John (13 June 2017). "Minecraft Creator Tells Women on Twitter 'Act Like a Cunt, Get Called a Cunt'". Observer. Archived from the original on 19 August 2019. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
https://observer.com/2017/06/minecraft-gamergate-markus-pers...
[54] Kane, Vivian (29 April 2019). "Minecraft's Creator Excluded From the Game's 10th Anniversary Due to Racist, Sexist, Transphobic Comments". The Mary Sue. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190516071226/https://www.thema...
[55] "Minecraft creator Notch unwelcome at 10th anniversary due to online conduct". Ars Technica. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves...
[56] Morris, David Z. (2 July 2017). "Minecraft Creator Sparks Cries of Homophobia". Fortune. Time Inc. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
http://fortune.com/2017/07/02/minecraft-markus-persson-homop...
[57] Crecente, Brian (29 April 2019). "'Minecraft' Creator Excluded From Anniversary Due to 'Comments and Opinions' (Exclusive)". Variety. Archived from the original on 17 June 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu...
[58] "The Creator of 'Minecraft' Tweeted Some Dumb Stuff About Race". GQ. Archived from the original on 25 July 2019. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets
[59] "From Q-Anon to transphobia, the creator of 'Minecraft' has takes". Newsweek. 11 March 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
https://www.newsweek.com/minecraft-notch-controversy-twitter...
[60] Thubron, Rob (28 March 2019). "Microsoft removes references to game creator Notch in latest Minecraft update". TechSpot. Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
https://www.techspot.com/news/79403-microsoft-removes-refere...
[61] Lanier, Liz (28 March 2019). "Some References to 'Minecraft' Creator Notch Removed From Game". Variety. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/notch-removed-minecraft...
[62] Arif, Shabana (29 April 2019). "Minecraft creator Notch won't be included in the game's 10 year anniversary event". VG247. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
https://www.vg247.com/2019/04/29/minecraft-creator-notch-abs...