Minecraft will be celebrating its 10-year anniversary on May 17th in Stockholm, and to celebrate the anniversary, Microsoft has announced that they will be hosting a special event that will look at the game’s past, present and future.
However, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson has been excluded from joining the event by Microsoft to celebrate the game that he created. While “Notch” hasn’t been involved with Minecraft or Mojang since he sold the company to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion, many fans would still have expected him to have been involved in celebrating 10 years of Minecraft.
It appears though that Microsoft has decided to exclude Persson due to controversial comments and opinions he has previously shared on Twitter. He had received backlash previously for comments he made in support of a heterosexual pride day, as well as another tweet where he said, “It’s ok to be white.” Following his comments, “Notch” received backlash from parts of the gaming community and beyond, and it looks like these comments were enough for Microsoft to distance themselves from the Minecraft creator.
This was confirmed in comments made to Variety by a Microsoft spokesperson who stated that his views did not match those shared by Microsoft or Mojang, resulting in them making the decision to exclude him.
“His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of ‘Minecraft,” the spokesperson told Variety.
It also looks like Microsoft has been trying to distance themselves from Persson for some time as back in March, an update was released that erased any reference to “Notch” from Minecraft’s title screen.
