All Mojang staff were offered $300K not to leave company

Please stay with us at Microsoft

Thanks to an excerpt from a new Minecraft book published on Wired, we’re finally starting to get a bit of an inside look at what happened at Mojang when Microsoft was in the process of purchasing the company. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing revealed is that Microsoft was so eager to keep Mojang staff from leaving as soon as the company was bought out, it offered to throw an absolute fortune at every employee.

“Everyone at Mojang was made the same offer: whoever stayed on board for at least six months after the sale would be rewarded with two million Swedish crowns, approximately three hundred thousand dollars, after taxes.”

The book excerpt also tells us something we all kind of assumed, Microsoft purchased Mojang explicitly for Minecraft.

“According to people present at the meeting, Matt Booty misspoke several times when discussing Mojang’s future. Instead of saying Mojang, he referred to the company simply as Minecraft, quickly correcting himself. For the others in the room, it was awkward to say the least. Less than half of them worked directly with Minecraft. Every time the man from Microsoft confused the name of the company he’d acquired with the game it was known for, he inadvertently pointed to the elephant in the room. Yes, Microsoft had acquired all of Mojang. But it was only really interested in Minecraft.”

So, does any of this come as a surprise to you? Would you stick with a job for the promise of $300K USD even if you hated the change in management?