The latest Minecraft update makes a few changes to the decade-old phenomenon, none more notable than the fact the game’s splash screens have removed all mention of Minecraft’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson.
Previously, the game’s splash screens — the yellow text you see when Minecraft boots up — would display random messages, and some of them referenced Persson with stuff like “Made by Notch!” and “The Work Of Notch!”. As of the 19w13a snapshot released earlier today, those are all gone now.
We’ve reached out for official comment on the reason Persson’s name is now missing from the screens. As possible background, though, Minecraft is a game played by millions of kids all over the world, and is now owned by Microsoft. Meanwhile Notch has become a conspiracy theorist whose increasingly erratic twitter behaviour has led to a situation best described as:
son: this minecraft game is great dad
dad: it is indeed son
son: who made it?
dad: no one. it came from space
— ⣝⣵⡎⣵⢗⣿⣫⢗⡎⣵ (@zarawesome) December 6, 2018
Note that while his name has been removed from splash screens, Persson is still listed as the game’s creator in Minecraft’s credits.
Comments
45 responses to “Minecraft Update Removes Mentions Of Notch, The Game’s Creator”
TIL Notch is a massive dick.
Seems to be symptom of getting a fuckton of money really quickly.
Says who? You don’t know this.
My cousin (a famous streamer) once did NYE stream in which Notch was watching. He gave them all a large donation, which my cousin and his crew were wrapped with, and then said if you ever want to visit, please do. He arrived on there door less than a week later and slept on the couch while he was with them.
The dudes not a dick, he is just bored as anything with all the money he has. He was saying how it’s hard with all the money and you can’t trust anyone and he has lost a lot of his friends, etc. He was just stoked that he was staying with my cousin and his housemates that treated him like a normal dude.
This is an internet story, so I don’t expect you to believe this, but it’s 100% true. He isn’t a dick, he is just bored and lonely.
I don’t understand the point of this.
Your story excuses his actions? So he was nice to one person, then demonises
Or the fact that he has money and is bored excuses his actions? If he is bored he should use his money to do something good. Not sit at home in the dark posting 4chan shit.
Oh wow, didn’t know Notch went burko, what a time we live in.
To be fair some of the things he says aren’t that bad and are just not what mainstream journos consider ‘the correct thoughts’ to have.
Other times yeah he’s sitting in decadence making a fool of himself.
journos….I like this. +1
So more Kanye West than Milo Yiannopoulos…
Definitely more Milo than Kanye.
He’s an absolute piece of shit. Kanye is a level headed angel compared to notch.
Just as an aside, turns out Kanye has bipolar disorder. So that explains pretty much everything.
Read through the tweets linked – the first one isn’t offensive unless you’re looking to start a fight. The second escalated quickly but started over “punching commies” – punching anyone you think is a ‘fascist’ is okay though, presumably…
I assume you’re talking about that “It’s okay to be white” tweet. This is something that I find annoying. If someone tweets “it’s ok to be black” they’ll get all sorts of support and likes. I hate the double standard and the sheer hypocrisy of people who claim he’s made a racist comment then supporting a comment that’s racist in a different direction.
We’ll never reach a truly racism free society while that sort of behaviour still happens.
As for the other article linked, I’m not entirely sure. I find it confusing and I can’t summon the energy to try to track down the whole thread of the conversation. It looks like he supports trans people but hates the attitude of some of them. But it also looks like he’s basing that off misinformation? I dunno.
That’s straight up false equivalence. These comments don’t exist in isolation, they’re backed by centuries of power and oppression. One is reassurance that something that was for centuries considered a deficiency, something that historically labelled someone a lesser being in genetics, rights and freedoms is no longer that way and it’s okay to embrace that aspect of themselves without fear. The other is a straw man answering a problem that never really existed, advanced by people who think experiencing a minor diminishment of power and opportunity is oppression despite the beneficiaries of that shift still not reaching the same level as the ones complaining.
A truly racism-free society must acknowledge and correct the imbalances it caused in its past. Equity is necessary to accomplish true equality. It’s not a double standard when the context of each is completely different. Taking them in isolation and comparing them on literal meaning is disingenuous.
Well said…nuff said.
I was going to reply but you did a better job.
