Mojang AB

Formerly	Mojang Specifications (2009–2010)
Type	Subsidiary
Founder(s)	Markus Persson, Jakob Porsér, and Carl Manneh
Founded	2009; 10 years ago (2009)
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Key people	Lead developer Jens Bergensten, CEO Jonas Mårtensson
Products	Minecraft, Caller’s Bane, Cobalt, and Crown and Council
Parent	Xbox Game Studios
Links	Site

Mojang AB (Mojäng Aktiebolag – Swedish for "Gadget Ltd.") or simply Mojang, pronounced /ˈmʊˈjɛn/ (IPA key) ᴍᴜᴜ-yang (respell key) in Swedish and /moʊˈdʒæŋ/ ᴍᴏʜ-jang in American English,^[1]^[2] is the home office of the Minecraft studio, a first-party game developer for Xbox Game Studios. It is primarily known for the creation and development of Minecraft. Located in Stockholm, Sweden, Mojang currently has 84 employees.^[3]

History[edit]

Mojang was founded by Markus Persson, Jakob Porsér, and Carl Manneh as an independent video game developer. Its original name was Mojang Specifications until becoming a limited liability company in October 2010 under the name "Mojang AB". Prior to Minecraft, Mojang developed Wurm Online, and has existed since 2003.^[4] Mojang publicly announced on September 15, 2014, that they would be bought by Microsoft, and they subsequently became a subsidiary of Microsoft, and joined Xbox Game Studios (then known as Microsoft Studios) on November 6, 2014.^[5] Mojang AB as a legal entity continues to exist as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Minecraft studio[edit]

Mojang in Stockholm is the home office of the larger Minecraft studio, and is where the decisions regarding the Minecraft franchise are made. The Minecraft studio also includes satellite offices in Japan, China, the United Kingdom, and Redmond, Washington, USA, sharing a single studio budget and studio vision between all locations. The heads of the studio are Mojang CEO Jonas Mårtensson and Minecraft Studio General Manager ^[6]Helen Chiang. Matt Booty, the former CVP of Minecraft, was promoted to the CVP of Xbox Game Studios and reports to Phil Spencer, who is the Executive Vice President of Microsoft's gaming division.^[7]

The UK office works closely with platform partners in Europe as well as partner studio 4J Studios. Primary testing and production for the PlayStation 4 Edition occurs there. The China office works closely with the partner studio NetEase. The Japan office works closely with platform partners in Japan and Asia. The Redmond office, like the one in Stockholm, assists with all the editions. Nearly all teams are spread out across both Stockholm and Redmond offices, except that Education Edition is developed primarily in Redmond, and Java Edition is developed primarily in Stockholm.^[8]

Games[edit]

Minecraft[edit]

Main article: Minecraft

Caller’s Bane[edit]

Caller’s Bane (originally known as Scrolls) is another Mojang game which was first conceived and developed by Jakob Porsér^[9], with Måns Olson and Henrik Pettersson joining later on.^[10] Announced on March 2, 2011,^[11] it aims to combine elements from trading card games and traditional board games in the strategy genre.

In August 2011, Mojang had been threatened with legal action by the legal team representing ZeniMax Media, with the accusation being that the original title "Scrolls" infringes on the The Elder Scrolls trademark, a series of role-playing video games published by Bethesda Softworks (a ZeniMax Media subsidiary). In mid-October 2011, the court case was won by Mojang,^[12] and one employee described the outcome as "the court saw it from our side". No further action was taken against Mojang, and the name "Scrolls" was allowed to remain.

