Minecraft Developer Mojang Eyes Co-Publishing Indie Games

    MojangSwedish indie game developer, Mojang recently announced its interest in co-publishing indie games alongside other developers with plans of releasing a title by the end of this year. The company has also announced this year that they’re working on another title of their own.

    Mojang, the developers behind the acclaimed Minecraft took home 5 awards at the GDC 2011 that included the Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award and the Best Debut Game Award. The game is still in Beta and has already neared a baffling near 5,000,000 registered users with almost 30% of them have paid for the game. I guess that is enough to justify how it was able to bag 5 million euros in March.

    The game has got the balls rolling for its founder Markus Persson and the rest of the team as the success have brought them into the limelight of the gaming industry. Reports also mention that Persson has been offered jobs from both Valve and Bungie, the companies behind Half Life and Halo. But seriously, who wants to work for anyone when you already own a killer product?

    Mojang’s business development director Daniel Kaplan stated in an interview to Gamesindustry that given the company is under the spotlight, the biggest challenge is in turning down offers. These are obvious ones, fishing developers and brains behind Minecraft or planning an acquisition.

    But nothing at present is of interest to them other than creating more indie games by getting other developers on board. This will be a great boost to having new titles available and also spreading Minecraft beyond PC exclusivity. Who knows, maybe they could even tap the rapidly evolving mobile market? But lets wait, at least till November, when the game is promised to be out of Beta.

    Also if you are keen to meet Daniel Kaplan, Business Developer at Mojang, make sure you are present at the Arctic15 conference!