Mojang Studios: History and Key Facts

Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer and a studio of Xbox based in Stockholm. The studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time.

Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft for its Microsoft Studios (later Xbox Game Studios) unit in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. The company was rebranded as Mojang Studios in May 2020 and changed to reporting to Microsoft's Xbox division in July 2026.

As of 2021, Mojang Studios employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Mojang Studios by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.