What were those 25 staff doing though? It seemed like there was only actually 3 full time staff working on the game, or so the article mentions (Notch, Jeb, C418). I can't find any good sources about who was on the team at the time, but it seems like they were back office/customer support/community management/dev supporting roles?

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)