Friday, December 19, 2014

35 Year Old 'Minecraft' Billionaire Buys a $70 Million House, Makes An Astute Comment

From Forbes:
'Minecraft' Billionaire Markus Persson Buys $70 Million Beverly Hills Contemporary With Car Lift
‘Minecraft’ creator Markus “Notch” Persson has just closed on a $70 million home on tony Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills.

The 23,000-square-foot, Contemporary-style home, with a wall of glass that provides a 280-degree view of the City of Angels and the Pacific Ocean below, triggered a bidding war between four buyers. Persson quickly decided he wanted the home, paid all cash, and closed in six days, according to the agents who sold him the property.

Persson, a 35-year-old Swedish video game designer, became a billionaire in September when he sold his company, Mojang, to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, as my colleagues Max Jedeur-Palmgren and Ryan Mac reported in September. According to postings on Reddit, Persson says that he grew up in a “relatively poor family” with a mother who was a nurse and a father who struggled with drug addiction. Persson only began to make a steady living when he became a video game programmer. He developed ‘Minecraft’ and released it in 2009, then founded Mojang in 2010.

“Once I got a decent job, I never really had to worry about money,” he wrote on Reddit last year. “Now, all of the sudden, as a result of how modern society works, I managed to somehow earn a shit-ton of money.”...MORE