The game was first made available to a limited number of people through alpha keys giveaways, starting from July 5, 2012.^[13] It then hit beta on June 3, 2013^[14] since when it is purchasable at a discounted price. The game was fully released on December 11, 2014, on PC, Mac, and Android devices,^[15] but on June 29th, 2015, Mojang announced that development of Scrolls would cease as "the game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development".^[16] Servers for the game didn’t shut down, however, until February 13, 2018.^[17]

On June 20, 2018, it was announced that the game would be released for free the same day, along with changing the name from Scrolls to Caller’s Bane.^[18]

Cobalt[edit]

Cobalt is an action game developed by Oxeye Game Studios and published / co-developed by Mojang. Announced on August 16, 2011,^[19] the gameplay consists of "running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring… and even more rolling!". The game also includes a map editor, and an engine that can be used to make new modes and games within it.

Cobalt is written in Lua, allowing for the game to be easily modifiable. The game was first made available through an alpha, starting from December 16, 2011, when it was offered at a discounted price.^[20]^[21] On August 20, 2013, Cobalt was announced to be released on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, with FatShark AB assisting with the port.^[22]

Originally, the game was planned to be released for PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PS3 in 2014,^[23] but was delayed twice to allow for more development time. The game was ultimately released for PC, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on February 2, 2016.^[24]

Crown and Council[edit]

Crown and Council is a casual strategy game fully created by Henrik Pettersson.^[25] It was originally concieved in a 72-hour game jam, and was released on April 22, 2016. It was inspired by the games History of the World and Slay, although many compare it to Risk.

The game puts the player in control of a nation warring against others on a tile-based map. Each turn, the player earns income based on how many conquered tiles they have, and can spend earned money to conquer other tiles or improve their own through the construction of structures like forts, villages and universities, which all provide different bonuses. The player wins a map once they have vanquished all enemies, regardless of actual remaining neutral tiles.^[26]^[27] There are 75 maps, with additional maps being procedurally generated.^[28]

He originally said he planned on continuing working on the game to fix bugs and add features.^[29] An update released in January 2017 added a 99-map campaign and tweaks to the procedural generation and land-taking mechanics to improve balance. The most important change was in the calculations affecting the attack and defense of territories: the element of "randomness" was removed, and "attrition" was added, meaning that failed attacks improve the chance of future attacks succeeding. This update also added OSX and Linux versions.^[30]

Cobalt W.A.S.D.[edit]

Cobalt W.A.S.D. (short for Cobalt W.A.S.D. Aim Shoot Destroy) is an action video game developed by Oxeye Game Studios and co-developed / published by Mojang. Announced on June 1, 2017, it is a spin-off of Cobalt, focusing on the Team Deathmatch mode.^[31]

The game was first made available in a closed beta the same day, and was originally planned to be released in August of that year. However, it was delayed to allow for more development time. The game was ultimately released for PC on November 30, 2017.^[32]

Unreleased games[edit]

0x10^c[edit]

Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Notch began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. 0x10^c is a hexadecimal number equivalent to 16¹² in decimal, which equals 281,474,976,710,656, which was the number of years that were passed in story since 1988. On April Fools' Day 2012, Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect, citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration.^[33] However, the gameplay elements remained true and on April 4, 2012, Mojang revealed it as a space sandbox title.^[34]

The game was eventually put on hold in April of 2013 because Notch had found creative blocks. However, at the time, he was still interested in expanding the development staff to push the game toward release.^[35] Eventually, the game was indefinitely shelved on August 13, 2013, but Notch added that it could be made in the future if another Mojang employee was interested in developing it.^[36]

On September 15, 2014, the soundtrack for the game was released by Daniel Rosenfeld.^[37]

Project Rex Kwon Do[edit]

From September 5, 2011^[38] to July 19, 2012, Mojang was co-developing a video game tentatively titled Project Rex Kwon Do alongside an undisclosed developer. Before the title had reached a significant stage of development, Mojang cancelled the collaboration to focus on developing their own titles (Minecraft, Scrolls, and 0x10^c at the time).^[39]

Employees[edit]

Current employees[edit]