I’ll just add that in America, they literally had segregation. People literally thought teaching your kids stuff like this was fine:
“http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/thirdsight/files/2016/11/protest.jpg”.
The FBI literally tried to threaten and blackmail Martin Luther King.
You can say that was a long time ago, but you’d be crazy to think it doesn’t still happen, among both individuals and groups. Obviously just not to the institutional extent it happened in the past, but it still happens.
Even in Australia we had pubs with no blacks allowed. I still remember not that long ago we had Wilson “Iron Bar” Tuckey in parliament, so named because he had beat an aboriginal man with an iron bar when he ran a pub. Even to this day, I’ve heard ignorant comments from family members, and things like this still happen: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-22/rorkes-closed-for-days-as-staff-claim-mass-underpayments-racism/10733592
Yes, it is okay to be white. But feeling the need to make that comment seems like it’s just lampooning people’s real concerns about being mistreated because they’re black. You don’t really need to feel like every twitter diatribe against white people is directed specifically at you. Who cares so long as you treat everyone excellently know what sort of world we live in?
The mere fact that someone can even have a ‘diatribe against white people’ and it NOT be considered racist is part of the problem, whether you want to see that or not.
Nothing will improve until ALL people start being held to the rules that they wish to enforce on others. Instead of being massive hypocrites and running around redefining the meanings of words like racism as it suits their agenda for that particular moment.
I used “diatribe against white people” in a general sense, but if you have seen a specific diatribe against white people where a person is being a hypocrite, you could take it up with them?
I was more making the point people make big generalisations all the time on twitter. If you want to make a statement that “It’s okay to be white” as some sort of pointed stand against racist generalisations against white people, then, uh, okay, that’s you’re war. But just using those words, bluntly like that, is going to upset people based on the reasons outlined by Zombie Jesus.
You know where “it’s okay to be white” came from? 4chan. Pretty much a test to see if they could stroke division. When you think of it, it’s perfect from that perspective. Those engaged with race issues see it, or even just some insufferable sjws, and they see it as a smear on race issues and a repeat of history. Those conservatives who feel like their sense of identity is under attack by minorities see it, and they see how their opponents dislike it, so they take it up as a slogan because they feel like disagreeing with it is a direct insult to them. The best way to win is not play 4chans dumb games.
Here’s the thing, people think that without being on 4Chan. Just because some memelord (or whatever they call themselves) comes up with a word of a phrase doesn’t mean it’s not already being used.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said except for a couple points.
1. I’m curious what Notch’s “it’s ok to be white” comment was actually about. I don’t think he’s “lampooning” people’s concerns. Maybe I’m wrong but I suspect he’s saying that in frustration about something. It’d be interesting to get the whole story there.
2. Not feeling like every twitter diatribe is directed at you cuts both ways. If someone said “black people suck” would you take that to be hate speech and rail against it, or would you shake it off and say “it’s not directed specifically at me”? I’m betting I already know the answer to that one.
I do try to subscribe to the attitude in you final sentence. I really believe the Bill & Ted mantra should be our guiding thought. But banning hate one way while fanning it in another will never get us that far.
Your second point nails it.
It is beyond insane the amount of people who love to talk about how white people suck, etc, yet would call you a racist and scream about hate speech if you said the very same thing about any non-white group.
It’s pretty simple really… Play by your own rules and maybe people might actually be willing to follow suit, until then you just look like a monumental hypocrite who refuses to practice what you preach.
1. Hm. Sure, whole story, absolutely. But, I think you’re missing the recent history of “the okay to be white” thing. Here’s a rundown on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_OK_to_be_white . The short of it is, 4chan encouraged people to post up posters with the message around American schools. Their point was that it’s a seemingly harmless that no one can disagree with without seeming unreasonable unless they’re rabid sjw. Here’s 4chan discussing it: https://imgur.com/a/FFp6H They seem like nice people.
The phrase gets taken up by a lot of other people who don’t know about its origin. Some of them might feel like they’re being forced to apologise for being white because they personally feel slighted by the proliferation of articles discussing race in left wing media or by angry twitterites. Right wing media gleefully collates those sorts of things all the time to try to make people even angrier. Most of it is clickbait.
