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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-PC_Gamer:_co-publish-20] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-PC_Gamer:_Cobalt_alpha-22] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster] | [TOKENS: 2567] |
Contents Napster Napster was an American proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared on the service was typically encoded in the MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster shut down in 2001 following a series of lawsuits and subsequently filed for bankruptcy in June 2002. The P2P model employed by Napster involved a centralized database that indexed a complete list of all songs being shared from connected clients. While effective, the service could not function without the central database, which was hosted by Napster and eventually forced to shut down. Following Napster's demise, alternative decentralized methods of P2P file-sharing emerged, including Gnutella, Freenet, FastTrack, I2P, and BitTorrent. Napster's assets were eventually acquired by Roxio, and it re-emerged as an online music store commonly known as Napster 2.0. Best Buy later purchased the service, and then went on to sell it to Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. In 2016, the original branding was restored when Rhapsody was renamed Napster. In 2022, the Napster streaming service was acquired by two Web3 companies, Hivemind and Algorand. In March 2025, Napster was sold to Infinite Reality. Origin Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. Initially, Napster was envisioned by Fanning as an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service. The service operated between June 1999 and July 2001. Its technology enabled people to easily share their MP3 files with other participants. Although the original service was shut down by court order, the Napster brand survived after the company's assets were liquidated and purchased by other companies through bankruptcy proceedings. History Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and Usenet, Napster specialized in MP3 files of music and had a user-friendly interface. At its peak, the Napster service had about 80 million registered users. Napster made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, such as older songs, unreleased recordings, studio recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings. Napster paved the way for streaming media services and transformed music into a public good for a brief time. High-speed networks in college dormitories became overloaded, with as much as 61% of external network traffic consisting of MP3 file transfers. Many colleges blocked its use for this reason, even before concerns about liability for facilitating copyright violations on campus. The service and software program began as Windows-only. However, in 2000, Black Hole Media wrote a Macintosh client called Macster. Macster was later bought by Napster and designated the official Mac Napster client ("Napster for the Mac"), at which point the Macster name was discontinued. Even before the acquisition of Macster, the Macintosh community had a variety of independently developed Napster clients. The most notable was the open source client called MacStar, released by Squirrel Software in early 2000, and Rapster, released by Overcaster Family in Brazil. The release of MacStar's source code paved the way for third-party Napster clients across all computing platforms, giving users advertisement-free music distribution options. A demo of the heavy metal band Metallica's song "I Disappear" had been circulating across the network before the song's official release. This led to it being played on several radio stations across the United States, which alerted Metallica to the presence of the leaked song, along with the fact that their entire back catalogue of studio material was also available on Napster. On April 13, 2000, they filed a lawsuit against Napster. A month later, rapper and producer Dr. Dre, who shared a litigator and legal firm with Metallica, filed a similar lawsuit after Napster refused his written request to remove his works from its service. Separately, Metallica and Dr. Dre later delivered to Napster thousands of usernames of people who they believed were pirating their songs. In March 2001, Napster settled both suits, after being shut down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a separate lawsuit from several major record labels (see below). In 2000, Madonna's single "Music" was leaked out onto the web and Napster prior to its commercial release, causing widespread media coverage. Verified Napster use peaked with 26.4 million users worldwide in February 2001. In that same month, with a court-ordered interim shut-down imminent, Napster went public with a settlement proposal which would have paid the record labels $1 billion over the next five years, with the money coming through a subscription service. In 2000, the American musical recording company A&M Records along with several other recording companies, through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), sued Napster (A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.) on grounds of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Napster was faced with the following allegations from the music industry: Napster lost the case in the District Court but then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Although it was clear that Napster could have commercially significant non-infringing uses, the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's decision. Immediately after, the District Court commanded Napster to keep track of the activities of its network and to restrict access to infringing material when informed of that material's location. Napster wasn't able to comply and thus had to close down its service in July 2001. In 2002, Napster announced that it had filed for bankruptcy and sold its assets to a third party. In a 2018 Rolling Stone article, Kirk Hammett of Metallica upheld the band's opinion that suing Napster was the "right" thing to do. Along with the accusations that Napster was hurting the sales of the record industry, some felt just the opposite, that file trading on Napster stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. Some evidence may have come in July 2000 when tracks from English rock band Radiohead's album Kid A found their way to Napster three weeks before the album's release. Unlike Madonna, Dr. Dre, or Metallica, Radiohead had never hit the top 20 in the US. Furthermore, Kid A was an album without any singles released, and received relatively little radio airplay. By the time of the album's release, the album was estimated to have been downloaded for free by millions of people worldwide, and in October 2000 Kid A captured the number one spot on the Billboard 200 sales chart in its debut week. According to Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire, the effect of Napster in this instance was isolated from other elements that could be credited for driving sales, and the album's unexpected success suggested that Napster was a good promotional tool for music. Since 2000, some musical artists, particularly those not signed to major labels and without access to traditional mass media outlets such as radio and television, said that Napster and successive Internet file-sharing networks helped get their music heard, spread word of mouth, and may have improved their sales in the long term. One such musician to publicly defend Napster as a promotional tool for independent artists was DJ Xealot, who became directly involved in the 2000 A&M Records Lawsuit. Chuck D from Public Enemy also came out and publicly supported Napster. Napster's facilitation of the transfer of copyrighted material was objected to by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which filed a lawsuit against the service on December 6, 1999. The legal action, while intended to shut down the service, brought it a great deal of publicity and an influx of millions of new users, many of whom were college students. After a failed appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, an injunction was issued on March 5, 2001, ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network. Lawrence Lessig claimed, however, that this decision made little sense from the perspective of copyright protection: "When Napster told the district court that it had developed a technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4 percent was not good enough. Napster had to push the infringements 'down to zero.' If 99.4 percent is not good enough," Lessig concluded, "then this is a war on file-sharing technologies, not a war on copyright infringement." On July 11, 2001, Napster shut down its entire network to comply with the injunction. One week later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily overturned the order from the week before and allowed Napster to resume operations, due to Napster saying it could block all but a tiny fraction of unauthorized song-swapping. On September 24, 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized uses of music, and as an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. To pay those fees, Napster attempted to convert its free service into a subscription system, and thus traffic to Napster was reduced. A prototype solution was tested in 2002: the Napster 3.0 Alpha, using the ".nap" secure file format from PlayMedia Systems and audio fingerprinting technology licensed from Relatable. Napster 3.0 was, according to many former Napster employees, ready to deploy, but it had significant trouble obtaining licenses to distribute major-label music. On May 17, 2002, Napster announced that its assets would be acquired by German media firm Bertelsmann for $85 million to transform Napster into an online music subscription service. The two companies had been collaborating since the middle of 2000 when Bertelsmann became the first major label to drop its copyright lawsuit against Napster. Pursuant to the terms of the acquisition agreement, on June 3 Napster filed for Chapter 11 protection under United States bankruptcy laws. On September 3, 2002, an American bankruptcy judge blocked the sale to Bertelsmann and forced Napster to liquidate its assets. Napster's brand and logos were acquired at a bankruptcy auction by Roxio which used them to re-brand the Pressplay music service as Napster 2.0. In September 2008, Napster was purchased by US electronics retailer Best Buy for US$121 million. On December 1, 2011, pursuant to a deal with Best Buy, Napster merged with Rhapsody, with Best Buy receiving a minority stake in Rhapsody. On July 14, 2016, Rhapsody phased out the Rhapsody brand in favor of Napster and has since branded its service internationally as Napster and expanded toward other markets by providing music on-demand as a service to other brands like the iHeartRadio app and their All Access music subscription service that provides subscribers with an on-demand music experience as well as premium radio. On August 25, 2020, Napster was sold to virtual reality concerts company MelodyVR. On May 10, 2022, Napster was sold to Hivemind and Algorand. The investor consortium also includes ATC Management, BH Digital, G20 Ventures, SkyBridge, RSE Ventures, Arrington Capital, Borderless Capital, and others. On March 25, 2025, Napster was sold for $207 million to Infinite Reality, a technology and entertainment company specializing on digital media and artificial intelligence. November 2025 saw their proposed $3B funding round collapse, raising questions about the streaming platform's viability. On January 1, 2026, the Napster music streaming service was abruptly shut down, with a software notice titled "Where are my playlists?" stating "Napster is no longer a music streaming service. We've become an AI platform for creating and experiencing music in new ways. That means the streaming catalog and playlists from the old app won't work here." In popular media See also Further reading References External links |
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Contents Las Vegas Las Vegas,[a] colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the seat of Clark County. It is the 24th-most populous city in the United States, with 641,903 residents at the 2020 census. The Las Vegas metropolitan area has an estimated 2.4 million residents and is the 29th-largest metropolitan area in the country. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. Most of these venues are located in downtown Las Vegas or on the Las Vegas Strip, which is outside city limits in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester. The Las Vegas Valley serves as the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center in Nevada. Las Vegas was settled in 1905 and officially incorporated in 1911. At the close of the 20th century, it was the most populated North American city founded within that century. Population growth has accelerated since the 1960s and into the 21st century, and between 1990 and 2000 the population increased by 85.2%. The city bills itself as the Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its luxurious and large casino-hotels. As of 2023, Las Vegas attracts over 40.8 million visitors annually, making it one of the most visited cities in the United States and consistently ranking among the world's top tourist destinations. It is the third most popular U.S. destination for business conventions and a global leader in the hospitality industry. The city's tolerance for numerous forms of adult entertainment has earned it the nickname "Sin City," and has made it a popular setting for films, literature, television programs, commercials and music videos. Toponymy In 1829, Mexican trader and explorer Antonio Armijo led a group consisting of 60 men and 100 mules along the Old Spanish Trail from modern day New Mexico to California. Along the way, the group stopped in what would become Las Vegas and noted its natural water sources, now referred to as the Las Vegas Springs, which supported extensive vegetation such as grasses and mesquite trees. The springs were a significant natural feature in the valley, with streams that supported a meadow ecosystem. This region served as the winter residence for the Southern Paiute people, who utilized the area's resources before moving to higher elevations during the summer months. The Spanish "las vegas" or "the meadows" (more precisely, lower land near a river) in English, was applied to describe the fertile lowlands near the springs. Over time, the name began to refer to the populated settlement. History Nomadic Paleo-Indians traveled to the Las Vegas area 10,000 years ago, leaving behind petroglyphs. Ancient Puebloan and Paiute tribes followed at least 2,000 years ago. A young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera is credited as the first non-Native American to encounter the valley, in 1829. Trader Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party along the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles, California, in 1829. In 1844, John C. Frémont arrived, and his writings helped lure pioneers to the area. Downtown Las Vegas's Fremont Street is named after him. Eleven years later, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chose Las Vegas as the site to build a fort halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, where they would travel to gather supplies. The fort was abandoned several years afterward. The remainder of this Old Mormon Fort can still be seen at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue.[citation needed] Las Vegas was founded as a city in 1905, when 110 acres (45 ha) of land adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks were auctioned in what would become the downtown area. In 1911, Las Vegas was incorporated as a city. The year 1931 was pivotal for Las Vegas. At that time, Nevada legalized casino gambling and reduced residency requirements for divorce to six weeks. This year also witnessed the beginning of construction of the tunnels of nearby Hoover Dam. The influx of construction workers and their families helped Las Vegas avoid economic calamity during the Great Depression. The construction work was completed in 1935. In late 1941, Las Vegas Army Airfield was established. Renamed Nellis Air Force Base in 1950, it is now home to the United States Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic team. Following World War II, lavishly decorated hotels, gambling casinos, and big-name entertainment became synonymous with Las Vegas. In 1951, nuclear weapons testing began at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles (105 km) northwest of Las Vegas. During this time, the city was nicknamed the "Atomic City". Residents and visitors were able to witness the mushroom clouds (and were exposed to the fallout) until 1963 when the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty required that nuclear tests be moved underground. In 1955, the Moulin Rouge Hotel opened and became the first racially integrated casino-hotel in Las Vegas. In 1995, the Fremont Street Experience opened in Las Vegas's downtown area. This canopied five-block area features 12.5 million LED lights and 550,000 watts of sound from dusk until midnight during shows held at the top of each hour.[citation needed] Due to the realization of many revitalization efforts, 2012 was dubbed "The Year of Downtown". Projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars made their debut at this time, including the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the Discovery Children's Museum, the Mob Museum, the Neon Museum, a new City Hall complex, and renovations for a new Zappos.com corporate headquarters in the old City Hall building. Geography Las Vegas is situated in a basin on the floor of the Mojave Desert, and is surrounded by mountain ranges. Much of the landscape is rocky and arid, with desert vegetation and wildlife. It can be subjected to torrential flash floods, although much has been done to mitigate the effects of flash floods through improved drainage systems. The city's elevation is approximately 2,030 ft (620 m) above sea level, though the surrounding peaks reach elevations of over 10,000 feet (3,000 m) and act as barriers to the strong flow of moisture from the surrounding area. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 135.86 sq mi (351.9 km2), of which 135.81 sq mi (351.7 km2) is land and 0.05 sq mi (0.13 km2) (0.03%) is water. After Alaska and California, Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the U.S. It has been estimated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) that over the next 50 years, there is a 10–20% chance of an M6.0 or greater earthquake occurring within 50 km (31 mi) of Las Vegas. Within the city are many lawns, trees, and other greenery. Due to water resource issues, there has been a movement to encourage xeriscapes. Another part of conservation efforts is scheduled watering days for residential landscaping. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant in 2008 funded a program that analyzed and forecast growth and environmental effects through 2019. Las Vegas has a subtropical hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification: BWh, Trewartha climate classification BWhk), typical of the Mojave Desert in which it lies. This climate is typified by long, extremely hot summers; warm transitional seasons; and short winters with mild days and cool nights. There is abundant sunshine throughout the year, with an average of 310 sunny days and bright sunshine during 86% of all daylight hours. Rainfall is scarce, with an average of 4.2 in (110 mm) dispersed between roughly 26 total rainy days per year. Las Vegas is among the sunniest, driest, and least humid locations in North America, with exceptionally low dew points and humidity that sometimes remains below 10%. The summer months of June through September are extremely hot, though moderated by the low humidity levels. July is the hottest month, with an average daytime high of 104.5 °F (40.3 °C). On average, 137 days per year reach or exceed 90 °F (32 °C), of which 78 days reach 100 °F (38 °C) and 10 days reach 110 °F (43 °C). During the peak intensity of summer, overnight lows frequently remain above 80 °F (27 °C), and occasionally above 85 °F (29 °C). While most summer days are consistently hot, dry, and cloudless, the North American Monsoon sporadically interrupts this pattern and brings more cloud cover, thunderstorms, lightning, increased humidity, and brief spells of heavy rain. Potential monsoons affect Las Vegas between July and August. Summer in Las Vegas is marked by significant diurnal temperature variation. While less extreme than other parts of the state, nighttime lows in Las Vegas are often 30 °F (16.7 °C) or more lower than daytime highs. The average hottest night of the year is 90 °F (32 °C). The all-time record is at 95 °F (35 °C). Las Vegas winters are relatively short, with typically mild daytime temperatures and chilly nights. Sunshine is abundant in all seasons. December is both the year's coolest and cloudiest month, with an average daytime high of 56.9 °F (13.8 °C) and sunshine occurring during 78% of its daylight hours. Winter evenings are defined by clear skies and swift drops in temperature after sunset, with overnight minima averaging around 40 °F (4.4 °C) in December and January. Owing to its elevation that ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 feet (610 to 910 m), Las Vegas experiences markedly cooler winters than other areas of the Mojave Desert and the adjacent Sonoran Desert that are closer to sea level. The city records freezing temperatures an average of 10 nights per winter. It is exceptionally rare for temperatures to reach or fall below 25 °F (−4 °C). Most of the annual precipitation falls during the winter. February, the wettest month, averages only four days of measurable rain. The mountains immediately surrounding the Las Vegas Valley accumulate snow every winter, but significant accumulation within the city is rare, although moderate accumulations occur every few years. The most recent accumulations occurred on February 18, 2019, when parts of the city received about 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5.1 cm) of snow and on February 20 when the city received almost 0.5 inches (1.3 cm). Other recent significant snow accumulations occurred on December 25, 2015, and December 17, 2008. Unofficially, Las Vegas's largest snowfall on record was the 12 inches (30 cm) that fell in 1909. In recent times, ice days have not occurred, although 29 °F (−2 °C) was measured in 1963. On average the coldest day is 44 °F (7 °C). The highest temperature officially observed for Las Vegas is 120 °F (48.9 °C), as measured at Harry Reid International Airport on July 7, 2024. The lowest temperature was 8 °F (−13 °C), recorded on two days: January 25, 1937, and January 13, 1963. The official record hot daily minimum is 95 °F (35 °C) on July 19, 2005, and July 1, 2013. The official record cold daily maximum is 28 °F (−2 °C) on January 8 and 21, 1937. July 2024 was the hottest month ever recorded in Las Vegas, with its highest recorded mean daily average temperature over the month of 99.9 °F (38 °C), its highest recorded mean daily maximum temperature of 111.5 °F (44 °C), and its highest recorded mean nightly minimum temperature of 88.3 °F (31 °C). Due to concerns about climate change in the wake of a 2002 drought, daily water consumption has been reduced from 314 US gallons (1,190 L) per resident in 2003 to around 205 US gallons (780 L) in 2015. See or edit raw graph data. Demographics According to the 2020 United States census, the city of Las Vegas had 644,883 people living in 244,429 households. The racial composition of the City of Las Vegas was 49.2% white, 11.9% black, 1.1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.9% Asian, Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 34.1% and 16.2% from two or more races. 40.8% were non-Hispanic white. Approximately 5.8% of residents are under the age of five, 22.8% under the age of eighteen and 15.6% over 65 years old. Females are 50.0% of the total population. From 2019 to 2023, Las Vegas had approximately 244,429 households, with an average of 2.63 persons per household. About 55.7% of housing units were owner-occupied, and the median value of owner-occupied housing was $395,300. Median gross rent during this period was $1,456 per month (in 2023 dollars). The median household income in Las Vegas from 2019 to 2023 was $70,723, while the per capita income was $38,421 (in 2023 dollars). Approximately 14.2% of the population lived below the poverty line during the same period. Residents over 25 years old with a high school diploma were 85.8% of the population with 27.3% having attained a bachelor's degree or higher. About 33.0% of residents aged 5 and older speak a language other than English at home. 20.9% of residents are foreign-born. The mean travel time to work for residents aged 16 and older was approximately 25.8 minutes between 2019 and 2023. The vast majority of households in Las Vegas are digitally connected, with 95.6% having a computer and 89.1% subscribing to broadband internet services. The largest ancestries in Las Vegas Valley/Clark County were Mexican (23.2%), German (7.4%), Filipino (6.8%), English (6.8%), Irish (6.2%), and Italian (4.5%). As of 2023[update], Native Hawaiians numbered around 22,000 in the metropolitan area, the largest Hawaiian population outside Hawaii. As a result, Las Vegas has been nicknamed the "ninth island of Hawaii." According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of residents throughout Las Vegas Valley/Clark County are Christian (61%) with Catholics as the largest denomination (22%), followed by evangelical (19%), mainline protestants (9%), and members of historically Black protestant churches (6%). 6% of residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Agnostic (10%) and Atheist (3%) are the largest groups of residents who are unaffiliated with a religion, which overall represent 34% of the population. Other religious groups, such as Judaism (1%), Islam (2%), and Buddhism (1%) together compose about 5% of the population. According to a 2004 study, Las Vegas has one of the highest divorce rates This is partly due to residents of states with more restrictive divorce laws traveling to Nevada, and in particular to Las Vegas, to get divorced. As of 2022[update], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified Nevada as a whole as having the highest divorce rate in the United States, with 4.4. divorces per 1,000 marriages. This is down from 11.4 divorces per 1,000 marriages in 1990 and is part of a national trend of fewer divorces. Nevada marriage requirements are equally lax resulting in one of the highest marriage rates of U.S. cities, with many licenses issued to people from outside the area. According to the 2010 Census, the city of Las Vegas had a population of 583,756. The city's racial composition had shifted slightly, with 47.91% of the population identifying as White alone (non-Hispanic), 10.63% as Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic), 0.41% as Native American or Alaska Native alone (non-Hispanic), 5.93% as Asian alone (non-Hispanic), 0.53% as Pacific Islander alone (non-Hispanic), 0.19% as Other Race alone (non-Hispanic), and 2.91% as Mixed race or Multiracial (non-Hispanic). Hispanic or Latino individuals of any race represented 31.50% of the population. According to the 2000 census, Las Vegas had a population of 474,434 people. The racial makeup of the city was 58.52% White alone (non-Hispanic), 10.19% Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic), 0.51% Native American or Alaska Native alone (non-Hispanic), 4.72% Asian alone (non-Hispanic), 0.41% Pacific Islander alone (non-Hispanic), 0.14% Other Race alone (non-Hispanic), and 2.52% Mixed race or Multiracial (non-Hispanic). Hispanic or Latino individuals of any race made up 23.81% of the population. Economy The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming, and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries. The major attractions in Las Vegas are the casinos and the hotels, although in recent years other new attractions have begun to emerge.[citation needed] Most casinos in the downtown area are on Fremont Street, with The STRAT Hotel, Casino & Skypod as one of the few exceptions. Fremont East, adjacent to the Fremont Street Experience, was granted variances to allow bars to be closer together, similar to the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, the goal being to attract a different demographic than the Strip attracts.[citation needed] The Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, downtown along the Fremont Street Experience, is the oldest continuously operating hotel and casino in Las Vegas; it opened in 1906 as the Hotel Nevada. In 1931, the Northern Club (now the La Bayou) opened. The most notable of the early casinos may have been Binion's Horseshoe (now Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel) while it was run by Benny Binion.[citation needed] Boyd Gaming has a major presence downtown operating the California Hotel & Casino, the Fremont Hotel & Casino, and the Main Street Casino. The Four Queens also operates downtown along the Fremont Street Experience.[citation needed] Downtown casinos that have undergone major renovations and revitalization in recent years include the Golden Nugget Las Vegas, The D Las Vegas (formerly Fitzgerald's), the Downtown Grand Las Vegas (formerly Lady Luck), the El Cortez Hotel & Casino, and the Plaza Hotel & Casino. In 2020, Circa Resort & Casino opened, becoming the first all-new hotel-casino to be built on Fremont Street since 1980. The center of the gambling and entertainment industry is the Las Vegas Strip, outside the city limits in the surrounding unincorporated communities of Paradise and Winchester in Clark County. Some of the largest casinos and buildings are there. In 1929, the city installed a welcome arch over Fremont Street, at the corner of Main Street. It remained in place until 1931. In 1959, the 25-foot-tall (7.6 m) Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was installed at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. A replica welcome sign, standing nearly 16 feet (4.9 m) tall, was installed within city limits in 2002, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Fourth Street. The replica was destroyed in 2016, when a pickup truck crashed into it. In 2018, the city approved plans for a new gateway landmark in the form of neon arches. It was built within city limits, in front of the Strat resort and north of Sahara Avenue. The project, built by YESCO, cost $6.5 million and stands 80 feet (24 m) high. Officially known as the Gateway Arches, the project was completed in 2020. The steel arches are blue during the day, and light up in a variety of colors at night. Also located just north of the Strat are a pair of giant neon showgirls, initially added in 2018 as part of a $400,000 welcome display. The original showgirls were 25 feet (7.6 m) tall, but were replaced by new ones in 2022, rising 50 feet (15 m). The originals were refurbished following weather damage and installed at the Las Vegas Arts District. When The Mirage opened in 1989, it started a trend of major resort development on the Las Vegas Strip outside the city. This resulted in a drop in tourism in the downtown area, but many recent projects have increased the number of visitors to downtown.[citation needed] An effort has been made by city officials to diversify the economy by attracting health-related, high-tech and other commercial interests. No state tax for individuals or corporations, as well as a lack of other forms of business-related taxes, have aided the success of these efforts. The Fremont Street Experience was built in an effort to draw tourists back to the area and has been popular since its startup in 1995.[citation needed] The city conducted a land-swap deal in 2000 with Lehman Brothers, acquiring 61 acres (25 ha) of property near downtown Las Vegas in exchange for 91 acres (37 ha) of the Las Vegas Technology Center. In 2004, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman announced that the area would become home to Symphony Park (originally called "Union Park"), a mixed-use development. The development is home to the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the Discovery Children's Museum, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and four residential projects totaling 600 residential units as of 2024. In 2005, the World Market Center opened, consisting of three large buildings taking up 5,400,000 square feet (500,000 m2). Trade shows for the furniture and furnishing industries are held there semiannually. Also nearby is the Las Vegas North Premium Outlets. With a second expansion, completed in May 2015, the mall currently offers 175 stores. City offices moved to a new Las Vegas City Hall in February 2013 on downtown's Main Street. The former city hall building is now occupied by the corporate headquarters for the online retailer Zappos.com, which opened downtown in 2013. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh took an interest in the urban area and contributed $350 million toward a revitalization effort called the Downtown Project. Projects funded include Las Vegas's first independent bookstore, The Writer's Block. A number of new industries have moved to Las Vegas in recent decades. Zappos.com (now an Amazon subsidiary) was founded in San Francisco but by 2013 had moved its headquarters to downtown Las Vegas. Allegiant Air, a low-cost air carrier, launched in 1997 with its first hub at Harry Reid International Airport and headquarters in nearby Summerlin.[citation needed] Planet 13 Holdings, a cannabis company, opened the world's largest cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas at 112,000 sq ft (10,400 m2). A growing population means the Las Vegas Valley used 1.2 billion US gal (4.5 billion L) more water in 2014 than in 2011. Although water conservation efforts implemented in the wake of a 2002 drought have had some success, local water consumption remains 30 percent greater than in Los Angeles, and over three times that of San Francisco metropolitan area residents. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is building a $1.4 billion tunnel and pumping station to bring water from Lake Mead, has purchased water rights throughout Nevada, and has planned a controversial $3.2 billion pipeline across half the state. By law, the Las Vegas Water Service District "may deny any request for a water commitment or request for a water connection if the District has an inadequate supply of water." But limiting growth on the basis of an inadequate water supply has been unpopular with the casino and building industries. Culture The city is home to several museums, including the Neon Museum (the location for many of the historical signs from Las Vegas's mid-20th century heyday), The Mob Museum, the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, the Discovery Children's Museum, the Nevada State Museum and the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park.[citation needed] The city's extensive Downtown Arts District hosts numerous galleries and events, including the annual Las Vegas Film Festival. "First Friday" is a monthly celebration that includes arts, music, special presentations and food in a section of the city's downtown region called 18b, The Las Vegas Arts District. The festival extends into the Fremont East Entertainment District. The Thursday evening before First Friday is known in the arts district as "Preview Thursday," which highlights new gallery exhibitions throughout the district. The Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts is a Grammy award-winning magnet school located in downtown Las Vegas. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts is downtown in Symphony Park and hosts various Broadway shows and other artistic performances.[citation needed] Las Vegas has earned the moniker "Gambling Capital of the World," as it has the world's most land-based casinos. The city is also host to more AAA Five Diamond hotels than any other city in the world. Sports The Las Vegas Valley is the home of three major professional teams: the National Hockey League (NHL)'s Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion team that began play in the 2017–18 NHL season at T-Mobile Arena in nearby Paradise, the National Football League (NFL)'s Las Vegas Raiders, who relocated from Oakland, California, in 2020 and play at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s Las Vegas Aces, who play at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. The Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB) will move to Las Vegas by 2028. Two minor league sports teams play in the Las Vegas area. The Las Vegas Aviators of the Pacific Coast League, the Triple-A farm club of the Athletics, play at Las Vegas Ballpark in nearby Summerlin. The Las Vegas Lights FC of the United Soccer League play in Cashman Field in Downtown Las Vegas. The Las Vegas metropolitan area has been the site of many prominent combat sports events, such as boxing and MMA, with Las Vegas being considered by many as the "fight capital of the world". The mixed martial arts promotion, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), is headquartered in Las Vegas and also frequently holds fights in the city at T-Mobile Arena and at the UFC Apex training facility near the headquarters. North of Las Vegas is the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a 1.5 mile tri-oval constructed in 1972 that hosts two NASCAR Cup Series races each year, one in the spring and a playoff race in the fall. Parks and recreation The city's parks and recreation department operates 78 regional, community, neighborhood, and pocket parks; four municipal swimming pools, 11 recreational centers, four active adult centers, eight cultural centers, six galleries, eleven dog parks, and four golf courses: Angel Park Golf Club, Desert Pines Golf Club, Durango Hills Golf Club, and the Las Vegas Municipal Golf Course. It is also responsible for 123 playgrounds, 23 softball fields, 10 football fields, 44 soccer fields, 10 dog parks, six community centers, four senior centers, 109 skate parks, and six swimming pools. Government The city of Las Vegas has a council–manager government. The mayor sits as a council member-at-large and presides over all city council meetings. If the mayor cannot preside over a city council meeting, then the Mayor pro tempore is the presiding officer of the meeting until the Mayor returns to his/her seat. The city manager is responsible for the administration and the day-to-day operations of all municipal services and city departments. The city manager maintains intergovernmental relationships with federal, state, county and other local governments. Out of the 2,265,461 people in Clark County as of the 2020 Census, approximately 1,030,000 people live in unincorporated Clark County, and around 650,000 live in incorporated cities such as North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City. Las Vegas and Clark County share a police department, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which was formed after a 1973 merger of the Las Vegas Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff's Department. North Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Mesquite, UNLV and CCSD have their own police departments. The federally-recognized Las Vegas Tribe of Paiute Indians (Southern Paiute: Nuvagantucimi) occupies a 31-acre (130,000 m2) reservation just north downtown between Interstate-15 and Main Street. Downtown is the location of Lloyd D. George Federal District Courthouse and the Regional Justice Center, draws numerous companies providing bail, marriage, divorce, tax, incorporation and other legal services. Politics Las Vegas City Presidential Election Results Education Primary and secondary public education is provided by the Clark County School District. Public higher education is provided by the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE). Public institutions serving Las Vegas include the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the College of Southern Nevada (CSN), Nevada State University (NSU), and the Desert Research Institute (DRI). UNLV is a public, land-grant, R1 research university and is home to the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine and the William S. Boyd School of Law, the only law school in Nevada. The university's campus is urban and located about two miles east of the Las Vegas strip. The Desert Research Institute's southern campus sits next to UNLV, while its northern campus is in Reno. CSN, with campuses throughout Clark County, is a community college with one of the largest enrollments in the United States. In unincorporated Clark County, CSN's Charleston campus is home to the headquarters of Nevada Public Radio (KNPR), an NPR member station. Touro University Nevada located in Henderson is a non-profit, private institution primarily focusing on medical education. Other institutions include a number of for-profit private schools (e.g., Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and Carrington College, among others). Media Las Vegas is served by 10 full power television stations and 46 radio stations. The area is also served by two NOAA Weather Radio transmitters (162.55 MHz located in Boulder City and 162.40 MHz located on Potosi Mountain). Transportation RTC Transit is a public transportation system providing bus service throughout Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and other areas of the valley. Inter-city bus service to and from Las Vegas is provided by Greyhound, BoltBus, Orange Belt Stages, Tufesa, and several smaller carriers. Amtrak trains have not served Las Vegas since the service via the Desert Wind at Las Vegas station ceased in 1997, but Amtrak California operates Amtrak Thruway dedicated service between the city and its passenger rail stations in Bakersfield, California, as well as Los Angeles Union Station via Barstow. High-speed rail project Brightline West began construction in 2024 to connect Brightline's Las Vegas station and the Rancho Cucamonga station in Greater Los Angeles. The Las Vegas Monorail on the Strip was privately built, and upon bankruptcy taken over by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Silver Rider Transit operates three routes within Las Vegas, offering connections to Laughlin, Mesquite, and Sandy Valley. The Union Pacific Railroad is the only Class I railroad providing rail freight service to the city. Until 1997, the Amtrak Desert Wind train service ran through Las Vegas using the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. In March 2010, the RTC launched bus rapid transit link in Las Vegas called the Strip & Downtown Express with limited stops and frequent service that connects downtown Las Vegas, the Strip and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Shortly after the launch, the RTC dropped the ACE name. In 2016, 77.1 percent of working Las Vegas residents (those living in the city, but not necessarily working in the city) commuted by driving alone. About 11 percent commuted via carpool, 3.9 percent used public transportation, and 1.4 percent walked. About 2.3 percent of Las Vegas commuters used all other forms of transportation, including taxi, bicycle, and motorcycle. About 4.3% of working Las Vegas residents worked at home. In 2015, 10.2 percent of city of Las Vegas households were without a car, which increased slightly to 10.5 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Las Vegas averaged 1.63 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household. With some exceptions, including Las Vegas Boulevard, Boulder Highway (SR 582) and Rancho Drive (SR 599), the majority of surface streets in Las Vegas are laid out in a grid along Public Land Survey System section lines. Many are maintained by the Nevada Department of Transportation as state highways. The street numbering system is divided by the following streets: Interstates 15, 11, and US 95 lead out of the city in four directions. Two major freeways – I-15 and I-11/US 95 – cross in downtown Las Vegas. I-15 connects Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and heads northeast to and beyond Salt Lake City. I-11 goes northwest to the Las Vegas Paiute Indian Reservation and southeast to Henderson and to the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, where from this point I-11 will eventually continue along US 93 towards Phoenix. US 95 (and eventually I-11) connects the city to northwestern Nevada, including Carson City and Reno. US 93 splits from I-15 northeast of Las Vegas and goes north through the eastern part of the state, serving Ely and Wells. US 95 heads south from US 93 near Henderson through far eastern California. A partial beltway has been built, consisting of I-215 on the south and Clark County 215 on the west and north. Other radial routes include Blue Diamond Road (SR 160) to Pahrump and Lake Mead Boulevard (SR 147) to Lake Mead. East–west roads, north to south Harry Reid International Airport handles international and domestic flights into the Las Vegas Valley. The airport also serves private aircraft and freight/cargo flights. Most general aviation traffic uses the smaller North Las Vegas Airport and Henderson Executive Airport. Notable people See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital] | [TOKENS: 10169] |
Contents Venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology. Pre-seed and seed rounds are the initial stages of funding for a startup company, typically occurring early in its development. During a seed round, entrepreneurs seek investment from angel investors, venture capital firms, or other sources to finance the initial operations and development of their business idea. Seed funding is often used to validate the concept, build a prototype, or conduct market research. This initial capital injection is crucial for startups to kickstart their journey and attract further investment in subsequent funding rounds. Typical venture capital investments occur after an initial "seed funding" round. The first round of institutional venture capital to fund growth is called the Series A round. Venture capitalists provide this financing in the interest of generating a return through an eventual "exit" event, such as the company selling shares to the public for the first time in an initial public offering (IPO), or disposal of shares happening via a merger, via a sale to another entity such as a financial buyer in the private equity secondary market or via a sale to a trading company such as a competitor. In addition to angel investing, equity crowdfunding and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering. In exchange for the high risk that venture capitalists assume by investing in smaller and early-stage companies, venture capitalists usually get significant control over company decisions, in addition to a significant portion of the companies' ownership (and consequently value). Companies who have reached a market valuation of over $1 billion are referred to as unicorns. As of May 2024, there were a reported total of 1248 unicorn companies. Venture capitalists also often provide strategic advice to the company's executives on its business model and marketing strategies. History Before World War II (1939–1945) venture capital was primarily the domain of wealthy individuals and families. J.P. Morgan, the Wallenbergs, the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Rockefellers, and the Warburgs were notable investors in private companies. In 1938, Laurance S. Rockefeller helped finance the creation of both Eastern Air Lines and Douglas Aircraft, and the Rockefeller family had vast holdings in a variety of companies. Eric M. Warburg founded E.M. Warburg & Co. in 1938, which would ultimately become Warburg Pincus, with investments in both leveraged buyouts and venture capital. The Wallenberg family started Investor AB in 1916 in Sweden and were early investors in several Swedish companies such as ABB, Atlas Copco, and Ericsson in the first half of the 20th century. Only after 1945 did "true" venture capital investment firms begin to emerge, notably with the founding of American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) and J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946. Georges Doriot, the "father of venture capitalism", along with Ralph Flanders and Karl Compton (former president of MIT) founded ARDC in 1946 to encourage private-sector investment in businesses run by soldiers returning from World War II. ARDC became the first institutional private-equity investment firm to raise capital from sources other than wealthy families. Unlike most present-day venture capital firms, ARDC was a publicly traded company. ARDC's most successful investment was its 1957 funding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which would later be valued at more than $355 million after its initial public offering in 1968. This represented a return of over 1200 times its investment and an annualized rate of return of 101% to ARDC. Former employees of ARDC went on to establish several prominent venture capital firms including Greylock Partners, founded in 1965 by Charlie Waite and Bill Elfers; Morgan, Holland Ventures, the predecessor of Flagship Ventures, founded in 1982 by James Morgan; Fidelity Ventures, now Volition Capital, founded in 1969 by Henry Hoagland; and Charles River Ventures, founded in 1970 by Richard Burnes. ARDC continued investing until 1971, when Doriot retired. In 1972 Doriot merged ARDC with Textron after having invested in over 150 companies. John Hay Whitney (1904–1982) and his partner Benno Schmidt (1913–1999) founded J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946. Whitney had been investing since the 1930s, founding Pioneer Pictures in 1933 and acquiring a 15% interest in Technicolor Corporation with his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. Florida Foods Corporation proved Whitney's most famous investment. The company developed an innovative method for delivering nutrition to American soldiers, later known as Minute Maid orange juice and was sold to The Coca-Cola Company in 1960. J.H. Whitney & Company continued to make investments in leveraged buyout transactions and raised $750 million for its sixth institutional private-equity fund in 2005.[citation needed] One of the first steps toward a professionally managed venture capital industry was the passage of the Small Business Investment Act of 1958. The 1958 Act officially allowed the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to license private "Small Business Investment Companies" (SBICs) to help the financing and management of the small entrepreneurial businesses in the United States. The Small Business Investment Act of 1958 provided tax breaks that helped contribute to the rise of private-equity firms. During the 1950s, putting a venture capital deal together may have required the help of two or three other organizations to complete the transaction. It was a business that was growing very rapidly, and as the business grew, the transactions grew exponentially. Arthur Rock, one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley during his venturing the Fairchild Semiconductor is often credited with the introduction of the term "venture capitalist" that has since become widely accepted. During the 1960s and 1970s, venture capital firms concentrated their investments mainly on launching and growing companies. These companies frequently capitalized on breakthroughs in electronic, medical, or data-processing technologies. As a result, venture capital came to be almost synonymous with financing of technology ventures. An early West Coast venture capital company was Draper and Johnson Investment Company, formed in 1962 by William Henry Draper III and Franklin P. Johnson, Jr. In 1965, Sutter Hill Ventures acquired the portfolio of Draper and Johnson as a founding action. Bill Draper and Paul Wythes were the founders, and Pitch Johnson formed Asset Management Company at that time. It was also in the 1960s that the common form of private-equity fund, still in use today, emerged. Private-equity firms organized limited partnerships to hold investments in which the investment professionals served as general partner and the investors, who were passive limited partners, put up the capital. The compensation structure, still in use today, also emerged with limited partners paying an annual management fee of 1.0–2.5% and a carried interest typically representing up to 20% of the profits of the partnership. In the 1970's, the US Government made two significant changes fuelling growth of Venture Capital firms: The growth of the venture capital industry was fueled by the emergence of the independent investment firms on Sand Hill Road, beginning with Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital in 1972. Located in Menlo Park, California, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia and later venture capital firms would have access to the many semiconductor companies based in the Santa Clara Valley as well as early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies.[note 1] Kleiner Perkins was the first venture capital firm to open an office on Sand Hill Road in 1972. Throughout the 1970s, a group of private-equity firms, focused primarily on venture capital investments, would be founded that would become the model for later leveraged buyout and venture capital investment firms. In 1973, with the number of new venture capital firms increasing, leading venture capitalists formed the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The NVCA was to serve as the industry trade group for the venture capital industry. Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund. It was not until 1978 that venture capital experienced its first major fundraising year, as the industry raised approximately $750 million. With the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974, corporate pension funds were prohibited from holding certain risky investments including many investments in privately held companies. In 1978, the US Labor Department relaxed certain restrictions of the ERISA, under the "prudent man rule"[note 2], thus allowing corporate pension funds to invest in the asset class and providing a major source of capital available to venture capitalists. The public successes of the venture capital industry in the 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Inc., Genentech) gave rise to a major proliferation of venture capital investment firms. From just a few dozen firms at the start of the decade, there were over 650 firms by the end of the 1980s, each searching for the next major "home run". The number of firms multiplied, and the capital managed by these firms increased from $3 billion to $31 billion over the course of the decade. The growth of the industry was hampered by sharply declining returns, and certain venture firms began posting losses for the first time. In addition to the increased competition among firms, several other factors affected returns. The market for initial public offerings cooled in the mid-1980s before collapsing after the stock market crash in 1987, and foreign corporations, particularly from Japan and Korea, flooded early-stage companies with capital. In response to the changing conditions, corporations that had sponsored in-house venture investment arms, including General Electric and Paine Webber either sold off or closed these venture capital units. Additionally, venture capital units within Chemical Bank and Continental Illinois National Bank, among others, began shifting their focus from funding early stage companies toward investments in more mature companies. Even industry founders J.H. Whitney & Company and Warburg Pincus began to transition toward leveraged buyouts and growth capital investments. By the end of the 1980s, venture capital returns were relatively low, particularly in comparison with their emerging leveraged buyout cousins, due in part to the competition for hot startups, excess supply of IPOs and the inexperience of many venture capital fund managers. Growth in the venture capital industry remained limited throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, increasing from $3 billion in 1983 to just over $4 billion more than a decade later in 1994. The advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s reinvigorated venture capital as investors saw companies with huge potential being formed. Netscape and Amazon (company) were founded in 1994, and Yahoo! in 1995. All were funded by venture capital. Internet IPOs—AOL in 1992; Netcom in 1994; UUNet, Spyglass and Netscape in 1995; Lycos, Excite, Yahoo!, CompuServe, Infoseek, C/NET, and E*Trade in 1996; and Amazon, ONSALE, Go2Net, N2K, NextLink, and SportsLine in 1997—generated enormous returns for their venture capital investors. These returns, and the performance of the companies post-IPO, caused a rush of money into venture capital, increasing the number of venture capital funds raised from about 40 in 1991 to more than 400 in 2000, and the amount of money committed to the sector from $1.5 billion in 1991 to more than $90 billion in 2000. The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 caused many venture capital firms to fail and financial results in the sector to decline.[citation needed] The Nasdaq crash and technology slump that started in March 2000 shook virtually the entire venture capital industry as valuations for startup technology companies collapsed. Over the next two years, many venture firms had been forced to write-off large proportions of their investments, and many funds were significantly "under water" (the values of the fund's investments were below the amount of capital invested). Venture capital investors sought to reduce the size of commitments they had made to venture capital funds, and, in numerous instances, investors sought to unload existing commitments for cents on the dollar in the secondary market. By mid-2003, the venture capital industry had shriveled to about half its 2001 capacity. Nevertheless, PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree Survey shows that total venture capital investments held steady at 2003 levels through the second quarter of 2005.[citation needed] Although the post-boom years represent just a small fraction of the peak levels of venture investment reached in 2000, they still represent an increase over the levels of investment from 1980 through 1995. As a percentage of GDP, venture investment was 0.058% in 1994, peaked at 1.087% (nearly 19 times the 1994 level) in 2000 and ranged from 0.164% to 0.182% in 2003 and 2004. The revival of an Internet-driven environment in 2004 through 2007 helped to revive the venture capital environment. However, as a percentage of the overall private-equity market, venture capital has still not reached its mid-1990s level, let alone its peak in 2000.[citation needed] Venture capital funds, which were responsible for much of the fundraising volume in 2000 (the height of the dot-com bubble), raised only $25.1 billion in 2006, a 2% decline from 2005 and a significant decline from its peak. The decline continued till their fortunes started to turn around in 2010 with $21.8 billion invested (not raised). The industry continued to show phenomenal growth and in 2020 hit $80 billion in fresh capital. Again, in 2022, there was a brief decline in venture capital access, but it has since recovered due to strong networks powering venture investment. Financing Obtaining venture capital is substantially different from raising debt or a loan. Lenders have a legal right to interest on a loan and repayment of the capital irrespective of the success or failure of a business. Venture capital is invested in exchange for an equity stake in the business. The return of the venture capitalist as a shareholder depends on the growth and profitability of the business. This return is generally earned when the venture capitalist "exits" by selling its shareholdings when the business is sold to another owner. Venture capitalists are typically very selective in deciding what to invest in, with a Stanford survey of venture capitalists revealing that 100 companies were considered for every company receiving financing. Ventures receiving financing must demonstrate an excellent management team, a large potential market, and most importantly high growth potential, as only such opportunities are likely capable of providing financial returns and a successful exit within the required time frame (typically 8–12 years) that venture capitalists expect. Because investments are illiquid and require the extended time frame to harvest, venture capitalists are expected to carry out detailed due diligence prior to investment. Venture capitalists also are expected to nurture the companies in which they invest, in order to increase the likelihood of reaching an IPO stage when valuations are favourable. Venture capitalists typically assist at four stages in the company's development: Because there are no public exchanges listing their securities, private companies meet venture capital firms and other private-equity investors in several ways, including warm referrals from the investors' trusted sources and other business contacts; investor conferences and symposia; and summits where companies pitch directly to investor groups in face-to-face meetings, including a variant known as "Speed Venturing", which is akin to speed-dating for capital, where the investor decides within 10 minutes whether he wants a follow-up meeting. In addition, some new private online networks are emerging to provide additional opportunities for meeting investors. This need for high returns makes venture funding an expensive capital source for companies, and most suitable for businesses having large up-front capital requirements, which cannot be financed by cheaper alternatives such as debt. That is most commonly the case for intangible assets such as software, and other intellectual property, whose value is unproven. In turn, this explains why venture capital is most prevalent in the fast-growing technology and life sciences or biotechnology fields. If a company does have the qualities venture capitalists seek including a solid business plan, a good management team, investment and passion from the founders, a good potential to exit the investment before the end of their funding cycle, and target minimum returns in excess of 40% per year, it will find it easier to raise venture capital.[citation needed] There are multiple stages of venture financing offered in venture capital, that roughly correspond to these stages of a company's development. In early stage and growth stage financings, venture-backed companies may also seek to take venture debt. Firms and funds A venture capitalist, or sometimes simply called a capitalist, is a person who makes capital investments in companies in exchange for an equity stake. The venture capitalist is often expected to bring managerial and technical expertise, as well as capital, to their investments. A venture capital fund refers to a pooled investment vehicle (in the United States, often an LP or LLC) that primarily invests the financial capital of third-party investors in enterprises that are too risky for the standard capital markets or bank loans. These funds are typically managed by a venture capital firm, which often employs individuals with technology backgrounds (scientists, researchers), business training and/or deep industry experience. A core skill within VCs is the ability to identify novel or disruptive technologies that have the potential to generate high commercial returns at an early stage. By definition, VCs also take a role in managing entrepreneurial companies at an early stage, thus adding skills as well as capital, thereby differentiating VC from buy-out private equity, which typically invest in companies with proven revenue, and thereby potentially realizing much higher rates of returns. Inherent in realizing abnormally high rates of returns is the risk of losing all of one's investment in a given startup company. As a consequence, most venture capital investments are done in a pool format, where several investors combine their investments into one large fund that invests in many different startup companies. By investing in the pool format, the investors are spreading out their risk to many different investments instead of taking the chance of putting all of their money in one start up firm. Venture capital firms are typically structured as partnerships, the general partners of which serve as the managers of the firm and will serve as investment advisors to the venture capital funds raised. Venture capital firms in the United States may also be structured as limited liability companies, in which case the firm's managers are known as managing members. Investors in venture capital funds are known as limited partners. This constituency comprises both high-net-worth individuals and institutions with large amounts of available capital, such as state and private pension funds, university financial endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and pooled investment vehicles, called funds of funds. Venture capitalist firms differ in their motivations and approaches. There are multiple factors, and each firm is different. Venture capital funds are generally three in types: Some of the factors that influence VC decisions include: Within the venture capital industry, the general partners and other investment professionals of the venture capital firm are often referred to as "venture capitalists" or "VCs". Typical career backgrounds vary, but, broadly speaking, venture capitalists come from either an operational or a finance background. Venture capitalists with an operational background (operating partner) tend to be former founders or executives of companies similar to those which the partnership finances or will have served as management consultants. Venture capitalists with finance backgrounds tend to have investment banking or other corporate finance experience. Although the titles are not entirely uniform from firm to firm, other positions at venture capital firms include: The average maturity of most venture capital funds ranges from 10 years to 12 years, with the possibility of a few years of extensions to allow for private companies still seeking liquidity. The investing cycle for most funds is generally three to five years, after which the focus is managing and making follow-on investments in an existing portfolio. This model was pioneered by successful funds in Silicon Valley through the 1980s to invest in technological trends broadly but only during their period of ascendance, and to cut exposure to management and marketing risks of any individual firm or its product. In such a fund, the investors have a fixed commitment to the fund that is initially unfunded and subsequently "called down" by the venture capital fund over time as the fund makes its investments. There are substantial penalties for a limited partner (or investor) that fails to participate in a capital call. It can take anywhere from a month to several years for venture capitalists to raise money from limited partners for their fund. At the time when all of the money has been raised, the fund is said to be closed and the 10-year lifetime begins. Some funds have partial closes when one half (or some other amount) of the fund has been raised. The vintage year generally refers to the year in which the fund was closed and may serve as a means to stratify VC funds for comparison. From an investor's point of view, funds can be: (1) traditional—where all the investors invest with equal terms; or (2) asymmetric—where different investors have different terms. Typically asymmetry is seen in cases where investors have opposing interests, such as the need to not have unrelated business taxable income in the case of public tax-exempt investors. The decision process to fund a company is elusive. One study report in the Harvard Business Review states that VCs rarely use standard financial analytics. First, VCs engage in a process known as "generating deal flow," where they reach out to their network to source potential investments. The study also reported that few VCs use any type of financial analytics when they assess deals; VCs are primarily concerned about the cash returned from the deal as a multiple of the cash invested. According to 95% of the VC firms surveyed, VCs cite the founder or founding team as the most important factor in their investment decision. Other factors are also considered, including intellectual property rights and the state of the economy. Some argue that the most important thing a VC looks for in a company is high-growth. The funding decision process has spawned bias in the form of a large disparity between the funding received by men and minority groups, such as women and people of color. In 2021, female founders only received 2% of VC funding in the United States. Some research studies have found that VCs evaluate women differently and are less likely to fund female founders. Venture capitalists are compensated through a combination of management fees and carried interest (often referred to as a "two and 20" arrangement): Because a fund may run out of capital prior to the end of its life, larger venture capital firms usually have several overlapping funds at the same time; doing so lets the larger firm keep specialists in all stages of the development of firms almost constantly engaged. Smaller firms tend to thrive or fail with their initial industry contacts; by the time the fund cashes out, an entirely new generation of technologies and people is ascending, whom the general partners may not know well, and so it is prudent to reassess and shift industries or personnel rather than attempt to simply invest more in the industry or people the partners already know.[citation needed] Because of the strict requirements venture capitalists have for potential investments, many entrepreneurs seek seed funding from angel investors, who may be more willing to invest in highly speculative opportunities, or may have a prior relationship with the entrepreneur. Additionally, entrepreneurs may seek alternative financing, such as revenue-based financing, to avoid giving up equity ownership in the business. For entrepreneurs seeking more than just funding, startup studios can be an appealing alternative to venture capitalists, as they provide operational support and an experienced team. A growing number of companies are also turning to **venture debt** as an alternative, particularly in technology and life sciences sectors, where it provides working capital without significant equity dilution. Furthermore, many venture capital firms will only seriously evaluate an investment in a start-up company otherwise unknown to them if the company can prove at least some of its claims about the technology and/or market potential for its product or services. To achieve this, or even just to avoid the dilutive effects of receiving funding before such claims are proven, many start-ups seek to self-finance sweat equity until they reach a point where they can credibly approach outside capital providers such as venture capitalists or angel investors. This practice is called "bootstrapping". Equity crowdfunding is emerging as an alternative to traditional venture capital. Traditional crowdfunding is an approach to raising the capital required for a new project or enterprise by appealing to large numbers of ordinary people for small donations. While such an approach has long precedents in the sphere of charity, it is receiving renewed attention from entrepreneurs, now that social media and online communities make it possible to reach out to a group of potentially interested supporters at very low cost. Some equity crowdfunding models are also being applied specifically for startup funding, such as those listed at Comparison of crowd funding services. One of the reasons to look for alternatives to venture capital is the problem of the traditional VC model. The traditional VCs are shifting their focus to later-stage investments, and return on investment of many VC funds have been low or negative. In Europe and India, Media for equity is a partial alternative to venture capital funding. Media for equity investors are able to supply start-ups with often significant advertising campaigns in return for equity. In Europe, an investment advisory firm offers young ventures the option to exchange equity for services investment; their aim is to guide ventures through the development stage to arrive at a significant funding, mergers and acquisition, or other exit strategy. In industries where assets can be securitized effectively because they reliably generate future revenue streams or have a good potential for resale in case of foreclosure, businesses may more cheaply be able to raise debt to finance their growth. Good examples would include asset-intensive extractive industries such as mining, or manufacturing industries. Offshore funding is provided via specialist venture capital trusts, which seek to use securitization in structuring hybrid multi-market transactions via an SPV (special purpose vehicle): a corporate entity that is designed solely for the purpose of the financing. In addition to traditional venture capital and angel networks, groups have emerged, which allow groups of small investors or entrepreneurs themselves to compete in a privatized business plan competition where the group itself serves as the investor through a democratic process. Law firms are also increasingly acting as an intermediary between clients seeking venture capital and the firms providing it. Other forms include venture resources that seek to provide non-monetary support to launch a new venture. Role in employment Every year, there are nearly 2 million businesses created in the US, but only 600–800 get venture capital funding. According to the National Venture Capital Association, 11% of private sector jobs come from venture-backed companies and venture-backed revenue accounts for 21% of US GDP. Gender disparities In 2020, female-founded companies raised 2.8% of capital investment from venture capital, the highest amount recorded. Babson College's Diana Report found that the number of women partners in VC firms decreased from 10% in 1999 to 6% in 2014. The report also found that 97% of VC-funded businesses had male chief executives, and that businesses with all-male teams were more than four times as likely to receive VC funding compared to teams with at least one woman. Currently, about 3% of all venture capital is going to woman-led companies. More than 75% of VC firms in the US did not have any female venture capitalists at the time they were surveyed. It was found that a greater fraction of VC firms had never had a woman represent them on the board of one of their portfolio companies. For comparison, a UC Davis study focusing on large public companies in California found 49.5% with at least one female board seat. Geographical differences Venture capital, as an industry, originated in the United States, and American firms have traditionally been the largest participants in venture deals with the bulk of venture capital being deployed in American companies. However, increasingly, non-US venture investment is growing, and the number and size of non-US venture capitalists have been expanding. Venture capital has been used as a tool for economic development in a variety of developing regions. In many of these regions, with less developed financial sectors, venture capital plays a role in facilitating access to finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which in most cases would not qualify for receiving bank loans.[citation needed] In the year of 2008, while VC funding were still majorly dominated by U.S. money ($28.8 billion invested in over 2550 deals in 2008), compared to international fund investments ($13.4 billion invested elsewhere), there has been an average 5% growth in the venture capital deals outside the US, mainly in China and Europe. Geographical differences can be significant. For instance, in the UK, 4% of British investment goes to venture capital, compared to about 33% in the U.S. VC funding has been shown to be positively related to a country's individualistic culture. According to economist Jeffrey Funk, however, more than 90% of US startups valued over $1 billion lost money between 2019–2020 and return on investment from VC barely exceed return from public stock markets over the last 25 years. In the United States, venture capital investing reached $209.4 billion in 2022, the second-highest investment year in history. Venture capitalists invested some $29.1 billion in 3,752 deals in the U.S. through the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a report by the National Venture Capital Association. The same numbers for all of 2010 were $23.4 billion in 3,496 deals. According to a report by Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capital funding fell to $6.4 billion in the US in the first quarter of 2013, an 11.8% drop from the first quarter of 2012, and a 20.8% decline from 2011. Venture firms have added $4.2 billion into their funds this year, down from $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2013, but up from $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012. Canadian technology companies have attracted interest from the global venture capital community partially as a result of generous tax incentive through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) investment tax credit program.[citation needed] The basic incentive available to any Canadian corporation performing R&D is a refundable tax credit that is equal to 20% of "qualifying" R&D expenditures (labour, material, R&D contracts, and R&D equipment). An enhanced 35% refundable tax credit of available to certain (i.e. small) Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs). Because the CCPC rules require a minimum of 50% Canadian ownership in the company performing R&D, foreign investors who would like to benefit from the larger 35% tax credit must accept minority position in the company, which might not be desirable. The SR&ED program does not restrict the export of any technology or intellectual property that may have been developed with the benefit of SR&ED tax incentives. Canada also has a fairly unusual form of venture capital generation in its labour-sponsored venture capital corporations (LSVCC). These funds, also known as Retail Venture Capital or Labour Sponsored Investment Funds (LSIF), are generally sponsored by labor unions and offer tax breaks from government to encourage retail investors to purchase the funds. Generally, these Retail Venture Capital funds only invest in companies where the majority of employees are in Canada. However, innovative structures have been developed to permit LSVCCs to direct in Canadian subsidiaries of corporations incorporated in jurisdictions outside of Canada.[citation needed] In 2022, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector closed around 50% of Canada's venture capital deals, 16% were in the Life Sciences. The Venture Capital industry in Mexico is a fast-growing sector in the country that, with the support of institutions and private funds, is estimated to reach US$100 billion invested by 2018.[needs update] In Australia and New Zealand, there have been 3 waves of VC, starting with Bill Ferris who founded IVC in 1970. are more than one hundred active VC funds, syndicates, or angel investors making VC-style investments. The 2nd wave was led by Starfish & Southern Cross VC, with the latter producing the leading VC of the 3rd wave, Blackbird. There was a boom in 2018, and today there are more than one hundred active VC funds, syndicates, or angel investors making VC-style investments. There have been few Nasdaq IPOs of Australian VC backed startups, with only Looksmart from Bill Ferris's fund, and Quantenna from Larry Marshall's Southern Cross VC, but Blackbird is expected to IPO Canva soon. The State of Startup Funding report found that in 2021, over AUD $10 billion AUD was invested into Australian and New Zealand startups across 682 deals. This represents a 3x increase from the $3.1 billion that was invested in 2020. Some notable Australian and New Zealand startup success stories include graphic design company Canva, financial services provider Airwallex, New Zealand payments provider Vend (acquired by Lightspeed), rent-to-buy company OwnHome, and direct-to-consumer propositions such as Eucalyptus (a house of direct-to-consumer telehealth brands), and Lyka (a pet wellness company). In 2022, the largest Australian funds are Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg Capital, and Airtree Ventures. These three funds have more than $1 billion AUD under management across multiple funds. These funds have funding from institutional capital, including AustralianSuper and Hostplus, family offices, and sophisticated individual high-net-wealth investors. Outside of the "Big 3", other notable institutional funds include AfterWork Ventures, Artesian, Folklore Ventures, Equity Venture Partners, Our Innovation Fund, Investible, Main Sequence Ventures (the VC arm of the CSIRO), OneVentures, Proto Axiom, and Tenacious Ventures. As the number of capital providers in the Australian and New Zealand ecosystem has grown, funds have started to specialise and innovate to differentiate themselves. For example, Tenacious Ventures is a $35 million specialised agritech fund, while AfterWork Ventures is a 'community-powered fund' that has coalesced a group of 120 experienced operators from across Australia's startups and tech companies. Its community is invested in its fund, and lean into assist with sourcing and evaluating deal opportunities, as well as supporting companies post-investment. Several Australian corporates have corporate VC arms, including NAB Ventures, Reinventure (associated with Westpac), IAG Firemark Ventures, and Telstra Ventures. Venture capital in Europe has grown significantly in recent years, investing €96 billion in nearly 27,000 companies between 2013 and 2023. Venture capital investment in 2023 totalled €12.9 billion, with 4,764 companies receiving funding – 99% of which were SMEs. In 2024, European private capital reached €1.25 trillion in assets under management, marking a 2.6x growth over the previous decade. European venture capital has also delivered strong financial performance. Over the past ten years, VC funds achieved a net IRR of 23.07%, outperforming US VC funds and public market benchmarks such as MSCI Europe. This performance has attracted long-term investors including pension funds, family offices, and corporate investment divisions. VC-backed companies in Europe employed more than 988,000 jobs at 13,524 mainly SMEs at the end of 2023, highlighting the sector’s role in job creation and economic development. However, despite its growth, venture capital investment in the Europe lags significantly behind the US and China, with the EU capturing only 5% of global venture capital compared to 52% in the US and 40% in China. The financing gap for EU scale-ups is significant, with companies raising 50% less capital than those in Silicon Valley. This disparity exists across industries and is unaffected by the business cycle or year of establishment. Comparing the EU market to the United States, in 2020 venture capital funding was seven times lower, the EU having fewer unicorns. This hampers the EU's transformation into a green and digital economy. As of 2024, tighter financial conditions have harmed venture capital funding in the European Union, which remains undeveloped in comparison to the United States. The European Green Deal has fostered policies that contributed to a 30% rise in venture capital specifically for greentech companies in the EU from 2021 to 2023, despite a downturn in other sectors during the same period. Leading early-stage venture capital investors in Europe included Mark Tluszcz of Mangrove Capital Partners and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, both of whom were named on Forbes Magazine's Midas List of the world's top dealmakers in technology venture capital in 2007. Recent years have seen a revival of the Nordic venture scene with more than €3 billion raised by VC funds in the Nordic region over the last five years. Over the past five years, a total of €2.7 billion has been invested into Nordic startups. Known Nordic early-stage venture capital funds include NorthZone (Sweden), Maki.vc (Finland) and ByFounders (Copenhagen). Many Swiss start-ups are university spin-offs, in particular from its federal institutes of technology in Lausanne and Zurich. According to a study by the London School of Economics analysing 130 ETH Zurich spin-offs over 10 years, about 90% of these start-ups survived the first five critical years, resulting in an average annual IRR of more than 43%. Switzerland's most active early-stage investors are The Zurich Cantonal Bank, investiere.ch, Swiss Founders Fund, as well as a number of angel investor clubs. In 2022, half of the total amount of CHF 4 billion investments went to the ICT and Fintech sectors, whereas 21% was invested in Cleantech. As of March 2019, there are 130 active VC firms in Poland which have invested locally in over 750 companies, an average of 9 companies per portfolio. Since 2016, new legal institutions have been established for entities implementing investments in enterprises in the seed or startup phase. In 2018, venture capital funds invested €178M in Polish startups (0.033% of GDP). As of March 2019, total assets managed by VC companies operating in Poland are estimated at €2.6B. The total value of investments of the Polish VC market is worth €209.2M. The Bulgarian venture capital industry has been growing rapidly in the past decade. As of the beginning of 2021, there are 18 VC and growth equity firms on the local market, with the total funding available for technology startups exceeding €200M. According to BVCA – Bulgarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, 59 transactions of total value of €29.4 million took place in 2020. Most of the venture capital investments in Bulgaria are concentrated in the seed and Series A stages. Sofia-based LAUNCHub Ventures recently launched one of the biggest funds in the region, with a target size of €70 million. South Korea has been undergoing an investment boom over the last ten years, peaking at US$10 billion in 2021. The Korean government and mega-corporations such as Kakao, Smilegate, SK, and Lotte has been behind much of the funding, backing both venture firms and accelerators, but new venture capitalists are in dire straits as they announce a 40% cut in financing in 2024. India is catching up with the West in the field of venture capital and a number of venture capital funds have a presence in the country (IVCA). In 2006, the total amount of private equity and venture capital in India reached $7.5 billion across 299 deals. In the Indian market, venture capital consists of investing in equity, quasi-equity, or conditional loans in order to promote unlisted, high-risk, or high-tech firms driven by technically or professionally qualified entrepreneurs. It is also used to refer to investors "providing seed", "start-up and first-stage financing", or financing companies that have demonstrated extraordinary business potential. Venture capital refers to capital investment; equity and debt; both of which carry indubitable risk. The anticipated risk is very high. The venture capital industry follows the concept of "high risk, high return", innovative entrepreneurship, knowledge-based ideas and human capital intensive enterprises have become common as venture capitalists invest in risky finance to encourage innovation. A large portion of funding from startups in India arise from Foreign Venture Capital Funds such as Sequoia, Accel, Tiger Global, SoftBank, etc. China is also starting to develop a venture capital industry (CVCA). Vietnam is experiencing its first foreign venture capitals, including IDG Venture Vietnam ($100 million) and DFJ Vinacapital ($35 million). Singapore is widely recognized and featured as one of the hottest places to both start up and invest, mainly due to its healthy ecosystem, its strategic location and connectedness to foreign markets. With 100 deals valued at US$3.5 billion, Singapore saw a record value of PE and VC investments in 2016. The number of PE and VC investments increased substantially over the last 5 years: In 2015, Singapore recorded 81 investments with an aggregate value of US$2.2 billion while in 2014 and 2013, PE and VC deal values came to US$2.4 billion and US$0.9 billion respectively. With 53 percent, tech investments account for the majority of deal volume. Moreover, Singapore is home to two of South-East Asia's largest unicorns. Garena is reportedly the highest-valued unicorn in the region with a US$3.5 billion price tag, while Grab is the highest-funded, having raised a total of US$1.43 billion since its incorporation in 2012. Start-ups and small businesses in Singapore receive support from policymakers and the local government fosters the role VCs play to support entrepreneurship in Singapore and the region. For instance, in 2016, Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF) has given out grants up to around $30 million to four large local enterprises for investments in startups in the city-state. This first of its kind partnership NRF has entered into is designed to encourage these enterprises to source for new technologies and innovative business models. Currently, the rules governing VC firms are being reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to make it easier to set up funds and increase funding opportunities for start-ups. This mainly includes simplifying and shortening the authorization process for new venture capital managers and to study whether existing incentives that have attracted traditional asset managers here will be suitable for the VC sector. A public consultation on the proposals was held in January 2017 with changes expected to be introduced by July. In recent years, Singapore's focus in venture capital investments has geared more towards more early stage, deep tech startups, with the government launching SGInnovate in 2016 to support the development of deep tech startups. Deep tech startups aim to address significant scientific problems. Singapore's tech startup scene has grown in recent years, and the city-state ranked seventh in the latest Global Innovation Index 2022. For the first nine months of 2022, investments up to Series B rounds amounted to $5.5 billion Singapore dollars ($4 billion), an increase of 14% by volume and 45% by value, according to data from government agency Enterprise Singapore. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) venture capital industry is an early stage of development but growing. According to H1 2019 MENA Venture Investment Report by MAGNiTT, 238 startup investment deals have taken place in the region in the first half of 2019, totaling in $471 million in investments. Compared to 2018's H1 report, this represents an increase of 66% in total funding and 28% in number of deals. According to the report, the UAE is the most active ecosystem in the region with 26% of the deals made in H1, followed by Egypt at 21%, and Lebanon at 13%. In terms of deals by sector, fintech remains the most active industry with 17% of the deals made, followed by e-commerce at 12%, and delivery and transport at 8%. The report also notes that a total of 130 institutions invested in MENA-based startups in H1 2019, 30% of which were headquartered outside the MENA, demonstrating international appetite for investments in the region. 15 startup exits have been recorded in H1 2019, with Careem's $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber being the first unicorn exit in the region. Other notable exits include Souq.com exit to Amazon in 2017 for $650 million. In Israel, high-tech entrepreneurship and venture capital have flourished well beyond the country's relative size. As it has very little natural resources and, historically has been forced to build its economy on knowledge-based industries, its VC industry has rapidly developed, and nowadays has about 70 active venture capital funds, of which 14 international VCs with Israeli offices, and additional 220 international funds which actively invest in Israel. In addition, as of 2010, Israel led the world in venture capital invested per capita. Israel attracted $170 per person compared to $75 in the US. About two thirds of the funds invested were from foreign sources, and the rest domestic. In 2013, Wix.com joined 62 other Israeli firms on the Nasdaq. The Southern African venture capital industry is developing. The South African Government and Revenue Service is following the international trend of using tax-efficient vehicles to propel economic growth and job creation through venture capital. Section 12 J of the Income Tax Act was updated to include venture capital. Companies are allowed to use a tax-efficient structure similar to VCTs in the UK. Despite the above structure, it is commented that government needs to adjust its regulation around intellectual property, exchange control and other legislation to ensure that venture capital succeeds.[citation needed] Currently, there are not many venture capital funds in operation and it is a small community; however, the number of venture funds are steadily increasing with new incentives slowly coming in from government. Funds are difficult to come by and due to the limited funding, companies are more likely to receive funding if they can demonstrate initial sales or traction and the potential for significant growth. The majority of the venture capital in Sub-Saharan Africa is centered on South Africa and Kenya.[citation needed] Entrepreneurship is a key to growth. Governments will need to ensure business friendly regulatory environments in order to help foster innovation. In 2019, venture capital startup funding grew to 1.3 billion dollars, increasing rapidly. The causes are as of yet unclear, but education is cited as being a possible factor. Confidential information Unlike public companies, information regarding an entrepreneur's business is typically confidential and proprietary. As part of the due diligence process, most venture capitalists will require significant detail with respect to a company's business plan. Entrepreneurs must remain vigilant about sharing information with venture capitalists that are investors in their competitors. Most venture capitalists treat information confidentially, but as a matter of business practice, they do not typically enter into Non Disclosure Agreements because of the potential liability issues those agreements entail. Entrepreneurs are typically well advised to protect truly proprietary intellectual property.[citation needed] Startups commonly use a data room to securely share this information with potential investors during the due diligence process. Limited partners of venture capital firms typically have access only to limited amounts of information with respect to the individual portfolio companies in which they are invested and are typically bound by confidentiality provisions in the fund's limited partnership agreement.[citation needed] Governmental regulations There are several strict guidelines regulating those that deal in venture capital. Namely, they are not allowed to advertise or solicit business in any form as per the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines. In popular culture See also Notes References Further reading |
