I love his story, I sympathise, and I want Microsoft, or Notch, or Mojang, to just give him a million dollars. But I can also see that his financial struggles are mostly his own doing. And probably his own choice. He wants to live in a world that's not about money, but he also wants to be able to pay rent.
You're trying to ship a game. This writer keeps hitting your inbox with prose that I assume that is about as annoying to read as the original article. He's wasting your time and not getting to the point. You don't know what the guy's deal is and you stopped trying to figure out two emails ago. Compared to all the other things that you need to be doing to actually ship the game, this is incredibly minor and taking up your time daily. You finally tell him, "look, it's 20k or we go look elsewhere".
From that story, the only thing Mojang did wrong is that they didn't send him the contract straight away. We all know he would have signed whatever was on it back then, as he clearly didn't know what he wanted. Looks like someone regretted behaving completely irrationally when closing a deal, then regretted it some more than he never attempted to get more compensation even after the fact (he could have easily gotten something a couple of years later if he had tried, and once more the article completely omits as to why he didn't try to reach out through his agent or anyone that can behave as an adult after the launch) and is now screaming at the universe that he's not being showered with riches and glory when all of this was his own doing, even after he had multiple opportunities to come out winning.
Why just give someone a million for no reason. It ain't beans we are talking about money here.
No, this is a person who's burning with envy and finds telling yourself stories an outlet.
20000€ would in most European countries be a pretty good compensation for about 3 months of work, after taxes. It doesn't seem unreasonable on the face of it.
> I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
In this framing, these are examples of being treated as an outsider.
> 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.
(Since the author seems to have spent about a month or so working on the game, you could reason that his compensation is about on par with the employees who worked for a full year. But he doesn't seem to see it that way, or he thinks he should be compensated better than them? I don't know.)
However, he was just a contractor found via twitter who wrote a few pages of text for the ending credits.
They really did not think of him as a friend, and when he was done with work they never contacted him again except for legal reasons.
the point is the gift economy
(I just wish the essay was edited down by 1/3, but that’s me)