Anyway, this “okay to be white” thing gains so much attention that Pauline Hanson tries to a pass a motion in parliament with the statement that it’s “okay to be white”. Considering the sort of rhetoric that One Nation tends to espouse, that’s only going to further solidify the idea that the meme, which on its own seems harmless, is further association with far right/white nationalism. And a lot of people tend to be wary about that sort of thing.
2. On twitter? I’d find it repugnant, but I’d still ignore it, because I only use twitter to look at my friend’s baby pictures. In the media? See point 1 about clickbait media trying to fan the flames of the culture war. I would also ignore it. In real life, directly to my face? I’d argue the point for a bit, sure. I’m no crusader.
Would I act the same if they were railing the same against white people? Twitter and media, yeah, totally. I ignore a lot of stuff most of the time. Real life? Yeah, probably. If you want to talk about feelings, am I likely to feel differently about racist remarks against black people versus racist remarks against white people? Well, yeah, I thought I outlined why, and arguably, the minority with less power generally have more to the fear than the majority with a greater share of the power. Do I care that at best some might find that inconsistent, or at worst, the other guy who posted would find it hypocritical? Not really.
You know what, I’d agree with you if it wasn’t for a couple things. Firstly, the outright vitriol that happens when a white person says “its ok to be white”. And second, he didn’t say “its better to be white” or “blacks are inferior”.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether “oppression” is centuries or years or months. You can feel oppressed in the short term too. Psychologically the effect is still the same on the individual. So why create a new cycle of oppression by picking on something like this?
I’d rather see an attitude of “its ok to be any colour” or “we’re all the same”, not “it’s ok to be black but if you’re white you suck”. Because that’s just racism but from a different direction. And doing so will just create a society where inevitably there will be a backlash. So we’ll just keep flip-flopping between the two extremes of hate.
The “if you’re white you suck” part is racist, I agree. But that’s not what “it’s okay to be black” or “black lives matter” are saying, and it’s not why “it’s okay to be white” is a problem.
The problem with “it’s okay to be any colour”/”it’s okay to be white” is it dismisses and dilutes the purpose of “it’s okay to be black”, in the same way “all lives matter” dilutes the purpose of “black lives matter”. Of course all lives matter, and of course it’s okay to be any colour; that’s not the encompassing purpose and context of those phrases. Neither of those things were institutionalised and systemic problems western society endorsed until only a few decades ago, nor are they problems that exist today outside the fevered paranoia and recruiting objectives of white supremacists. They’re knee-jerk responses (or in one case, a deliberately planned dog whistle) by people feeling left out. They’re basically saying “if they get something, I want that something too, otherwise it’s unfair”. It’s the able-bodied driver saying “it’s unfair that disabled people get special parking spaces and I don’t. All drivers matter.” Of course all drivers matter, but that’s irrelevant to the point of disabled parking. And that’s the point of equity – people who need more get more. It’s perfectly fair.
I mean this in the gentlest way possible because I do understand your pragmatism mentality and I know you personally don’t have malicious intent in using a phrase like “it’s okay to be any colour”, but the notion that giving disadvantaged ethnic groups more than other people is unfair or prejudiced against the majority is a classic divisive tactic of white supremacist groups. “It’s okay to be white” essentially strips “it’s okay to be black” of all its context and purpose, switches who it talks about at the most superficial and literal level, and then uses the inevitable and justified criticism that it strips the original phrase of its meaning to drive a wedge between people, saying anyone who criticises the phrase “hates whites” with the goal of instilling in them a fear that their own identity is under attack, pushing them more towards racial division and the arms of white nationalists. It takes advantage of people who don’t understand the context by misleadingly presenting two things as equivalent when they’re not.
This is why I said phrases like “all lives matter” and “it’s okay to be white” are straw men. Nobody is arguing that all lives don’t matter, and there are no societal disadvantages for being white in western society that need attention. The goal is simply equity: giving the disadvantaged what they need to get to a position where everyone really is equal.
Disabled people are also physically unable to work well. They get enough to live but obviously are not given the same work, responsibilities and pay that not disabled get. They aren’t equal, they can never do all the things not disabled can.
Equal opportunity is good. Letting a more capable person go because there’s someone more pitiful isn’t.