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Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Vita] | [TOKENS: 7728] |
Contents PlayStation Vita The PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, then in other international territories on February 22, 2012, and was produced until discontinuation on March 1, 2019. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles, it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS. The original model of the handheld includes a 5-inch (130 mm) OLED multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, a rear touchpad, two analog joysticks, and front and shoulder push-button input, and supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as standard while a variant model was sold with an additional 3G modem. The Vita features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and a quad-core SGX543MP GPU. The PS Vita 2000 series, a revised version of the system, was released across 2013 and 2014. It has all of the same features with a slightly smaller size, extended battery life, and an LCD panel instead of an OLED. Sony released the PlayStation TV, a short-lived, re-purposed version of the Vita that uses a television screen like a home video game console, discontinued at the end of 2015. The Vita's design was intended to meld the experience of big-budget, dedicated video game platforms with the then up-and-coming trend of mobile gaming as seen on smart phones and tablets. However, in the year after the device's successful launch, sales of the hardware and its bigger budget games stalled, threatening to end its lifespan. A concentrated effort to attract smaller independent developers in the West, combined with strong support from mid-level Japanese companies, helped keep the platform afloat. Though this led to less diversity in its game library, it strengthened support in JRPGs, visual novels, and Western-developed indie games. This built moderate sales in Japan and a smaller yet passionate userbase in the West. Though Sony has not released exact sales figures, estimates are around 15 to 16 million units. In the platform's later years, Sony promoted the PlayStation Vita's ability to work in conjunction with its other gaming products, such as Remote Play of PlayStation 4 games, similar to the Wii U's function of Off-TV Play. The platform stalled in 2017 upon the release of the Nintendo Switch, and was completely discontinued in 2019. The system is regarded as a commercial failure in the video game industry, and was significantly outsold by the Nintendo 3DS. No direct successor was released by Sony, though in 2023, a similar remote play accessory, the PlayStation Portal, was released for the PlayStation 5. History After the success of Nintendo's Game Boy family of handheld game consoles throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, with little market competition, and Sony's massive success with its PlayStation and PlayStation 2 home video game consoles around the same time, Sony entered the handheld market as well. In 2004, it released the PlayStation Portable (PSP) to compete with the Nintendo DS as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. After a slow start in the worldwide market, it was invigorated in Japan with multiple releases in the Monster Hunter series. With the series being less popular in western regions, it failed to revive the platform in the same way. The PSP ended up being a mixed result for the company. It was seen as a success in that it was the only handheld video game platform that had ever significantly competed with Nintendo for market share, with almost 80 million units sold in its lifespan, roughly the same amount as Nintendo's Game Boy Advance had during the sixth generation of video game consoles. This is only a little more than half of the sales of its actual market competitor, the DS, which was more than 150 million units by the end of 2011. Rumors of a successor to the PSP came as early as July 2009 when Eurogamer reported that Sony was working on such a device, which would utilize the PowerVR SGX543MP processor and perform at a level similar to the original Xbox. Through mid-2010, websites continued to run stories about accounts of the existence of a "PSP 2". Reports arose during the Tokyo Game Show that the device was unveiled internally during a private meeting during mid-September held at Sony Computer Entertainment's headquarters in Aoyama, Tokyo. Shortly after, reports of development kits for the handheld had reportedly already been shipped to numerous video game developers including both first-party and third-party developers to start making games for the device, a report later confirmed by Mortal Kombat Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick. By November, Senior Vice President of Electronic Arts, Patrick Soderlund, confirmed that he had seen that the PlayStation Portable successor existed, but could not confirm details. In the same month, VG247 released pictures of an early prototype version showing a PSP Go-like slide-screen design along with two analog sticks, two cameras and a microphone, though the report mentioned that overheating issues had since caused them to move away from the design in favor of a model more similar to the original PlayStation Portable device. Throughout 2010, Sony would not confirm these reports of a PSP successor but would make comments regarding making future hardware. Shuhei Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios revealed that his studio, despite usually being more involved with software, had a continued role in future hardware development at the time. In December, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai stated that Sony aimed to appeal to a wide demographic of people by using multiple input methods on future hardware; buttons and joysticks for traditional handheld game system users, and touchscreens for smart phone users. The device was officially announced by Sony on January 27, 2011, at their "PlayStation Meeting" press conference held by the company in Japan. The system, only known by its code name "Next Generation Portable" (NGP), was announced to be a handheld gaming device that aimed for PlayStation 3 quality visuals, which was later clarified to not be taken at a literal level because, according to David Coombes, platform research manager at Sony Computer Entertainment America, "Well, it's not going to run at 2 GHz [like the PS3] because the battery would last five minutes and it would probably set fire to your pants". Its power was later described by Sony engineers as about halfway between the PSP and PS3. As rumors had suggested, the device was designed to present "the best of both worlds" between mobile and handheld gaming, including a 5-inch OLED touchscreen, a rear touchpad coupled with physical buttons and dual analog sticks. Sony also revealed that the device would be using a mix of retail and digital distribution of games. Further details were announced at Game Developers Conference 2011, including that Sony would be dropping the PSP's UMD disc format in favor of small game cartridges of 2 GB or 4 GB size variants, along with two cameras, facial detection, head detection and tracking capabilities. On June 6, 2011, at E3 2011, Sony announced that the device's official name would be the PlayStation Vita, with the word "vita" being Latin for "life". Mark Cerny was the lead architect of the device. Despite reports of the 2011 earthquakes in Japan delaying the release of the device, Sony reconfirmed that it was on track for a late 2011 release in Japan and a February 2012 release date for other major regions of the world. The release date was later narrowed down to a December 17, 2011, release in Japan, and a February 22, 2012, release date for America and Europe, although a limited edition was released a week earlier in North America on February 15, 2012, which included the 3G/Wi-Fi model of the device, the game Little Deviants, a limited-edition carry case, and a 4 GB memory card. The Vita launched with 26 titles in Japan, with Sony announcing that there were over 100 titles in development prior to the system's release overall. The Vita launched in the west with 25 titles, including original titles such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Wipeout 2048, and ports of games such as FIFA 12 and Rayman Origins. The sales of the Vita started strong at launch but then stalled and greatly underperformed. The Vita had a strong launch in Japan, selling over 300,000 units in its first week of availability, though figures shortly afterwards shrunk down 78% to under 73,000 sold in its second week, and then settled into about 12,000 sold per week in the following weeks. Similarly, in the United States, the system debuted with 200,000 units sold in the first month, before slinking down into an amount of about 50,000 a month. 1.2 million units were reported as sold as of February 26, 2012 – after it had launched in most regions. The system continued to get high-profile games over the course of 2012, including Gravity Rush, LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Persona 4 Golden, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, and Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified. Despite this, the system still only managed to sell 4 million units worldwide in its first 10 months on the market, and estimated by analysts to only be at 6 million units sold after two years of availability. After 2012, Sony ceased releasing direct sales figures of the Vita, instead opting to release combined sales figures with it and the PSP. Still, the system under-performed; while Sony projected selling 16 million units of combined Vita and PSP systems, it had to slash its forecast twice in the same year—down to 12 and then 10 million units sold. With higher-profile games not pushing the system sales enough in 2012, big third-party companies like Ubisoft and Activision started reducing or eliminating support for the system, especially in the West. Additionally, while the Monster Hunter series had significantly boosted the sales of the PSP, its absence instead hurt the Vita. Its developer, Capcom, had decided to release Monster Hunter Tri and future Monster Hunter games exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS, where it would sell millions of copies for Sony's main competitor. With support diminishing, Shahid Ahmad, Sony's Director of Strategic Content, instead began a new approach to software, through directly reaching out to, and making accommodations for, smaller, independent developers who had previously released games for mobile and PC platforms. While not completely reversing the sales trends of the Vita, the lower costs of making or porting smaller-budget games made it easier for developers to make a profit on the system's smaller userbase, and in turn, increased consumer attention on the console, keeping the device afloat. Fez, Spelunky, Hotline Miami, and OlliOlli all found success with releases on Vita. Ahmad also maintained interest in the device by directly interacting with consumers on social media; the game Tales of Hearts R was localized into English only because it was number one in a survey of games desired on the platform. Sony continued to support the system with games through 2013 as well, albeit lesser so, with titles such as Killzone: Mercenary and Tearaway, along with a handful of other Western-developed ports such as FIFA 13 and Rayman Legends. While the focus on indie games kept the device afloat in the West, in Japan, no such measures were necessary, as the Vita maintained moderate hardware sales. While it was routinely outsold by its main competitor, the Nintendo 3DS, the Vita still managed to be one of the top consoles sold overall, partially due to Japan's preference towards handheld gaming. Strong support by Japanese developers also helped, with companies such as Bandai Namco, Falcom, Koei Tecmo, 5pb, Compile Heart, Spike Chunsoft, and Atlus releasing many games in the JRPG and visual novels genre to help keep a steady flow of mid-level releases coming to the system. Additionally, big games such as Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster sold well and roughly in-line with their home console counterparts. The heavier support from Japan, in turn, also helped support the system in the West as well, with many games in the Atelier, Ys, Danganronpa, Persona, and Trails series localized into English on the Vita, or made playable through the system's backward compatibility with digital PSP games. While the system managed to stay afloat as a minor success, other issues continued to persist, including the high price of the system in comparison to its main competitor, the Nintendo 3DS, and its sibling device, the PS3, the high price of its memory cards used for game and data storage, and the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets. In August 2013, Sony addressed the first two, dropping the price to $199 in North America and €199 in Europe, and cutting the suggested retail price of the memory cards as well. The price cut also coincided with the release of a slight redesign of the system, the "PS Vita 2000" model. The redesign included making the system 20% thinner and 15% lighter, while adding 1 GB of internal storage, and an extra hour of battery life. However, the redesign did remove the OLED screen in favor of a cheaper LCD screen. Towards the end of 2013, around the launch of Sony's next video game device, the home video game console the PlayStation 4, Sony began making comments in regard to the change in focus with the Vita. Yoshida stated that Sony would be releasing fewer first party games for the platform. Sony Computer Entertainment's Product Planning & Platform Software Innovation Director Don Mesa stated that the "economics simply don't work with the traditional process". Sony addressed the "economics of Vita game development" issue with beginning on focusing on the fact that almost all PlayStation 4 games could be streamed and played through a Vita through Remote Play. Sony attempted to attach the device to the PS4 due to its extreme popularity; it took only a few weeks for the sales to surpass the sales of the Vita over the course of almost two years. In July 2014, Yoshida stated that the company would focus on it less as a dedicated handheld video game console, and more on its combination of uses, stating "it's not about individual Vita games any more. It's more about how Vita can have multiple uses – with PS4 Remote Play, PS3 games with PS Now, and the dedicated games. The whole ecosystem with PS4 at the center, the Vita's a part of that." Sony later announced that the Vita will have PlayStation VR integration in the form of a second screen as well. Open beta trials for PlayStation Now functionality on the PS Vita began on October 14, 2014, in North America. The PlayStation TV, released across late 2013 and 2014, also aimed to expand the system's userbase by allowing for Vita games to be played on a television like a home console, though the device was discontinued in the West by the end of 2015, and did not fare well in Japan's handheld-focused region either. In November 2014, SCEA president Shawn Layden suggested that the new approach was working on hardware level, stating that Vita sales had increased since the implementation of PS4 Remote Play, though he and another Sony representative did not give specific figures. Sony continued to make games for the device, though in smaller number than in past. The last major Sony-developed title, Freedom Wars, still found success, selling over 188,000 copies in its first week of release in Japan. The debut was the highest Sony game debut for the system, and the second highest, only to Namco Bandai's late 2013 release of God Eater 2 on the platform. In September 2015, Yoshida stated that Sony had no current plans for a Vita successor, stating that "climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming." At E3 2015, he had stated that Sony would not be making any more AAA, big budget games to the system, but by October, the comment had been revised that Sony would not be making any more games for it at all. Reasons cited included the company focusing on supporting the PS4, and the fact that it felt that third party Japanese developers and Western indie developers were sufficiently supporting the device. In March 2016, Sony announced that instead, it would be forming a new company, "Forward Works", and be instead concentrating on bringing PlayStation-based games to mobile platforms like iOS and Android. Despite Sony's focus on the PS4 and mobile for the future, the Vita still continued to receive substantial third-party company game support in the way of Japanese-style role-playing games and visual novels and Western-style indie video games through 2017. Minecraft in particular was successful for the platform, with it selling over 1.2 million physical copies in Japan alone as of September 2017. The device is considered to have sold fairly well in Japan, and still a crucial part of Sony's overall strategy in the region, while Sony has acknowledged that the device still has a very vocal and passionate user-base in the West as well, with the company still encouraging third-party companies to create games for the device. At the 2016 Game Developers Conference, research analyst firm EEDAR estimated the sales of the Vita to be about at 10 million units sold through the end of 2015. Multi-platform releases with the PS4 have also incidentally helped sustain the Vita's stream of software, even in the west, through 2016 and 2017; games receive a Vita version more to appeal to Japan's larger Vita user-base, and receive a PS4 version more to appeal to North America's larger user-base. The March 2017 launch of the Nintendo Switch, which operates on a similar concept of providing high budget video games on a portable unit, further overshadowed the Vita, though niche support through indie games and JRPGs continued into the year. In mid-2017, Glixel estimated the Vita userbase to be around 15 million. On September 20, 2018, Sony announced at Tokyo Game Show 2018 that the Vita would be discontinued in 2019, ending its hardware production. Production of new physical Vita games in Europe and America ceased by the end of Sony's 2018 fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2019. At the time of the announcement, USgamer estimated that the Vita userbase had grown to approximately 16 million units. Production of Vita hardware officially ended on March 1, 2019. In March 2021, Sony announced that the Vita's online storefront would be closing on August 27, 2021, making it impossible to purchase digital games for the platform, though still allowing for the download of previously purchased games; this decision was later reversed following consumer backlash. Hardware In line with Sony's ambition to combine aspects of traditional video game consoles with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, the Vita contains a multitude of input methods. The device features a "super oval" shape similar to the design of the original PlayStation Portable, with a 5-inch (130 mm) qHD OLED capacitive touchscreen in the centre of the device. The device features two analog sticks, a D-pad, a set of standard PlayStation face buttons (, , and ), two shoulder buttons (L and R), a PlayStation button and Start and Select buttons. Motion control is also possible through Sony's Sixaxis motion sensing system, consisting of a three-axis gyroscope and a three-axis accelerometer. In addition to these input methods, specific to just the Vita, is a secondary touchpad that is on the back of the device. Other hardware includes stereo speakers, a microphone, built-in Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR connectivity, and two cameras. The cameras are both 0.3 megapixel and run at 640×480 (VGA) at 60 frames/s, or at 320×240 at 120 frames/s. They can be used to take photos or videos using built-in applications on the system. The two cameras feature the abilities of face detection, head detection, and head tracking. The platform also launched with a model with 3G mobile data support, which required a separate data plan through a data provider. The 3G service has been partnered with NTT DoCoMo in Japan, AT&T in the US, Rogers in Canada and Vodafone in Europe and Australia. The 3G model was discontinued in 2013 and not made available in the system's future revised models. Internally, the device features a custom system on chip with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a quad-core GPU SGX543MP4+. Sony has stated that the Vita generally runs well under its full clock speed but due to overheating and battery consumption issues that would ensue, Sony placed its processing power "around halfway between the current PSP and the PS3". The Vita's internal battery has between 3–5 hours of power for game playing, depending on the processing power required for the game, screen brightness, sound level and network connections, as well as other factors. Additionally, the battery can supply about five hours for video watching, and up to nine hours of music listening with the screen off. The system does allow for additional external battery solutions as well. The PlayStation Vita has 512 MB of system RAM and 128 MB of VRAM. The amount of RAM allows cross-game chat to be used on the system. Software for the PlayStation Vita is distributed on a proprietary flash memory card called "PlayStation Vita game card" rather than on Universal Media Discs (UMDs) as used by the PlayStation Portable. The shape and size of the card itself is very similar to an SD card. 5–10% of the game card's space is reserved for game save data and patches. The PS Vita is incompatible with standard memory cards, such as SD cards, and instead stores data on proprietary PS Vita memory cards, which are available in sizes of 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. Initially, a maximum of 100 applications and games can be stored on the device at a time, regardless of data storage available. When the limit is reached, applications or games must be moved or deleted in order to access those beyond the limit. This limit was later raised to 500 applications in system software version 3.10 released in 2014. Due to the high price of official Sony memory cards, inexpensive third-party "SD2Vita" adapter cards which allow the use of commodity micro SD storage media in conjunction with a modified console appeared on the market. All games developed for the PlayStation 4, with the exception of games requiring the use of special peripherals such as PlayStation Camera, are playable on the Vita through Remote Play. With the use of a Vita, PS4, and PS4 game, this allows a PS4 game to be run on the PS4, but its output transmitted to the Vita, with the Vita being used for the controller input, and the image and sound being transmitted to the Vita's screen and speakers instead of a television. The result is similar to what a Wii U console does with its GamePad controller through Off-TV Play. The Vita technically has Remote Play functionality with the PlayStation 3 as well, though very few PS3 games supported the feature due to limitations with the less-powerful PS3 hardware. More PS3 games are available for streaming on the Vita through Sony's cloud gaming service PlayStation Now, though they are streamed over the internet in the form of cloud computing rather than directly from a physical PS3 console. First implemented in 2014, the service was announced to be discontinued on the Vita on August 15, 2017. A revised model of the Vita was released in Japan on October 10, 2013, in Europe on February 7, 2014 and in North America on May 6, 2014. The revised model, officially called the PCH-2000 series and commonly referred to as the PS Vita Slim, is 20% thinner and 15% lighter compared to the original model. While it largely maintains the original's overall structure and layout, the original's OLED screen has been replaced with a lower-cost LCD display. The model also roughly added about an extra hour of battery life. The newer model also comes with 1 GB of internal storage memory, although it is not possible to use both the internal memory and memory card concurrently. Upon inserting a PS Vita memory card, the system will offer to copy the existing data from the internal memory to the new card. This model has a micro USB Type B port, which can be used to charge the device along with any standard micro USB cable. The model was released in six colors in Japan (white, black, light blue, lime green, pink, and khaki), although it was only released in black and light blue in North America and Europe. The PlayStation TV is a non-portable variant of the Vita; instead of featuring its own display screen, it connects to a television via HDMI like a traditional home video game console, and is controlled though the use of a DualShock 3 or DualShock 4 controller. Due to the difference in controller input between the Vita and a DualShock controller, Vita games that are dependent on the system's touch-screen, rear touchpad, microphone, or camera are not compatible. It also shares the Remote Play and PS Now functionality of a regular Vita. The system was released in Japan in November 2013, in North America in October 2014, and in Europe on November 14, 2014. The device did not fare well and had a short retail shelf life in North America and Europe, where it was discontinued at the end of 2015. Software Physical software for the Vita is distributed on a proprietary flash memory card called "PlayStation Vita game card". All Vita games are also made available to be downloaded digitally on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store, although not all games are released physically. Since its launch, digital-only releases have slowly become more prominent, partially in an effort to reduce production costs for release on the platform's comparatively smaller user-base, and partially due to the influx smaller-scale indie mobile phone games that have always been digital-only releases. Like the PS3 and PS4, the Vita contains Trophy support for games. The system was designed so that it would be easy for developers to extract PS3 game assets and in turn use them to make Vita versions of games. Prior to the Vita's release, several third-party studios showcased tech demos of the device by exporting existing assets from their PlayStation 3 counterpart and then rendering them on the device, high budget examples including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Yakuza 4, and Lost Planet. While none of these particular high budget tech demos materialized into actual game releases, and few big-budget Western games would be made for both outside of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, many Japanese development teams would go on to develop mid-level games that would release for both platforms, including the first two games from Falcom's Trails of Cold Steel series, Compile Hearts' original Hyperdimension Neptunia trilogy, and many entries from Tecmo Koei's Atelier and Dynasty Warriors series. The trend continued on the PS4 as well, with Vita/PS4 releases becoming common due to the spread of their userbases – Vita versions for Japan, where the Vita was larger in its initial years, and PS4 versions of games for North America and Europe, where the PS4 userbase was substantially larger. Few PlayStation 2 titles were ported to the Vita due to the PS2's complicated architecture– games that did, such as Final Fantasy X/X2 Remaster and Persona 4 Golden required extensive reworking, or were based on their PS3 counterparts, such as Jak and Daxter Collection, Ratchet and Clank Collection, and Sly Cooper Collection. Towards the end of its lifespan, Vita versions of games began to be cancelled, in favor of PS4 or Nintendo Switch releases. The device is backward compatible with most PSP games; however, its lack of a UMD disc drive limits this capability to those titles which have been digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store, but not physical PSP games or films. The Vita is also backward compatible with the majority of the PS one Classics – the group of PlayStation 1 games Sony has made available digitally for download, and PlayStation Minis – small-budget downloadable titles originally created for the PSP and PS3. Games from Sony's PlayStation Mobile initiative had initially been compatible but were removed when the service was shut down in September 2015. In Japan, select downloadable PC Engine and PocketStation titles became backward compatible as well. A number of applications are available to run on the Vita, some initially pre-loaded on the device, while others are available via Sony's PlayStation Store. Pre-loaded apps include a web browser, a "Content Manager" app for monitoring data saved to the device, an email client, a music app, a photo app, and a video player. The system's web browser supports HTML5, cookies, and JavaScript, but not Adobe Flash. Also included was "Near", a social media/GPS like app that allowed the user to see other Vita players in the area, and what games or applications they had been using, with the opportunity for some limited interactivity and communication, although most of its functionality was disabled in 2015. A number of other third-party apps commonly found on mobile devices have also been made available on the Vita: Crunchyroll, Facebook (removed in 2015), Flickr (broken), Google Maps (removed in 2015), Hulu, Live Tweet (Sony's third-party client for Twitter), MLB.tv (broken), Netflix, Redbox Instant (discontinued), Skype (removed in 2016), TuneIn (broken), Twitch, WeatherNation and YouTube (removed in 2015). Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps, Twitter and YouTube no longer function as Vita apps, but continue to be available by using the Vita's web browser. Unlike the PSP and PlayStation 3, the PlayStation Vita does not use the XrossMediaBar interface. Instead, it uses a touchscreen-based UI dubbed LiveArea, which includes various social networking features via the PlayStation Network. Each game or application is represented by its own circle icon, and selecting it leads the user to a panel with multiple options present, including running software itself, going to its respective website through the internet, seeing if there are downloadable updates available for the software, and seeing a newsfeed-like list of activities related to it, such as installing it or obtaining trophies, for both the user and others the user has interacted with recently. Reception and sales According to review aggregator Metacritic, the Vita's original hardware release was generally well-received with critics, although a few concerns persisted as well. Metacritic editor Jason Dietz noted that reviewers tended to praise the Vita's actual hardware design and operating system, but expressed some concern on its practicality, namely competing in 2012 onward, with a large size and price, where mobile phones with large screens and cheap games were prevalent as an alternative. As of its initial Western launch in February 2012, out of 44 professional critic reviews, 9 fell in the "Great" rating, 29 in the "Good" rating, 6 in the "Mixed" rating, and 0 in the "Bad" or "Awful" rating. Its initial launch sales were generally seen as positive, selling over 300,000 units in Japan, and 200,000 units in North America. However, a large dropoff occurred in both regions. In Japan, second-week sales dropped 78%, and leveled off at selling about 12,000 units per week. Similarly, sales dropped off to about 30,000 to 50,000 units sold per month for the year after launch in North America. Overall, Sony fell far short of the worldwide sales targets of 10 million Vitas sold by the end of March 2013. The device sold 1.2 million units as of the end of February 2012, 4 million by the end of 2012, and were only estimated by analysts to have reached 6 million by the end of 2013, figures that have not been confirmed due to Sony's ceasing to release Vita sales figures after hitting the 4 million mark at the end of 2012. Views on the hardware dropped to more moderate levels in 2013, after the platform's initial sales lulls. Surveys in Japan showed that consumers were not purchasing the device due to its high retail price and perceived lack of software variety, and that current Vita owners only showed a 46% rate of approval for the device and its software library. Similarly, many Western critics felt that the low sales through 2013 would lead to an early death for the product. From 2013 onward, Sony was able to reverse the trajectory of the system by changing focus, aiming to be more of a niche product than one with mass market appeal – focusing more on small Western mobile phone games and mid-level Japanese developed games, and attaching it to the rise of popularity of its PlayStation 4 platform with its remote play connectivity functions. Sony also released the Vita model revision, the PCH-2000, which was generally well received by critics as well for addressing a number of prior complaints about the system, which included a price and size reduction. However, reviewers felt more mixed on the decision to change from OLED to LCD screen in the revised model, with some feeling it led to a minor downgrade in image quality. While not giving specific figures, Sony stated that Vita sales beat projections in North America in 2014, which it was happy and surprised with, sometimes even falling out of stock. Similar response was found in the UK as well. The platform has been considered to have sold well in Japan, where it outsold the PS4 in 2015, and reached 5 million units sold in 2016 according to sales tracker Media Create. It also obtained million-selling software in the same year, with the Japanese Vita release of Minecraft. By the end of 2015, research firm EEDAR estimated the sales of the Vita worldwide to be around 10 million. Despite the smaller userbase, the platform continued to be viable for game releases into 2017 due to the high attach rate of software sold per hardware user. Limited Run Games and various indie game developers praised the platform for its wide selection of more original and niche video games, and the strong respective sales of them. In mid-2017, Glixel estimated that approximately 15 million units of the system had been sold, while by September 2018, USGamer estimated it had grown to about 16 million units. In a 2021 retrospective by The Verge, Sony employees attributed several factors to the Vita's poor sales in contrast to the PSP, which had an estimated 80 million sales in its lifetime; a similar drop had been seen by Nintendo with its transition from the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo 3DS. Christian Phillips, a former senior director in Sony, said they had underestimated the impact of mobile gaming at the time of the Vita's release. They had considered gaming on smartphones to be "just good enough for gameplay" and instead felt tablet computers to be more their competitors to the Vita, according to Phillips. While some technologists in Sony had cautioned that mobile device computational power could outpace current consoles around 2010–2011, the design of the Vita did not incorporate this caution. Thus, the Vita was released at the same time that mobile gaming was greatly expanding, losing potential consumers to that market. John Koller, the former vice president of marketing at Sony, also believed that the Vita had been released too late into the main PlayStation console cycle and too close to the PlayStation 4's release in November 2013. As one of Sony's flagship products, many of their first-party developers had put more focus on games for that system rather than the Vita as a result. The lack of interest from Sony's first-party teams reverberated to third-party developers, who felt the Vita was not worth the effort to develop for over the upcoming PlayStation 4, leaving the Vita without a strong software library. Koller believed that if the Vita had launched earlier into the PlayStation 3's lifecycle, they would have been able to capture more interest from developers during that time and build out a more compelling library for the Vita. Legacy and impact The Vita was considered a commercial failure for Sony. In 2018, Sony announced there would be no successor to the Vita/PSP line of handhelds. With the success of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck handhelds moving into the 2020s, publications questioned Sony's decision to abandon the market. In 2023, Sony announced "Project Q", a controller with an 8-inch screen for the PlayStation 5 that would replicate the experience of remote play on a Vita or Off-TV Play of the Wii U GamePad. The product was later named PlayStation Portal and was released on November 15, 2023. Notes References External links XGP |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-PCGamesN:_vice_president-31] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-NYTimes:_Console_Wars-32] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi] | [TOKENS: 6008] |
Contents Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi (/paɪ/ PY) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) originally developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the Foundation established a commercial entity, now known as Raspberry Pi Holdings. The Raspberry Pi was originally created to help teach computer science in schools, but gained popularity for many other uses due to its low cost, compact size, and flexibility. It is now used in areas such as industrial automation, robotics, home automation, IoT devices, and hobbyist projects. The company's products range from simple microcontrollers to computers that the company markets as being powerful enough to be used as a general purpose PC. Computers are built around a custom designed system on a chip and offer features such as HDMI video/audio output, USB ports, wireless networking, GPIO pins, and up to 16 GB of RAM. Storage is typically provided via microSD cards. In 2015, the Raspberry Pi surpassed the ZX Spectrum as the best-selling British computer of all time. As of March 2025[update], 68 million units had been sold. History The Raspberry Pi Foundation was established in 2008 by a group including Eben Upton, in response to a noticeable decline in both the number and skill level of students applying to study computer science at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. The foundation's goal was to create a low-cost computer to help rekindle interest in programming among schoolchildren. This mission was inspired by the aims of the BBC Micro computer of the early 1980s, which was developed by Acorn Computers as part of a BBC initiative to promote computer literacy in UK schools. The names "Model A" and "Model B" were chosen as a deliberate homage to the BBC Micro. The name "Raspberry Pi" combines the fruit-themed naming convention used by early computer companies with a nod to the Python programming language. The first prototypes resembled small USB sticks. By August 2011, fifty functionally complete "alpha" boards were produced for testing, with demonstrations showing them running a Debian-based desktop and handling 1080p video playback. In late 2011, twenty-five "beta" boards were finalized, and to generate publicity before the official launch, ten of these were auctioned on eBay in early 2012. The first commercial Raspberry Pi, the Model B, was launched on 29 February 2012, with an initial price of $35. Demand far exceeded expectations, causing the websites of the two initial licensed distributors, Premier Farnell and RS Components, to crash from high traffic. Initial batches sold out almost immediately, with one distributor reporting over 100,000 pre-orders on the first day. The lower-cost $25 Model A followed on 4 February 2013. The Raspberry Pi did not ship with a pre-installed operating system. While ports of RISC OS 5 and Fedora Linux were available, a port of Debian called Raspbian quickly became the standard. Released in July 2012, it was optimized to leverage the Raspberry Pi's floating-point unit, offering significant performance gains. Raspberry Pi quickly endorsed it as the official recommended OS, and by September 2013, the company assumed leadership of Raspbian's development. In 2012, the Foundation restructured, creating Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd. to handle engineering and commercial activities, with Eben Upton as its CEO. This allowed the Raspberry Pi Foundation to focus solely on its charitable and educational mission. Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd. was renamed Raspberry Pi Ltd. in 2021. In June 2024, the company went public on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RPI, becoming Raspberry Pi Holdings. Following the launch, the first units reached buyers in April 2012. To address overwhelming demand and initial supply chain issues, the Foundation ramped up production to 4,000 units per day by July. The first batch of 10,000 boards was produced in factories located in Taiwan and China. A significant strategic shift occurred in September 2012, when manufacturing began moving to a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales. During this period, the hardware was also refined: the Model B Revision 2.0 board was announced with minor corrections, and in October, its included RAM was doubled to 512 MB. The post-launch period focused heavily on software and ecosystem development. In August 2012, the Foundation enabled hardware-accelerated H.264 video encoding and began selling licenses for MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs. A major milestone for the open-source community occurred in October 2012, when the Foundation released the Videocore IV graphics driver as free software. While the claim of it being the first fully open-source ARM SoC driver was debated, the move was widely praised. This effort culminated in February 2014 with the release of full documentation for the graphics core and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. In 2014, the Raspberry Pi product line began to diversify. April saw the release of the Compute Module, a miniature Raspberry Pi in a small form factor designed for industrial and embedded applications, which would soon become the largest market for the computers. In July the Model B+ was released with a refined design featuring additional USB ports and a more efficient board layout that established the form factor for future models. A smaller, cheaper ($20) Model A+ was released in November. A significant leap in performance came in February 2015 with the Raspberry Pi 2, which featured a 900 MHz quad-core CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Following its release, the price of the Model B+ was lowered to $25, a move some observers linked to the emergence of lower-priced competitors. The Raspberry Pi Zero, launched in November 2015, radically redefined the entry point for computing at a price of just $5. In February 2016, the Raspberry Pi 3 marked another major milestone by integrating a 64-bit processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The product line continued to expand with the wireless-enabled Raspberry Pi Zero W (February 2017), the faster Raspberry Pi 3B+ (March 2018), Raspberry Pi 3A+ (November 2018), and Compute Module 3+ (January 2019). The Raspberry Pi 4, launched in June 2019, represented another major performance leap with a faster processor, up to 8 GB of RAM, dual-monitor support, and USB 3.0 ports. A compute module version (CM4) launched in October 2020. This era saw further diversification with the Raspberry Pi 400 (a computer integrated into a keyboard) in November 2020, and the Raspberry Pi Pico in January 2021. The Pico, based on the in-house designed RP2040 chip, marked the company's first entry into the low-cost microcontroller market. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, introduced in 2021, featured a faster processor, providing a significant performance boost while maintaining the low-cost, compact form factor. The global chip shortage starting in 2020, as well as an uptake in demand starting in early 2021, notably affected the Raspberry Pi, causing significant availability issues from that time onward. The company explained its approach to the shortages in 2021, and April 2022, explaining that it was prioritising business and industrial customers. The Raspberry Pi 5 was released in October 2023, featuring an upgraded CPU and GPU, up to 16 GB of RAM, a PCIe interface for fast peripherals and an in-house designed southbridge chip. Updated versions of the Compute Module (CM5) and keyboard computer (Pi 500, Pi 500+) based on the Pi 5's architecture were subsequently announced. The Raspberry Pi Pico 2, released in 2024, introduced the RP2350 microcontroller, featuring selectable dual-core 32-bit ARM Cortex-M33 or RISC-V processors, 520 KB of RAM, and 4 MB of flash memory. The Raspberry Pi's sales demonstrated remarkable growth. The one-millionth Pi was sold by October 2013, a figure that doubled just a month later. By February 2016, sales reached eight million units, surpassing the ZX Spectrum as the best-selling British computer of all time. Sales hit ten million in September 2016, thirty million by December 2019, and forty million by May 2021. As of its tenth anniversary in February 2022, a total of 46 million Raspberry Pis had been sold. As of March 2025[update], 68 million units had been sold. Series and generations There are five main series of Raspberry Pi computers, each with multiple generations. Most models feature a Broadcom system on a chip (SoC) with an integrated ARM-based central processing unit (CPU) and an on-chip graphics processing unit (GPU). The exception is the Pico series, a microcontroller which uses the RP2040, a custom-designed SoC with an ARM-compatible CPU but no GPU. The flagship Raspberry Pi series, often referred to simply as "Raspberry Pi", offers high-performance hardware, a full Linux operating system, and a variety of common ports in a compact form factor roughly the size of a credit card. The Keyboard series combines Raspberry Pi hardware and ports into a keyboard computer form factor, providing a self-contained Linux-based desktop system. The Raspberry Pi Zero is a series of compact, low-cost, and low-power single-board computers that provide basic functionality and Linux compatibility for embedded and minimalist computing applications. The Pico is a series of compact microcontroller boards based on Raspberry Pi-designed chips. Unlike other models, they do not run Linux or support removable storage, and are instead programmed by flashing binaries to onboard flash memory. The Compute Module (CM) series delivers Raspberry Pi's flagship hardware in a compact form for industrial and embedded applications, omitting onboard ports and GPIO headers in favour of a carrier board interface. Compute Modules are offered in one of two formats: a board matching the physical dimensions of a DDR2 SO-DIMM RAM module (though electrically incompatible with standard SO-DIMM sockets) and a smaller board with dual 100-pin high-density connectors that enables additional interfaces. 