Rumor: Microsoft wants to buy Minecraft maker Mojang for 2 billion dollars

Microsoft is said to be in the final stages of negotiations to acquire Mojang, the Swedish maker of the popular Minecraft game. The acquisition may already be completed this week, for an amount of more than 2 billion dollars, converted 1.55 billion euros.

That Microsoft is close to a Mojang acquisition, The Wall Street Journal has heard from a source familiar with the negotiations. Should an acquisition follow this week, it would be a striking turnaround for Mojang: the 35-year-old founder of the small Swedish company, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, has often stated in the past that he has no interest in large companies such as Microsoft. In the past, he criticized, among other things, the course that Microsoft was taking with the PC platform and refused, for example, a Windows 8 certification from the group.

Mojang has 28 employees and the company makes in a year 289 million dollars, converted 224 million euros, with a profit of 126 million dollars, or 97 million euros. Mojang has sold 50 million copies of Minecraft in the past five years. Minecraft is available for a variety of platforms, including Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Xbox One, as well as PC, iOS, Android and Sony’s PlayStations. Last week, Microsoft announced its arrival to the Xbox One.