Mojang Studios

What Mojang Studios is

Mojang Studios is a Swedish game developer based in Stockholm and the creator of Minecraft. In its own corporate announcements Microsoft describes the studio as the Stockholm-based developer behind the Minecraft franchise, and that single game remains the centre of its identity. The team began as a small independent group and grew into one of the most recognisable developer names in the industry, largely on the strength of a block-building sandbox that players have kept buying and playing for well over a decade.

The studio's public profile is narrow by design. Where most large developers spread work across several franchises, Mojang's output is organised around Minecraft and the products built on top of it. Microsoft's acquisition announcement framed the team as joining Microsoft Studios, and the company committed at the time to keeping Minecraft available on the platforms where it already ran, including PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation. That commitment to wide availability has shaped the studio's approach ever since.

How Minecraft was made

Minecraft began as a solo project. According to Microsoft's own retrospective on the franchise, Markus Persson, known as Notch, started work on a game he first called Cave Game in May 2009, inspired by earlier titles such as Infiniminer. The earliest public version, later known as the Java Classic Edition, generated a world and let players dig and build freely. Over the following months it split into Creative and Survival modes, and by January 2010 it had already attracted more than a hundred thousand players.

The game's full release came later than many people assume. Microsoft's timeline records that the 1.0 version, later branded Minecraft: Java Edition, launched on 18 November 2011 during MineCon, and that it arrived after the game had grown from one million players in January 2011 to ten million by July. That gap between the early public builds and the formal release is part of why Minecraft's history is usually told in versions and updates rather than in a single launch date.

The Microsoft acquisition

On 15 September 2014 Microsoft announced it had agreed to acquire Mojang, described in the announcement as the celebrated Stockholm-based game developer and owner of the Minecraft franchise. The price was $2.5 billion, and Microsoft said it expected the deal to break even in its 2015 fiscal year. The team was to join Microsoft Studios, the group that already held Halo, Forza and Fable, and the acquisition was expected to close before the end of 2014.

The announcement also marked the end of an era for the founding team. Carl Manneh, then chief executive of Mojang, said in the release that the founders would move on to start new projects, and Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said Microsoft intended to maintain Minecraft and its community in the ways players already valued. Microsoft stated it would keep the game available on all platforms where it was already sold, a point the company repeated in the years that followed.

Beyond the main game

Minecraft has not been Mojang's only product. Microsoft's recap of Minecraft Live states that Minecraft Legends arrived in 2023 as an action strategy title, and the franchise's timeline notes that Minecraft Dungeons came earlier as a dungeon-crawling spin-off. Minecraft Education, launched in 2016, brought the game into classrooms. These projects extend one existing world rather than starting fresh franchises, which keeps the studio's focus narrow even as the number of products around it grows.

The franchise has also moved beyond games. Mojang announced in April 2025 that A Minecraft Movie was out in cinemas, produced in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, and accompanied the release with free in-game content on the Minecraft Marketplace. Announcing a film through its own channels rather than only through a distributor is consistent with how the studio communicates: directly to the players who already follow its news posts, updates and live events.

Where the studio sits inside Microsoft today

Mojang's position inside Microsoft has shifted more than once. In a message published on Xbox Wire in July 2026, Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma set out a wide restructuring of the division, noting that reductions would vary in size across Activision, Bethesda, Blizzard, King, Mojang and Xbox Game Studios. The same message stated that Mojang and King would now report directly to her, describing both as having increasingly become platforms and as the largest units by monthly active players.

That change also affected the studio's leadership. The July 2026 post announced that Helen Chiang, who had led Mojang and the Minecraft franchise, had been promoted to a new chief operating officer role at Xbox. Her move means the studio's former head now oversees a wider set of businesses, while Mojang itself continues to run the Minecraft products. The arrangement suggests the franchise is treated as a platform business rather than as one studio among many.

Quick facts

Founded: 2009. Founder: Markus Persson, known as Notch. Headquarters: Stockholm, Sweden. Owner: Microsoft, which announced an agreement to acquire Mojang on 15 September 2014 for $2.5 billion. Key games: Minecraft, Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, Minecraft Education.

Key figures with dates: Minecraft's 1.0 version released on 18 November 2011; Mojang announced that the game had passed 300 million copies sold at Minecraft Live on 15 October 2023; A Minecraft Movie reached cinemas in April 2025. Status as of July 2026: Mojang reports directly to the Xbox chief executive.

Does Mojang Studios still make Minecraft?

Yes. Mojang remains the studio behind Minecraft, and the game still receives regular updates, which Microsoft's own site describes as arriving several times a year. The July 2026 restructuring changed who the studio reports to rather than what it makes. Microsoft stated that none of its first-party publicly announced games or projects were cancelled as part of those reductions, so the Minecraft roadmap described in its own announcements remains in place.

What has changed over time is the breadth of what sits under the Mojang name. Once a small Stockholm team shipping a single game, it now covers a main title, spin-off games, an education edition and a film released in 2025. For anyone trying to judge whether the studio is still active, the useful signals are the update cadence, the Minecraft Live announcements and the content still arriving on the Marketplace.

Games

• Caller's Bane
• Catacomb Snatch
• Crown and Council
• Minecraft
• Minecraft China
• Minecraft Dungeons
• Minecraft Dungeons II
• Minecraft Earth
• Minecraft Education
• Minecraft Legends
• Minecraft Starter Collection
• Minecraft: Bedrock Edition
• Minecraft: Deluxe Collection
• Minecraft: Legacy Console Edition
• Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition

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