Game developers[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite games	Special talent	Twitter	About: Mojang AB: Employees ^[40]
Jens 'Jeb' Bergensten^[41]	Lead creative designer (Minecraft, Cobalt and Minecraft: Dungeons)	Starcraft, Doom 2, Don’t Look Back	Eating cheese doodles with chopsticks^[42]	@jeb_	Fun Fact #328: The facial hair right below his lower lip is brighter than the rest. He's also a redditor!
Nathan 'Dinnerbone' Adams^[43]	Game developer (Minecraft)			@Dinnerbone	Member of the Bukkit team. Known as Foreverabone on his Twitter page.
Michael 'Searge' Stoyke^[44]	Game developer (Minecraft)			@SeargeDP	Founder of the Mod Coder Pack (MCP)
Maria Lemón	Game developer (Minecraft)			@MiaLem_n
Tommaso 'tommo' Checchi	Game developer (Minecraft, Redmond)		Wasting time^[45]	@_tomcc	Previously worked on Cobalt's game engine.
Max 'Keso' Herngren	Game developer (Minecraft: Dungeons)			@maxherngren
Erik 'Grum' Broes^[43]	Game developer (Minecraft)			@_grum	Member of the Bukkit team.
Jon Kågström	Game developer (Caller’s Bane)			@jonkagstrom	Used to work as an AI programmer at DICE on Battlefield.
Aron Nieminen	Game developer (Minecraft and Caller's Bane)				He's very bright. His hair looks like a blue, woolen cap.
Måns Olson	Game developer (Minecraft and Minecraft: Dungeons)			@MansOlson
Kristoffer Jelbring^[46]	Game developer (Minecraft: Dungeons)		Being Mojang's unofficial DJ.	@KrisJelbring	Peace.
Thomas 'ProfMobius' Guimbretière^[47]	Game developer (Minecraft)			@ProfMobius	Co-founder of the Mod Coder Pack (MCP)
Agnes 'LadyAgnes' Larsson^[48]	Game developer (Minecraft)			@_ladyagnes
Shoghi Cervantes	Game developer (Minecraft and Minecraft: Dungeons)		Likes everything that uses electricity^[49]	@shoghicp	Founder of PocketMine
Daniel Wustenhoff	Game developer (Minecraft and Minecraft: Dungeons)		Likes pizza, and code	@darngeek
Tomas Alaeus	Game developer (Minecraft)			@talaeus
Jason Major	Game developer (Minecraft)			@argo_major
Georgii 'fry' Gavrichev	Game developer (Minecraft)			@fry_su
Bartosz Bok	Game developer (Minecraft)			@0x00716f62
Christian Westman^[50]	Game developer (Minecraft: Dungeons)			@westmaaan
Samuel Åberg	Lead sound designer (Minecraft)			@slamp0000
Cory Scheviak	Game developer (Minecraft and Minecraft: Dungeons)			@cojomax99	Creator of the Tropicraft Mod
Mikael 'Slicedlime' Hedberg	Game developer (Minecraft)			@slicedlime
Petr 'peterix' Mrázek	Game developer (Minecraft)			@peterixxx	Creator of MultiMC

Artists[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite games	Special talent	Twitter	About: Mojang AB: Employees ^[40]
Markus 'Junkboy' Toivonen^[41]	Art director	Wild Guns, Metal Slug, Full Throttle	Laying down digital mosaic.^[42]	@jnkboy	Very mysterious. Some say he doesn't even exist.
Ninni Landin	Graphic designer			@ninnilandin
Mattis 'BombBoy' Grahm	Artist (Caller’s Bane)		Time travel.	@BomuBoi	Bombs. (He has one on his T-shirt, ooh...)
Johan Aronson	Studio art director			@johanaronson
Martin Johansson	Graphic designer
Filip Thoms	Product designer
Amanda Strom	Product designer

Web/system development[edit]

Name	Position	Twitter
Tomas Sommar	Web developer	@tomassommar
Pär Axelsson	Web developer	@paera
Robert Sjodahl	Web developer	@robertsjodahl
Stefan Torstensson	Web developer

Content and community[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite game(s)	Special talent	Twitter	About: Mojang AB: Employees ^[40]
Karim Walldén	Head of community relations			@dearkarim
Matthew 'Moesh' Dryden	Content coordinator	Minecraft	Can entrance groups with his mesmerizing eyes.	@lemoesh
Marc Watson	Content manager	Minecraft, Mass Effect, Halo, The Elder Scrolls	Performs improv comedy	@Marc_IRL	Started Minecraft Marathon^[51]
Adam Martinsson	Content coordinator		Shooting laser beams from his fingers (unconfirmed).	@a_mson
Jay 'Mega_Spud' Wells	Mojira community coordinator	Minecraft	Reproducing even the most stubborn bugs.	@mega_spud
Aleksandra 'Ola' Zajac	Mojira and Crowdin project manager			@missmarzenia
Moira Ingeltun	Video producer		Being able to do a million things at once.	@moizrgi
Matthew 'Deus Ex' Gartzke	Community coordinator		Being Herobrine	@mattgartzke

Realms development[edit]

Name	Position	Twitter
Olof Carlson^[52]	Realms director	@olofcarlson
Alexandre Pretto^[53]	Realms developer	@alexandrepretto
Fredrik Telenius	Realms producer	@_b4njo

Business development[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite games	Special talent	Twitter	About: Mojang AB: Employees ^[40]
Brynjólfur 'Binni' Erlingsson	Data warehouse manager			@brynjolfur
Owen 'Bopogamel' Jones	Director of creative communications			@bopogamel	Former PC Gamer web editor.
Tom Stone	Creative communications assistant
Josefina Axelsson	Financial assistant			@vitasparven
Adrian Östergård	Project manager			@adrian_ivl
Lydia 'MinecraftChick' Winters	Chief brand officer	Minecraft, Oregon Trail	Having bright-colored hair, being amazing.	@LydiaWinters	Minecraft was the second video game she played.
Karin Severinson	Chief financial officer			@KarinSeverinson
Patrick Geuder	Business developement			@pgeuder
Vu Bui	Chief operating officer			@vubui
Jonas Mårtensson^[54]	Studio head			@maartensson	Carl Manneh's twin brother.
Lisa Kempe	Project manager			@ohhilisa
Isabella Balk	Office manager
Siri Hoel Andersson	Office manager			@sirihoel
Nicolette Suraga	Project manager Brand director			@nicolettesuraga
Tobias Ahlin	Lead experience designer			@tobiasahlin
Ulrika Hojgard	Project director
Marina Kostesic	Senior financial accountant
Mikaela Prim	Studio manager

Mojang support[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite games	Twitter
David Stuart Dahlgren	Customer support agent		@hejstuart
Mattias Victorin	Customer support agent		@mattiasvictorin
Cim Borg	Customer support agent	Mass Effect	@cim_xii
Hampus Nilsson	Customer support manager
Nasim Derakhshan	Customer support agent
Sarah Mårtensson	Customer support agent
Elli Ashrafi	Customer support agent
Josefin Olsson	Customer support agent
Marcus Forss	Customer support agent

Brand enforcement[edit]

Name	Position	Twitter
Mathias Andersson	Brand enforcer
Brandon Andersson	Brand enforcer
Talia Grunt	Brand enforcer
Milla Stone	Brand enforcer
Karl Lowry	Brand enforcer
Anna Klingberg	Brand enforcer
Olle Personne	Brand enforcer
Matilda Åkerman	Brand enforcer
Anna Lundgren	Brand enforcer	@ianna_na_na
Maria Malone	Brand enforcer

Contractors[edit]

