The original Minecraft game was released in early versions in 2009. Its creator, Markus Persson, known under the nickname Notch, sold the project with the Mojang studio in 2014 for $2.5 billion, after which he actually left the gaming industry. He tried to launch several new projects, but they did not find even a fraction of the popularity that Minecraft had.
At the beginning of 2025, Markus Persson launched a poll on his social networks about what kind of game fans wanted to see from him. He offered 2 options:
- A traditional roguelike like Ancient Domains of Mystery or Nethack mixed with a first-person dungeon crawler like Legend of Grimrock or Eye of the Beholder.
- Minecraft’s spiritual successor.
The Minecraft-inspired version of the game won with an overwhelming majority of votes (about 76%).
After this, Markus Persson made a statement on his social networks that he was not joking and “essentially announced Minecraft 2”:
I basically announced Minecraft 2. I thought maybe people REALLY wanted me to make another game very similar to the first one, and I’m enjoying working on games again.
I want to be honest and clear about the fact that spiritual successors usually…you know…become garbage. This is tragic. Something I fear for my next game and try to avoid. So why not do something that people really want and for which they are willing to give me, one way or another, even more money.
Markus Persson noted that he is not going to belittle Mojang’s achievements with his game, but he has ideas that can be implemented. Naturally, the game will not use Minecraft intellectual property.
