Markus Persson | |
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Persson at the 2016 Game Developers Conference
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Born |
, Sweden |
1 June 1979
Residence | Beverly Hills, California, US |
Nationality | Swedish |
Other names | Notch |
Known for | Minecraft |
Net worth | US$1.5 billion |
Spouse(s) | Elin Zetterstrand (m. 2011; div. 2012) |
Website |
notch notch |
Markus Alexej Persson (born 1 June 1979), also known as Notch or xNotch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer who founded the video game company Mojang alongside Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser in late 2010.
Persson's principal venture for founding Mojang was Minecraft, a first-person sandbox video game that has gained popularity and support since its tech demo in 2009. Since the release of Minecraft, Persson has gained significant notability within the video game industry, having won multiple awards and establishing relations with the industry's figureheads. Persson retained his position as the lead designer of Minecraft until the game's official launch in 2011, after which he transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In November 2014, he left Mojang after its acquisition by Microsoft.
Persson was born in ,Sweden, to a Finnish mother and a Swedish father on 1 June 1979. He lived in Edsbyn for the first seven years of his life before his family moved back to Stockholm. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. Having experimented with various type-in programs he produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. Professionally he had worked as a game developer for King.com for over four years, until 2009. Afterwards he worked as a programmer for Jalbum. He is also one of the founders of Wurm Online, although he no longer works on this game. Outside of work, he has made seven games for competitions. He is the central figure of a documentary by 2 Player Productions about the rise of Minecraft and Mojang called Minecraft: The Story of Mojang.