1W 2017 10 Notes Hardware Since its introduction, Raspberry Pi hardware has been designed to provide low-cost computing platforms. The founders intended it to be an affordable and accessible system by making it compatible with widely available second-hand peripherals, such as televisions for displays, USB input devices, and cellphone chargers for power. Over time, the hardware has expanded to support both advanced configurations and ultra-low-cost variants. The company has also committed to keeping products in production for up to ten years. The Raspberry Pi has undergone multiple hardware revisions, with changes in processor type, memory capacity, networking features, and peripheral support. All models include a processor, memory, and various input/output interfaces on a single circuit board. Most include an HDMI output, USB ports, and a GPIO (general-purpose input/output) header. Networking capabilities vary by model, with later versions featuring integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Storage is typically provided via a microSD card, with newer models supporting USB or PCIe-based boot options. Raspberry Pi models use a range of system on a chip (SoC) designs, developed in partnership with Arm and Broadcom. Each generation has introduced improvements in CPU architecture, clock speed, graphics, and overall performance. The original Raspberry Pi and the Pi Zero use the Broadcom BCM2835, featuring a single-core 32-bit ARM11 CPU and a VideoCore IV GPU. The CPU is clocked at 700 MHz on the original Pi and 1 GHz on the Zero and Zero W. The Raspberry Pi 2 introduced the BCM2836 with a 900 MHz quad-core 32-bit Cortex-A7 CPU, while later revisions used the 64-bit BCM2837 with Cortex-A53 cores. The Raspberry Pi 3 retained the BCM2837, increasing the CPU clock to 1.2–1.4 GHz depending on the model. The Pi Zero 2 uses the RP3A0, a system in a package (SiP) combining the quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. The Raspberry Pi 4 introduced the BCM2711, a 64-bit SoC with a quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU and VideoCore VI GPU. Clock speeds were initially 1.5 GHz and later increased to 1.8 GHz. The Raspberry Pi 5 uses the BCM2712, featuring a quad-core Cortex-A76 CPU at 2.4 GHz, an 800 MHz VideoCore VII GPU, and a separate RP1 southbridge chip designed in-house. Raspberry Pi has also developed its own chips outside of its partnership with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi Pico uses the RP2040, featuring dual-core 32-bit Cortex-M0+ processors running at 133 MHz and 264 kB of on-chip RAM. The Pico 2 uses the RP2350, which can operate with either dual-core Cortex-M33 or dual-core Hazard3 RISC-V CPUs selected at boot, running at 150 MHz, with 520 kB of RAM. Most Raspberry Pi models support user-configurable overclocking through the system configuration file. More recent models feature dynamic frequency scaling, adjusting CPU speed based on workload to balance performance and thermal output. This behavior, while similar to overclocking, is part of the default power management system. If the CPU temperature exceeds 85 °C (185 °F) or if undervoltage is detected, performance is throttled automatically. For sustained high-performance workloads, additional cooling—such as a heat sink or fan—may be required. The original Raspberry Pi Model B was equipped with 512 MB of random-access memory (RAM), which, like later models, shares memory between the CPU and GPU. All Raspberry Pi boards support dynamic memory allocation between these components, allowing the system to adjust the division based on workload or user configuration. The original Model A included 256 MB of RAM. Subsequent models introduced increased memory capacities. The Pi 2B and 3 B/B+ models feature 1 GB of RAM, while the smaller 1A+ and 3A+ models have 512 MB. The Pi Zero and Zero 2 W also include 512 MB. The Pi 4 is available with 1, 2, 4, or 8 GB of RAM, and the Pi 5 expands this further with options for 2, 4, 8, or 16 GB, the highest capacity offered to date. Storage is typically provided via a microSD card, though some Compute Modules offer onboard eMMC flash. Newer models support USB booting, and the Pi 5 includes support for NVMe SSDs over PCIe. Boards also include USB ports for peripherals such as keyboards, mice, and storage devices. Raspberry Pi devices support both digital and analog video output across various resolutions. Early models featured a full-size HDMI port and an RCA connector for analog composite video output. Later boards removed the RCA jack but retained analog output via the 3.5 mm TRRS jack or dedicated solder points. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, analog support helps maintain accessibility in developing countries. To accommodate the addition of features on the compact boards, video connectors have shrunk across models. The Pi Zero series uses a mini-HDMI connector, while the Pi 4 and 5 use dual micro-HDMI ports. This change enables support for multiple displays: the Pi 4 can drive two 4K displays at 30 Hz or one at 60 Hz, while the Pi 5 improves on this with support for two 4K displays at 60 Hz. Older Raspberry Pi models support common display resolutions such as 720p and 1080p by default, with some capable of higher resolutions depending on hardware and configuration. In some cases, older hardware can output in 4K, though performance may be poor. Most Raspberry Pi models include a 40-pin connector known as the GPIO (general-purpose input/output) header, although only some of the pins are dedicated to GPIO functions. The header, designated as J8, uses a consistent pinout across models.[citation needed] The header supplies 3.3 V and 5 V power along with various multiplexed, low-speed interfaces, including UART, SPI, I²C, I²S, and PCM. GPIO pins can be configured as either inputs or outputs. When set as an output, a pin can drive a high (3.3 V) or low (0 V) signal. When configured as an input, it can read a high (3.3 V) or low (0 V) voltage level. The original Raspberry Pi 1 Model A and B include only the first 26 pins of this header. On some Pi Zero models, the header is unpopulated, but solderable through-holes are provided. The Pico models feature a unique layout with unpopulated through-holes and a castellated edge, allowing it to be surface-mounted as a module. Compute Module boards do not include GPIO headers but instead expose GPIO signals through their board connectors.[citation needed] Networking capabilities differ by model. The Model B and B+ include an Ethernet port. Starting with the Raspberry Pi 3, most models come with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. The Raspberry Pi 3B+ adds faster Ethernet and dual-band WiFi. The Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 offer full gigabit Ethernet. The "A" models and the Pi Zero series do not have Ethernet ports, and built-in wireless support is optional. A USB adapter may be used for wired or wireless connections. Headless Raspberry Pi configurations may experience intermittent network connectivity issues, often attributed to default WiFi power management settings. These issues are typically addressable through configuration changes.[citation needed] Some Raspberry Pi models, like the Zero, 1A, 3A+, and 4, can act like a USB device (via the USB On-The-Go protocol) when plugged into another computer. This lets them work as gadgets such as a virtual keyboard, network adapter, or serial device. Many newer models can also start up (or "boot") directly from a USB drive, without needing a microSD card. This feature is not available on older models like the original Raspberry Pi, Pi Zero, or early versions of the Pi 2. Most Raspberry Pi models do not include a built-in real-time clock, which means they rely on an internet connection to set the correct time with the Network Time Protocol when they start up. If there is no connection, the time must be set manually; otherwise, the system assumes no time has passed since it was last used. Add-on clock modules are available for situations where accurate timekeeping is needed without internet access. The Raspberry Pi 5 is the first model to include a built-in clock which uses a battery to keep time when powered off. Specifications 1.6 A (8 W) for "power virus" workloads 3 A (15 W) power supply recommended. Software The recommended operating system is Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware and tuned to have low base memory requirements. It is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and comes in several editions: a standard edition, a "Lite" version without a desktop environment, and a "Full" version that includes a comprehensive suite of software. Raspberry Pi OS can be purchased pre-installed on a microSD card, or downloaded and installed using Raspberry Pi Imager, a utility introduced in March 2020 to simplify the installation of operating systems onto SD cards and other media for Raspberry Pi devices. Available for macOS, Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu, and Windows, Imager allows users to download and write operating system disk images within a single application. In addition to Raspberry Pi OS, the utility supports a variety of third-party operating systems, including Alpine Linux, Armbian, Emteria.OS (Android based), FreedomBox, Kali Linux, LibreELEC, RetroPie, RISC OS, SatNOGS, and Ubuntu. The Raspberry Pi uses official firmware that is proprietary, meaning its source code is not publicly available, but the binary blob can be freely redistributed. An experimental open-source alternative to the official firmware is also available. Although limited in functionality, it demonstrates that it is possible to start the Raspberry Pi's ARM processor cores and boot a basic version of the Linux kernel without relying on the proprietary components. This is significant for developers and advocates who aim to build fully open systems. Raspberry Pi systems use Broadcom's VideoCore GPU, which requires a proprietary binary blob to be loaded at boot. Initially, the supporting software stack was entirely proprietary, though parts of the code were later released. Most driver functionality remains within closed-source GPU firmware, accessed via runtime libraries such as OpenMAX IL, OpenGL ES, and OpenVG. These libraries interface with a kernel-space open-source driver, which in turn communicates with the closed GPU firmware. Applications use OpenMAX IL for video, OpenGL ES for 3D graphics, and OpenVG for 2D graphics, with all graphics libraries making use of EGL. In February 2020, Raspberry Pi announced the development of a Vulkan graphics driver. A working prototype demonstrated high performance in Quake III Arena on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ later that year. On 24 November 2020, Raspberry Pi 4's Vulkan driver was declared Vulkan 1.0 conformant, with subsequent conformance updates for versions 1.1 and 1.2. Official accessories Raspberry Pi offers several official camera modules that connect via the Camera Serial Interface. These modules are used for photography, video capture, and machine vision applications. Raspberry Pi also offers official display peripherals for graphical and touchscreen interfaces: Official Raspberry Pi HATs (Hardware Attached on Top) and expansion boards extend the functionality of Raspberry Pi computers. The HAT standard was introduced in July 2014. Many boards use an EEPROM for automatic configuration. Reception and use Technology writer Glyn Moody described the project in May 2011 as a "potential BBC Micro 2.0", not by replacing PC compatible machines but by supplementing them. In March 2012 Stephen Pritchard echoed the BBC Micro successor sentiment in ITPRO. Alex Hope, co-author of the Next Gen report, is hopeful that the computer will engage children with the excitement of programming. Co-author Ian Livingstone suggested that the BBC could be involved in building support for the device, possibly branding it as the BBC Nano. The Centre for Computing History strongly supports the Raspberry Pi project, feeling that it could "usher in a new era". Before release, the board was showcased by ARM's CEO Warren East at an event in Cambridge outlining Google's ideas to improve UK science and technology education. Harry Fairhead, however, suggests that more emphasis should be put on improving the educational software available on existing hardware, using tools such as MIT App Inventor to return programming to schools, rather than adding new hardware choices. Simon Rockman, writing in a ZDNet blog, was of the opinion that teens will have "better things to do", despite what happened in the 1980s. In October 2012, the Raspberry Pi won T3's Innovation of the Year award, and futurist Mark Pesce cited a (borrowed) Raspberry Pi as the inspiration for his ambient device project MooresCloud. In October 2012, the British Computer Society responded to the announcement of enhanced specifications by stating, "it's definitely something we'll want to sink our teeth into." In June 2017, Raspberry Pi won the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award. The citation for the award to the Raspberry Pi said it was "for its inexpensive credit card-sized microcomputers, which are redefining how people engage with computing, inspiring students to learn coding and computer science and providing innovative control solutions for industry." Clusters of hundreds of Raspberry Pis have been used for testing programs destined for supercomputers. The Raspberry Pi community was described by Jamie Ayre of FOSS software company AdaCore as one of the most exciting parts of the project. Community blogger Russell Davis said that the community strength allows the Foundation to concentrate on documentation and teaching. The community developed a fanzine around the platform called The MagPi which in 2015, was handed over to Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd by its volunteers to be continued in-house. A series of community Raspberry Jam events have been held across the UK and around the world. As of January 2012[update], enquiries about the board in the United Kingdom have been received from schools in both the state and private sectors, with around five times as much interest from the latter. It is hoped that businesses will sponsor purchases for less advantaged schools. The CEO of Premier Farnell said that the government of a country in the Middle East has expressed interest in providing a board to every schoolgirl, to enhance her employment prospects. In 2014, the Raspberry Pi Foundation hired a number of its community members including ex-teachers and software developers to launch a set of free learning resources for its website. The Foundation also started a teacher training course called Picademy with the aim of helping teachers prepare for teaching the new computing curriculum using the Raspberry Pi in the classroom. In 2018, NASA launched the JPL Open Source Rover Project, which is a scaled down version of Curiosity rover and uses a Raspberry Pi as the control module, to encourage students and hobbyists to get involved in mechanical, software, electronics, and robotics engineering. There are a number of developers and applications that are using the Raspberry Pi for home automation. These programmers are making an effort to modify the Raspberry Pi into a cost-affordable solution in energy monitoring and power consumption. Because of the relatively low cost of the Raspberry Pi, this has become a popular and economical alternative to the more expensive commercial solutions.[citation needed] In June 2014, Polish industrial automation manufacturer TECHBASE released ModBerry, an industrial computer based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. The device has a number of interfaces, most notably RS-485/232 serial ports, digital and analogue inputs/outputs, CAN and economical 1-Wire buses, all of which are widely used in the automation industry. The design allows the use of the Compute Module in harsh industrial environments, leading to the conclusion that the Raspberry Pi is no longer limited to home and science projects, but can be widely used as an Industrial IoT solution and achieve goals of Industry 4.0. In March 2018, SUSE announced commercial support for SUSE Linux Enterprise on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B to support a number of undisclosed customers implementing industrial monitoring with the Raspberry Pi. In January 2021, TECHBASE announced a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 cluster for AI accelerator, routing and file server use. The device contains one or more standard Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4s in an industrial DIN rail housing, with some versions containing one or more Coral Edge tensor processing units. The Organelle is a portable synthesiser, a sampler, a sequencer, and an effects processor designed and assembled by Critter & Guitari. It incorporates a Raspberry Pi computer module running Linux. OTTO is a digital camera created by Next Thing Co. It incorporates a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. It was successfully crowd-funded in a May 2014 Kickstarter campaign. Slice is a digital media player which also uses a Compute Module as its heart. It was crowd-funded in an August 2014 Kickstarter campaign. The software running on Slice is based on Kodi. Numerous commercial thin client computer terminals use the Raspberry Pi. During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand increased primarily due to the increase in remote work, but also because of the use of many Raspberry Pi Zeros in ventilators for COVID-19 patients in countries such as Colombia, which were used to combat strain on the healthcare system. In March 2020, Raspberry Pi sales reached 640,000 units, the second largest month of sales in the company's history. A project was launched in December 2014 at an event held by the UK Space Agency. The Astro Pi was an augmented Raspberry Pi that included a sensor hat with a visible light or infrared camera. The Astro Pi competition, called Principia, was officially opened in January and was opened to all primary and secondary school aged children who were residents of the United Kingdom. During his mission, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake deployed the computers on board the International Space Station. He loaded the winning code while in orbit, collected the data generated and then sent this to Earth where it was distributed to the winning teams. Covered themes during the competition included spacecraft sensors, satellite imaging, space measurements, data fusion and space radiation. The organisations involved in the Astro Pi competition include the UK Space Agency, UKspace, Raspberry Pi, ESERO-UK and ESA. In 2017, the European Space Agency ran another competition open to all students in the European Union called Proxima. The winning programs were run on the ISS by Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut. In December 2021, the Dragon 2 spacecraft launched by NASA had a pair of Astro Pi in it. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spencer_(business_executive)] | [TOKENS: 670] |
Contents Phil Spencer (business executive) Phil Spencer (born January 12, 1968) is an American business executive and the former CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Starting his career at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, Spencer has worked in various sectors within the company, including developing Microsoft's first CD-ROM-based titles. He joined the Xbox team in 2001, and in February of 2026, Spencer announced his retirement from Microsoft. Career Spencer joined Microsoft in 1988 as an intern and has worked in a number of technical roles, leading the development of Microsoft's first CD-ROM-based titles (such as Encarta), development manager for Microsoft Money, and general manager of Microsoft's online and offline consumer productivity products including Microsoft Works and Microsoft Picture It! During his early time at Microsoft, he was known by other employees to be an avid gamer, playing games such as Ultima Online in the office. With the launch of the Xbox in 2001, Spencer joined the Xbox team and served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008, when he became the general manager of Microsoft Studios, eventually becoming the studio's corporate vice president a year later. He has participated in Microsoft's E3 conferences since 2010, until E3's final iteration in 2021. In late March 2014, Satya Nadella announced in a corporate e-mail that Spencer was to "lead the Xbox, Xbox Live, Groove Music and Movies & TV teams, and Microsoft Studios" as part of the Windows and Devices division. In September 2017, Spencer was promoted to the Senior Leadership Team, gaining the title of Executive Vice President of Gaming and reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella. In 2018, Spencer delivered the keynote address at the 2018 DICE Summit and spoke at the 2018 Game Awards. In January 2022, along with the announcement of Microsoft's intent to acquire Activision Blizzard, Spencer was promoted to the role of CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Since taking over both Xbox and the Gaming division, Spencer has advocated for cross-platform play and has indicated his goals are no longer to move gamers from other platforms to Xbox. He has launched key initiatives, such as reintroducing backward compatibility to the Xbox platform, the purchase of Mojang and Bethesda, the further development and support of Minecraft, the introduction of Xbox Game Pass, launching the Xbox Adaptive Controller, an increased focus on PC gaming, porting some Microsoft-published games to other platforms including the Nintendo Switch, the launch of xCloud, and increasing the number of first-party development studios. Spencer received the Lifetime Achievement award at the 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards on February 24, 2022, and the Andrew Yoon Legend award at the New York Game Awards on January 17, 2023. In February 2026, Spencer announced his retirement from Microsoft. Personal life Spencer attended Ridgefield High School in Ridgefield, Washington, and then earned a bachelor's degree in technical and scientific communication from the University of Washington. Spencer lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two daughters. He serves on the boards of the First Tee of Greater Seattle and the Entertainment Software Association. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4] | [TOKENS: 7657] |
Contents PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in Europe, South America, and Australia, and on February 22, 2014, in Japan. A console of the eighth generation, it competes with Microsoft's Xbox One and Nintendo's Wii U and Switch. Moving away from the more complex Cell microarchitecture of its predecessor, the console features an APU from AMD built upon the x86-64 architecture, which can theoretically peak at 1.84 teraflops; AMD stated that it was the "most powerful" APU it had developed to date. The PlayStation 4 places an increased emphasis on social interaction and integration with other devices and services, including the ability to play games off-console on PlayStation Vita and other supported devices ("Remote Play"), the ability to stream gameplay online or to friends, with them controlling gameplay remotely ("Share Play"). The console's controller was also redesigned and improved over the PlayStation 3, with updated buttons and analog sticks, and an integrated touchpad among other changes. The console also supports HDR10 high-dynamic-range video and playback of 4K resolution multimedia. The PlayStation 4 was released to critical acclaim, with critics praising Sony for acknowledging its consumers' needs, embracing independent game development, and for not imposing the restrictive digital rights management schemes like those originally announced by Microsoft for the Xbox One. Critics and third-party studios, before its launch, also praised the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 in comparison to its competitors. Heightened demand also helped Sony top global console sales. In September 2016, the console was refreshed with a new, smaller revision, popularly referred to as the "Slim" model, as well as a high-end version called the PlayStation 4 Pro, which features an upgraded GPU and a higher CPU clock rate to support enhanced performance and 4K resolution in supported games. By October 2019, PS4 had become the second best-selling PlayStation console of all time, behind the PlayStation 2. Its successor, the PlayStation 5, was released in November 2020; the PS4 continues to be produced as of 2025.[failed verification] History According to lead architect Mark Cerny, the development of Sony's fourth video game console began as early as 2008. Less than two years earlier, the PlayStation 3 had been launched after months of delays due to issues with production. The delay placed Sony almost a year behind Microsoft's Xbox 360, which was already approaching unit sales of 10 million by the time the PS3 launched. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan said Sony wanted to avoid repeating the same mistake with PS3's successor. In designing the system, Sony worked with software developer Bungie, who offered their input on the controller and how to make it better for shooting games. In 2012, Sony began shipping development kits to game developers, consisting of a modified PC running the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit chipset. These development kits were known as "Orbis". In early 2013, Sony announced that an event known as PlayStation Meeting 2013 would be held in New York City, U.S., on February 20, 2013, to cover the "future of PlayStation". Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 at the event. It revealed details about the console's hardware and discussed some of the new features it would introduce. Sony also showed off real-time footage of games in development, as well as some technical demonstrations. The design of the console was unveiled in June at E3 2013, and the initial recommended retail prices of $399 (NA), €399 (Europe), and £349 (UK) given. Sony took advantage of problems that Microsoft had been having with their positioning of their newly announced Xbox One, which included its higher price point ($499 in North America), as well as strict regulations on how users could share game media. Besides its lower price point, Sony focused on the ease one would have in sharing media with the PS4. The company revealed release dates for North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and Australia, as well as final pieces of information, at a Gamescom press event in Cologne, Germany, on August 20, 2013. The console was released on November 15, 2013, in the United States and Canada, followed by further releases on November 29, 2013. By the end of 2013, the PS4 was launched in more European, Asian and South American countries. The PS4 was released in Japan at ¥39,980 on February 22, 2014. Sony finalized a deal with the Chinese government in May 2014 to sell its products in mainland China, and the PS4 was the first product to be released. Kazuo Hirai, chief executive officer of Sony, said in May: "The Chinese market, just given the size of it, is obviously potentially a very large market for video game products ... I think that we will be able to replicate the kind of success we have had with PS4 in other parts of the world in China." In September 2015, Sony reduced the price of the PS4 in Japan to ¥34,980, with similar price drops in other Southeast Asian markets. The first official sub-£300 PS4 bundle was the £299.99 "Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection 500GB", and was released in the UK on October 9, 2015; a 1 TB £329.99 version was offered at the same time. On October 9, 2015, the first official price cut of the PS4 in North America was announced: a reduction of $50 to $349.99 (US) and by $20 to $429.99 (Canada). An official price cut in Europe followed in late October 2015, reduced to €349.99/£299.99. On June 10, 2016, Sony confirmed that a hardware revision of the PlayStation 4, rumored to be codenamed "Neo", was under development. The new revision was revealed to be a higher-end model meant to support gameplay in 4K. This new model was sold alongside the existing model, and all existing software was compatible between the two models. Layden stated that Sony has no plans to "bifurcate the market", only that gamers playing on the Neo will "have the same experience, but one will be delivered at a higher resolution, with an enhanced graphical experience, but everything else is going to be exactly as you'd expect". The high-end console was publicly revealed on September 7, 2016, as PlayStation 4 Pro. At the same time, Sony unveiled an updated version of the original PS4 model with a smaller form factor. In May 2018, during a presentation to investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera stated that the PlayStation 4 was heading into the end of its lifecycle and that the company was anticipating decreasing year-over-year hardware sales. He explained that Sony would be countering the expected decline by focusing on "strengthen[ing] user engagement" including continued investments into new first-party games and other online services for PS4. "We will use the next three years to prepare the next step, to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future," Kodera added in an interview with the press the following day. Following the launch of the PlayStation 5 in November 2020, Sony discontinued production in Japan of all but the 500 GB Slim model of the PlayStation 4 on January 5, 2021, with the standard PS4 and PS4 Pro still being produced for western markets. According to a report from Bloomberg News in January 2022, Sony had been poised to discontinue the PlayStation 4 at the end of 2021 in favor of the PlayStation 5, but due to a global chip shortage that lasted from 2020 to 2023, this made it difficult for Sony to keep up with PlayStation 5 demand. Instead, the company planned to continue PlayStation 4 production; besides helping to offset the PlayStation 5 shortage, this production method would help assure deals with its component providers for the PlayStation 5. Hardware The technology in the PlayStation 4 is similar to the hardware found in modern personal computers. This familiarity is designed to make it easier and less expensive for game studios to develop games for the PS4. "[We] have not built an APU quite like that for anyone else in the market. It is by far the most powerful APU we have built to date". (February 2013) The PlayStation 4 uses an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) developed by AMD in cooperation with Sony. It combines a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), as well as other components such as a memory controller and video decoder. The CPU consists of two 28 nm quad-core Jaguar modules totaling 8 64-bit x86-64 cores, 7 of which are available for game developers to use. The GPU consists of 18 compute units to produce a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS. The system's GDDR5 memory is capable of running at a maximum clock frequency of 2.75 GHz (5500 MT/s) and has a maximum memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. The console contains 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, 16 times the amount of RAM found in the PS3 and is expected to give the console considerable longevity. It also includes secondary custom chips that handle tasks associated with downloading, uploading, and social gameplay. These tasks can be handled in the background during gameplay or while the system is in sleep mode. The console also contains an audio module, which can support in-game chat as well as "a very large number" of audio streams for use in-game. All PlayStation 4 models support high dynamic range (HDR) color profiles. Its read-only optical drive is capable of reading Blu-ray Discs at speeds of up to three times that of its predecessor. The console features a hardware on-the-fly zlib decompression module. The original PS4 model supports up to 1080p and 1080i video standards, while the Pro model supports 4K resolution. The console includes a 500 gigabyte hard drive for additional storage, which can be upgraded by the user. System Software 4.50, which was released on March 9, 2017, enabled the use of external USB hard drives up to 8 TB for additional storage. The PlayStation 4 features Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, Bluetooth, and two USB 3.0 ports. An auxiliary port is also included for connection to the PlayStation Camera, a motion detection digital camera device first introduced on the PS3. A mono headset, which can be plugged into the DualShock 4, is bundled with the system. Audio/video output options include HDMI TV and optical S/PDIF audio. The console does not have an analog audio/video output. The PS4 features a "Rest mode" feature. This places the console in a low-power state while allowing users to immediately resume their game or app once the console is awoken. The console also is able to download content such as game and OS updates while it is in this state. The DualShock 4 is PlayStation 4's primary controller; it maintains a similar design to previous iterations of the DualShock series, but with additional features and design refinements. Among other tweaks, the caps of the analog sticks were given a concave design (similar to the Xbox 360 controller), the shape of the triggers and shoulder buttons was refined, the D-pad buttons were given a steeper downward angle to provide a resting space in the center for the user's thumb, and the hand grips were made thicker and given microtexturing to improve their feel. A major addition to the DualShock 4 is a touchpad; it is capable of detecting up to two simultaneous touch presses, and can also be pressed down as a button. The "Start" and "Select" buttons were replaced by "Options" and "Share" buttons; the latter is designed to allow access to the PlayStation 4's social features (including streaming, video recording, and screenshot tools). The DualShock 4 is powered by a non-removable, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which can be charged using its micro USB connector. The controller also features an internal speaker, and a headphone jack for headsets or headphones; the console is bundled with a pair of headset earbuds. The controller's motion tracking system is more sensitive than those of the PlayStation 3's controllers. An LED "light bar" was additionally added to the front of the controller; it is designed to allow the PlayStation Camera accessory to further track its motion, but can also be used to provide visual effects and feedback within games (such as, for instance, reflecting a player's low health by turning red). Although the PS4 and DualShock 4 continue to use Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, the console is incompatible with PlayStation 3 controllers. An exception are the PlayStation Move motion controllers originally released for PS3, which are officially supported for use with the PlayStation Camera. In October 2013, Shuhei Yoshida stated on Twitter that the DualShock 4 would support "basic functions" when attached to a PC. In August 2016, Sony unveiled an official USB wireless adapter for the DualShock 4, enabling use of all of the controller's functionality on PC. In December 2016, Valve's Steam platform was updated to provide support and controller customization functionality for DualShock 4, through existing APIs for the Steam Controller. A revision of the DualShock 4 was released alongside the "Slim" and Pro models in 2016, and is bundled with these systems. It is largely identical to the original model, except that the touchpad now contains a "stripe" along the top which the light bar's LED can shine through, and the controller can communicate non-wirelessly when connected to the console over USB. The PlayStation Camera is an optional motion sensor and camera for the PlayStation 4, similar to Kinect on Xbox. It includes two 1280×800 pixel lenses operating with an aperture of f/2.0, with 30 cm focusing distance, and an 85° field of view. The dual camera setup allows for different modes of operation, depending on the initiated and running application. The two cameras can be used together for depth-sensing of its surrounding objects in its field of vision. Alternatively, one of the cameras can be used for generating the video image, with the other used for motion tracking. PlayStation Camera also features a four-channel microphone array, which helps reduce unwanted background noise and can be used for voice commands. With the PlayStation Camera connected, different users can automatically log-on to the system via face detection. PlayStation VR is a virtual reality system for PlayStation 4; it consists of a headset, which features a 1080p display panel, LED lights on the headset that are used by PlayStation Camera to track its motion, and a control box that processes 3D audio effects, as well as video output to the external display (either simulcasting the player's VR perspective, or providing an asymmetrical secondary perspective). PlayStation VR can also be used with PlayStation Move motion controllers. Software and services The PlayStation 4's operating system is called "Orbis OS", based upon a customized FreeBSD 9. The console does not require an Internet connection for usage, although more functionality is available when connected. The console introduces a customizable menu interface, the "PlayStation Dynamic Menu", featuring a variety of color schemes. The interface displays the player's profile, recent activity, notifications, and other details in addition to unlocked trophies. It allows multiple user accounts, all with their own pass-codes. Each player account has the option to share their real name with friends, or use a nickname in other situations when anonymity is important. Facebook profiles can be connected to PlayStation Network accounts, making it easier to recognize friends. The default home screen features real time content from friends. The "What's New" activity feed includes shared media, recently played games, and other notifications. Services from third-party vendors, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, can be accessed within the interface. Multitasking is available during gameplay, such as opening the browser or managing party chat, and switching between applications is done by double-tapping the "PS" button. The PlayStation Camera or a microphone enables the user to control the system using voice input. Players can command the interface to start a game, take screenshots, and save videos. Saying "PlayStation" initiates voice control, and "All Commands" displays a list of possible commands. The PlayStation 4 supports Blu-ray and DVD playback, including 3D Blu-ray. The playing of CD is no longer supported, as the console no longer has an infrared 780 nm laser. Custom music and video files can still be played from USB drives and DLNA servers using the Media Player app. The PlayStation 4 allows users to access a variety of free and premium PlayStation Network (PSN) services, including the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Plus subscription service, PlayStation Music powered by Spotify, and the PlayStation Video subscription service, which allows owners to rent or buy TV shows and films à la carte. A United States-exclusive cloud-based television-on-demand service known as PlayStation Vue began beta testing in late November 2014. Sony intends to expand and evolve the services it offers over the console's lifespan. Unlike PS3, a PlayStation Plus membership is required to access multiplayer in most games; this requirement does not apply to free-to-play or subscription-based games. Smartphones and tablets can interact with the PlayStation 4 as second screen devices, and can also wake the console from sleep mode. A Sony Xperia smartphone, tablet or the PlayStation Vita can be used for streaming gameplay from the console to handheld, allowing supported games to be played remotely from around a household or away from home. Sony has ambitions to make all PS4 games playable on PlayStation Vita. Developers can add Vita-specific controls for use via Remote Play. This feature was later expanded to enable PS4 Remote Play functionality on Microsoft Windows PCs and on Apple OS X Macs. The update, released in April 2016, allows for Remote Play functionality on computers running Windows 8.1, Windows 10, OS X Yosemite, and OS X El Capitan. Remote Play supports resolution options of 360p, 540p, and 720p (1080p is available on PS4 Pro), frame rate options of 30–60 FPS, and the DualShock 4 can be connected via USB. The PlayStation App allows iOS and Android mobile devices to interact with the PlayStation 4 from their device. The user can use this application to purchase PS4 games from the console and have them remotely downloaded, watch live streams of other gamers and view in-game maps while playing games. Social features "Ustream's integration within PS4 consoles will put gamers on a new media field. They will have the ability to direct, produce, and star in their own video game production, simply by being an awesome (or not so awesome!) gamer." Sony focused on "social" aspects as a major feature of the console. Although the PS4 has improved social functionality, the features are optional and can be disabled. Users have the option to create or join community groups based on personal interest. Communities include a discussion board, accomplishments and game clips shared by other members, plus the ability to join group chat and launch cooperative games. Sony stated that "communities are a good way to socialize with like-minded players", particularly when "you want to tackle a big multiplayer raid, but don't have enough friends available." Sony has officially stated that starting April 2021, the community system of the PlayStation Network will be discontinued. This, however, will not prevent users from communicating with their friends in private messaging or in group chats on the PlayStation Network. The DualShock 4 controller includes a "SHARE" button, allowing the player to cycle through the last 60 minutes of recorded gameplay to select a screenshot or video clip appropriate for sharing. Media is uploaded seamlessly from the console to other PSN users or social networking sites such as Dailymotion, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, or else users can copy media to a USB flash drive and upload to a social network or website of their preference. Players can also use a free video editing application named ShareFactory to cut and assemble their favorite video clips and add custom music or voice commentary with green screen effects. Subsequent updates have added options for picture-in-picture layouts, the ability to create photo collages and animated GIFs. Gamers can either watch live gameplay of games which their friends are playing through the PS4 interface with cross-game camera and microphone input, spectate silently, or broadcast their own gameplay live via DailyMotion, Twitch, Ustream, Niconico, or YouTube Gaming, allowing for friends and members of the public to view and comment upon them from other web browsers and devices. If a user is not screen-casting, a friend can send them a "Request to Watch" notification. Share Play allows users to invite an online friend to join their play session via streaming, even if they do not own a copy of the game. Users can pass control of the game entirely to the remote user or partake in cooperative multiplayer as if they were physically present. Mark Cerny says that remote assistance is particularly useful when confronted by a potentially game-defeating obstacle. "You can even see that your friend is in trouble and reach out through the network to take over the controller and assist them through some difficult portion of the game," he said. Share Play requires a PlayStation Plus subscription and can only be used for one hour at a time. Games Each PlayStation 4 console comes preinstalled with The Playroom, a game designed to server as demonstration of the DualShock 4 controller and the PlayStation Camera. The PlayStation Camera accessory is required to play The Playroom. If a camera is not present, a trailer for The Playroom will be displayed instead of the full game. PlayStation 4 games are distributed at retail on Blu-ray Disc, and digitally as downloads through the PlayStation Store. Games are not region-locked, so games purchased in one region can be played on consoles in all regions, and players can sign-on to any PS4 console to access their entire digital game library. All PlayStation 4 games must be installed to the console's storage. Additionally a system called "PlayGo" allows users to begin to play portions of a game (such as opening levels) once the installation or download reaches a specific point, while the remainder of the game is downloaded or installed in the background. Updates to games and system software are also downloaded in the background and while in standby. PS4 users will, in the future, be able to browse games and stream games via Gaikai to demo them almost instantaneously. Sony says it is committed to releasing an ever-increasing number of free-to-play games, including PlanetSide 2 and War Thunder. Sony also took steps to make it easier for independent game developers to release games for the PS4 by giving them the option to self-publish their own games rather than rely upon others to distribute their games. PlayStation 4 is not compatible with any disc of older PlayStation consoles. Emulated versions of selected PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable games are available for purchase via PlayStation Store, which are upscaled to high definition and have support for PS4 social features. In December 2013, Andrew House indicated that Sony was planning to launch a cloud gaming service for the PS4 in North America within the third quarter of 2014, with a European launch to follow in 2015. At Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, 2014, Sony unveiled PlayStation Now, a digital distribution service which will initially allow users to access PlayStation 3 games on the PS4 via a cloud-based streaming system, purchasing games individually or via a subscription, as a solution of no backward compatibility on the hardware of the console. The United States Open Beta went live on July 31, 2014. The official United States release of the service was on January 13, 2015. As of March 2015[update] PlayStation Now was in closed beta in the United Kingdom. At E3 2017, Sony revealed the "PlayLink" line of games, which let players control the game with their mobile devices and PlayLink companion apps. The apps would release on November 21 that same year and would include games such as Knowledge is Power, That's You, Hidden Agenda, SingStar Celebration, and Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier. On November 14, 2018, more games would be released, including Just Deal With It, Chimparty, WordHunters, UNO, Melbits World, Ticket To Ride, and Knowledge is Power: Decades. In 2019, the delayed release of Erica made no mention of the PlayLink initiative, when it was planned with PlayLink functionality at the 2017 Paris Games Week event. It would be confirmed by Sony in 2020 that PS4 PlayLink titles would be backwards-compatible with the PlayStation 5. Since 2021, many of the PlayLink companion apps have been delisted from the Apple App Store and Google Play, such as Uno.