Minecraft – is Notch working on a ‘spiritual successor’ to one of the greatest games of all time?

Cards on the table, I love Minecraft. Let me rephrase that slightly, I love single-player Minecraft. I am not interested in your server, I don’t really care for your builds (unless they are spectacular and something like this).

Minecraft was a game I discovered way back in its beta version, long before it became what it is now, a Microsoft gaming powerhouse. Back then it was just Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and some blocks. Surviving that first night in Minecraft is one of my gaming moments of a very long life with videogames.

I still have the first world I built, it was nothing special but was a trawl through my inner consciousness. I had a giant window in the shape of a space invader overlooking a man-made infinity pool on the edge of the sea. Psychiatrists will study it one day.

As history tells us Notch left Mojang in the hands of Microsoft and banked a huge amount of cash in the process. Much of the internet decided some of his views were not compatible with the consensus these days and his reputation plummeted.He has remained about, starting up a couple of companies that have done nothing since, but, well, how do you live up to Minecraft?

I basically announced minecraft 2.

I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that's super similar to the first one, and I'm loving working on games again.

I don't super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know…

— notch (@notch) January 3, 2025

Until now, he hasn’t. Then, in a seemingly throwaway series of comments on X Notch has said he wants to work on the spiritual successor to his Magnum Opus. It can’t be anything to do with Minecraft of course, which is now Microsoft’s, so it’s not going to be Minecraft 2, or probably even resemble it. Anything with a single voxel block is going to have Microsoft lawyers as active as Nintendo’s when they first downloaded Palworld.

Saying on X, Notch kickstarted the excitement, “I basically announced Minecraft 2.

I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that’s super similar to the first one, and I’m loving working on games again.

I don’t super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know I’m making one, so I figured I’d absolutely be willing to give it an honest shot in the form of a spiritual successor to Minecraft and put up a poll about it.”

Despite mentioning the words, ‘Minecraft 2’, Persson clarified, “Oh, and I also very much value being a man of my word, so I also intend to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the Microsoft shittification about.

And I respect them for doing that. It’s their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me.”

So what this all means is anyone’s guess. The one game the world wants Notch to make is something that would be Minecraft if it was created in the mid-2020s. Will he be able to is another matter entirely.

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