Minecraft riches put at $80m

Swedish studio Mojang has accumulated some 540 million Swedish krona, or $80 million, for its indie games sensation Minecraft.

The Lego-like world-building game has been downloaded about twenty five million times since October 2010, a fifth of which are full-priced purchases of the game.
Earnings before taxation stood at $13.5 million, according to the Financial Times.

Studio co-founder Markus Persson (pictured) is the group’s largest shareholder and pays his earnings into a separate company.

Persson decided to share his $3.7 million dividend to other developers at the company, the FT claimed.

It is also believed that Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who went on to briefly become president of Facebook, flew to Stockholm last year and sought to become an investor in Mojang.

“He even put the entire Mojang gang on his private jet back to London for a night of archetypal Parker partying before delivering them back home the next morning,” the FT claimed.

However, Mojang turned the offer down.

“Generally we didn’t want to raise capital at the time and we still don’t,” Mojang chief executive Carl Manneh said.