Name	Task	Twitter	Notes
57Digital	Developers of Minecraft Explorer, the official Minecraft companion guide for iOS, as well as the official Minecraft Skin Studio.	@57digital	Jamie Chapman and Luke Dixon
Nikolaj Nyholm	Has assisted Mojang with their early business development.	@nikolaj
Daniel 'C418' Rosenfeld	Making the music and sounds for Minecraft and 0x10^c.	@c418	Has high self-esteem!
Paul Spooner	Assisted with the development of Minecraft's trees.	@dudecon
Kristoffer Zetterstrand	Made the paintings for Minecraft.	@zetterstrand	The subject of a Wikipedia article, and Notch is his brother-in-law!
4J Studios	Developers of the PlayStation 4 Edition of Minecraft	@4JStudios	Developed Banjo-Kazooie for Xbox.
Garry 'Army of Trolls' J Lucken	Made the skins for the Pocket Edition Skin packs and some skins in the Halloween and Skin Pack 3 Skin packs for Legacy Console Edition^[55]^[56]	@armyoftrolls
Jasper 'Jappa' Boerstra	Pixel artist working on new textures for Minecraft	@JasperBoerstra

Publishers[edit]

Name	Edition	Twitter
Mojang AB	Minecraft Java, Bedrock and New Nintendo 3DS Edition	@mojang
Xbox Game Studios	Minecraft Bedrock Edition	@msstudiosblog
NetEase	Minecraft China	@neteasegames
Sony Computer Entertainment	Minecraft PlayStation 4 Edition	@playstation

Former employees[edit]

Name	Position	Favorite games	Special talent	Twitter	About: Mojang AB: Employees ^[40]
Marsh Davies	Creative communications manager			@marshdavies
Markus 'Notch' Persson	Founder of Mojang, creator of Minecraft Game developer	Dungeon Master 2, Doom, X-Com	Can look directly at the sun with only minor permanent damage.^[42]	@notch	1. Enjoy games 2. Pick up programming 3. ???? 4. Profit His beard has been shaved for charity.^[57] When Mojang was sold to Microsoft, he left the company soon after along with the other two founders.
Tobias Möllstam^[58]	Web developer		Developing tight webs to capture customers.	@mollstam	One day he decided to eat failure and shit success. True story.
Carl Manneh^[58]	Founder of Mojang Chief Executive Officer	FIFA 10, Resident Evil, Tetris	Cloning himself.^[42]	@carlmanneh	Used to be Notch's old boss. His last name sounds like "money" and he is Mojang's business guy. Coincidence?
Daniel 'Kappische' Kaplan^[59]	Business developer	Street Fighter IV, Tetris DS, Zelda: A Link to the Past	Typing very fast.^[42]	@Kappische	On his Skype picture he looks like a pirate.
Warren 'EvilSeph' Loo^[43]^[60]	Game developer			@EvilSeph	Leader of the Bukkit team.
Jakob Porsér	Founder of Mojang Game developer (Caller’s Bane)	X-Com 2, Master of Magic, Diablo 2	Recursive for loops.^[42]	@JahKob	Made another game (Scrolls) along with Minecraft. His pants defy gravity and suspenders alike.
Johan Bernhardsson	Game developer (Minecraft Java Edition)	Half-Life 2, Bloodline Champions		@jbernhardsson	Previously worked as a Half-Life 2 modder, a minigame developer and a software engineer. Was a programmer for Stunlock Studios on strategy game Bloodline Champions. Previously a Minecraft Pocket Edition developer. He no longer works for Mojang. He now works in Malmö.
Leonard 'xlson' Gram^[61]	Web developer		Can recite the entire alphabet by memory.	@xlson
Henrik 'Carnalizer' Pettersson^[62]	Production manager of Caller’s Bane Artist Developer of Crown and Council	Board games, strategy games, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Minecraft	Extreme procrastination.	@carnalizer	Was the oldest person employed by Mojang.
Daniel Frisk	Chief architect			@danfrisk	He never works on Fridays.
Ryan 'TheMogMiner' Holtz^[44]	Game developer (Minecraft Java Edition)			@TheMogMiner	Previously worked on Scaleform
Martin Odhelius	Web developer			@modhelius
Anton Albiin	Customer support agent			@ettglasvatten
Hayden 'Dock' Scott-Baron^[63]^[64]	Artist			@docky	Joined in December 2009, but left shortly after in February 2010 due to work-related issues.
Poi Poi Chen	Artist (Scrolls)	Dota 2		@poipoichen
Nathan 'Tahg' Gilbert^[43]^[65]	Minecraft server development			@tahgtahv	Former member of the Bukkit team.
Linn Hultman	Office manager			@linnsebumsan	Was Notch's personal assistant.
Andreas 'hideous' Jörgensen	Customer support agent			@hideous_
Amir Moulavi	Minecraft Realms lead developer Web developer			@mamirm
Mike 'ClayHero' Till	Customer support agent			@e_claymore	Worked with Marc Watson at a previous job.
Torbjorn Allard	Web developer			@torbjornallard
Andreas Andersson	Customer support agent	Dota 2		@blurpiandy	Creating videos related to Dota 2
Jonatan 'eldrone' Pöljö	Designator			@eldrone
David Marby^[66]	Realms developer			@DMarby
Amelia Dale	Head of social			@amelialkd
Rikard Herlitz	Chief technology officer			@goocoder	Founder and CTO of Goo Create
Jifeng Zhang	DevOps engineer			@zjfroot
Josh 'rockenroll4life' Letellier	Game developer (Minecraft)			@rockenroll4life
Joe Liu	Customer support agent			@joebleh	Worked with Marc Watson at a previous job.
Bella 'Broontoo'^[67]	Project manager			@broontoo
Mariana 'RazzleberryFox' Graham	Animator, modeler, texture artist			@RazzleberryFox
Philip 'Zee' Vieira	Realms developer			@zeeraw
Corey 'MonsieurV3rt' Clemans	Latin America Community coordinator		Speaking 11 different languages!	@coreyclemans

