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Mojang is a Stockholm, Sweden-based video game development studio. The studio is best known for developing the popular, best-selling video game Minecraft, a sandbox construction and survival exploration game where users can build anything they imagine.Minecraft has gone on to be one of the most popular video games, with related merchandise and spin-off game titles. The studio has developed several other game titles, none of which have met the same success as Minecraft, including Caller's Bane, Cobalt, and Crown and Council.
Mojang was founded in 2009 by Markus Persson, Jakob Porser, and Carl Manneh to develop and release the sandbox and survival game Minecraft. The studio's name came from a previous video game Persson was developing prior to founding Mojang and is an old Swedish term meaning "gadget." With the early success of Minecraft, Mojang established itself as an independent game development studio. In 2014, Microsoft acquired Mojang for USD$2.5 billion after Minecraft sold over 54 million copies, and the studio became a first-party video game developer for Microsoft's Xbox platform.
As part of the sale to Microsoft, and with the pressure of running Mojang after the development company had become more focused on maintaining Minecraft and its servers, the founders— including Markus Persson, Carl Manneh, and Jakob Porser—left the company. There were initial concerns related to what would happen to Minecraft at the time of the sale and with the leaving of the founders, but the title has continued to be available across all platforms with continuing development, while Mojang continues to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft and as a first-party Xbox developer.