Do we like them?

Do we like Markus Persson?

Our score: 3 out of 10. Years of his own posts on trans people and 'an agenda against white men' sink the harm test, and the good on record is thin.

Markus Persson, better known as Notch, is the Swedish programmer who made Minecraft. He sold his company Mojang to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion, and reportedly owned about two-thirds of it at the time. Without Minecraft there's no blocky global phenomenon, so the credit is real.

The sale itself was about burnout, by his telling. In a 2015 Forbes interview, summarised by Game Informer, he felt burdened by the property he created. He walked away from the studio and the Microsoft machine, and the sort of fame that comes with the biggest game on earth.

The trouble started on social media. In 2016 a Vice writer called a run of his tweets at a critic grotesque and an example of mansplaining. That was the warm-up, because the posts that really cost him came later.

On the harm test, it's his own words, and there are plenty. In December 2018 he posted “There clearly is an agenda against white men” and “If you're still on the left, PLEASE wake up. You are evil.” He also floated the idea that talking about IQ differences between populations would mean fewer conspiracy theories.

By 2019 the posts included claims about trans people and the line that women are “an inspiration and a cook” on International Women's Day. Microsoft removed him from Minecraft's credits, then told Variety his comments and opinions don't reflect Microsoft or Mojang and aren't representative of Minecraft. He was left out of the game's tenth anniversary event.

Nothing new we could confirm turned up on him lately, and his name keeps coming up on gaming news mostly around talk of a Minecraft spiritual successor. The page's rule here is simple: someone who builds a game loved by LGBTQ+ kids and then spends years posting against them has to be judged on the posts.