Former contractors[edit]

Name	Task	Twitter
Gary M.	Community Manager (Scrolls)^[68]	@atmaz
Gareth	Community Manager (Scrolls)^[69]	@seemescrollin
Telltale Games	Developers of Minecraft: Story Mode and Minecraft: Story Mode - Season Two	@telltalegames
Other Ocean Interactive	Developers of the New Nintendo 3DS Edition of Minecraft	@other_ocean

Office tour[edit]

Gallery[edit]

Mojang's current logo.
Mojang's old logo.
Mojang's support logo.
Mojang Status logo.
Mojira (Mojang bug tracker) logo.
Mojang's logo supporting same-sex marriage.
The Mojang logo used on the support page.
The Mojang footer logo.
The old Mojang footer logo.
The footer logo used on the old Minecraft Realms website.^[70]
The first Mojang Specifications logo, from 2004.
The Old Mojang logo splash image For Minecraft.
Mojang logo splash image used in Minecraft from Beta 1.3 to Beta 1.8.
Splash image used in Minecraft from Beta 1.8 to 13w47a.
Current Mojang logo splash image for Minecraft.
The Mojang logo that was featured in 0x10^c.
The Mojang logo that was once used on their YouTube channel Minecraft, that was once called TeamMojang.
The M Team, working hard to make games.
Mojang's employees, in their Mojang suits.
An average day at the office.
Another average day at the office.
The Mojang Cape.
The average Minecraft developer.
JahKob in real life.
Jeb in real life.
Junkboy in real life.
Working hard in Mojang.
Mojang, doing their work.
Mojang's trophy wall.
First shirts ever sold by Mojang, featuring the classic Mojang Specifications logo.
Mojang prepares for their move to a larger facility.
Mojang building directory board with a note from some griefers.^[71]
Mojang Pax display.^[72]
Oil paintings of most of the Mojang employees.^[73]
Mojang's preparations for Mojam.^[74]
The Mojang support team hanging out in the ball pit.^[75]