Friendly Pirate Challenges Minecraft Creator To Quake 3 Battle

from the what-goes-around-comes-around dept

Minecraft developer Markus Persson, better known as notch, made headlines last year when he proposed to settle a trademark dispute with Bethesda with a Quake 3 match. Now, in yet another example of how being open, human and awesome is the best response to "problems" like piracy, Ashley Sheridan points us to two recent tweets on notch's feed:

Notch is well known for not worrying too much about piracy or believing in "lost sales", and the staggering success of Minecraft speaks for the wisdom of that attitude. It also goes to show that, despite what critics claim, accepting the reality of piracy doesn't mean letting any and all activity run rampant. When you threaten people, or send lawyers after them, they might get scared but they will definitely get defensive (and not like you very much). But by reaching out to the guy, notch had a friendly exchange and the pirate site came down (plus what I assume will be an epic Quake battle on q3dm17, which I gather from Google is some sort of badass space platform map). Are there other pirates who would have ignored notch or set up shop elsewhere? Probably—but they will always find a way to do what they do. Indeed, some people will always be jerks/idiots/dumb kids too, as some of the reactions to the disappearance of the site showed—which notch recognizes, so he took it in stride:

It sucks that some people are like that, but attacking them sure isn't going to change them. It's a waste of time, and can cause people to threaten and drive away pirates like the one with whom notch reached a friendly resolution.

Filed Under: markus persson, minecraft, notch, quake 3