Being rich is weird, says Minecraft creator

Some of the cash made by Minecraft has been shared with staff at Mojang

The developer of hit game Minecraft has described being a multi-millionaire as "weird".

Markus Persson, also known as Notch, was questioned about the earnings of the block mining and building game, on social news site Reddit.

Minecraft creator Mojang said it had sold 15 million copies of Minecraft in 2012, netting a profit of £57m.

Mr Persson said he planned to use his wealth to help his family, charities and campaign groups.

'Useless things'

Since a full version of Minecraft for the PC, priced at £17.95, was launched in November 2011, more than 20 million copies of the game's various versions have been sold. It currently has a player base about 40 million strong.

Details of Mojang's earnings emerged in a story on Swedish tech news site it24 and the numbers it quoted have since been confirmed by Mojang. In 2012, Mojang's turnover was about £149m, on which it made the £57m profit, much of which went to Mr Persson. In 2011, he shared about £2.7m of that profit with Mojang's 29 employees.

Answering questions on Reddit, Mr Persson said he did not "mind having loads of money" but it had not changed his life much.

"I still like playing games and programming, and once I had the latest computer and consoles, there really isn't much more to spend the money on [other] than travelling," he said.

Mr Persson said he had set some cash aside to make sure his family was comfortable, would use some to live out his dreams and some would be spent on helping make the world a better place.

He said: "For me, this includes charities that help children, and charities that help promote freedoms I think are vital in the coming dozens of years, such as the EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation]."

Despite these good works, Mr Persson said he was using some of the cash to indulge himself.

"I definitely spend money on totally useless things," he said. "I won't burn all my money on that, though. There's so much more to do."

Mr Persson has stepped back from day-to-day involvement with Minecraft to work on his next creation - a space-trading and combat game called 0x10c.