[citation needed] On December 14, 2023, companion apps for Chimparty, Frantics, Hidden Agenda, Knowledge is Power, Knowledge is Power: Decades, and That's You were no longer downloadable for new Google Play users with devices above Android 9 or 11 due to compatibility issues, with iOS users being unaffected. There are other PlayLink applications that have been published outside of PlayStation, including by Ubisoft for Battleship. Release "It's abundantly clear that PS4 is being driven as a collaboration between East and West, as opposed to a dictation from one side to the other. Developers are fully involved, activated, discussed and doing really cool collaborative things." Pre-release reception to the console from developers and journalists was positive. Mark Rein of Epic Games praised the "enhanced" architecture of Sony's system, describing it as "a phenomenal piece of hardware". John Carmack, programmer and co-founder of id Software, also commended the design by saying "Sony made wise engineering choices", while Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software expressed satisfaction with the amount of high-speed memory in the console. Eurogamer also called the graphics technology in the PS4 "impressive" and an improvement from the difficulties developers experienced on the PlayStation 3. Numerous industry professionals have acknowledged the PlayStation 4's performance advantage over the Xbox One. Speaking to Edge magazine, multiple game developers have described the difference as "significant" and "obvious". ExtremeTech says the PS4's graphics processing unit offers a "serious advantage" over the competition, but due to the nature of cross-platform development, games that share the same assets will appear "very similar". In other scenarios, designers may tap some of PS4's additional power in a straightforward manner, to boost frame rate or output at a higher resolution, whereas games from Sony's own first-party studios that take full advantage of the hardware "will probably look significantly better than anything on the Xbox One." In response to concerns surrounding the possibility of DRM measures to hinder the resale of used games (and in particular, the initial DRM policies of Xbox One, which did contain such restrictions), Jack Tretton explicitly stated during Sony's E3 press conference that there would be "no restrictions" on the resale and trading of PS4 games on physical media, while software product development head Scott Rohde specified that Sony was planning to disallow online passes as well, going on to say that the policies were designed to be "consumer-friendly, extremely retailer-friendly, and extremely publisher-friendly". After Sony's E3 2013 press conference, IGN responded positively to Sony's attitude towards indie developers and trading games, stating they thought "most gamers would agree" that "if you care about games like [Sony] do, you'll buy a PlayStation 4". PlayStation 4's removable and upgradable hard drive also drew praise from IGN, with Scott Lowe commenting that the decision gave the console "another advantage" over the Xbox One, whose hard drive cannot be accessed. GameSpot called the PlayStation 4 "the gamer's choice for next-generation", citing its price, lack of restrictive digital rights management, and most importantly, Sony's efforts to "acknowledge its consumers" and "respect its audience" as major factors. The PlayStation 4 has received very positive reviews by critics. Scott Lowe of IGN gave it an 8.2 rating out of 10 praising the console's DualShock 4 design and social integration features. He criticized the console's lack of software features and for underutilizing the DualShock 4's touch pad. The Gadget Show gave a similar review complimenting the DualShock 4's new triggers and control sticks, in addition to the new Remote Play feature, yet criticized the system's lack of media support at launch. IGN compared the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 over various categories, allowing their readers to vote for their preferred system. The PS4 won every category offered, and IGN awarded the PS4 with their People's Choice Award. Shortly following the launch, it became apparent that some games released on multiple platforms were available in higher resolutions on the PS4 as opposed to other video game consoles. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku reported on the differences in early games such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag which ran at 1080p on the PS4, but in 720p and 900p, respectively, on the Xbox One. Demand for PlayStation 4 was strong. In August 2013, Sony announced the placement of over a million preorders for the console, while on the North American launch alone, one million PlayStation 4 consoles were sold. In the UK, the PlayStation 4 became the best-selling console at launch, with the sale of 250,000 consoles within a 48-hour period and 530,000 in the first five weeks. On January 7, 2014, Andrew House announced in his Consumer Electronics Show keynote speech that 4.2 million PS4 units had been sold-through by the end of 2013, with more than 9.7 million software units sold. On February 18, 2014, Sony announced that, as of February 8, it had sold over 5.3 million console units following the release of the PS4 onto the North American and Western/Central European markets. Within the first two days of release in Japan during the weekend of February 22, 2014, 322,083 consoles were sold. PS4 software unit sales surpassed 20.5 million on April 13, 2014. During Japan's 2013 fiscal year, heightened demand for the PS4 helped Sony top global console sales, beating Nintendo for the first time in eight years. According to data released by Nielsen in August 2014, nine months after the PS4 was released, thirty-one percent of its sales were to existing Wii and Xbox 360 owners, none of whom had by then owned a PS3. At Gamescom 2014, it was announced that 10 million PS4 units had been sold-through to consumers worldwide, and on November 13, it was announced that the PlayStation 4 was the top-selling console in the U.S. for the tenth consecutive month. In its first sales announcement of 2015, Sony confirmed on January 4 that it had sold-through 18.5 million PlayStation 4 units. Sony updated the sell-through figures for the system throughout 2015: over 20 million consoles as of March 3, 2015[update], over 30 million as of November 22, 2015[update], and over 35 million by the end of 2015. As of May 22, 2016, total worldwide sell-through reached 40 million. As of December 2018, over 91 million consoles and more than 876 million PlayStation 4 games have been sold worldwide. By October 2019, the PS4 had sold 102.8 million times, making it the second best-selling video game console of all time, behind the PlayStation 2. The PlayStation 4 holds a market share of at least 70% within all European countries, as of June 2015[update]. Hardware revisions The PlayStation 4 has been produced in various models: the original, the Slim, and the Pro. Successive models have added or removed various features, and each model has variations of Limited Edition consoles. On September 7, 2016, Sony announced a hardware revision of the PlayStation 4, model number CUH-2000, known colloquially as the PlayStation 4 Slim, which phased out the original model. It is a revision of the original PS4 hardware with a smaller form factor; it has a rounded body with a matte finish on the top of the console rather than a two-tone finish, and is 40% smaller in size than the original model. The two USB ports on the front have been updated to the newer USB 3.1 standard and have a larger gap between them, and the optical audio port was removed. This model also features support for USB 3.1, Bluetooth 4.0 and 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi. It was released on September 15, 2016, with a 500 GB model at the same price as the original version of the PlayStation 4. On April 18, 2017, Sony announced that it had replaced this base model with a 1 TB version at the same MSRP. The PlayStation 4 Pro (codenamed Neo, model number CUH-7000) was announced on September 7, 2016, and launched worldwide on November 10, 2016. It is an upgraded version of the PlayStation 4 with improved hardware to enable 4K rendering and improved PlayStation VR performance, including an upgraded GPU with 4.2 teraflops of processing power and hardware support for checkerboard rendering, and a higher CPU clock. As with PS4 "Slim", this model also features support for USB 3.1, Bluetooth 4.0 and 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi. The PS4 Pro also includes 1 GB of DDR3 memory that is used to swap out non-gaming applications that run in the background, allowing games to utilize an additional 512 MB of the console's GDDR5 memory. Although capable of streaming 4K video, the PS4 Pro does not support Ultra HD Blu-ray. The Pro model has a release price of $399 (NA), €399 (Europe), and £349 (UK). Games marketed by Sony as PS4 Pro Enhanced have specific optimizations when played on this model, such as 4K resolution graphics or higher performance. For games not specifically optimized, an option known as "Boost Mode" was added on system software 4.5, which can be enabled to force higher CPU and GPU clock rates to possibly improve performance. Rendering games at 4K resolution is achieved through various rendering techniques and hardware features; PlayStation technical chief Mark Cerny explained that Sony could not "brute force" 4K without compromising form factor and cost, so the console was designed to support "streamlined rendering techniques" using custom hardware, "best-in-breed temporal and spatial anti-aliasing algorithms", and "many new features from the AMD Polaris architecture as well as several even beyond it". The most prominent technique used is checkerboard rendering, wherein the console only renders portions of a scene using a checkerboard pattern, and then uses algorithms to fill in the non-rendered segments. The checkerboarded screen can then be smoothed using an anti-aliasing filter. Hermen Hulst of Guerrilla Games explained that PS4 Pro could render something "perceptively so close [to 4K] that you wouldn't be able to see the difference". PS4 Pro supports Remote Play, Share Play, and streaming at up to 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second, as well as capturing screenshots at 2160p, and 1080p video at 30 frames per second. In late 2017, Sony issued a new PS4 Pro revision (model number CUH-7100) that featured updated internal components. The actual hardware specifications and performance remained the same as the original model, although it was found that the revised console has a slightly quieter fan profile than the original and as a result was operating at a slightly higher temperature under load than the CUH-7000. In October 2018, Sony quietly issued another revision (model number CUH-7200), initially as part of Red Dead Redemption 2 hardware bundles. The revision has a different power supply which uses the same type of cord as the "Slim" model, and was shown to have further improvements to acoustics. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter] | [TOKENS: 17723] |
Contents Twitter X, formerly known as Twitter,[b] is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in short posts (commonly and unofficially known as "tweets") and like other users' content. The platform also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, Grok chatbot integration, job search, and a social audio feature (X Spaces). Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature. The platform, initially called twttr, was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, and was launched in July of that year; it was renamed Twitter some months later. The platform grew quickly; by 2012 more than 100 million users produced 340 million daily tweets. Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices around the world. A signature characteristic of the service initially was that posts were required to be brief. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters, which was changed to 280 characters in 2017. The limitation was removed for subscribed accounts in 2023. 10% of users produce over 80% of tweets. In 2020, it was estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were run by Internet bots rather than humans. The service is owned by the American company X Corp., which was established to succeed the prior owner Twitter, Inc. in March 2023 following the October 2022 acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk for US$44 billion. Musk stated that his goal with the acquisition was to promote free speech on the platform. Since his acquisition, the platform has been criticized for enabling the increased spread of disinformation and hate speech. Linda Yaccarino succeeded Musk as CEO on June 5, 2023, with Musk remaining as the chairman and the chief technology officer. In July 2023, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranded to "X" and the bird logo would be retired, a process which was completed by May 2024. In March 2025, X Corp. was acquired by xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company. The deal, an all-stock transaction, valued X at $33 billion, with a full valuation of $45 billion when factoring in $12 billion in debt. Meanwhile, xAI itself was valued at $80 billion. In July 2025, Linda Yaccarino stepped down from her role as CEO. The X site has been accused of becoming increasingly right-wing and catering to hate groups. In February 2026, the platform's owner, xAI, was acquired by SpaceX; this marked the sixth time where the social media platform has changed hands and the third time under Musk's ownership. History Jack Dorsey claims to have introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate to a small group in 2006. The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The decision was also partly due to the fact that the domain twitter.com was already in use, and it was six months after the launch of twttr that the crew purchased the domain and changed the name of the service to Twitter. Work on the project started in February 2006. The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007. The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. The company experienced rapid initial growth thereafter. In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. In June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second. From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites, including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete overhaul of the interface. In 2019, Twitter was announced to be the 10th most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday by announcing that it had 140 million users, a 40% rise from September 2011, who were sending 340 million tweets per day. On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users.[citation needed] In September 2013, the company's data showed that 200 million users sent over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices. In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site resemble Facebook somewhat, with a profile picture and biography in a column left to the timeline, and a full-width header image with parallax scrolling effect.[c] Late in 2015, it became apparent that growth had slowed, according to Fortune, Business Insider, Marketing Land and other news websites including Quartz (in 2016). In 2019, Twitter released another redesign of its user interface. By the start of 2019[update], Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users. Twitter then experienced considerable growth during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The platform also was increasingly used for misinformation related to the pandemic. Twitter started marking tweets which contained misleading information, and adding links to fact-checks. In 2021, Twitter began the research phase of Bluesky, an open source decentralized social media protocol where users can choose which algorithmic curation they want. The same year, Twitter also released Twitter Spaces, a social audio feature; "super follows", a way to subscribe to creators for exclusive content; and a beta of "ticketed Spaces", which makes access to certain audio rooms paid. Twitter unveiled a redesign in August 2021, with adjusted colors and a new Chirp font, which improves the left-alignment of most Western languages. Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino. Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024. Yaccarino resigned on July 9, 2025. Now operating as X, the platform closely resembles its predecessor but includes additional features such as long-form texts, account monetization options, audio-video calls, integration with xAI's Grok chatbot, job search, and a repurposing of the platform's verification system as a subscription premium. Several legacy Twitter features were removed from the site after Musk acquired Twitter, including Circles, NFT profile pictures, and the experimental pronouns in profiles feature. Musk's aims included transforming X into a "digital town square" and an "everything app" akin to WeChat. X has faced significant controversy post-rebranding. Issues such as the release of the Twitter Files, suspension of ten journalists' accounts, and labeling media outlets as "state-affiliated" and restricting their visibility have sparked criticism. Despite Musk stepping down as CEO, X continues to struggle with challenges such as viral misinformation, hate speech (especially antisemitism), and child pornography. In response to allegations it deemed unfair, X Corp. has pursued legal action against nonprofit organizations Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Appearance and features Posts (commonly and unofficially called "tweets") are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message delivery to their followers. Users can mute users they do not wish to interact with, block accounts from viewing their posts, and remove accounts from their followers list. Users can post via the website, compatible external applications, or by Short Message Service (SMS). Users may subscribe to other users' posts—this is known as "following" and subscribers are known as "followers" or "tweeps", a portmanteau of Twitter and peeps. Posts can be forwarded by other users to their own feed, a process commonly called a "retweet" (officially "repost"). In 2015, Twitter launched "quote tweet", a feature (now named "quote repost") which allows users to add a comment to their post, embedding one post in the other. Users can also "like" individual tweets. The counters for likes, retweets, and replies appear next to the respective buttons in timelines such as on profile pages and search results. Counters for likes and reposts exist on a post's standalone page too. Since 2020, quote tweets have their own counter. Until the legacy desktop front end that was discontinued in 2020, a row with miniature profile pictures of up to ten liking or retweeting users was displayed, as well as a tweet reply counter next to the according button on a tweet's page. Twitter allows users to update their profile via their phones either by text messaging or by apps. Twitter announced in a tweet in 2022, that the ability to edit a tweet was being tested for select users. Eventually, all Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to use the feature. Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users. In 2014, Twitter introduced hashflags, special hashtags that automatically generate a custom emoji next to them for a period of time. Hashflags may be generated by Twitter themselves or purchased by corporations. To repost a message from another user and share it with one's own followers, a user can click the repost button within the post. Users can reply to other accounts' replies. Users can hide replies to their messages and select who can reply to each of their tweets before sending them: anyone, accounts who follow the post's author, specific accounts, or none. The original, strict 140 character limit was gradually relaxed. In 2016, Twitter announced that attachments, links, and media such as photos, videos, and the person's handle, would no longer count. In 2017, Twitter handles were similarly excluded and Twitter doubled its character limitation to 280. Under the new limit, glyphs are counted as a variable number of characters, depending upon the script they are from. From 2023 Twitter Blue users could create posts with up to 4,000 characters in length. t.co is a URL shortening service created by Twitter. It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not general use. All links posted to Twitter use a t.co wrapper. Twitter intended the service to protect users from malicious sites, and to use it to track clicks on links within tweets. In June 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com. Users now have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet. Twitter plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic. In 2016 Twitter introduced the ability to add a caption of up to 480 characters to each image attached to a tweet, accessible via screen reading software or by hovering the mouse above a picture inside TweetDeck. In 2022, Twitter made the ability to add and view captions globally available. Descriptions can be added to any uploaded image with a limit of 1000 characters. Images that have a description will feature a badge that says ALT in the bottom left corner, which will bring up the description when clicked. In 2015, Twitter began to roll out the ability to attach poll questions to tweets. Polls are open for up to 7 days, and voters are not identified. In Twitter's early years, users could communicate with Twitter using SMS. This was discontinued in most countries in April 2020 after hackers exposed vulnerabilities. In 2016, Twitter began to place a larger focus on live streaming video programming, hosting events including streams of the Republican and Democratic conventions, and winning a bid for non-exclusive streaming rights to ten NFL games in 2016. In 2017, Twitter announced that it planned to construct a 24-hour streaming video channel hosted within the service, featuring content from various partners. Twitter announced a number of new and expanded partnerships for its streaming video services at the event, including Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, Cheddar, IMG Fashion, Live Nation Entertainment, Major League Baseball, MTV and BET, NFL Network, the PGA Tour, The Players' Tribune, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens' Propagate, The Verge, Stadium and the WNBA. as of the first quarter of 2017[update], Twitter had over 200 content partners, who streamed over 800 hours of video over 450 events. Twitter Spaces is a social audio feature that enables users to host or participate in a live-audio virtual environment called space for conversation. A maximum of 13 people are allowed onstage. The feature was initially limited to users with at least 600 followers, but since October 2021, any Twitter user can create a Space. In March 2020, Twitter began to test a stories feature known as "fleets" in some markets, which officially launched on November 17, 2020. Fleets could contain text and media, are only accessible for 24 hours after they are posted, and are accessed within the Twitter app; Twitter announced it would start implementing advertising into fleets in June 2021. Fleets were removed in August 2021; Twitter had intended for fleets to encourage more users to tweet regularly, but instead they were generally used by already-active users. Twitter introduced its "trends" feature in mid-2008, an algorithmic lists of trending topics among users. A word or phrase mentioned can become "trending topic" based on an algorithm. Because a relatively small number of users can affect trending topics through a concerted campaign, the feature has been the targeted of concerted manipulation campaigns. While some campaigns are innocuous, others have promoted conspiracy theories or hoaxes, or sought to amplify extremist messages. Some featured trends are globally displayed, while others are limited to a specific country. A 2021 study by EPFL researchers found that frequent "ephemeral astroturfing" efforts targeted at Trends; from 2015 to 2019, "47% of local trends in Turkey and 20% of global trends are fake, created from scratch by bots...The fake trends discovered include phishing apps, gambling promotions, disinformation campaigns, political slogans, hate speech against vulnerable populations and even marriage proposals." The MIT Technology Review reported that, as of 2022, Twitter "sometimes manually overrides particularly objectionable trends" and, for some trends, used both algorithmic and human input to select representative tweets with context. In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow a curated list of accounts all at once, rather than following individual users. Currently,[when?] lists can be set to either public or private. Public lists may be recommended to users via the general Lists interface and appear in search results. If a user follows a public list, it will appear in the "View Lists" section of their profile, so that other users may quickly find it and follow it as well. Private lists can only be followed if the creator shares a specific link to their list. Lists add a separate tab to the Twitter interface with the title of the list, such as "News" or "Economics". In October 2015, Twitter introduced "Moments"—a feature that allows users to curate tweets from other users into a larger collection. Twitter initially intended the feature to be used by its in-house editorial team and other partners; they populated a dedicated tab in Twitter's apps, chronicling news headlines, sporting events, and other content. In September 2016, creation of moments became available to all Twitter users. On October 21, 2021, a report based on a "long-running, massive-scale randomized experiment" that analyzed "millions of tweets sent between 1 April and 15 August 2020", found that Twitter's machine learning recommendation algorithm amplified right-leaning politics on personalized user Home timelines.: 1 The report compared seven countries with active Twitter users where data was available (Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Spain) and examined tweets "from major political groups and politicians".: 4 Researchers used the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHESDATA) to position parties on political ideology within each country.: 4 The "machine learning algorithms", introduced by Twitter in 2016, personalized 99% of users' feeds by displaying tweets (even older tweets and retweets from accounts the user had not directly followed) that the algorithm had "deemed relevant" to the users' past preferences.: 4 Twitter randomly chose 1% of users whose Home timelines displayed content in reverse-chronological order from users they directly followed.: 2 In 2026, a report released in Nature found X's feed algorithm promotes conservative content and deprioritizes traditional media in favor of conservative activists. Based on an analysis of 4,965 participants in 2023 over 7 weeks, it found switching from a chronological feed to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted users to adopt conservative political positions, particularly around "policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine". It also found that exposure to algorithmic content led users to follow conservative political accounts and that users kept following them even after the algorithm was switched off.: 1 Twitter had mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. In April 2017, Twitter introduced Twitter Lite, a progressive web app designed for regions with unreliable and slow Internet connections, with a size of less than one megabyte, designed for devices with limited storage capacity. On June 3, 2021, Twitter announced a paid subscription service called Twitter Blue. Following Twitter's rebranding to "X", the subscription service was initially renamed to X Blue (or simply Blue), and, on August 5, 2023, was rebranded as X Premium (or simply Premium). The subscription provides additional premium features to the service. In November 2023 a "Premium+" subscription was launched, with a higher monthly fee giving benefits such as the omission of adverts on For You and Following feeds. In November 2022, Musk announced plans to add account verification and the ability to upload longer audio and video to Twitter Blue. A previous perk offering advertising-free news articles from participating publishers was dropped, but Musk stated that Twitter did want to work with publishers on a similar "paywall bypass" perk. Musk had pushed for a more expensive version of Twitter Blue following his takeover, arguing that it would be needed to offset a decline in advertising revenue. Twitter states that paid verification is required to help reduce fraudulent accounts. The verification marker was included in a premium tier of Twitter Blue introduced on November 9, 2022, priced at US$7.99 per month. On November 11, 2022, after the introduction of this feature led to prominent issues involving accounts using the feature to impersonate public figures and companies, Twitter Blue with verification was temporarily suspended. After about a month, Twitter Blue was relaunched on December 12, 2022, though for those purchasing the service through the iOS app store, the cost will be $10.99 a month as to offset the 30% revenue split that Apple takes. Twitter initially grandfathered users and entities that had gained verification due to their status as public figures, referring to them as "legacy verified accounts" that "may or may not be notable". On March 25, 2023, it was announced that "legacy" verification status would be removed; a subscription will be required to retain verified status, costing $1,000 per-month for organizations (which are designated with a gold verified symbol), plus an additional $50 for each "affiliate". The change was originally scheduled for April 1, 2023, but was delayed to April 20, 2023, following criticism of the changes. Musk also announced plans for the "For You" timeline to prioritize verified accounts and user followers only beginning April 15, 2023, and threatened to only allow verified users to participate in polls (although the latter change has yet to occur). Effective April 21, 2023, X requires companies to participate in the verified organizations program to purchase advertising on the platform, although companies that spend at least $1,000 on advertising per-month automatically receive membership in the program at no additional cost. From April 25, 2023, verified users are now prioritized in replies to tweets. In 2021, the company opened applications for its premium subscription options called Super Follows. This lets eligible accounts charge $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 per month to subscribe to the account. The launch only generated about $6,000 in its first two weeks. In 2023, the Super Follows feature was rebranded as simply "subscriptions", allowing users to publish exclusive long-form posts and videos for their subscribers; the pivot in marketing was reportedly intended to help compete with Substack. In May 2021, Twitter began testing a Tip Jar feature on its iOS and Android clients. The feature allows users to send monetary tips to certain accounts, providing a financial incentive for content creators on the platform. The Tip Jar is optional and users can choose whether or not to enable tips for their account. On September 23, 2021, Twitter announced that it will allow users to tip users on the social network with bitcoin. The feature will be available for iOS users. Previously, users could tip with fiat currency using services such as Square's Cash App and PayPal's Venmo. Twitter will integrate the Strike bitcoin lightning wallet service. It was noted that at this current time, Twitter will not take a cut of any money sent through the tips feature. On August 27, 2021, Twitter rolled out Ticketed Spaces, which let Twitter Spaces hosts charge between $1 and $999 for access to their rooms. In April 2022, Twitter announced that it will partner with Stripe, Inc. for piloting cryptocurrency payouts for limited users in the platform. Eligible users of Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows will be able to receive their earnings in the form of USD coin, a stablecoin whose value is that of the U.S. dollar. Users can also hold their earnings in crypto wallets, and then exchange them into other cryptocurrencies. In July 2021, Twitter began testing a "Shop module" for iOS users in the US, allowing accounts associated with brands to display a carousel of cards on their profiles showcasing products. Unlike the Buy button, where order fulfillment was handed from within Twitter, these cards are external links to online storefronts from which the products may be purchased. In March 2022, Twitter expanded the test to allow companies to showcase up to 50 products on their profiles. In November 2021, Twitter introduced support for "shoppable" live streams, in which brands can hold streaming events that similarly display banners and pages highlighting products that are featured in the presentation. In January 2025, X announced plans to introduce an "X Money Account" feature in 2025. The product would be a digital wallet and enable X users to move funds between traditional bank accounts and their digital wallet and make instant peer-to-peer payments. Visa was announced as partnering with X on the project and, at least initially, cryptocurrencies would not be supported. Usage Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits. An April 2017 a statista.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the tenth most used social network based on their count of 319 million monthly visitors. Its global user base in 2017 was 328 million. According to Musk, the platform had 500 million monthly active users in March 2023, 550 million in March 2024, and 600 million in May 2024. In 2009, Twitter was mainly used by older adults who might not have used other social sites before Twitter. According to comScore only 11% of Twitter's users were aged 12 to 17. According to a study by Sysomos in June 2009, women made up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than men—53% over 47%. It also stated that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity. According to Quantcast, 27 million people in the US used Twitter in September 2009; 63% of Twitter users were under 35 years old; 60% of Twitter users were Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet properties) were African American/black (16%) and Hispanic (11%); 58% of Twitter users have a total household income of at least US$60,000. The prevalence of African American Twitter usage and in many popular hashtags has been the subject of research studies. Twitter grew from 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in September 2011, to 255 million in March 2014, and more than 330 million in early 2019. In 2013, there were over 100 million users actively using Twitter daily and about 500 million tweets every day. A 2016 Pew research poll found that Twitter is used by 24% of all online US adults. It was equally popular with men and women (24% and 25% of online Americans respectively), but more popular with younger generations (36% of 18–29-year olds). A 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Foundation found that Twitter users are three times as likely to be younger than 50 years old, with the median age of adult U.S. users being 40. The survey found that 10% of users who are most active on Twitter are responsible for 80% of all tweets. San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the United States and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm (CST) and separated them into six categories. Pointless babble made up 40%, with 38% being conversational. Pass-along value had 9%, self-promotion 6% with spam and news each making 4%. Despite Jack Dorsey's own open contention that a message on Twitter is "a short burst of inconsequential information", social networking researcher danah boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labeled "pointless babble" is better characterized as "social grooming" or "peripheral awareness" (which she justifies as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn't viable"). Similarly, a survey of Twitter users found that a more specific social role of passing along messages that include a hyperlink is an expectation of reciprocal linking by followers. According to research published in April 2014, around 44% of user accounts have never tweeted. About 22% of Americans say they have used Twitter, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. In 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter had a user-retention rate of 40%. Many people stop using the service after a month; therefore the site may potentially reach only about 10% of all Internet users. Noting how demographics of Twitter users differ from the average Americans, commentators have cautioned against media narratives that treat Twitter as representative of the population, adding that only 10% of users Tweet actively, and that 90% of Twitter users have Tweeted no more than twice. In 2016, shareholders sued Twitter, alleging it "artificially inflated its stock price by misleading them about user engagement". The company announced on September 20, 2021, that it would pay $809.5 million to settle this class-action lawsuit. As of 2026[update], usage of X on mobile devices has been in a progressive decline. At the same time, mobile usage of the rival social network Threads has been increasing. In January 2026, Threads usage finally rose to match that of X. X still remains the dominant network on non-mobile traffic. Branding Before its rebranding to X, Twitter was internationally identifiable by its signature bird logo, or the Twitter Bird. The original logo, which was simply the word Twitter, was in use from its launch in March 2006. It was accompanied by an image of a bird which was later discovered to be a piece of clip art created by the British graphic designer Simon Oxley. A new logo had to be redesigned by founder Biz Stone with help from designer Philip Pascuzzo, which resulted in a more cartoon-like bird in 2009. This version had been named "Larry the Bird" after Larry Bird of the NBA's Boston Celtics fame. Within a year, the Larry the Bird logo underwent a redesign by Stone and Pascuzzo to eliminate the cartoon features, leaving a solid silhouette of Larry the Bird that was used from 2010 through 2012. In 2012, Douglas Bowman created a further simplified version of Larry the Bird, keeping the solid silhouette but making it more similar to a mountain bluebird. This logo was simply called the "Twitter Bird" and was used until July 2023. On July 22, 2023, Elon Musk announced that the service would be rebranded to "X", in his pursuit of creating an "everything app". Musk's profile picture, along with the platform's official accounts, and the icons when browsing/signing up for the platform, were updated to reflect the new logo. The logo resembles the Unicode mathematical alphanumeric symbol U+1D54F 𝕏 MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X for the letter "X" styled in double-strike bold. Mike Proulx of The New York Times was critical of this change, saying the brand value has been "wiped out". Mike Carr says the new logo gives a "'Big Brother' tech overlord vibe" in contrast to the "cuddly" nature of the previous bird logo. Users review bombed the newly rebranded "X" app on the iOS App Store on the day it was revealed, and Rolling Stone's Miles Klee said that the rebrand "reeks of desperation". Finances On April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid advertising for companies that would be able to purchase "promoted tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter website, similar to Google Adwords' advertising model. Users' photos can generate royalty-free revenue for Twitter, and an agreement with World Entertainment News Network (WENN) was announced in May 2011. Twitter generated an estimated US$139.5 million in advertising sales during 2011. In June 2011, Twitter announced that it would offer small businesses a self-service advertising system. The self-service advertising platform was launched in March 2012 to American Express card members and merchants in the U.S. on an invite-only basis. To continue their advertising campaign, Twitter announced on March 20, 2012, that promoted tweets would be introduced to mobile devices. In April 2013, Twitter announced that its Twitter Ads self-service platform, consisting of promoted tweets and promoted accounts, was available to all U.S. users without an invite. On August 3, 2016, Twitter launched Instant Unlock Card, a new feature that encourages people to tweet about a brand to earn rewards and use the social media network's conversational ads. The format itself consists of images or videos with call-to-action buttons and a customizable hashtag. In October 2017, Twitter banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on their website following the conclusions of the U.S. national intelligence report the previous January that both Sputnik and RT had been used as vehicles for Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Maria Zakharova for the Russian foreign ministry said the ban was a "gross violation" by the US of free speech. In October 2019, Twitter announced it would stop running political ads on its ad platform effective November 22. This resulted from several spurious claims made by political ads. Company CEO Dorsey clarified that Internet advertising had great power and was extremely effective for commercial advertisers, the power brings significant risks to politics where crucial decisions impact millions of lives. The company reversed the ban in August 2023, publishing criteria governing political advertising which do not allow the promotion of false or misleading content, and requiring advertisers to comply with laws, with compliance being the sole responsibility of the advertiser. In April 2022, Twitter announced a ban on "misleading" advertisements that go against "the scientific consensus on climate change". While the company did not give full guidelines, it stated that the decisions would be made with the help of "authoritative sources", including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A 2025 article in The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon, Ralph Lauren Corporation, and at least four other companies signed advertising contracts with X following legal threats from Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino. X has been fined several times for non-compliance with laws and regulations. On May 25, 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million by the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Department of Justice for collecting users' contact details and using them for targeted advertising. In December 2025, the European Commission fined X €120 million for alleged non-compliance with requirements of the Digital Services Act. Days later, X banned the European Commission from advertising on the platform. Technology X relies on open-source software. The X web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework, deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.[needs update] In the early days of Twitter, tweets were stored in MySQL databases that were temporally sharded (large databases were split based on time of posting). After the huge volume of tweets coming in caused problems reading from and writing to these databases, the company decided that the system needed re-engineering. From Spring 2007 to 2008, the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling. Since 2009, implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala. The switch from Ruby to Scala and the JVM has given Twitter a performance boost from 200 to 300 requests per second per host to around 10,000–20,000 requests per second per host. This boost was greater than the 10x improvement that Twitter's engineers envisioned when starting the switch. The continued development of Twitter has also involved a switch from monolithic development of a single app to an architecture where different services are built independently and joined through remote procedure calls. As of April 6, 2011, Twitter engineers confirmed that they had switched away from their Ruby on Rails search stack to a Java server they call Blender. Individual tweets are registered under unique IDs called snowflakes, and geolocation data is added using 'Rockdove'. The URL shortener t.co then checks for a spam link and shortens the URL. Next, the tweets are stored in a MySQL database using Gizzard, and the user receives an acknowledgement that the tweets were sent. Tweets are then sent to search engines via the Firehose API. The process is managed by FlockDB and takes an average of 350 ms. On August 16, 2013, Raffi Krikorian, Twitter's vice president of platform engineering, shared in a blog post that the company's infrastructure handled almost 143,000 tweets per second during that week, setting a new record. Krikorian explained that Twitter achieved this record by blending its homegrown and open source technologies. The service's API allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter. Developer interest in Twitter began immediately following its launch, prompting the company to release the first version of its public API in September 2006. The API quickly became iconic as a reference implementation for public REST APIs and is widely cited in programming tutorials. From 2006 until 2010, Twitter's developer platform experienced strong growth and a highly favorable reputation. Developers built upon the public API to create the first Twitter mobile phone clients as well as the first URL shortener. Between 2010 and 2012, however, Twitter made a number of decisions that were received unfavorably by the developer community. In 2010, Twitter mandated that all developers adopt OAuth authentication with just 9 weeks of notice. Later that year, Twitter launched its own URL shortener, in direct competition with some of its most well-known third-party developers. And in 2012, Twitter introduced stricter usage limits for its API, "completely crippling" some developers. While these moves successfully increased the stability and security of the service, they were broadly perceived as hostile to developers, causing them to lose trust in the platform. In July 2020, Twitter released version 2.0 of the public API and began showcasing Twitter apps made by third-party developers on its Twitter Toolbox section in April 2022. In January 2023, Twitter ended third-party access to its APIs, forcing all third-party Twitter clients to shut down. This was controversial among the developer community, as many third-party apps predated the company's official apps, and the change was not announced beforehand. Twitterrific's Sean Heber confirmed in a blog post that the 16-year-old app has been discontinued. "We are sorry to say that the app's sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer." In February 2023, Twitter announced it would be ending free access to Twitter API, and began offering paid tier plans with a more limited access. On April 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement an "Innovators Patent Agreement" which would obligate Twitter to only use its patents for defensive purposes.[clarify] Twitter has a history of both using and releasing open-source software while overcoming technical challenges of their service. A page in their developer documentation thanks dozens of open-source projects which they have used, from revision control software like Git to programming languages such as Ruby and Scala. Software released as open source by the company includes the Gizzard Scala framework for creating distributed datastores, the distributed graph database FlockDB, the Finagle library for building asynchronous RPC servers and clients, the TwUI user interface framework for iOS, and the Bower client-side package manager. The popular Bootstrap frontend framework was also started at Twitter and is 10th most popular repository on GitHub. On March 31, 2023, Twitter released the source code for Twitter's recommendation algorithm, which determines what tweets show up on the user's personal timeline, to GitHub. According to Twitter's blog post: "We believe that we have a responsibility, as the town square of the internet, to make our platform transparent. So today we are taking the first step in a new era of transparency and opening much of our source code to the global community." Elon Musk, the CEO at the time, had been promising the move for a while – on March 24, 2022, before he owned the site, he polled his followers about whether Twitter's algorithm should be open source, and around 83% of the responses said "yes". In February, he promised it would happen within a week before pushing back the deadline to March 31. Twitter updated its source code repository in January 2026 with a new algorithm that depends on an external large language model (such as Grok) to evaluate posts, leading researchers to describe the disclosed source code as lacking in transparency. Also in March 2023, Twitter suffered a security attack which resulted in proprietary code being released. Twitter then had the leaked source code removed. Twitter introduced the first major redesign of its user interface in September 2010, adopting a dual-pane layout with a navigation bar along the top of the screen, and an increased focus on the inline embedding of multimedia content. Critics considered the redesign an attempt to emulate features and experiences found in mobile apps and third-party Twitter clients. The new layout was revised in 2011 with a focus on continuity with the web and mobile versions, introducing "Connect" (interactions with other users such as replies) and "Discover" (further information regarding trending topics and news headlines) tabs, an updated profile design, and moving all content to the right pane (leaving the left pane dedicated to functions and the trending topics list). In March 2012, Twitter became available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, the first right-to-left language versions of the site. In 2023 the Twitter Web site listed 34 languages supported by Twitter.com. In September 2012, a new layout for profiles was introduced, with larger "covers" that could be customized with a custom header image, and a display of the user's recent photos posted. The "Discover" tab was discontinued in April 2015, and was succeeded on the mobile app by an "Explore" tab—which features trending topics and moments. In September 2018, Twitter began to migrate selected web users to its progressive web app (based on its Twitter Lite experience for mobile web), reducing the interface to two columns. Migrations to this iteration of Twitter increased in April 2019, with some users receiving it with a modified layout. In July 2019, Twitter officially released this redesign, with no further option to opt-out while logged in. It is designed to further-unify Twitter's user experience between the web and mobile application versions, adopting a three-column layout with a sidebar containing links to common areas (including "Explore" that has been merged with the search page) which previously appeared in a horizontal top bar, profile elements such as picture and header images and biography texts merged into the same column as the timeline, and features from the mobile version (such as multi-account support, and an opt-out for the "top tweets" mode on the timeline). In response to early Twitter security breaches, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought charges against the service; the charges were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private information, including maintenance of a "comprehensive information security program" to be independently audited biannually. After a number of high-profile hacks of official accounts, including those of the Associated Press and The Guardian, in April 2013, Twitter announced a two-factor login verification as an added measure against hacking. On July 15, 2020, a major hack of Twitter affected 130 high-profile accounts, both verified and unverified ones such as Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk; the hack allowed bitcoin scammers to send tweets via the compromised accounts that asked the followers to send bitcoin to a given public address, with the promise to double their money. Within a few hours, Twitter disabled tweeting and reset passwords from all verified accounts. Analysis of the event revealed that the scammers had used social engineering to obtain credentials from Twitter employees to access an administration tool used by Twitter to view and change these accounts' personal details as to gain access as part of a "smash and grab" attempt to make money quickly, with an estimated US$120,000 in bitcoin deposited in various accounts before Twitter intervened. Several law enforcement entities including the FBI launched investigations into the attack. On August 5, 2022, Twitter disclosed that a bug introduced in a June 2021 update to the service allowed threat actors to link email addresses and phone numbers to twitter user's accounts. The bug was reported through Twitter's bug bounty program in January 2022 and subsequently fixed. While Twitter originally believed no one had taken advantage of the vulnerability, it was later revealed that a user on the online hacking forum Breach Forums had used the vulnerability to compile a list of over 5.4 million user profiles, which they offered to sell for $30,000. The information compiled by the hacker includes user's screen names, location and email addresses which could be used in phishing attacks or used to deanonymize accounts running under pseudonyms. During an outage, Twitter users were at one time shown the "fail whale" error message image created by Yiying Lu, illustrating eight orange birds using a net to hoist a whale from the ocean captioned "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again." Web designer and Twitter user Jen Simmons was the first to coin the term "fail whale" in a September 2007 tweet. In a November 2013 Wired interview Chris Fry, VP of Engineering at that time, noted that the company had taken the "fail whale" out of use as the platform was now more stable. Twitter had approximately 98% uptime in 2007 (or about six full days of downtime). The downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address. As of January 16, 2026, Twitter's error message during an outage is "Something went wrong, but don't fret – Let's give it another shot." User accounts In June 2009, after being criticized by Kanye West and sued by Tony La Russa over unauthorized accounts run by impersonators, the company launched their "Verified Accounts" program. Twitter stated that an account with a "blue tick" verification badge indicates "we've been in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved". In July 2016, Twitter announced a public application process to grant verified status to an account "if it is determined to be of public interest" and that verification "does not imply an endorsement". Verified status allows access to some features unavailable to other users, such as only seeing mentions from other verified accounts. In November 2020, Twitter announced a relaunch of its verification system in 2021. According to the new policy, Twitter verifies six different types of accounts; for three of them (companies, brands, and influential individuals like activists), the existence of a Wikipedia page will be one criterion for showing that the account has "Off Twitter Notability". Twitter states that it will re-open public verification applications at some point in "early 2021". In October 2022, after the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, it was reported that verification would instead be included in the paid Twitter Blue service, and that existing verified accounts would lose their status if they do not subscribe. On November 1, Musk confirmed that verification would be included in Blue in the future, dismissing the existing verification system as a "lords & peasants system". After concerns over the possibility of impersonation, Twitter subsequently reimplemented a second "Official" marker, consisting of a grey tick and "Official" text displayed under the username, for high-profile accounts of "government and commercial entities". In December 2022, the "Official" text was replaced by a gold checkmark for organizations, as well as a grey check mark for government and multilateral accounts. In March 2023, the gold check mark was made available for organizations to purchase through the Verified Organizations program (formerly called Twitter Blue for Business). Tweets are public, but users can also send private "direct messages". Information about who has chosen to follow an account and who a user has chosen to follow is also public, though accounts can be changed to "protected" which limits this information (and all tweets) to approved followers. Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties as specified in its privacy policy. The service also reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands.[non-primary source needed] Advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads directed specifically to the user. Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing people with public profiles to announce their account name. The profile pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status. On December 14, 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks. Twitter decided to notify its users and said, "... it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so." In May 2011, a claimant known as "CTB" in the case of CTB v Twitter Inc. took action against Twitter at the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, requesting that the company release details of account holders. This followed gossip posted on Twitter about professional footballer Ryan Giggs's private life. This led to the 2011 British privacy injunctions controversy and the "super-injunction". Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy and that the site would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was legally required to do so. He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site. Twitter acquired Dasient, a startup that offers malware protection for businesses, in January 2012. Twitter announced plans to use Dasient to help remove hateful advertisers on the website. Twitter also offered a feature which would allow tweets to be removed selectively by country, before deleted tweets used to be removed in all countries. The first use of the policy was to block the account of German neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover on October 18, 2012. The policy was used again the following day to remove anti-Semitic French tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good Jew"). After the sharing of images showing the killing of American journalist James Foley in 2014, Twitter said that in certain cases it would delete pictures of people who had died after requests from family members and "authorized individuals". In 2015, following updated terms of service and privacy policy, Twitter users outside the United States were legally served by the Ireland-based Twitter International Company instead of Twitter, Inc. The change made these users subject to Irish and European Union data protection laws. On April 8, 2020, Twitter announced that users outside of the European Economic Area or United Kingdom (thus subject to GDPR) will no longer be allowed to opt out of sharing "mobile app advertising measurements" to Twitter third-party partners. On October 9, 2020, Twitter took additional steps to counter misleading campaigns ahead of the 2020 US Election. Twitter's new temporary update encouraged users to "add their own commentary" before retweeting a tweet, by making 'quoting tweet' a mandatory feature instead of optional. The social network giant aimed at generating context and encouraging the circulation of more thoughtful content. After limited results, the company ended this experiment in December 2020. On May 25, 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million for collecting users' phone numbers and email addresses used for security and using them for targeted advertising, required to notify its users, and banned from profiting from "deceptively collected data". The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice stated that Twitter violated a 2011 agreement not to use personal security data for targeted advertising. In September 2024, the FTC released a report summarizing 9 company responses (including from X) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress and mental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm. In August 2013, Twitter announced plans to introduce a "report abuse" button for all versions of the site following uproar, including a petition with 100,000 signatures, over Tweets that included rape and death threats to historian Mary Beard, feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and the member of parliament Stella Creasy. Twitter announced new reporting and blocking policies in December 2014, including a blocking mechanism devised by Randi Harper, a target of GamerGate. In February 2015, CEO Dick Costolo said he was 'frankly ashamed' at how poorly Twitter handled trolling and abuse, and admitted Twitter had lost users as a result. As per a research study conducted by IT for Change on abuse and misogynistic trolling on Twitter directed at Indian women in public-political life, women perceived to be ideologically left-leaning, dissenters, Muslim women, political dissenters, and political commentators and women from opposition parties received a disproportionate amount of abusive and hateful messages on Twitter. In 2016, Twitter announced the creation of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council to help "ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter". The council's inaugural members included 50 organizations and individuals. The announcement of Twitter's "Trust & Safety Council" was met with objection from parts of its userbase. Critics accused the member organizations of being heavily skewed towards "the restriction of hate speech" and a Reason article expressed concern that "there's not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list". Twitter banned 7,000 accounts and limited 150,000 more that had ties to QAnon on July 21, 2020. The bans and limits came after QAnon-related accounts began harassing other users through practices of swarming or brigading, coordinated attacks on these individuals through multiple accounts in the weeks prior. Those accounts limited by Twitter will not appear in searches nor be promoted in other Twitter functions. Twitter said they will continue to ban or limit accounts as necessary, with their support account stating "We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension". In September 2021, Twitter began beta testing a feature called Safety Mode. The functionality aims to limit unwelcome interactions through automated detection of negative engagements. If a user has Safety Mode enabled, authors of tweets that are identified by Twitter's technology as being harmful or exercising uninvited behavior will be temporarily unable to follow the account, send direct messages, or see tweets from the user with the enabled functionality during the temporary block period. Jarrod Doherty, senior product manager at Twitter, stated that the technology in place within Safety Mode assesses existing relationships to prevent blocking accounts that the user frequently interacts with. In January 2016, Twitter was sued by the widow of a U.S. man killed in the 2015 Amman shooting attack, claiming that allowing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to continually use the platform, including direct messages in particular, constituted the provision of material support to a terrorist organization, which is illegal under U.S. federal law. Twitter disputed the claim, stating that "violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear". The lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, upholding the Section 230 safe harbor, which dictates that the operators of an interactive computer service are not liable for the content published by its users. The lawsuit was revised in August 2016, providing comparisons to other telecommunications devices. The second amended complaint was dismissed by the district court, a decision affirmed on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Twitter suspended multiple parody accounts that satirized Russian politics in May 2016, sparking protests and raising questions about where the company stands on freedom of speech. Following public outcry, Twitter restored the accounts the next day without explaining why the accounts had been suspended. The same day, Twitter, along with Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours. In August 2016, Twitter stated that it had banned 235,000 accounts over the past six months, bringing the overall number of suspended accounts to 360,000 accounts in the past year, for violating policies banning use of the platform to promote extremism. On May 10, 2019, Twitter announced that they suspended 166,513 accounts for promoting terrorism in the July–December 2018 period, saying there was a steady decrease in terrorist groups trying to use the platform owing to its "zero-tolerance policy enforcement". According to Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, there was a reduction of 19% terror related tweets from the previous reporting period (January–June 2018). As of July 30, 2020, Twitter will block URLs in tweets that point to external websites that contain malicious content (such as malware and phishing content) as well as hate speech, speech encouraging violence, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, breaches of privacy, and other similar content that is already banned as part of the content of tweets on the site. Users that frequently point to such sites may have their accounts suspended. Twitter said this was to bring their policy in line to prevent users from bypassing their tweet content restrictions by simply linking to the banned content. After the onset of protests by Donald Trump's supporters across the US in January 2021, Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts, stating that they shared "harmful QAnon-associated content" at a large scale, and were "dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service". One of the accounts suspended was then-former-president Trump's account; in February 2025, X settled a lawsuit filed by Trump in response to his suspension paying Trump approximately $10 million. Between January and late July 2017, Twitter had identified and shut down over 7,000 fake accounts created by Iranian influence operations. In May 2018, in response to scrutiny over the misuse of Twitter by those seeking to maliciously influence elections, Twitter announced that it would partner with the nonprofit organization Ballotpedia to add special labels verifying the authenticity of political candidates running for election in the U.S. In December 2019, Twitter removed 5,929 accounts for violating their manipulation policies. The company investigated and attributed these accounts to a single state-run information operation, which originated in Saudi Arabia. The accounts were reported to be a part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in spammy behavior. However, Twitter did not disclose all of them as some could possibly be legitimate accounts taken over through hacking. In March 2021, Twitter suspended around 3,500 fake accounts that were running a campaign to influence the American audience, after the US intelligence officials concluded that the assassination of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was "approved" by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. These Saudi accounts were working in two languages, English and Arabic, to influence public opinion around the issue. Many accounts commented directly on the tweets of US-based media houses, including The Post, CNN, CBS News and The Los Angeles Times. Twitter was unable to identify the source of the influence campaign. As of 2022[update], the top four countries spreading state-linked Twitter misinformation are Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In November 2025, X began displaying various information on user accounts for transparency such as location, history, and username changes to combat bots and other malicious accounts. Other X users and media commenters noted seeming inconsistencies between some prominent users’ claimed location or nationality and the newly displayed data, with experts claiming that these accounts were likely used for “rage farming” or as foreign influence operations. A bot is a computer program that can automatically tweet, retweet, and follow other accounts. Twitter's open application programming interface and the availability of cloud servers make it possible for bots to exist within the social networking site. Benign bots may generate creative content and relevant product updates, whereas malicious bots can make unpopular people seem popular, push irrelevant products on users, and spread misinformation, spam or slander. Bots amass significant influence and have been noted to sway elections, influence the stock market, appeal to the public, and attack governments. As of 2013[update], Twitter said there were 20 million fake accounts on Twitter, representing less than 5% of active users. A 2020 estimate put the figure at 15% of all accounts or around 48 million accounts. Society Twitter had been used for a variety of purposes in many industries and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests, including the protests over the 2009 Moldovan election, the 2009 student protests in Austria, the 2009 Gaza–Israel conflict, the 2009 Iranian green revolution, the 2010 Toronto G20 protests, the 2010 Bolivarian Revolution, the 2010 Stuttgart 21 protests in Germany, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, 2011 England riots, the 2011 United States Occupy movement, the 2011 anti-austerity movement in Spain, the 2011 Aganaktismenoi movements in Greece, the 2011 demonstration in Rome, the 2011 Wisconsin labor protests, the 2012 Gaza–Israel conflict, the 2013 protests in Brazil, and the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey. The service was also used as a form of civil disobedience: In 2010, users expressed outrage over the Twitter joke trial by copying a controversial joke about bombing an airport and attaching the hashtag #IAmSpartacus, a reference to the film Spartacus (1960) and a sign of solidarity and support to a man controversially prosecuted after posting a tweet joking about bombing an airport if they canceled his flight. #IAmSpartacus became the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide. Another case of civil disobedience happened in the 2011 British privacy injunction debate, where several celebrities who had taken out anonymized injunctions were identified by thousands of users in protest to traditional journalism being censored. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in July 2014, the United Kingdom's GCHQ has a tool named BIRDSONG for "automated posting of Twitter updates" and a tool named BIRDSTRIKE for "Twitter monitoring and profile collection". During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, Twitter suspended a core group of 1,000 "fake" accounts and an associated network of 200,000 accounts for operating a disinformation campaign that was linked to the Chinese government. On June 12, 2020, Twitter suspended over 7,000 accounts from Turkey because those accounts were fake profiles, designed to support the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and were managed by a central authority. Turkey's communication director said that the decision was illogical, biased, and politically motivated. Turkey blocked access to Twitter twice, once after voice recordings appeared on Twitter in which Erdoğan ordered his son to stash away millions of dollars and another time for 12 hours in the aftermath of the earthquake of February 2023, when Erdoğan blamed the people for a disinformation campaign as they criticized the Government for their lack of help. In May 2021, Twitter labeled one of the tweets by Sambit Patra, a spokesman of the local ruling party BJP in India, as "manipulated media", leading to Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurgaon being raided by the local police. Later, the Indian government released a statement in July 2021 claiming Twitter has lost its liability protection concerning user-generated content. This was brought on by Twitter's failure to comply with the new IT rules introduced in 2021, with a filing stating that the company failed to appoint executives to govern user content on the platform. In 2025, X sued the Indian government for using the IT Act to block tweets and other content on its platform. According to a report by Reuters, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts on Twitter to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law. The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog. Twitter allows pornographic content as long as it is marked "sensitive" by uploaders, which puts it behind an interstice and hides it from minors. The "super-follow" feature is said to enable competition with the subscription site OnlyFans, used mainly by sex workers. Many performers use Twitter's service to market and grow their porn businesses, attracting users to paywalled services like OnlyFans by distributing photos and short video clips as advertisements. In April 2022, Twitter convened a "Red Team" for the project of ACM, "Adult Content Monetization", as it is known internally. Eventually, the project was abandoned, because of the difficulty of implementing Real ID. A February 2021 report from the company's Health team begins, "While the amount of CSE (child sexual exploitation) online has grown exponentially, Twitter's investment in technologies to detect and manage the growth has not." Until February 2022, the only way for users to flag illegal content was to flag it as "sensitive media", a broad category that left much of the worst material unprioritized for moderation. In a February report, employees wrote that Twitter, along with other Tech Companies have "accelerated the pace of CSE content creation and distribution to a breaking point where manual detection, review, and investigations no longer scale" by allowing pornography and failing to invest in systems that could effectively monitor it. The working group made several recommendations, but they were not taken up and the group was disbanded. As part of its efforts to monetize porn, Twitter held an internal investigation which reported in April 2022, "Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale." John Doe et al. v. Twitter, a civil lawsuit filed in the 9th Circuit Court, alleges that Twitter benefited from sex trafficking and refused to remove the illegal tweets when first informed of them. In an amicus brief filed in the case, the NCMEC said, "The children informed the company that they were minors, that they had been 'baited, harassed, and threatened' into making the videos, that they were victims of 'sex abuse' under investigation by law enforcement" but Twitter failed to remove the videos, "allowing them to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of the platform's users". Some major brands, including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes, and PBS Kids suspended their marketing campaigns and pulled their ads from the platform after an investigation showed that Twitter failed to suspend 70% of the accounts that shared or solicited the prohibited content. In December 2025, social media users reported that X's integrated chatbot, Grok, would allow users to noncensually strip individuals, including minors, or show them performing sexually explicit and pornographic acts. The majority of these prompts were targeted at women and girls. Images generated by Grok since December 2025 have been disproportionately of people in bikinis, transparent clothes, and the like, with users being able to generate such images through prompts such as "put her in a bikini". This scandal would lead to significant criticism from lawmakers across the world, calls for bans on X, as well as legal crackdowns on X and xAI for, amongst other reasons, the facilitation of sexual abuse, revenge porn, and child pornography. A practical use for Twitter's real-time functionality is as an effective de facto emergency communication system for breaking news. It was neither intended nor designed for high-performance communication, but the idea that it could be used for emergency communication was not lost on the creators, who knew that the service could have wide-reaching effects early on when the company used it to communicate during earthquakes. Another practical use that is being studied is Twitter's ability to track epidemics and how they spread. Additionally Twitter serves as a real-time sensor for natural disasters such as bushfires and earthquakes. Twitter has been adopted as a communication and learning tool in educational and research settings mostly in colleges and universities. It has been used as a backchannel to promote student interactions, especially in large-lecture courses. Research has found that using Twitter in college courses helps students communicate with each other and faculty, promotes informal learning, allows shy students a forum for increased participation, increases student engagement, and improves overall course grades. Twitter has been an increasingly growing in the field of education as an effective tool that can be used to encourage learning and idea, or knowledge sharing, in and outside the classroom. By using or creating hashtags, students and educators are able to communicate under specific categories of their choice to enhance and promote education. A broad example of a hashtag used in education is "edchat", to communicate with other teachers and people using that hashtag. Once teachers find someone they want to talk to, they can either direct message the person or narrow down the hashtag to make the topic of the conversation more specific, using hashtags for scichat (science), engchat (English), sschat (social studies). Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful." In that same vein, and with Sigmund Freud in mind, political communications expert Matthew Auer observed that well-crafted tweets by public figures often deliberately mix trivial and serious information so as to appeal to all three parts of the reader's personality: the id, ego, and superego. The poets Mira Gonzalez and Tao Lin published a book titled Selected Tweets featuring selections of their tweets over some eight years. The novelist Rick Moody wrote a short story for Electric Literature called "Some Contemporary Characters", composed entirely of tweets. Many commentators have suggested that Twitter radically changed the format of reporting due to instant, short, and frequent communication. According to The Atlantic writers Benjamin M. Reilly and Robinson Meyer, Twitter has an outsized impact on the public discourse and media. "Something happens on Twitter; celebrities, politicians and journalists talk about it, and it's circulated to a wider audience by Twitter's algorithms; journalists write about the dustup." This can lead to an argument on a Twitter feed looking like a "debate roiling the country... regular people are left with a confused, agitated view of our current political discourse". In a 2018 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Matthew Ingram argued much the same about Twitter's "oversized role" and that it promotes immediacy over newsworthiness. In some cases, inauthentic and provocative tweets were taken up as common opinion in mainstream articles. Writers in several outlets unintentionally cited the opinions of Russian Internet Research Agency-affiliated accounts. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter's rapid expansion and have been increasingly using Twitter diplomacy, the use of Twitter to engage with foreign publics and their own citizens. US Ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul has been attributed as a pioneer of international Twitter diplomacy. He used Twitter after becoming ambassador in 2011, posting in English and Russian. On October 24, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first tweet to mark the opening of the London Science Museum's Information Age exhibition. A 2013 study by website Twiplomacy found that 153 of the 193 countries represented at the United Nations had established government Twitter accounts. The same study also found that those accounts amounted to 505 Twitter handles used by world leaders and their foreign ministers, with their tweets able to reach a combined audience of over 106 million followers. According to an analysis of accounts, the heads of state of 125 countries and 139 other leading politicians have Twitter accounts that have between them sent more than 350,000 tweets and have almost 52 million followers. However, only 30 of these do their own tweeting, more than 80 do not subscribe to other politicians and many do not follow any accounts. The Twitter account for the pope was set up in 2012. As of February 2025[update], it has 18 million followers (@Pontifex). Twitter is banned completely in Russia, Iran, China and North Korea, and has been intermittently blocked in numerous countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Turkey, Venezuela and Turkmenistan, on different basis. In 2016, Twitter cooperated with the Israeli government to remove certain content originating outside Israel from tweets seen in Israel. In the 11th biannual transparency report published on September 19, 2017, Twitter said that Turkey was the first among countries where about 90% of removal requests came from, followed by Russia, France and Germany. Twitter stated that between July 1 and December 31, 2018, "We received legal demands relating to 27,283 accounts from 47 different countries, including Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, and Slovenia for the first time." As part of evidence to a U.S. Senate Enquiry, the company admitted that their systems "detected and hid" several hundred thousand tweets relating to the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak. During the curfew in Jammu and Kashmir after revocation of its autonomous status on August 5, 2019, the Indian government approached Twitter to block accounts accused of spreading anti-India content; by October 25, nearly one million tweets had been removed as a result. In March 2022, shortly after Russia's censorship of Twitter, a Tor onion service link was created by the platform to allow people to access the website, even in countries with heavy Internet censorship. In 2025, India ordered X to block 8,000 accounts to users within India, under threat of fines. X criticized the government's orders and encouraged affected users to seek legal recourse. X uses Age Verify with ID or Photo Selfie for users to access sensitive content like pornography in the UK, EU and EEA to comply with Online Safety Act 2023 and EU's Digital Service. Twitter removed more than 88,000 propaganda accounts linked to Saudi Arabia. Twitter removed tweets from accounts associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency that had tried to influence public opinion during and after the 2016 US election. In June 2020, Twitter also removed 175,000 propaganda accounts that were spreading biased political narratives for the Chinese Communist Party, the United Russia Party, or Turkey's President Erdogan, identified based on centralized behavior. Twitter also removed accounts linked to the governments of Armenia, Egypt, Cuba, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia and Iran. Twitter suspended Pakistani accounts tied to government officials for posting tweets about the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. In February 2021, Twitter removed accounts in India that criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for its conduct during Indian farmers' protests in 2020–2021. At the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, numerous tweets reported false medical information related to the pandemic. Twitter announced a new policy in which they would label tweets containing misinformation going forward. In April 2020, Twitter removed accounts which defended President Rodrigo Duterte's response to the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines. In November 2020, then Chief Technology Officer and future CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal, when asked by MIT Technology Review about balancing the protection of free speech as a core value and the endeavour to combat misinformation, said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation ... focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed." Musk had been critical of Twitter's moderation of misinformation prior to his acquisition of the company. After the transition, Musk eliminated the misinformation moderation team, and stopped enforcing its policy on labeling tweets with misleading information about coronavirus. While Twitter had joined a voluntary program under the European Union's to fight disinformation in June 2022, Musk pulled the company out of the program in May 2023. In August 2020, development of Birdwatch was announced, initially described as a moderation tool. Twitter first launched the Birdwatch program in January 2021, intended as a way to debunk misinformation and propaganda, with a pilot program of 1,000 contributors, weeks after the January 6 United States Capitol attack. The aim was to "build Birdwatch in the open, and have it shaped by the Twitter community". In November 2021, Twitter updated the Birdwatch moderation tool to limit the visibility of contributors' identities by creating aliases for their accounts, in an attempt to limit bias towards the author of notes. Twitter then expanded access to notes made by the Birdwatch contributors in March 2022, giving a randomized set of US users the ability to view notes attached to tweets and rate them, with a pilot of 10,000 contributors. On average, contributors were noting 43 times a day in 2022 prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This then increased to 156 on the day of the invasion, estimated to be a very small portion of the misleading posts on the platform. By March 1, only 359 of 10,000 contributors had proposed notes in 2022, while a Twitter spokeswoman described plans to scale up the program, with the focus on "ensuring that Birdwatch is something people find helpful and can help inform understanding". By September 2022, the program had expanded to 15,000 users. In October 2022, the most commonly published notes were related to COVID-19 misinformation based on historical usage. In November 2022, at the request of new owner Elon Musk, Birdwatch was rebranded to Community Notes, taking an open-source approach to deal with misinformation, and expanded to Europe and countries outside of the US. Twitter Inc. v. Taamneh, alongside Gonzalez v. Google, were heard by the United States Supreme Court during its 2022–2023 term. Both cases dealt with Internet content providers and whether they are liable for terrorism-related information posted by their users. In the case of Twitter v. Taamneh, the case asked if Twitter and other social media services are liable for user-generated terrorism content under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and are beyond their Section 230 protections. The court ruled in May 2023 that the charges brought against Twitter and other companies were not permissible under the Antiterrorism Act, and did not address the Section 230 question. This decision also supported the Court's per curiam decision in Gonzalez returning that case to the lower court for review in light of the Twitter decision. In 2016, Twitter shareholder Doris Shenwick filed a lawsuit against Twitter, Inc., claiming executives misled investors over the company's growth prospects. In 2021, Twitter agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle. In May 2022, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle a lawsuit started by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit concerned Twitter's use of email addresses and phone numbers of Twitter users to target advertisements at them. The company also agreed to third-party audits of its data privacy program. On November 3, 2022, on the eve of expected layoffs, a group of Twitter employees based in San Francisco and Cambridge filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Naming five current or former workers as plaintiffs, the suit accused the company of violating federal and state laws that govern notice of employment termination. The federal law in question is the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, and the state law in question is California's state WARN Act. On November 20, 2023, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, a media watchdog group. The lawsuit alleges defamation by Media Matters following its publication of a report claiming that advertisements for major brands were displayed alongside posts promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. On August 6, 2024, X filed an antitrust lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers, Unilever, Mars, CVS and Ørsted, alleging that the advertisers had conspired via their participation in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media to withhold "billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from the platform. The World Federation Of Advertisers created the Global Alliance for Responsible Media in 2019 to address "illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising". On August 13, 2024, the Workplace Relations Commission ordered X to pay €550,000 to former senior staffer Gary Rooney in an unfair dismissal case. X had argued that Rooney's failure to check "yes" at the bottom of an email from Elon Musk constituted resignation. Criticism The platform has faced significant controversy since its buying by Musk and re-branding to X, including an increase in misinformation, hate speech and antisemitism. According to a report published by the "Never Again" Association, X refuses to remove hate speech or ignores reports. Researchers have called for greater transparency especially ahead of national elections, based on findings that the platform algorithm favors a small number of popular accounts, in particular right-leaning users. In July 2025, Musk and xAI's artificial intelligence tool, Grok, faced backlash from X users and the Anti-Defamation League regarding a series of antisemitic tweets made in response to the July 2025 Central Texas floods. The Grok account acknowledged the "inappropriate" posts and removed the comments. The incident is reported to have happened just days after Musk announced updates to Grok, noting that users should see "a difference when you ask Grok questions." Statistics As of May 2025[update], the ten X accounts with the most followers were: The "Oscar Selfie" orchestrated by 86th Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres during the March 2, 2014, broadcast was, at the time, the most retweeted image ever. The photo of twelve celebrities broke the previous retweet record within forty minutes and was retweeted over 1.8 million times in the first hour. On May 9, 2017, Ellen's record was broken by Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) by collecting nearly 3.5 million retweets in a little over a month. This record was broken when Yusaku Maezawa announced a giveaway on Twitter in January 2019, accumulating 4.4 million retweets. A similar tweet he made in December 2019 was retweeted 3.8 million times. The most tweeted moment in the history of Twitter occurred on August 2, 2013; during a Japanese television airing of the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky, fans simultaneously tweeted the word balse (バルス)—the incantation for a destruction spell used during its climax, after it was uttered in the film. There was a global peak of 143,199 tweets in one second, beating the previous record of 33,388. The most discussed event in Twitter history occurred on October 24, 2015; the hashtag ("#ALDubEBTamangPanahon") for Tamang Panahon, a live special episode of the Filipino variety show Eat Bulaga! at the Philippine Arena, centering on its popular on-air couple AlDub, attracted 41 million tweets.[non-primary source needed] The most-discussed sporting event in Twitter history was the 2014 FIFA World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany on July 8, 2014. According to Guinness World Records, the fastest pace to a million followers was set by actor Robert Downey Jr. in 23 hours and 22 minutes in April 2014. This record was later broken by Caitlyn Jenner, who joined the site on June 1, 2015, and amassed a million followers in just 4 hours and 3 minutes. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_reality] | [TOKENS: 4436] |
