Notch turned down job offer at Valve to create Mojang

Back in 2010, when Minecraft was first starting to take off, Valve flew out Markus “Notch” Persson to its headquarters for “a cup of coffee.” In an excerpt of the English translation of Daniel Goldberg’s Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything, Notch explains that at the time Valve was either interested in buying Minecraft or offering Notch a job. It ended up being the latter.

In September 2010, Minecraft was just over a year past its initial, unfinished release. A “full” version wouldn’t come out for 14 more months. If not for one single meeting that month, the indie game phenomenon could’ve gone down a very different path. This chapter from “Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything,” excerpted with permission of the authors, tells the tale.