Minecraft has quietly removed all mention of Notch from its startup splash screen.
You probably have heard of Minecraft, the multi-billion dollar game that takes up most of your waking hours, whether it be on your phone, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, or home PC (even on Mac and Linux). And throughout every instance of booting up the game, you probably caught sight of the message “Made By Notch!” or “The Work Of Notch!” during the loading process.
But who is this mysterious Notch? As some might have guessed, he’s the guy who originally developed Minecraft and later sold it to Microsoft for a cool $2.5 billion (which sounds like a lot even for Microsoft, but they’ve made their money back MANY times over, don’t you worry).
Why remove the name of Notch? Isn’t he an important part of Minecraft’s illustrious history? Well, sure, but he’s also been an increasingly controversial figure that Microsoft would probably prefer to not shine a spotlight on. Or even mention during the game’s loading screen.
Markus "Notch" Persson is a Swedish national now spending his billions of dollars in Beverly Hills, California. Since becoming fabulously wealthy, he hasn’t been doing a whole lot except for making headlines in strange and ever-more offensive ways.
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Take 2017, a banner year for Persson. In July he tweeted about his support for a “heterosexual pride day” to coincide with Gay Pride, which immediately got him slapped with calls of homophobia from the internet at large. Eventually, someone took the time to explain that Gay Pride Month isn’t so much about being proud of being homosexual, but is actually about demanding equal rights from a society that hasn’t always treated homosexuals kindly (which is a bit of an understatement).
Persson eventually backed down on those comments, but then made headlines again after he got into a Twitter flame war against Zoe Quinn, the original victim of GamerGate that sparked a controversy that is still making waves today.
Later still, Persson denied the existence of white privilege, calling it a “made up metric.”
But to be honest, Notch hasn’t been a part of Minecraft for a long time, so even if he wasn’t a big jerk on the internet, it probably makes sense to remove his name from the splash screen. Notch is still credited in the final game credits, however, so he wasn’t entirely removed. Just the part that might direct impressionable young minds to a not-so-wholesome source of opinions.
(via Kotaku)
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