Contents Augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a form of 3D human–computer interaction that overlays real-time 3D-rendered computer graphics into the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted display. This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, compared to virtual reality, which aims to completely replace the user's real-world environment with a simulated one. Augmented reality is typically visual, but can span multiple sensory modalities, including auditory, haptic, and somatosensory. The earliest functional AR systems that provided immersive mixed reality experiences for users were invented in the early 1990s, starting with the Virtual Fixtures system developed at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Laboratory in 1992. Commercial augmented reality experiences were first introduced in entertainment and gaming businesses. Subsequently, augmented reality applications have spanned industries such as education, communications, medicine, and entertainment. Augmented reality frameworks include ARKit and ARCore. Commercial augmented reality headsets include the Magic Leap 1 and HoloLens. A number of companies have promoted the concept of smartglasses that have augmented reality capability. Augmented reality refers to experiences that are artificial and that add to the already existing reality. In AR, information about the environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world. This information can be virtual or real, e.g. seeing other real sensed or measured information such as electromagnetic radio waves overlaid in exact alignment with where they actually are in space. Augmented reality also has a lot of potential in the gathering and sharing of tacit knowledge. Augmented reality can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment), or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment). Hardware and displays AR visuals appear on handheld devices (video passthrough) or head-mounted displays (optical see-through or video passthrough). Systems pair a display with sensors (e.g., cameras and IMUs) to register virtual content to the environment; research also explores near-eye optics, projection-based AR, and experimental concepts such as contact-lens or retinal-scanned displays. AR HMDs place virtual imagery in the user's view using optical see-through or video passthrough and track head motion for stable registration. Phone and tablet AR uses the rear camera (video passthrough) plus on-device SLAM/VIO for tracking. Projectors overlay graphics onto real objects/environments without head-worn displays (spatial AR). Glasses-style near-eye displays aim for lighter, hands-free AR; approaches vary in optics, tracking, and power. 3D tracking AR systems estimate device pose and scene geometry so virtual graphics stay aligned with the real world. Common approaches include visual–inertial odometry and SLAM for markerless tracking, and fiducial markers when known patterns are available; image registration and depth cues (e.g., occlusion, shadows) maintain realism. AR runtimes provide sensing, tracking, and rendering pipelines; mobile platforms expose SDKs with camera access and spatial tracking. Interchange/geospatial formats such as ARML standardize anchors and content. Input commonly combines head/gaze with touch, controllers, voice, or hand tracking; audio and haptics can reduce visual load. Human-factors studies report performance benefits but also workload and safety trade-offs depending on task and context. Key usability factors include stable registration, legible contrast under varied lighting, and low motion-to-photon latency. Visual design often uses depth cues (occlusion, shadows) to support spatial judgment; safety-critical uses emphasize glanceable prompts and minimal interaction. Comparison with mixed reality/virtual reality Augmented reality (AR) is largely synonymous with mixed reality (MR). There is also overlap in terminology with extended reality and computer-mediated reality. However, In the 2020s, the differences between AR and MR began to be emphasized. In augmented reality, users are not only able to view digital content within their real environment but can also interact with it as if it were a tangible part of the physical world. This is made possible through devices such as Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, which utilize multiple cameras and sensors to enable real-time interaction between virtual and physical elements. Mixed reality that incorporates haptics has sometimes been referred to as visuo-haptic mixed reality. In virtual reality (VR), the users' perception is completely computer-generated, whereas with augmented reality (AR), it is partially generated and partially from the real world. For example, in architecture, VR can be used to create a walk-through simulation of the inside of a new building; and AR can be used to show a building's structures and systems super-imposed on a real-life view. Another example is through the use of utility applications. Some AR applications, such as Augment, enable users to apply digital objects into real environments, allowing businesses to use augmented reality devices as a way to preview their products in the real world. Similarly, it can also be used to demo what products may look like in an environment for customers, as demonstrated by companies such as Mountain Equipment Co-op or Lowe's who use augmented reality to allow customers to preview what their products might look like at home. Augmented reality (AR) differs from virtual reality (VR) in the sense that in AR, the surrounding environment is real and AR is just adding virtual objects to the real environment. On the other hand, in VR, the surrounding environment is completely virtual and computer generated. A demonstration of how AR layers objects onto the real world can be seen with augmented reality games. WallaMe is an augmented reality game application that allows users to hide messages in real environments, utilizing geolocation technology in order to enable users to hide messages wherever they may wish in the world. The use of the terms "mixed reality" and "interreality" is clearly defined in the context of physics and may be slightly different in other fields, however, it is generally seen as, "bridging the physical and virtual world". Recent improvements in AR and VR headsets have made the display quality, field of view, and motion tracking more accurate, which makes augmented experiences more immersive. Improvements in sensor calibration, lightweight optics, and wireless connectivity have also made it easier for users to move around and be comfortable. History Uses Augmented reality has been explored for many uses, including education and business. Some of the earliest cited examples include augmented reality used to support surgery by providing virtual overlays to guide medical practitioners, to AR content for astronomy and welding. Example application areas described below include archaeology, architecture, commerce and education. AR for education and training can overlay 3D models and step-by-step guidance in real settings (e.g., anatomy, maintenance); systematic reviews report learning benefits alongside design and implementation caveats that vary by context and task. Augmented reality navigation overlays route guidance or hazard cues onto the real scene, typically via smartphone "live view" or in-vehicle heads-up displays. Research finds AR can improve wayfinding and driver situation awareness, but human-factors trade-offs (distraction, cognitive load, occlusion) matter for safety-critical use. See also: Head-up display, Automotive navigation system, Wayfinding In 2021, iBite was one of the first iOS applications to integrate Apple's ARKit & RealityKit Swift frameworks for interactive augmented reality digital ordering. iBite allows users to view 3D models of their food before ordering, and allow merchants to upload their own USDZ files which they can generate using iBite's patented photogrammetry software. In 2018, Apple announced USDZ, a file format based on Universal Scene Description from Pixar, which allows 3D objects to be viewed in AR on iPhones and iPads with iOS 12. Apple has created an AR QuickLook Gallery that allows people to experience augmented reality through their own Apple device. In 2018, Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce company, announced AR Quick Look integration. Their merchants will be able to upload 3D models of their products and their users will be able to tap on the models inside the Safari browser on their iOS devices to view them in their real-world environments. AR technology is used by furniture retailers such as IKEA, Houzz, and Wayfair. These retailers offer apps that allow consumers to view their products in their home prior to purchasing anything. In 2017, Ikea announced the Ikea Place app. It contains a catalogue of over 2,000 products—nearly the company's full collection of sofas, armchairs, coffee tables, and storage units which one can place anywhere in a room with their phone. The app made it possible to have 3D and true-to-scale models of furniture in the customer's living space. IKEA realized that their customers are not shopping in stores as often or making direct purchases anymore. Shopify's acquisition of Primer, an AR app aims to push small and medium-sized sellers towards interactive AR shopping with easy to use AR integration and user experience for both merchants and consumers. AR helps the retail industry reduce operating costs. Merchants upload product information to the AR system, and consumers can use mobile terminals to search and generate 3D maps. One of the first applications of augmented reality was in healthcare, particularly to support the planning, practice, and training of surgical procedures. As far back as 1992, enhancing human performance during surgery was a formally stated objective when building the first augmented reality systems at U.S. Air Force laboratories. AR provides surgeons with patient monitoring data in the style of a fighter pilot's heads-up display, and allows patient imaging records, including functional videos, to be accessed and overlaid. Examples include a virtual X-ray view based on prior tomography or on real-time images from ultrasound and confocal microscopy probes, visualizing the position of a tumor in the video of an endoscope, or radiation exposure risks from X-ray imaging devices. AR can enhance viewing a fetus inside a mother's womb. Siemens, Karl Storz and IRCAD have developed a system for laparoscopic liver surgery that uses AR to view sub-surface tumors and vessels. Guidance overlays and image fusion support planning and intraoperative visualization across several specialties; reviews note accuracy/registration constraints and workflow integration issues. The HoloLens is capable of displaying images for image-guided surgery. As augmented reality advances, it finds increasing applications in healthcare. Augmented reality and similar computer based-utilities are being used to train medical professionals. In healthcare, AR can be used to provide guidance during diagnostic and therapeutic interventions e.g. during surgery. Magee et al., for instance, describe the use of augmented reality for medical training in simulating ultrasound-guided needle placement. Recently, augmented reality began seeing adoption in neurosurgery, a field that requires heavy amounts of imaging before procedures. Smartglasses can be incorporated into the operating room to aide in surgical procedures; possibly displaying patient data conveniently while overlaying precise visual guides for the surgeon. Augmented reality headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens have been theorized to allow for efficient sharing of information between doctors, in addition to providing a platform for enhanced training. This can, in some situations (i.e. patient infected with contagious disease), improve doctor safety and reduce PPE use. While mixed reality has lots of potential for enhancing healthcare, it does have some drawbacks too. The technology may never fully integrate into scenarios when a patient is present, as there are ethical concerns surrounding the doctor not being able to see the patient. Mixed reality is also useful for healthcare education. For example, according to a 2022 report from the World Economic Forum, 85% of first-year medical students at Case Western Reserve University reported that mixed reality for teaching anatomy was "equivalent" or "better" than the in-person class. Building on decades of perceptual-motor research in experimental psychology, researchers at the Aviation Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign used augmented reality in the form of a flight path in the sky to teach flight students how to land an airplane using a flight simulator. An adaptive augmented schedule in which students were shown the augmentation only when they departed from the flight path proved to be a more effective training intervention than a constant schedule. Flight students taught to land in the simulator with the adaptive augmentation learned to land a light aircraft more quickly than students with the same amount of landing training in the simulator but with constant augmentation or without any augmentation. The first augmented reality system that integrated haptic 3D input was the Virtual Fixtures platform, which was developed in 1992 by Louis Rosenberg at the Armstrong Laboratories of the United States Air Force. It enabled human users to control robots in real-world environments using a haptic controller. Published studies showed that by introducing virtual objects into the real world, significant performance increases could be achieved by human operators. An interesting early application of AR occurred when Rockwell International created video map overlays of satellite and orbital debris tracks to aid in space observations at Air Force Maui Optical System. In their 1993 paper "Debris Correlation Using the Rockwell WorldView System" the authors describe the use of map overlays applied to video from space surveillance telescopes. The map overlays indicated the trajectories of various objects in geographic coordinates. This allowed telescope operators to identify satellites, and also to identify and catalog potentially dangerous space debris. Starting in 2003 the US Army integrated the SmartCam3D augmented reality system into the Shadow Unmanned Aerial System to aid sensor operators using telescopic cameras to locate people or points of interest. The system combined fixed geographic information including street names, points of interest, airports, and railroads with live video from the camera system. The system offered a "picture in picture" mode that allows it to show a synthetic view of the area surrounding the camera's field of view. This helps solve a problem in which the field of view is so narrow that it excludes important context, as if "looking through a soda straw". The system displays real-time friend/foe/neutral location markers blended with live video, providing the operator with improved situational awareness. Combat reality can be simulated and represented using complex, layered data and visual aides, most of which are head-mounted displays (HMD), which encompass any display technology that can be worn on the user's head. Military training solutions are often built on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, such as Improbable's synthetic environment platform, Virtual Battlespace 3 and VirTra, with the latter two platforms used by the United States Army. As of 2018[update], VirTra is being used by both civilian and military law enforcement to train personnel in a variety of scenarios, including active shooter, domestic violence, and military traffic stops. In 2017, the U.S. Army was developing the Synthetic Training Environment (STE), a collection of technologies for training purposes that was expected to include mixed reality. As of 2018[update], STE was still in development without a projected completion date. Some recorded goals of STE included enhancing realism and increasing simulation training capabilities and STE availability to other systems. It was claimed that mixed-reality environments like STE could reduce training costs, such as reducing the amount of ammunition expended during training. In 2018, it was reported that STE would include representation of any part of the world's terrain for training purposes. STE would offer a variety of training opportunities for squad brigade and combat teams, including Stryker, armory, and infantry teams. Researchers at USAF Research Lab (Calhoun, Draper et al.) found an approximately two-fold increase in the speed at which UAV sensor operators found points of interest using this technology. This ability to maintain geographic awareness quantitatively enhances mission efficiency. The system is in use on the US Army RQ-7 Shadow and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial Systems. In combat, AR can serve as a networked communication system that renders useful battlefield data onto a soldier's goggles in real time. From the soldier's viewpoint, people and various objects can be marked with special indicators to warn of potential dangers. Virtual maps and 360° view camera imaging can also be rendered to aid a soldier's navigation and battlefield perspective, and this can be transmitted to military leaders at a remote command center. The combination of 360° view cameras visualization and AR can be used on board combat vehicles and tanks as circular review system. AR can be an effective tool for virtually mapping out the 3D topologies of munition storages in the terrain, with the choice of the munitions combination in stacks and distances between them with a visualization of risk areas.[unreliable source?] The scope of AR applications also includes visualization of data from embedded munitions monitoring sensors. The NASA X-38 was flown using a hybrid synthetic vision system that overlaid map data on video to provide enhanced navigation for the spacecraft during flight tests from 1998 to 2002. It used the LandForm software which was useful for times of limited visibility, including an instance when the video camera window frosted over leaving astronauts to rely on the map overlays. The LandForm software was also test flown at the Army Yuma Proving Ground in 1999. In the photo at right one can see the map markers indicating runways, air traffic control tower, taxiways, and hangars overlaid on the video. In industrial environments, augmented reality is proving to have a substantial impact with use cases emerging across all aspect of the product lifecycle, starting from product design and new product introduction (NPI) to manufacturing to service and maintenance, to material handling and distribution. For example, labels were displayed on parts of a system to clarify operating instructions for a mechanic performing maintenance on a system. Assembly lines benefited from the usage of AR. In addition to Boeing, BMW and Volkswagen were known for incorporating this technology into assembly lines for monitoring process improvements. Big machines are difficult to maintain because of their multiple layers or structures. AR permits people to look through the machine as if with an x-ray, pointing them to the problem right away. Augmented reality can be used to build mockups that combine physical and digital elements. With the use of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), mockups can interact with the physical world to gain control of more realistic sensory experiences like object permanence, which would normally be infeasible or extremely difficult to track and analyze without the use of both digital and physical aides. AR applications such as Word Lens can interpret the foreign text on signs and menus and, in a user's augmented view, re-display the text in the user's language. Spoken words of a foreign language can be translated and displayed in a user's view as printed subtitles. Recent advances in mixed-reality technologies have renewed interest in alternative modes of communication for human-robot interaction. Human operators wearing augmented reality headsets such as HoloLens can interact with (control and monitor) e.g. robots and lifting machines on site in a digital factory setup. This use case typically requires real-time data communication between a mixed reality interface with the machine / process / system, which could be enabled by incorporating digital twin technology. More than one in three surveyed advanced Internet users would like to edit out disturbing elements around them, such as garbage or graffiti. They would like to even modify their surroundings by erasing street signs, billboard ads, and uninteresting shopping windows. Consumers want to use augmented reality glasses to change their surroundings into something that reflects their own personal opinions. Around two in five want to change the way their surroundings look and even how people appear to them.[citation needed] Apps Snapchat users have access to augmented reality features. In September 2017, Snapchat announced a feature called "Sky Filters" that will be available on its app. This new feature makes use of augmented reality to alter the look of a picture taken of the sky, much like how users can apply the app's filters to other pictures. Users can choose from sky filters such as starry night, stormy clouds, beautiful sunsets, and rainbow. Google launched an augmented reality feature for Google Maps on Pixel phones that identifies users' location and places signs and arrows on the device screen to show a user navigation directions. Concerns In a paper titled "Death by Pokémon GO", researchers at Purdue University's Krannert School of Management claim the game caused "a disproportionate increase in vehicular crashes and associated vehicular damage, personal injuries, and fatalities in the vicinity of locations, called PokéStops, where users can play the game while driving." Using data from one municipality, the paper extrapolates what that might mean nationwide and concluded "the increase in crashes attributable to the introduction of Pokémon GO is 145,632 with an associated increase in the number of injuries of 29,370 and an associated increase in the number of fatalities of 256 over the period of 6 July 2016, through 30 November 2016." The authors extrapolated the cost of those crashes and fatalities at between $2bn and $7.3 billion for the same period. Augmented reality devices that use cameras for 3D tracking or video passthrough depend on the ability of the device to record and analyze the environment in real time. Because of this, there are potential legal concerns over privacy. According to recent studies, users are especially concerned that augmented reality smart glasses might compromise the privacy of others, potentially causing peers to become uncomfortable or less open during interactions. Notable researchers See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-NYTimes:_Expected-35] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Studios] | [TOKENS: 4459] |
Contents Xbox Game Studios Xbox Game Studios (previously known as Microsoft Studios, Microsoft Game Studios, and Microsoft Games) is an American video game publisher based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, web-based portals, and other game consoles. Xbox Game Studios, alongside ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard, are part of the Microsoft Gaming division led by Phil Spencer, who is chief executive officer of the division. History Early in the history of Microsoft the software company published video games like Olympic Decathlon, but Steve Ballmer reportedly persuaded Bill Gates to deemphasize them to professionalize the company's image. By the early 1990s, Microsoft published subLOGIC's Microsoft Flight Simulator and several Microsoft Entertainment Pack compilations of minigames, but was best known for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. In 1992, the company began increasing its focus on games. It announced Microsoft Golf for Windows, based on Access Software's Links, and expanded the games division from two to six people with the intention of commissioning more products from other developers. Microsoft acquired FASA Interactive in 1999 for its MechWarrior game series, Access Software, and Aces Game Studio, which worked on Flight Simulator. The Games Group had also established long-term publishing deals with developers like Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires, Age of Mythology), and Digital Anvil (Starlancer). Under Microsoft, FASA Interactive was renamed FASA Studio, and Access Software became Salt Lake Games Studio. Microsoft transitioned the Games Group into a wholly separate division named Microsoft Games around March 2000, along with other consolidation of games-related projects within Microsoft. This came alongside the public announcement of the first Xbox console, with Microsoft Games to serve as a developer and publisher of titles for both Xbox and Windows. Robbie Bach, who held executive positions in Microsoft's entertainment divisions, was named senior vice-president while Ed Fries, a member of the former Games Group and instrumental for some of its acquisitions, was named as vice-president of the new division. Shane Kim served as the division's general manager. In 2001, the division was renamed Microsoft Game Studios (MGS). FASA Studio and Salt Lake Games Studio remained with Microsoft Game Studios. Digital Anvil and Ensemble Studios were acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and 2001, respectively. One of the first major studio acquisitions following the division's formation was Bungie in June 2000, in the midst of its development of Halo: Combat Evolved. With the acquisition, Halo, which had been planned for release on personal computers, became a Microsoft-published title as well as a launch title for the Xbox on its release in 2001. Turn 10 Studios was established in 2001 for work on the Forza series of racing games. In September 2002, Microsoft Game Studios acquired Rare, who had previously extensively developed for Nintendo platforms. In 2003, Microsoft recognized that the EA Sports label was in a far stronger position to develop sports games for the Xbox console, and among realignment steps, laid off about 78 employees within Microsoft Game Studios that were developing sports games in-house, and sold Salt Lake Games Studio, now named Indie Games to Take-Two Interactive in 2004, where it became Indie Built. Peter Moore was named in 2003 as vice-president of Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division, which included MGS, the Xbox division, and Microsoft's home hardware market, reporting to Bach. In addition to pulling big publishers like Electronic Arts to the Xbox platform, Moore tried to push the Xbox in Japan by courting Japanese developers with support from MGS publishing. Such games included Phantom Dust and Blinx: The Time Sweeper. Around 2004, MGS established Carbonated Games as an internal studio for the development of casual games for Microsoft's web games portal MSN Games, on the chat client MSN Messenger, and on the Xbox Live platform. Kim and Fries were instrumental for securing MGS' publishing deal with Lionhead Studios for their 2004 game Fable, which would serve as the first major role-playing game on the Xbox platform. Subsequently, in 2006, MGS acquired Lionhead Studios along with the Fable properties, as it sought to secure a Fable sequel for the upcoming Xbox 360. MGS folded the staff of Digital Anvil into the larger studio in 2005, following the release of 2003's Brute Force, and closed down the studio entirely in 2006. FASA Studio was closed three-and-a-half months after the May 2007 release of their last game, Shadowrun. In 2007, MGS announced the opening of a European office in Reading, England, headed by general manager Phil Spencer. Moore opted to leave Microsoft in July 2007, so to move back to the San Francisco Bay area with his family and to rejoin Electronic Arts. Don Mattrick was named as his replacement as the new vice-president of the Xbox and Games Business, which included MGS. Later in 2007, Bungie amicably split from MGS to become a privately held independent company, with MGS retaining the rights to the Halo property. Bungie continued to develop two additional Halo games for MGS, Halo 3: ODST (2009) and Halo: Reach (2010). Simultaneously, MGS founded 343 Industries as an internal studio to develop future Halo games without Bungie. In 2008, MGS disbanded Carbonated Games and announced the formation of internal studio Xbox Live Productions to develop "high-quality digital content" for Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft as a whole announced layoffs of up to 5,000 jobs across all divisions in January 2009 due to slowing sales of personal computers as a result of the Great Recession. Within MGS, the studio had already planned to disband Ensemble Studios after the completion of Halo Wars in early 2009, while the new layoffs led MGS to also disband Aces Game Studio. Microsoft acquired Vancouver-based BigPark in May 2009, using the studio to develop some of the first games for the upcoming Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360. Later in 2009, Phil Spencer was promoted to corporate vice-president of MGS, in order to replace the retiring Shane Kim. In 2010, MGS formed a mobile gaming studio, MGS Mobile Gaming, focused on developing gaming and entertainment multimedia for Windows Phone devices. It also expanded Rare with a second studio in Digbeth, Birmingham. By the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 in June 2011, Microsoft Game Studios was quietly renamed to Microsoft Studios. Later in 2011, Microsoft Studios acquired Twisted Pixel Games. In early December 2011, Microsoft Studios created Microsoft Casual Games, a division to revamp its past casual games for Windows (like Windows Solitaire and MSN Games) using more up-to-date software delivery platforms. In 2012, Phil Harrison, the former Sony worldwide studios head, joined Microsoft as head of Microsoft Studios Europe and IEB. Microsoft Studios acquired developer Press Play, known for developing Tentacles and Max & the Magic Marker. They also announced a new development studio in London, England. Later in 2012, Microsoft downsized Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver due to the cancellation of the Kinect family title Project Columbia and announced that the ongoing development of free-to-play title Microsoft Flight had been ceased due to portfolio evaluation. The reduced Vancouver studios were renamed to Black Tusk Studios and tasked with making similar franchise-building title as Halo. In 2013, Microsoft established European studio Lift London, a studio that would create cloud-based games for tablets, mobiles and TVs. Later, they created a new "Deep Tech" team inside its Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) unit; the new team is charged with working with top developers outside the company to build next-generation applications on top of Microsoft platforms. While Mattrick had overseen much of the development of Microsoft's next console, the Xbox One, he left in July 2013, prior to its release, to take over as CEO of Zynga. Mattrick was succeeded by Julie Larson-Green, who was named the president of the Devices and Studios Engineering Group, following a realignment of Microsoft's divisions, overseeing both the Xbox hardware divisions and Microsoft Studios. Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in February 2014. At this time, Microsoft was facing strong competition in the consumer market, and within the gaming sector, the Xbox One (released in 2013) was more expensive than competitors and had too much focus on non-gaming functions. Under Nadella's direction, Phil Spencer was named the new head of Microsoft Studios to replace Jason Holtman, who had only been its lead for the prior six months. Spencer began looking for ways to expand Microsoft Studios to make it a profitable division for Microsoft, and began negotiations for the acquititions of Mojang, the developers behind Minecraft, in late 2014. Microsoft spent US$2.5 billion to acquire the studio, and upon the deal's completion in November, the studio's key founding personnel, Markus Persson, Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh, departed Mojang. As a result, Persson became valued around US$1.3 billion. Microsoft Studios committed to keeping Minecraft available across multiple platforms, including rival PlayStation consoles. Matt Booty, the studio's corporate vice-president in 2020, said the acquisition of Mojang served as the template for later acquisitions, as Mojang was left to run as an "unplugged studio" with limited integration into the Microsoft corporation, minimizing the disruption of Mojang's normal day-to-day business matters nor impeding on the studio's freedom. Additional intellectual property (IP) acquisitions by Microsoft Studios in 2014 included a publishing contract with Undead Labs for their game State of Decay, the rights to the Gears of War series from Epic Games, and the Rise of IP (Rise of Nations and Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends) from Big Huge Games. Microsoft Studios assigned Gears of War to Black Tusk Studios, which was later rebranded in 2015 as The Coalition. In July 2014, it was announced that Xbox Entertainment Studios would be closed in the following months; the closure was completed by October 29. On March 4, 2015, Microsoft announced that they were merging UK-based studios, Lift London and Soho Productions for further games development, with the amalgam continuing to operate under the Lift London name. On March 7, Microsoft announced at the Game Developers Conference that HoloLens games were coming to Xbox One. On March 9, Microsoft announced that Kudo Tsunoda's role was expanding and that he would be the new studio team leader for studios such as Press Play, Lift London and a new internal studio called Decisive Games. Decisive Games was previously mentioned in job postings, saying that they were hiring for work on a "beloved strategy game" for Xbox One and PC, but this is the first public acknowledgement of the team's existence as a first-party studio. Twisted Pixel and Microsoft Studios agreed to split in September 2015. Kudo Tsunoda left the Xbox division in November 2015 for the development of HoloLens and Microsoft Edge, and other projects that could improve means of human interaction, including voice and gesture. Tsunoda's role was filled by Hanno Lemke and Shannon Loftis. In 2016, Microsoft was perceived as "unifying PC and Xbox One" platforms. In March 2016, Microsoft canceled development of two major projects: Lionhead's Fable Legends and Press Play's Project Knoxville, shuttering both studios in the following months. Around the same time, changes to Microsoft Studios' website indicated that further studios—BigPark, Good Science Studio, Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), Function Studios and State of the Art (SOTA)—had been closed, Microsoft Studios clarified that all of them had been consolidated into other Microsoft Studios teams over the past several years. In September 2017, Spencer was promoted to the senior leadership team, gaining the title of "executive vice-president of gaming". At this point, Microsoft Studios directly reported to Nadella. In January 2018, Matt Booty was promoted from leader in the Minecraft games business to corporate vice-president of Microsoft Studios. On June 10, 2018, during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2018, Microsoft announced the acquisitions of Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs and Compulsion Games, as well as the opening of a new studio in Santa Monica, California, entitled The Initiative, which would be led by the former Crystal Dynamics studio head Darrell Gallagher. In November, Microsoft Studios announced further acquisitions with Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment. The studio rebranded itself on February 5, 2019, as Xbox Game Studios, as to reflect Microsoft's intent to use the Xbox brand to support gaming across all the devices it supports. At E3 2019, Xbox Game Studios announced it had acquired Double Fine, and established a new internal studio dedicated to Age of Empires headed by Shannon Loftis, bringing their total studio count to fifteen. This studio, later named World's Edge, does not directly develop any games, but oversees efforts from external studios, such as Relic Entertainment, Forgotten Empires and Tantalus Media, to assure the series is being developed in the right direction, according to creative director Adam Isgreen. Booty has stated that with studios like Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and Double Fine, which have traditionally supported multiplatform games, they will determine if it makes sense for their future products to be treated as Microsoft-exclusive content for Xbox and Windows computers, or to allow these to be published across multiple platforms. That decision will be based on a "network effect", whether having these games on other platforms will better support the franchise and thus worthwhile for Microsoft to help dedicate resources towards it, such as they had with Minecraft. Xbox Game Studios has allowed some of the content developed by its studios or that was previously published exclusively for the Xbox and Windows systems to be released on Nintendo systems, notably the Nintendo Switch versions of Cuphead from Studio MDHR and Ori and the Blind Forest from Moon Studios, and allowing for the titular characters from Rare's Banjo-Kazooie into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. However, the division stated that these releases were generally "existing commitments to other platforms" that they allowed studios to honor, but they otherwise have "no plans to further expand our exclusive first party games to other consoles." Near the end of 2019, with the combined fifteen studios now under Xbox Game Studios, Booty stated that they now had more games than ever to handle, and were likely not going to acquire any additional studios in the near future, stating "we've been shifting our focus inside Xbox Game Studios from acquisition and growth, to a phase of execution and delivery". Additionally, as Microsoft started promotion of its fourth-generation of Xbox, including the Xbox Series X, Booty stated that titles developed by Xbox Game Studios in year or two following its release will not be exclusively for the new generation of consoles, but instead will support both Xbox One and the new console, with some games receiving enhanced performance when played on the new console lineup. Booty said that with the large number of studios they had recently acquired, as well as ongoing external partnerships and their Xbox Game Pass service, the Studios are able to support a "breadth of offerings in the portfolio" designed to attract a large number of players. Further, in an interview in November 2020, Phil Spencer said during an interview regarding the future of the Xbox brand that he intends to put more focus on outputting RPGs, which had to that point been underserved. Microsoft and ZeniMax Media announced on September 21, 2020, that Microsoft planned to acquire ZeniMax and its family of studios, which include Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane Studios, id Software, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, and ZeniMax Online Studios, for over US$7.5 billion in cash. According to Spencer, the ZeniMax acquisition was intended to give Microsoft a large library of games known around the world, and to expand the library of Xbox Game Pass and XCloud. However, during 2023 hearings regarding the Federal Trade Commission's concern over the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Spencer said that Sony Interactive Entertainment had made sways at Bethesda to keep Starfield as a PlayStation-exclusive, further prompting Microsoft to purchase Zenimax. Both U.S. and European Union regulatory agencies approved the acquisition by early March 2021, and the acquisition was formally completed by March 9, 2021. The total price of the deal was $8.1 billion Bethesda Softworks, the primarily publisher for all of ZeniMax's games, remained as an operational unit under Microsoft with the acquisition and retained all its current leadership. With the acquisition, future games from the studios will be exclusive to Xbox consoles, but existing commitments to other platforms (such as Arkane Studios' Deathloop and Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire: Tokyo, which are contractually exclusive to PlayStation 5 for a period of 12 months before their release on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S) will still be honored. Spencer stated that Game Pass was also fundamental driver for the acquisition. A preliminary injunction to block the acquisition had been sought in an ongoing class-action lawsuit that ZeniMax faced over Fallout 4, with the plaintiffs in the case arguing that Microsoft could shield ZeniMax's assets from damages should they be found liable after the acquisition. The ZeniMax Board of Directors was dissolved following the Microsoft purchase. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal valued at $68.7 billion. Microsoft stated that this acquisition would make it the third-largest gaming company by revenue, following Tencent and Sony. With the announcement, Microsoft also announced a major change to its corporate structure, with Phil Spencer becoming CEO of the new division Microsoft Gaming, with Matt Booty leading Xbox Game Studios under it. Once approved, Activision Blizzard would then become a subdivision of Microsoft Gaming. The deal was cleared by various national regulators by October 13, 2023, with Microsoft closing the deal the same day. During litigation on the merger with the United States Federal Trade Commission, internal documents from Microsoft c. 2020 show strong interest in re-acquiring Bungie, or acquiring Sega's game development companies, Supergiant Games, Niantic, Inc., Thunderful Group, Zynga, IO Interactive, Scopely, or Playrix as part of Xbox Game Studios, as well as publisher Square Enix to help bolster its Asian presence and mobile market share. In January 2023, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, which represented about 5% of its global workforce. Included in those layoffs were many employees from 343 Industries, The Coalition, and Bethesda Game Studios. On October 26, 2023, Microsoft announced the promotion of several employees in the company, including Sarah Bond being promoted to president of Xbox, overseeing all Xbox platform, business, and hardware work, and Matt Booty promoted from president of Xbox to president of Game Content and Studios, including the new responsibility of overseeing ZeniMax and Bethesda, with Jamie Leder still running Zenimax as a limited integration entity, but now reporting to Matt. In the wake of Matt Booty's promotion, Alan Hartman, then the head of Turn 10, was subsequently promoted to head of Xbox Game Studios. On October 6, 2024, 343 Industries officially announced their rebranding as Halo Studios, additionally confirming that multiple Halo games were in development and that said projects would now use Unreal Engine 5 as opposed to the proprietary Slipspace Engine that powered Halo Infinite. On October 14, Rare creative lead Craig Duncan was announced to be succeeding Alan Hartman as head of Xbox Game Studios beginning in November 2024, with Hartman retiring after a three-decade tenure at Microsoft. In July 2025, Microsoft Gaming performed a business restructuring ahead of the new financial year, which resulted in layoffs at Xbox Game Studios Rare, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs and Turn 10 Studios. The latter, who conceived and developed the Forza Motorsport series, was reported to have lost almost half of its workforce and was anticipated to be restructured as a support studio for Motorsport's sister series Forza Horizon and developments for the ForzaTech engine, according to former content coordinator Fred Russell. In addition, Rare's action-adventure game Everwild ceased production, while Microsoft also canceled the Perfect Dark reboot and closed its developer The Initiative simultaneously. Alongside Everwild's cancelation, Rare veteran and designer Gregg Mayles also departed the company after 35 years, alongside producer Louise O'Connor. Over 2024 and 2025, a series of video games published by Microsoft Gaming divisions, most notably Xbox Game Studios' titles, were released on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles under an initiative to pivot focus from the Xbox series of consoles and eventually cease to produce exclusive titles for the consoles like Sega. Xbox Game Studios had also released Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 video games on the Nintendo Switch Online service in 2024, all of whom were developed by Rare and in some cases, formerly published by Nintendo. Studios Games published References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-Polygon:_Microsoft-38] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-Sveriges_Radio:_Bergensten-40] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-Variety:_Scrolls-45] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-Polygon:_Scrolls-44] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-MCV:_Henrik_Pettersson-47] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play] | [TOKENS: 4041] |