For example giving the exam material freely to everyone, and everyone taking the same exam. There are perfectly capable coloured people out there. Now someone asks “Why did you get in that top school?” “Well because I’m black/indian/rich”. Even when one could have earned it and aced the exams. I’d think this is diminishing their capability, almost like spoiling a kid.
A physical disability can most definitely be overcome, but it’s moot since disabled parking isn’t just for the physically disabled. You should also seriously reconsider describing a disadvantaged candidate (whether they’re disabled or any other disadvantage) as “pitiful”, that’s quite derogatory.
What works particularly well about the disabled parking analogy is it demonstrates exactly how little the change affects able-bodied people, but how important it is to the disabled. If an able-bodied person is in a parking lot with 200 spaces, 5 of which are reserved for disabled customers, and sees a vacant disabled space they’re not allowed to take, their reaction is typically going to be “if that space weren’t for disabled parking I’d have gotten a parking spot already”, but that’s not actually true. If that space wasn’t disabled, one of the other hundreds of able-bodied people would have already taken it. And besides, there are 195 other parking spaces the able-bodied person can eventually find to park in, so the effect of not being able to park in that disabled parking space is a negligible inconvenience. Any parking space is ultimately the same for them, the only difference is the slightest variation of minor inconvenience in walking distance. Yet still, the able-bodied driver feels personally and disproportionately disadvantaged by the existence of those disabled spaces. On the other hand, a disabled person is greatly inconvenienced by parking in any of those other 195 spaces. Reserved parking spaces for disabled people makes a huge difference, particularly compared to the negligible convenience they’d offer an able-bodied driver.
Things like university placement work on the same principle. The system acknowledges that minorities have been disproportionately disadvantaged in receiving the prerequisite skills typically needed to undertake a university course, and acknowledges the science that there’s a positive cyclical effect on getting more disadvantaged minorities into higher education and being able to serve as role models for younger generations. When the decision is made to preference a minority for placement, it serves as a minor inconvenience at best to an advantaged person also contending for that spot, because that person has more opportunities (more parking spaces to choose from, in the analogy) and missing out on one doesn’t significantly affect their future – after all, with hundreds of applicants in the first place, the likelihood of any one advantaged person being the one to have gotten that space even if it weren’t reserved is negligible. But for a disadvantaged minority, the opportunities they have are considerably smaller, and it has a much bigger cascade effect on their life to not have the opportunity to study at the university (making a disabled person park in a regular parking space far from the entrance, in the analogy). They have fewer opportunities and the cascade effect is bigger because they missed out on the educational prerequisites that others had.
Of course, lacking access to proper education isn’t a uniquely minority problem. Of course, poor majority communities suffer from similar experiences. But collectively, minority communities experience this more often than majority communities. And they have that experience because the majority were responsible for creating them: by historically preventing minorities from attending school, or by segregating them and treating them as lesser people, the majority caused the imbalance that led to minorities experiencing fewer opportunities in the first place.
It’s not at all acceptable for the majority to now say “well I wasn’t personally responsible for that, so I shouldn’t have to personally sacrifice some of my own opportunity to help disadvantaged people gain some of their own”. The majority today may not have been directly responsible for disadvantaging minorities, but the majority today are still beneficiaries of the imbalance their predecessors created. The majority today do, collectively, enjoy benefits that minorities don’t, even though trivial equality may say “treat everyone the same”. The damage done by past generations created imbalances that can’t be fixed with trivial equality, and can’t be fixed overnight. To actually fix those imbalances, to get disadvantaged minorities to a point where “treat everyone the same” really does treat everyone the same, the gap between the two must first be closed. That’s what equity is about – giving people what they need to succeed. A disadvantaged minority needs that university placement to succeed a lot more than an advantaged person does, so it goes to the disadvantaged person. The advantaged person misses out that time, but they’re offered another opportunity in short order – any of those other 195 parking spaces when it frees up.
Blind equality says “tax everyone $100 a week”, an ‘equal’ treatment even though it clearly affects the poor more than the rich. Equity says “tax everyone proportionate to their income, and tax low income earners even less than their proportion” because it acknowledges that context matters, and that helping the poor out of poverty makes them more productive participants in our economy and our society.
