Mojang Studios

Mojang Studios, or simply Mojang (pronounced   ), is a first-party game developer for Xbox Game Studios. It is primarily known for the creation and development of Minecraft. Located in multiple locations around the world, Mojang Studios has approximately 494 employees.

History
Markus Persson and Rolf Janssen started development on massively multiplayer online role-playing game Wurm Online in 2003, using the name Mojang Specifications. Persson and Janssen incorporated their business under the name Mojang Specifications AB in 2007. Persson soon left and wished to reuse the name "Mojang"; Janssen renamed his company to Onetoofree AB, and later to Code Club AB.

During early development on Minecraft, Persson reused the name Mojang Specifications. After declining a job offer at Valve, Notch incorporated Mojang Specifications as Mojang AB ("Mojäng Aktiebolag", Swedish for "Gadget Ltd.") with Jakob Porsér. Persson then hired Carl Manneh as CEO, since both wanted to focus on Minecraft's development.

Mojang publicly announced on September 15, 2014, that they would be bought by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion, and they subsequently became a subsidiary of Microsoft Studios (now known as Xbox Game Studios) on November 6, 2014. Mojang AB as a legal entity continues to exist as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

On May 17, 2020 (the eleventh anniversary of Minecraft), Mojang announced that they were changing their name to Mojang Studios, unveiling a new logo and a logo animation.

Locations
Mojang Studios in Stockholm is the home office of the larger Minecraft studio and is where the decisions regarding the Minecraft franchise are made. Mojang Studios also includes satellite offices in Japan, China, the United Kingdom, and Redmond, Washington, USA, sharing a single studio budget and studio vision between all locations. The head of the studio is Helen Chiang who is assisted by Mojang CEO Jonas Mårtensson Matt Booty, the former CVP of Minecraft, was promoted to the CVP of Xbox Game Studios and reports to Phil Spencer, who is the Executive Vice President of Microsoft's gaming division.

The UK office works closely with platform partners in Europe as well as partner studio 4J Studios. The China office works closely with the partner studio NetEase. The Japan office works closely with platform partners in Japan and Asia. The Redmond office, like the one in Stockholm, assists with all the editions. Nearly all teams are spread out across both Stockholm and Redmond offices, except that is developed primarily in Redmond, and  is developed primarily in Stockholm.

Caller's Bane


Caller's Bane (originally known as Scrolls) is another Mojang game which was first conceived and developed by Jakob Porsér, with Måns Olson and Henrik Pettersson joining later on. Announced on March 2, 2011, it aims to combine elements from trading card games and traditional board games in the strategy genre.

In August 2011, Mojang had been threatened with legal action by the legal team representing ZeniMax Media, with the accusation being that the original title "Scrolls" infringes on the The Elder Scrolls trademark, a series of role-playing video games published by Bethesda Softworks (a ZeniMax Media subsidiary). In mid-October 2011, the court case was won by Mojang, and one employee described the outcome as "the court saw it from our side". No further action was taken against Mojang, and the name "Scrolls" was allowed to remain.

The game was first made available to a limited number of people through alpha keys giveaways, starting from July 5, 2012. It then hit beta on June 3, 2013 since when it is purchasable at a discounted price. The game was fully released on December 11, 2014, on PC, Mac, and Android devices, but on June 29th, 2015, Mojang announced that development of Scrolls would cease as "the game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development". Servers for the game didn’t shut down, however, until February 13, 2018.

On June 20, 2018, it was announced that the game would be released for free the same day, along with changing the name from Scrolls to Caller's Bane.

Cobalt


Cobalt is an action game developed by Oxeye Game Studios and published / co-developed by Mojang. Announced on August 16, 2011, the gameplay consists of "running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring… and even more rolling!". The game also includes a map editor, and an engine that can be used to make new modes and games within it.

Cobalt is written in Lua, allowing for the game to be easily modifiable. The game was first made available through an alpha, starting from December 16, 2011, when it was offered at a discounted price. On August 20, 2013, Cobalt was announced to be released on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, with FatShark AB assisting with the port.

Originally, the game was planned to be released for PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PS3 in 2014, but was delayed twice to allow for more development time. The game was ultimately released for PC, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on February 2, 2016.

Crown and Council


Crown and Council is a casual strategy game fully created by Henrik Pettersson. It was originally conceived in a 72-hour game jam, and was released on April 22, 2016. It was inspired by the games History of the World and Slay, although many compare it to Risk.

The game puts the player in control of a nation warring against others on a tile-based map. Each turn, the player earns income based on how many conquered tiles they have, and can spend earned money to conquer other tiles or improve their own through the construction of structures like forts, villages and universities, which all provide different bonuses. The player wins a map once they have vanquished all enemies, regardless of actual remaining neutral tiles. There are 75 maps, with additional maps being procedurally generated.

He originally said he planned on continuing working on the game to fix bugs and add features. An update released in January 2017 added a 99-map campaign and tweaks to the procedural generation and land-taking mechanics to improve balance. The most important change was in the calculations affecting the attack and defense of territories: the element of "randomness" was removed, and "attrition" was added, meaning that failed attacks improve the chance of future attacks succeeding. This update also added OSX and Linux versions.

Cobalt W.A.S.D.
Cobalt W.A.S.D. (short for Cobalt W.A.S.D. Aim Shoot Destroy) is an action video game developed by Oxeye Game Studios and co-developed / published by Mojang. Announced on June 1, 2017, it is a spin-off of Cobalt, focusing on the Team Deathmatch mode.

The game was first made available in a closed beta the same day, and was originally planned to be released in August of that year. However, it was delayed to allow for more development time. The game was ultimately released for PC on November 30, 2017.

0x10c


Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Notch began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. 0x10c is a hexadecimal number equivalent to 1612 in decimal, which equals 281,474,976,710,656, which was the number of years that were passed in story since 1988. On April Fools' Day 2012, Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect, citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on April 4, 2012, Mojang revealed it as a space sandbox title.

The game was eventually put on hold in April of 2013 because Notch had found creative blocks. However, at the time, he was still interested in expanding the development staff to push the game toward release. Eventually, the game was indefinitely shelved on August 13, 2013, but Notch added that it could be made in the future if another Mojang employee was interested in developing it.

On September 15, 2014, the soundtrack for the game was released by Daniel Rosenfeld.

Project Rex Kwon Do
From September 5, 2011 to July 19, 2012, Mojang was co-developing a video game tentatively titled Project Rex Kwon Do alongside an undisclosed developer. Before the title had reached a significant stage of development, Mojang cancelled the collaboration to focus on developing their own titles (Minecraft, Scrolls, and 0x10c at the time).