Microsoft is buying Minecraft

After many rumours, one of the biggest deals in gaming history has been confirmed: Microsoft is buying Swedish indie studio Mojang, and therefore also buying Minecraft. The price tag? An eye-watering 2.5 billion dollars.

The move will see Markus "Notch" Persson and his fellow Mojang co-founders leave the company. Don't cry for him though – it's a move he's been wanting to make for a while. "He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance," explains a post on the Mojang blog. "Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that."

Microsoft is unlikely to suffer too much either. Minecraft is such an enormous phenomenon, selling not only tens of millions of games, but also tons of official merchandise including books, toys and t-shirts, that Microsoft expects to make that cool $2.5bn back by June 2015. After that? Don't panic if you're not an Xbox or PC gamer – Microsoft insists that it plans to keep Minecraft available on all the platforms it is currently on, including PlayStation.

"Minecraft is more than a great game franchise – it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft," says Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO.

Minecraft recently released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and will next come to PlayStation Vita.