So yes, sometimes accepting a less prior-educated minority candidate for an education opportunity or for a job is better than giving it to a more prior-educated majority candidate. Because for the small amount it inconveniences the majority candidate, it benefits the minority candidate significantly more, and more than that, it has a cascade effect that benefits minority communities more than it does majority communities. Equity results in a much bigger gain for society than if context had been ignored and blind equality had been used to make a superficial decision.
I was having a similar discussion with another person who was wondering why it was not ok “being proud of being white”.
In a vacuum, I believe, feeling pride for your race, whatever it is, is just silly. You didn’t choose your race, so you can’t congratulate yourself for it, nor did you work hard in order to achieve it. And even if you managed to make something noteworthy with your life, you cannot argue that it was your race what allowed to do so, scientifically speaking.
Of course, we don’t live in a vacuum, so stating pride for one’s race takes all kinds of different contexts. We are all painfully aware that there’s a loud subset of white people who state said pride as an entirely anti-scientifical statement of genetic superiority. Their existence makes dicey the utterance of racial pride: some people prickle at the fact that they want to express racial pride (for whatever strange reason) when they themselves are not (or do not consider themselves) bigoted or supremacist, blaming “PC culture”, “SJWs” or whatever else, when in reality, they should aim all that anger towards the bigots who give it a bad name.
The person I was discussing with argued that black people also express racial pride, and in fact, there’s a month dedicated to it. The big difference is that when PoC express pride, they are not talking about /being/ “superior” due to their achievements, genetic makeup or similar, but rather, to celebrate achievements done /in spite/ of massive, undeniable discrimination, hostility, and disenfranchisement. In truth, it is more a statement of defiance and solidarity than one of arrogant conceit.
Did you at any point think that openly supporting white supremacist talking points is a shit thing to do?
My favourite tweet of his recently was when someone asked him the difference between a Nazi and a commie and he replied with “I did Nazi you commie”
I’m not surprised that he is an awkward nerd that says tactless things.
It’s a lukewarm, yet spiteful reaction from the developers taking his name out like that.
Before I read this story, I assumed that it was a total removal of his name which led me to this thought.
I believe that games (at least on their websites) should have changelog credits to the people who worked on the updates & DLC’s.
(I am not talking an animated musical credits but just a page somewhere)
And nothing of worth was lost.
The less of Notch in the world, the better.
Agree. Fixed that downvote for you too.
Whoever did that is obviously a prick
Nice ad hominem there bud.
I’m surprised my downvote triggered you so much.
Not triggered. I reacted to an inexplicable dick move.
7 downvotes. What the actual fuck is wrong with the Kotaku readers? These used to be so much nicer. Now it’s like I’m on Reddit or even 4chan.
It’s ok, champ. You and your friends were out voted. ????
You can be a “not nice” person but still do things of worth. Without him there’d be no Minecraft.
And as to whether he’s a bad person, that’s up for debate.
Read his Twitter, man. He’s not a nice person.
When are we going to learn to separate the artist from the art? Joss Whedon is a loser but I still love Serenity. Get over it.
And minecraft should just be ignored, hell I’ve played it since original ‘release’ and it was cool with mods and good stuff, MS bought it and everything is basically for them to make money. Mods are either being ignored or MS wants money for it, or mods just don’t work on updated software.
The amount of people here who don’t seem to realise all there comments are doing is dividing people further when their goal apparently unity is staggering.
Unity is predicated on mutual understanding. Explaining that something has more depth to it than initially suggested isn’t divisive, it’s just basic exchange of ideas. Conversation is more useful than drive-by downvotes, in any case.
I agree, but that presupposes both parties are coming to the debate in good faith using similar ground rules.
You probably debate based on the old humanist tradition. You feel like a debate can be “won” by coming to an agreement using reason, providing sources and giving facts. Some people don’t. Some people view it like a political tv debate. In such a debate, facts can’t really be verified immediately with ease, so it’s often about whoever looks the most resolute, and who is able to deflect better in order to look strong. You have definitely seen people who operate this way and, especially in politics, you see how compromise is perceived as a sort of weakness.
I thought MS was out of mobile phones! Why are they concerned with notches? Oh… wait…