Markus “Notch” Persson has “basically announced” Minecraft 2.
In an X exchange over the New Year, Persson invited his millions of followers to indicate which project they’d like him to focus on in 2025 – a traditional roguelike mixed with a “tile-based first-person dungeon crawler” or a “spiritual successor” to Minecraft.
In the post asking for “honest and legitimate […] feedback for once”, Persson explained briefly what his dungeon crawler would entail, but then admitted, “but then I gots to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft, and I mean sure, I’d take that cash”.
At the time of writing, almost a quarter of a million of his followers have left a vote, 78 percent of which have, perhaps unsurprisingly, been in favour of a new Minecraft game, even though he’d asked people to “[please] vote potion. You can do this Zoomers, it’s actually super cosy.
“Kinda feels like Stardew Valley, but more diagonal door kicking,” Notch added.
A few days later, responding to commenters who missed his original posting, Persson summarised what had happened, saying: “I basically announced Minecraft 2. I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that’s super similar to the first one, and I’m loving working on games again.
“I don’t super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know I’m making one, so I figured I’d absolutely be willing to give it an honest shot in the form of a spiritual successor to Minecraft and put up a poll about it.
“My intentions are to be clear and honest about it, saying that spiritual successors are usually kind of… you know… washed up. Tragic,” he added. “The things I’m fearing my next game is going to be anyway and try to push myself to avoid. So why not do the thing that people DO want and are willing to give me, somehow, even MORE cash for.
“I intend for the money to the [sic] spent for good, but my God, have I learned I fail a lot. Winning is failing until you make yourself succeed.”
Persson added that he had no non-compete clause in the sale of Minecraft to Microsoft – “there was a one-year period where I couldn’t make a game with modifiable terrain or something like that, but I was off in the Maldives during all that, didn’t affect any creative decisions” – but did acknowledge that using the Minecraft name “would be super illegal”.
“Instead, I’d make a new original game of the same type as Minecraft and call it something else,” he said. “These are traditionally sometimes referred to as ‘spiritual successors’, but usually kinda mostly feel a bit flat.
“But, like, if that’s actually what people want, I would LOVE to make that game. It’d be my Gremlins 2.”
Persson also said that as “a man of [his] word”, he intended “to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the Microsoft shittification about”.
“And I respect them for doing that. It’s their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me,” he added.
It’s been a busy time for Minecraft. At the end of last year, the game finally received a PlayStation 5 native version, announced it would ditch PC VR support, and confirmed plans to launch Minecraft theme park areas in the US and UK.