Contents Free-to-play Free-to-play (F2P or FtP) video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models that ultimately result in the creation of free-to-play games. Games that adhere to free-to-play business models are distinct from traditional premium games, which require payment before use. Free-to-play games are not to be confused with freeware games, which are entirely costless. Accordingly, free-to-play games are sometimes called "free-to-start" due to not being entirely free. Certain free-to-play games have also been labeled as "pay-to-win"—that is, that players can pay to obtain competitive advantages over other players. There are several kinds of ways that free-to-play games generate money, despite being mostly free. A common method is based on the freemium software model, in which users are incentivised to make small purchases, called microtransactions, to either access additional cosmetic or gameplay content, progress through the content faster, or gain competitive advantages over other players. Another method of generating revenue is to integrate advertisements into the game. The free-to-play business model was commonly seen in early massively multiplayer online games targeted towards casual gamers, before finding wider adoption among games released by major video game publishers to combat video game piracy. The model has been used by games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Apex Legends, Fortnite, VALORANT, and League of Legends. Revenue sources In-game items can be purely cosmetic, enhance the power of the player, accelerate progression speed, and many more. A common technique used by developers of these games is for the items purchased to have a time limit; after this expires, the item must be repurchased before the user can continue. Another commonly seen mechanic is the use of two in-game currencies: one earned through normal gameplay, and another which can be purchased with real-world money. The second, "premium" currency is sometimes given out in small amounts to non-paying players at certain times, such as when they first start the game, complete a quest, or refer a friend to the game. Many browser games have an "energy bar" that depletes when the player takes actions. These games then sell items such as coffee or snacks to refill the bar. Free-to-play games commonly use microtransactions, which allow players to purchase in-game items or advantages using real money. These purchases may include cosmetic items such as character skins and customization options, gameplay enhancements, time-saving features, or access to additional content. This system allows access to the core gameplay without payment while offering optional purchases that enhance convenience or accelerate progression. Other free-to-play games also include loot boxes, in which players can purchase random virtual items using real money or in-game currency. These mechanics have attracted significant research attention due to their similarities to gambling, as players spend money without knowing the outcome of the rewards. Research has examined the association between loot box spending and problem gambling behavior. Battle passes are also used in some free-to-play games. They are a seasonal monetization system in which players earn rewards by completing in-game challenges. Players may access a free reward track, while a premium track is available for purchase to obtain additional rewards, such as cosmetic items, in-game currency, and other content. Some free-to-play games use virtual currencies that can be purchased with real money and used to buy items within the game. The use of virtual currency can create psychological distance from real-world spending, which may encourage additional purchases. Research on freemium games suggests that factors such as convenience, progression speed, social interaction, and personalization can influence players’ decisions to make purchases. Some free-to-play games, such as id Software's Quake Live, use in-game advertising to generate revenue. In addition to making in-game items available for purchase, EA integrates in-game advertising into its games. In August 2007, EA completed a deal with Massive Incorporated, which lets Massive update and change in-game advertising in real-time within EA games. History Matt Mihaly created the first known business model of exchanging virtual items for money in an online game, in 1997 for the flagship title Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands for his corporation originally Achaea LLC that later became Iron Realms Entertainment. The free-to-play business model in online games was later realized by Nexon in South Korea to a degree first catching more major media attention at the time. The first Nexon game to use it, QuizQuiz, was released in October 1999. Its head developer, Lee Seungchan, would eventually be involved in the creation of MapleStory. The free-to-play model originated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, coming from a series of highly successful MMOs targeted towards children and casual gamers, including Furcadia, Neopets, RuneScape, MapleStory, and text-based dungeons such as Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands. Known for producing innovative titles, small independent developers also continue to release free-to-play games. Free-to-play games are particularly prevalent in countries such as South Korea and the People's Republic of China. Microtransaction-based free-to-play mobile games and browser games such as Puzzle & Dragons, Kantai Collection and The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls also have large player populations in Japan. In particular, the Nikkei Shimbun reported in September 2012 that Cinderella Girls was earning over 1 billion yen in revenue monthly from microtransactions. Electronic Arts first adopted the free-to-play concept in one of its games when it released FIFA Online in Korea. In the late 2000s, many MMOs transitioned to the free-to-play model from subscriptions, including subscription-based games such as The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Champions Online. Turbine as of September 10, 2010, has given an F2P with Cash shop option to The Lord of the Rings Online which resulted in a tripling of profit. Sony Online Entertainment's move to transition EverQuest from a subscription model into a hybrid F2P/subscription game was followed by a 125% spike in item sales, a 150% up-tick in unique log-ins, and over three times as many account registrations. The movement of free-to-play MMOs into the mainstream also coincided with experimentation with other genres as well. The model was picked up by larger developers and more diverse genres, with games such as Battlefield Heroes, Free Realms, Quake Live and Team Fortress 2 appearing in the late 2000s. The experimentation was not successful in every genre, however. Traditional real time strategy franchises such as Age of Empires and Command & Conquer both attempted free-to-play titles. Age of Empires Online was shut down in the midst of a tiny player base and stagnant revenue, and Command & Conquer: Generals 2 was shut down in alpha due to negative reactions from players. In 2011, revenue from free-to-play games overtook revenue from premium games in the top 100 games in Apple's App Store. The percentage of people that spend money on in-game items in these games ranges from 0.5% to 6%, depending on a game's quality and mechanics. Even though this means that a large number of people will never spend money in a game, it also means that the people that do spend money could amount to a sizeable number due to the fact that the game was given away for free. Indeed a report from mobile advertising company firm SWRV stated that only 1.5 percent of players opted to pay for in-game items, and that 50 percent of the revenue for such games often came from just ten percent of players. Nevertheless The Washington Post noted that the developers of two such games, Supercell (Clash of Clans) and Machine Zone (Game of War: Fire Age), were able to afford Super Bowl commercials in 2015 featuring big-name celebrities (respectively Liam Neeson and Kate Upton). The latter, Game of War, was in fact, part of a roughly $40 million campaign starring Upton. Many video game publishers use the free-to-play model for the MOBA genre. During 2015, Slice Intelligence tracked people that bought products in mobile video games, and these players spent an average of $87 in free-to-play games. The highest spending per player in 2015 was in Game of War: Fire Age, where the players that bought products on average spent $550. Comparison with traditional model The free-to-play model has been described as a shift from the traditional model, also known as premium-priced games, where consumers paid for the cost of the game upfront and the game's success was measured by multiplying the number of units of a game sold by the unit price. Within free-to-play, the most important factor is the number of players that a game can keep continuously engaged, followed by how many compelling spending opportunities the game offers its players. With free games that include in-game purchases, two particularly important things occur: first, more people will try out the game since there is zero cost to doing so and second, revenue will likely be more than a traditional game since different players can now spend different amounts of money that depend on their engagement with the game and their preferences towards it. Player populations that spend money on free-to-play games can be broken up into terms that borrow from gambling: "whales" which typically are the smallest segment, up to around 10% of players, but are willing to spend the most on a game; "dolphins" which represent a larger portion of around 40% of players who spend some money but not as much as whales; and "minnows", representing about half the population, who spend the barest amount to maintain activity. As a result of this distribution, whales typically provide most of the revenue in free to play games, and in some cases, 50% of the revenue comes from 0.15% of players ("white whales") in one report. It is not unlikely for a very few players to spend tens of thousands of dollars in a game that they enjoy. For PC gaming specifically, two challenges exist: video game piracy and demanding system requirements. The free-to-play model attempts to solve both these problems by providing a game that requires relatively low system requirements and at no cost, and consequently provides a highly accessible experience funded by advertising and micropayments for extra content or an advantage over other players. Free-to-play is newer than the pay-to-play model, and the video game industry is still attempting to determine the best ways to maximize revenue from their games. Gamers have cited the fact that purchasing a game for a fixed price is still inherently satisfying because the consumer knows exactly what they will be receiving, compared to free-to-play which requires that the player pay for most new content that they wish to obtain. The term itself, "free-to-play", has been described as one with a negative connotation. One video game developer noted this, stating, "Our hope—and the basket we're putting our eggs in—is that 'free' will soon be disassociated with [sic] 'shallow' and 'cruddy'." However, another noted that developing freeware games gave developers the largest amount of creative freedom, especially when compared to developing console games, which requires that the game follow the criteria as laid out by the game's publisher. Many kinds of revenue are being experimented with. For example, with its Free Realms game targeted to children and casual gamers, Sony makes money from the product with advertisements on loading screens, free virtual goods sponsored by companies such as Best Buy, a subscription option to unlock extra content, a collectible card game, a comic book, and micropayment items that include character customization options. In 2020, a study from Germany concluded that some free-to-play games use the "money illusion" as a form to hide the true cost of products. When they examined the game Fortnite, they found that since the in-game currency does not have a unique exchange rate, it can conceal the true cost of an in-game purchase, resulting in players potentially paying more than they realize. In 2021 the study was used to take legal action against Epic Games, the publisher of Fortnite. In some games, players who are willing to pay for special items, downloadable content, or to skip cooldown timers may be able to gain an advantage over those playing for free who might otherwise hardly be able to access said items. Such games are called "pay-to-win" (abbreviated as "P2W"). In general a game is considered pay-to-win when a player can gain any advantage over their non-paying peers. Market research indicates that pay-to-win mechanics are considered much more acceptable by players in China than in Western countries, possibly because Chinese players are more habituated to recurring costs associated with gaming, such as gaming café fees. A common suggestion for avoiding pay-to-win is for payments to only be used to broaden the experience without affecting gameplay. For example, some games, such as Dota 2, Fortnite Battle Royale, and StarCraft II, only allow the purchase of cosmetic items, meaning that a player who has spent money on the game will still be on the same level as a player who has not. Others suggest finding a balance where a game encourages players to pay for extra content that enhances the game without making the free version feel limited by comparison. This theory is that players who do not pay for items would still increase awareness of it through word of mouth marketing, which ultimately benefits the game indirectly. In response to concerns about players using payments to gain an advantage in the game, titles such as World of Tanks have explicitly committed to not giving paying players any advantages over their non-paying peers, while allowing the users buying the "gold" or "premium" ammo and expendables without paying the real money. However, features affecting gameplay and win rate, such as purchasing a 100% crew training level, a premium account, premium vehicles, and converting experience points to free experience points, remain available for the paying customers only. Play-to-earn, also known as pay-to-earn, is a model of monetization that uses cryptocurrency and other blockchain technologies. In single-player games, another concern is the tendency for free games to constantly request that the player buy extra content, in a similar vein to nagware and trialware's frequent demands for the user to "upgrade". Payment may be required in order to survive or continue in the game, annoying or distracting the player from the experience. Some psychologists, such as Mark D. Griffiths, have criticized the mechanics of freemium games as exploitative, drawing direct parallels to gambling addiction. The ubiquitous and often intrusive use of microtransactions in free-to-play games has sometimes caused children to either inadvertently or deliberately pay for large amounts of virtual items, often for drastically high amounts of real money. In February 2013, Eurogamer reported that Apple had agreed to refund a British family £1700.41 after their son had purchased countless microtransactions whilst playing the F2P game Zombies vs. Ninjas. Effects on player behavior Free-to-play (F2P) games have been widely studied for their influence on player engagement patterns, spending behavior, and long-term interaction with digital systems. Unlike traditional premium games that rely primarily on a single upfront purchase, F2P titles are structured around continued participation and optional in-game purchases. As a result, design elements within these games are often developed to encourage sustained play over extended periods of time. Research in game psychology has identified structural characteristics such as reward frequency, progression pacing, and reinforcement schedules as factors that can influence repeated engagement. Many F2P games employ variable-ratio reward systems, in which rewards are delivered unpredictably rather than on a fixed schedule. Behavioral research suggests that variable reinforcement structures can produce higher rates of repeated interaction compared to predictable reward patterns. In gaming environments, these systems may appear in the form of randomized item drops, loot systems, or chance-based rewards tied to gameplay milestones. F2P titles frequently incorporate retention mechanics designed to promote habitual participation. Common examples include daily login bonuses, streak rewards, limited-time challenges, and energy systems that restrict the number of actions a player can perform within a given timeframe. These mechanics often create cycles of return behavior, encouraging players to re-enter the game regularly in order to avoid losing progress or missing temporary rewards. Scholars have argued that such structures align with established behavioral reinforcement principles, though their implementation varies widely across genres and platforms. Spending behavior within F2P environments has also been examined in academic literature. Research indicates that purchases of virtual goods are influenced not only by functional advantages but also by psychological and social factors. Cosmetic customization options—such as character skins, avatars, emotes, and decorative items—allow players to express identity and differentiate themselves within online communities. Studies suggest that motivations for virtual purchases may include self-presentation, enjoyment, social recognition, and perceived value within peer groups. Social design features in F2P games may further shape engagement patterns. Multiplayer systems such as guilds, cooperative missions, and competitive leaderboards can introduce elements of social obligation and peer comparison. Participation in group-based objectives may encourage players to return consistently in order to maintain status or fulfill cooperative responsibilities. In competitive environments, ranking systems and visible performance metrics can increase time investment by introducing comparison-based incentives. The data-driven nature of many F2P platforms has also contributed to refined engagement strategies. Developers commonly analyze metrics such as retention rates, session length, churn rates, and conversion percentages to adjust game economies and reward systems. This analytical approach enables iterative design changes intended to reduce player drop-off and optimize long-term participation. As a result, game updates, seasonal content releases, and progression adjustments may be informed by aggregated behavioral data. At the same time, concerns have been raised regarding the ethical implications of certain monetization and reward systems within F2P models. Randomized purchase mechanics, particularly loot boxes, have been the subject of empirical investigation and regulatory debate. Studies have reported associations between loot box spending and measures of problem gambling severity, prompting discussions in several jurisdictions about consumer protection and transparency requirements. While not all F2P games include randomized monetization features, the broader debate has contributed to increased scrutiny of behavioral design strategies within digital games. Overall, the free-to-play model has reshaped how player engagement is structured, measured, and sustained. By combining accessibility with retention-oriented systems and optional monetization, F2P games operate within an ecosystem that integrates design, psychology, and data analytics. Ongoing research continues to examine the long-term behavioral and economic effects of these systems across different player demographics and platforms. Outlook Pointing to the disruptive effect of free-to-play on current models, IGN editor Charles Onyett stated in 2011 that "expensive, one-time purchases are facing extinction". He believes that the current method of paying a one-time fee for most games will eventually disappear completely. Greg Zeschuk of BioWare believes there is a good possibility that free-to-play would become the dominant pricing plan for games, but that it was very unlikely that it would ever completely replace subscription-based games. Developers such as Electronic Arts have pointed to the success of freemium, saying that microtransactions will inevitably be part of every game. While noting the success of some developers with the model, companies such as Nintendo have remained skeptical of free-to-play, preferring to stick to more traditional models of game development and sales. In February 2015 Apple began featuring popular non-freemium software on the App Store as "Pay Once & Play", describing them as "Great Games with No In-App Purchases ... hours of uninterrupted fun with complete experiences". See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux] | [TOKENS: 6858] |
Contents Linux Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Linux (/ˈlɪnʊks/ LIN-uuks) is a group of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, a kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries—most of which are provided by third parties—to create a complete operating system. Linux was originally designed as a clone of Unix and is released under the copyleft GPL license. Thousands of Linux distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian, Fedora Linux, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, and Ubuntu, while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and ChromeOS. Linux distributions are frequently used in server platforms. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy. Other than the Linux kernel, key components that make up a distribution may include a display server (windowing system), a package manager, a bootloader and a Unix shell. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. While originally developed for x86-based personal computers, it has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system, and is used on a wide variety of devices including PCs, workstations, mainframes and embedded systems. Linux is the predominant operating system for servers and is also used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers.[g] When combined with Android, which is Linux-based and designed for smartphones, they have the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems. Overview The Linux kernel was designed by Linus Torvalds, following the lack of a working kernel for GNU, a Unix-compatible operating system made entirely of free software that had been undergoing development since 1983 by Richard Stallman. A working Unix system called Minix was later released but its license was not entirely free at the time and it was made for an educative purpose. The first entirely free Unix for personal computers, 386BSD, did not appear until 1992, by which time Torvalds had already built and publicly released the first version of the Linux kernel on the Internet. Like GNU and 386BSD, Linux did not have any Unix code, being a fresh reimplementation, and therefore avoided the legal issues. Linux distributions became popular in the 1990s and effectively made Unix technologies accessible to home users on personal computers whereas previously it had been confined to sophisticated workstations. Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as X11 or Wayland and a desktop environment such as GNOME, KDE Plasma or Xfce. Distributions intended for servers may not have a graphical user interface at all or include a solution stack such as LAMP. The source code of Linux may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The license means creating novel distributions is permitted by anyone and is easier than it would be for an operating system such as macOS or Microsoft Windows. The Linux kernel, for example, is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL. Because of the dominance of Linux-based Android on smartphones, Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 2022[update]. Linux is, as of March 2024[update], used by around 4 percent of desktop computers. The Chromebook, which runs the Linux kernel-based ChromeOS, dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$300 notebook sales in the US. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other big iron systems such as mainframe computers,[clarification needed] and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers[h] (as of November 2017[update], having gradually displaced all competitors). Linux also runs on embedded systems, i.e., devices whose operating system is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers, automation controls, smart home devices, video game consoles, televisions (Samsung and LG smart TVs), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft (Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter). History The Unix operating system was conceived of and implemented in 1969, at AT&T's Bell Labs in the United States, by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. First released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language, as was common practice at the time. In 1973, in a key pioneering approach, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie (except for some hardware and I/O routines). The availability of a high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. As a 1956 antitrust case forbade AT&T from entering the computer business, AT&T provided the operating system's source code to anyone who asked. As a result, Unix use grew quickly and it became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of its regional operating companies, and was released from its obligation not to enter the computer business; freed of that obligation, Bell Labs began selling Unix as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify it. Onyx Systems began selling early microcomputer-based Unix workstations in 1980. Later, Sun Microsystems, founded as a spin-off of a student project at Stanford University, also began selling Unix-based desktop workstations in 1982. While Sun workstations did not use commodity PC hardware, for which Linux was later originally developed, it represented the first successful commercial attempt at distributing a primarily single-user microcomputer that ran a Unix operating system. With Unix increasingly "locked in" as a proprietary product, the GNU Project, started in 1983 by Richard Stallman, had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software. Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers, text editors, a command-line shell, and a windowing system) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers, daemons, and the kernel, called GNU Hurd, were stalled and incomplete. Minix was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a computer science professor, and released in 1987 as a minimal Unix-like operating system targeted at students and others who wanted to learn operating system principles. Although the complete source code of Minix was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000. While attending the University of Helsinki in the fall of 1990, Torvalds enrolled in a Unix course. The course used a MicroVAX minicomputer running Ultrix, and one of the required texts was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. This textbook included a copy of Tanenbaum's Minix operating system. It was with this course that Torvalds first became exposed to Unix. In 1991, he became curious about operating systems. Frustrated by the licensing of Minix, which at the time limited it to educational use only, he began to work on his operating system kernel, which eventually became the Linux kernel. On July 3, 1991, to implement Unix system calls, Linus Torvalds attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a digital copy of the POSIX standards documentation with a request to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. After not finding the POSIX documentation, Torvalds initially resorted to determining system calls from SunOS documentation owned by the university for use in operating its Sun Microsystems server. He also learned some system calls from Tanenbaum's Minix text. Torvalds began the development of the Linux kernel on Minix and applications written for Minix were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all Minix components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under the same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, creating a fully functional and free operating system. Although not released until 1992, due to legal complications, the development of 386BSD, from which NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has stated that if the GNU kernel or 386BSD had been available in 1991, he probably would not have created Linux. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention "Freax", a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, some of the project's makefiles included the name "Freax" for about half a year. Torvalds considered the name "Linux" but dismissed it as too egotistical. To facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds' coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name, so he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux". According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds, the word "Linux" should be pronounced (/ˈlɪnʊks/ ⓘ LIN-uuks) with a short 'i' as in 'print' and 'u' as in 'put'. To further demonstrate how the word "Linux" should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code. However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ (LEEN-uuks) with a short but close front unrounded vowel, instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post. The adoption of Linux in production environments, rather than being used only by hobbyists, started to take off first in the mid-1990s in the supercomputing community, where organizations such as NASA started replacing their increasingly expensive machines with clusters of inexpensive commodity computers running Linux. Commercial use began when Dell and IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard, started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Today, Linux systems are used throughout computing, from embedded systems to virtually all supercomputers, and have secured a place in server installations such as the popular LAMP application stack. The use of Linux distributions in home and enterprise desktops has been growing. Linux distributions have also become popular in the netbook market, with many devices shipping with customized Linux distributions installed, and Google releasing their own ChromeOS designed for netbooks. Linux's greatest success in the consumer market is perhaps the mobile device market, with Android being the dominant operating system on smartphones and very popular on tablets and, more recently, on wearables, and vehicles. Linux gaming is also on the rise with Valve showing its support for Linux and rolling out SteamOS, its own gaming-oriented Linux distribution, which was later implemented in their Steam Deck platform. Linux distributions have also gained popularity with various local and national governments, such as the federal government of Brazil. Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer for the Linux kernel and guides its development, while Greg Kroah-Hartman is the lead maintainer for the stable branch. Zoë Kooyman is the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise a vast body of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions. Design Many developers of open-source software agree that the Linux kernel was not designed but rather evolved through natural selection. Torvalds considers that although the design of Unix served as a scaffolding, "Linux grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA." Eric S. Raymond considers Linux's revolutionary aspects to be social, not technical: before Linux, complex software was designed carefully by small groups, but "Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. Quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback from hundreds of users within days, creating a sort of rapid Darwinian selection on the mutations introduced by developers." Bryan Cantrill, an engineer of a competing OS, agrees that "Linux wasn't designed, it evolved", but considers this to be a limitation, proposing that some features, especially those related to security, cannot be evolved into, "this is not a biological system at the end of the day, it's a software system." A Linux-based system is a modular Unix-like operating system, deriving much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during the 1970s and 1980s. Such a system uses a monolithic kernel, the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, access to the peripherals, and file systems. Device drivers are either integrated directly with the kernel or added as modules that are loaded while the system is running. The GNU userland is a key part of most systems based on the Linux kernel, with Android being a notable exception. The GNU C library, an implementation of the C standard library, works as a wrapper for the system calls of the Linux kernel necessary to the kernel-userspace interface, the toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools vital to Linux development (including the compilers used to build the Linux kernel itself), and the coreutils implement many basic Unix tools. The GNU Project also develops Bash, a popular CLI shell. The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top of an implementation of the X Window System. More recently, some of the Linux community has sought to move to using Wayland as the display server protocol, replacing X11. Many other open-source software projects contribute to Linux systems. Installed components of a Linux system include the following: The user interface, also known as the shell, is either a command-line interface (CLI), a graphical user interface (GUI), or controls attached to the associated hardware, which is common for embedded systems. For desktop systems, the default user interface is usually graphical, although the CLI is commonly available through terminal emulator windows or on a separate virtual console. CLI shells are text-based user interfaces, which use text for both input and output. The dominant shell used in Linux is the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), originally developed for the GNU Project; other shells such as Zsh are also used. Most low-level Linux components, including various parts of the userland, use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks and provides very simple inter-process communication. On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are the GUI shells, packaged together with extensive desktop environments, such as KDE Plasma, GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Pantheon, and Xfce, though a variety of additional user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces are based on the X Window System, often simply called "X" or "X11". It provides network transparency and permits a graphical application running on one system to be displayed on another where a user may interact with the application; however, certain extensions of the X Window System are not capable of working over the network. Several X display servers exist, with the reference implementation, X.Org Server, being the most popular. Several types of window managers exist for X11, including tiling, dynamic, stacking, and compositing. Window managers provide means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interact with the X Window System. Simpler X window managers such as dwm, ratpoison, or i3wm provide a minimalist functionality, while more elaborate window managers such as FVWM, Enlightenment, or Window Maker provide more features such as a built-in taskbar and themes, but are still lightweight when compared to desktop environments. Desktop environments include window managers as part of their standard installations, such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE), or Xfwm (xfce), although users may choose to use a different window manager if preferred. Wayland is a display server protocol intended as a replacement for the X11 protocol; as of 2022[update], it has received relatively wide adoption. Unlike X11, Wayland does not need an external window manager and compositing manager. Therefore, a Wayland compositor takes the role of the display server, window manager, and compositing manager. Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland, while GNOME's Mutter and KDE's KWin are being ported to Wayland as standalone display servers. Enlightenment has already been successfully ported since version 19. Additionally, many window managers have been made for Wayland, such as Sway or Hyprland, as well as other graphical utilities such as Waybar or Rofi. Linux currently has two modern kernel-userspace APIs for handling video input devices: V4L2 API for video streams and radio, and DVB API for digital TV reception. Due to the complexity and diversity of different devices, and due to the large number of formats and standards handled by those APIs, this infrastructure needs to evolve to better fit other devices. Also, a good userspace device library is the key to the success of having userspace applications to be able to work with all formats supported by those devices. Development The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open-source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is by far the most widely used. Some free and open-source software licenses are based on the principle of copyleft, a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license, the GNU General Public License (GPL), is a form of copyleft and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU Project. Linux-based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX, Single UNIX Specification (SUS), Linux Standard Base (LSB), ISO, and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT. The Open Group has tested and certified at least two Linux distributions as qualifying for the Unix trademark, EulerOS and Inspur K-UX. Free software projects, although developed through collaboration, are often produced independently of each other. The fact that the software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, however, provides a basis for larger-scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution. Many Linux distributions manage a remote collection of system software and application software packages available for download and installation through a network connection. This allows users to adapt the operating system to their specific needs. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole. Distributions typically use a package manager such as apt, yum, zypper, pacman or portage to install, remove, and update all of a system's software from one central location. A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora, and SUSE does with openSUSE. In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux User Groups (LUGs) seek to promote their preferred distribution and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users. Many Internet communities also provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and free software / open-source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups. Online forums are another means of support, with notable examples being Unix & Linux Stack Exchange, LinuxQuestions.org and the various distribution-specific support and community forums, such as ones for Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Gentoo, etc. Linux distributions host mailing lists; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list. There are several technology websites with a Linux focus. Print magazines on Linux often bundle cover disks that carry software or even complete Linux distributions. Although Linux distributions are generally available without charge, several large corporations sell, support, and contribute to the development of the components of the system and free software. An analysis of the Linux kernel in 2017 showed that well over 85% of the code was developed by programmers who are being paid for their work, leaving about 8.2% to unpaid developers and 4.1% unclassified. Some of the major corporations that provide contributions include Intel, Samsung, Google, AMD, Oracle, and Facebook. Several corporations, notably Red Hat, Canonical, and SUSE have built a significant business around Linux distributions. The free software licenses, on which the various software packages of a distribution built on the Linux kernel are based, explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialization; the relationship between a Linux distribution as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic. One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer a specialized business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks. Another business model is to give away the software to sell hardware. This used to be the norm in the computer industry, with operating systems such as CP/M, Apple DOS, and versions of the classic Mac OS before 7.6 freely copyable (but not modifiable). As computer hardware standardized throughout the 1980s, it became more difficult for hardware manufacturers to profit from this tactic, as the OS would run on any manufacturer's computer that shared the same architecture. Most programming languages support Linux either directly or through third-party community based ports. The original development tools used for building both Linux applications and operating system programs are found within the GNU toolchain, which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Build System. Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada, C, C++, Go and Fortran. Many programming languages have a cross-platform reference implementation that supports Linux, for example PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, Java, Go, Rust and Haskell. First released in 2003, the LLVM project provides an alternative cross-platform open-source compiler for many languages. Proprietary compilers for Linux include the Intel C++ Compiler, Sun Studio, and IBM XL C/C++ Compiler. BASIC is available in procedural form from QB64, PureBasic, Yabasic, GLBasic, Basic4GL, XBasic, wxBasic, SdlBasic, and Basic-256, as well as object oriented through Gambas, FreeBASIC, B4X, Basic for Qt, Phoenix Object Basic, NS Basic, ProvideX, Chipmunk Basic, RapidQ and Xojo. Pascal is implemented through GNU Pascal, Free Pascal, and Virtual Pascal, as well as graphically via Lazarus, PascalABC.NET, or Delphi using FireMonkey (previously through Borland Kylix). A common feature of Unix-like systems, Linux includes traditional specific-purpose programming languages targeted at scripting, text processing and system configuration and management in general. Linux distributions support shell scripts, awk, sed and make. Many programs also have an embedded programming language to support configuring or programming themselves. For example, regular expressions are supported in programs like grep and locate, the traditional Unix message transfer agent Sendmail contains its own Turing complete scripting system, and the advanced text editor GNU Emacs is built around a general purpose Lisp interpreter. Most distributions also include support for PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python and other dynamic languages. While not as common, Linux also supports C# and other CLI languages (via Mono), Vala, and Scheme. Guile Scheme acts as an extension language targeting the GNU system utilities, seeking to make the conventionally small, static, compiled C programs of Unix design rapidly and dynamically extensible via an elegant, functional high-level scripting system; many GNU programs can be compiled with optional Guile bindings to this end. A number of Java virtual machines and development kits run on Linux, including the original Sun Microsystems JVM (HotSpot), and IBM's J2SE RE, as well as many open-source projects like Kaffe and Jikes RVM; Kotlin, Scala, Groovy and other JVM languages are also available. GNOME and KDE are popular desktop environments and provide a framework for developing applications. These projects are based on the GTK and Qt widget toolkits, respectively, which can also be used independently of the larger framework. Both support a wide variety of languages. There are a number of Integrated development environments available including Anjuta, Code::Blocks, CodeLite, Eclipse, Geany, ActiveState Komodo, KDevelop, Lazarus, MonoDevelop, NetBeans, and Qt Creator, while the long-established editors Vim, nano and Emacs remain popular. Hardware support The Linux kernel is a widely ported operating system kernel, available for devices ranging from mobile phones to supercomputers; it runs on a highly diverse range of computer architectures, including ARM-based Android smartphones and the IBM Z mainframes. Specialized distributions and kernel forks exist for less mainstream architectures; for example, the ELKS kernel fork can run on Intel 8086 or Intel 80286 16-bit microprocessors, while the μClinux kernel fork may run on systems without a memory management unit. The kernel also runs on architectures that were only ever intended to use a proprietary manufacturer-created operating system, such as Macintosh computers (with PowerPC, Intel, and Apple silicon processors), PDAs, video game consoles, portable music players, and mobile phones. Linux has a reputation for supporting old hardware very well by maintaining standardized drivers for a long time. There are several industry associations and hardware conferences devoted to maintaining and improving support for diverse hardware under Linux, such as FreedomHEC. Over time, support for different hardware has improved in Linux, resulting in any off-the-shelf purchase having a "good chance" of being compatible. In 2014, a new initiative was launched to automatically collect a database of all tested hardware configurations. Uses Market share and uptake Many quantitative studies of free/open-source software focus on topics including market share and reliability, with numerous studies specifically examining Linux. The Linux market is growing, and the Linux operating system market size is expected to see a growth of 19.2% by 2027, reaching $15.64 billion, compared to $3.89 billion in 2019. Analysts project a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.7% between 2024 and 2032, culminating in a market size of US$34.90 billion by the latter year.[citation needed] Analysts and proponents attribute the relative success of Linux to its security, reliability, low cost, and freedom from vendor lock-in. As of 2024, estimates suggest Linux accounts for at least 80% of the public cloud workload, partly thanks to its widespread use in platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. ZDNet reports that 96.3% of the top one million web servers are running Linux. W3Techs state that Linux powers at least 39.2% of websites whose operating system is known, with other estimates saying 55%. Copyright, trademark, and naming The Linux kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2. The GPL requires that anyone who distributes software based on source code under this license must make the originating source code (and any modifications) available to the recipient under the same terms. Other key components of a typical Linux distribution are also mainly licensed under the GPL, but they may use other licenses; many libraries use the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a more permissive variant of the GPL, and the X.Org implementation of the X Window System uses the MIT License. Torvalds states that the Linux kernel will not move from version 2 of the GPL to version 3. He specifically dislikes some provisions in the new license which prohibit the use of the software in digital rights management. It would also be impractical to obtain permission from all the copyright holders, who number in the thousands. A 2001 study of Red Hat Linux 7.1 found that this distribution contained 30 million lines of source code. Using the Constructive Cost Model, the study estimated that this distribution required about eight thousand person-years of development time. According to the study, if all this software had been developed by conventional proprietary means, it would have cost about US$1.86 billion to develop in 2024 in the United States. Most of the source code (71%) was written in the C programming language, but many other languages were used, including C++, Lisp, assembly language, Perl, Python, Fortran, and various shell scripting languages. Slightly over half of all lines of code were licensed under the GPL. The Linux kernel itself was 2.4 million lines of code, or 8% of the total. In a later study, the same analysis was performed for Debian version 4.0 (etch, which was released in 2007). This distribution contained close to 283 million lines of source code, and the study estimated that it would have required about seventy three thousand man-years and cost US$10.4 billion (in 2024 dollars) to develop by conventional means. In the United States, the name Linux is a trademark registered to Linus Torvalds. Initially, nobody registered it. However, on August 15, 1994, William R. Della Croce Jr. filed for the trademark Linux, and then demanded royalties from Linux distributors. In 1996, Torvalds and some affected organizations sued him to have the trademark assigned to Torvalds, and, in 1997, the case was settled. The licensing of the trademark has since been handled by the Linux Mark Institute (LMI). Torvalds has stated that he trademarked the name only to prevent someone else from using it. LMI originally charged a nominal sublicensing fee for use of the Linux name as part of trademarks, but later changed this in favor of offering a free, perpetual worldwide sublicense. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) prefers GNU/Linux as the name when referring to the operating system as a whole, because it considers Linux distributions to be variants of the GNU operating system initiated in 1983 by Richard Stallman, president of the FSF. The foundation explicitly takes no issue over the name Android for the Android OS, which is also an operating system based on the Linux kernel, as GNU is not a part of it. A minority of public figures and software projects other than Stallman and the FSF, notably distributions consisting of only free software, such as Debian (which had been sponsored by the FSF up to 1996), also use GNU/Linux when referring to the operating system as a whole. Most media and common usage, however, refers to this family of operating systems simply as Linux, as do many large Linux distributions (for example, SUSE Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux). As of May 2011[update], about 8% to 13% of the lines of code of the Linux distribution Ubuntu (version "Natty") is made of GNU components (the range depending on whether GNOME is considered part of GNU); meanwhile, 6% is taken by the Linux kernel, increased to 9% when including its direct dependencies. See also Notes References External links |
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Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_note-Gamasutra:_Mojang_Studios-56] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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