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Markus Alexej Persson, also known as "Notch", is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of the video game Minecraft, which since its release has become the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. His commercial success began after publishing an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point, Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014, Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. Persson left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft for a reported US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. Since 2016, the media criticized several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding homosexuality, race and trans rights issues. In 2019, Persson's tweets were censured by Microsoft, who subsequently removed mentions of his name from Minecraft and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015, he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment.