Minecraft is now out, like for real. It's no longer a beta but maybe you've not noticed because it doesn't mean anything. Minecraft is about creativity and evolution and at this stage, with its 1.0.0 version number, it's no different than it was a few months ago. Minecraft is always growing and it just depends on what the community (through mods) or the developers (Mojang) can think of next.

Before even releasing in "full," during MineCon on November 18th, Minecraft had sold over 4 million copies. It's this indie success that made Markus "Notch" Persson a very rich man, while also allowing the creation and growth of Mojang, a developer now deep into development of its second project, Scrolls. Now that it's out, Notch is moving on and stepping down from development on Minecraft.

On his personal blog this morning, Notch announced that he's no longer going to be the lead developer for Minecraft and he's instead going to begin work on another new project. This doesn't mean Minecraft is over - the intention always was that it would continue to get tweaks, updates and other fun stuff going forward. It just means that Jens "Jeb" Bergensten will be taking over as lead on the project.

Fans of the game and of the Mojang team should be very familiar with Jeb since he's practically been a lead developer on the game for the last year and an active voice for the game on Twitter and Reddit. It was only he and Notch who worked on Minecraft while the rest of the Mojang crew work on Scrolls.

"As of yesterday, Jens Bergensten is the new lead developer on Minecraft. He will have the final say in all design decisions, so he will kinda sorta become my boss, I guess. I’ve promised him to not pull rank. ;)

We’ve been working together on Minecraft for a year now, and I’m amazed at how much in synch we two are when it comes to how to design the game. And when we don’t agree, we discuss it and something much better comes out at a result. He’s truly a great person to work with, and I feel very confident handing over the leadership of Minecraft to him."

Hopefully Jeb will have the resources necessary to keep growing Minecraft and implementing more of the community's ideas and mods. As for Notch, we're very curious what this new project he's speaking of is - could it be Mojang game #3?

"Personally, I will now rest for a while, then get back to work refreshed and eager. I’ll be helping out with Minecraft, of course, but also starting work on some new project."

Mojang of course, is also stepping up as a third party publisher for indie games. Their first one is the side-scroller called Cobalt.

Minecraft 1.0.0 (the full version) is now out for PC and Minecraft — Pocket Edition is available now for Android and iOS.

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Source: Notch