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Games

Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft 170

Posted by samzenpus from the almost-like-the-real-thing dept.
theodp writes In case you've fallen behind on your TMZ reading, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson used his Microsoft money to outbid Beyonce and Jay Z for the most expensive mansion in Beverly Hills. Now, the Minecraft mogul's new $70 million mega-mansion has been recreated inside the game that made him rich.
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Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft More

Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft

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  • just wait... (Score:3)

    by alphatel ( 1450715 ) * on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:13PM (#48655209)
    Bart: I'm rapidly becoming a big underground success in this town.
    Jim: See? In another twenty-five years, you'll be able to shake their hands in broad daylight.

  • Waste (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

    23,000 square feet, with 15 bathrooms and eight bedrooms [aaroe.com]

    It's his money to spend and I wouldn't stand in his way, but what a waste. Makes you wonder what kind of good could have been done or how many lives could have been saved with that $70 million.

    • Re:Waste (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:18PM (#48655249) Homepage

      Makes you wonder what kind of good could have been done or how many lives could have been saved with that $70 million.

      It's not like he's throwing bills into a fire. That money goes back into the economy which is good for everybody, and its recipients are still free to spend it on whatever good deeds they want.

      • The same argument got posted with Gates built his mega-mansion. People complained about it being a waste.

        Apparently skilled tradesmen who build houses don't need jobs. Building things is, arguably, one of the better things you could do with money.

        • While true, it would be less wasteful if these skilled tradesmen had built 140 $200k houses instead of 1 $70M house.

      • The money goes into the economy, but the resources and labor to build the thing do not. Still, it's his money to spend once people give it to him. If you think there was a waste, then you should be upset about Microsoft for spending as much as they did to buy a somewhat polished, but still fairly shallow indie game. Assuming they do nothing with it other than pass the cost on to you through higher costs for windows licenses.

      • I'll get modded into the ground, but whatever.

        To teach my early teen kids about money, I offered them $20 apiece for each example they could list of how our "rich" neighbor could do something with his money that doesn't benefit me ( besides piling up his cash and burning it to death )

        My son went first... "he could buy a million dollar car". (note: he actually drives a 2+ million dollar Veyron, but whatever)
        Reply: "Nice try... But I'm a car salesman / builder / mechanic / own stock in GEICO insurance

        • I can only afford a lambo. :( sad face

        • Re: Waste (teaching kids about the 'rich') (Score:5, Insightful)

          by O('_')O_Bush ( 1162487 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @11:52PM (#48657839)
          The fault is that your argument builds a straw man that the wealthy do *no* good by holding/using wealth, but that isn't the argument. The argument is that they do relatively little with that wealth. One two million dollar car churns the economy, as in, provides jobs, taxes through fees, etc, much less than one hundred 20 thousand dollar cars. A similar thing could be said of a house. A 70 million dollar house doesn't generate 100x the economic activity of 100x 700k dollar houses. Partly this is because many "premium" materials don't generate more economic activity than less premium materials at a fraction of the cost...but the increase in cost is due to rarity and desirability only. Another part is that high priced items tend to require a one team work longer rather than more teams work, concentrating the transfer of wealth rather than spreading it out over broad actors who can trickle wealth down much faster and efficiently than a few who have a large share of it. The idea of "trickle down" is valid, it does happen, but it is more like accidentally watering some plants from a leak in water tank rather than watering a field with irrigation. And when your goal is to grow a crop like an economy, relying on minimal rainfall and tank leaks just isn't a productive way to go about it, as our Norse neighbors have shown.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Quite how many bathrooms do you need in a house that can sleep - I assume - eight pairs of people?

      I'd have stopped at four at the most, surely. Even in the biggest of Christmas toilet-mishap contagion, you're not going to have a problem finding a free bathroom with four of them.

      Because of the area I work in, I know that you could start at least 35 schools with that kind of money and if you did it right, with a bit of research, they could be self-sustaining private schools offering bursaries to kids who wou

    • Homeless Shelter?

    • That $70 million didn't disappear. He paid it to whoever had that mansion. If that person who received the $70 million spends it on saving lives, you get what you wanted. The only difference would be the mansion is now Notch's instead of the previous owner's. But, I wouldn't bet on the previous owner going out and giving that $70 million cash to charity. Most likely, it's going into a hedge fund with high-growth investments.

    • gotta take care of that house, you dont think he will be doing those things himself do you? No, besides the taxes he will be paying on such an expensive home, the caretakers being employed etc.

      but again its his money, if he literally wanted to burn it all, thats his right

    • I would not pay more than $50 million for it.

    • Re:Waste (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:42PM (#48655493) Homepage

      I wonder what kind of good could have been done, or how many lives could have been saved, with the thousands of dollars you've spent on a computer, a car, and a phone that you really don't need.

      Or does your outrage only apply to rich people?

      • Please don't try to make sense on the Internet. These people are just jealous.

      • Three orders of magnitude less than the millions spent on this house.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Or does your outrage only apply to rich people?

        Oops, I think you tipped over your own straw man with that last remark.

        There's no outrage in my post, and I think it's very telling that the examples you chose: a computer (which I use to earn a living), a car (which I use to get to stores to buy necessities), and a phone (really? [and it isn't even a smartphone]) actually are necessities for myself as well as the vast majority of people today.

        Notch can literally eat his piles of cash for all I care. My point was simply that at some point you pass a level

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

          I somehow lost the last line of my reply.

          [...] that doesn't mean everyone agrees that it's a good idea, or that there's not something more practically beneficial to spend it on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 )

        My outrage only applies to people richer than me.

      • I'm not faulting Notch. There's something about sending the message to kids that you can live large doing computer science stuff. But what you said are things that are tools to make more money. If you want to sacrifice your entire life to live for the poor because it is a noble thing to do, you don't simply give everything you have to live on to the poor. If you do that, you become a problem yourself and can no longer make money. What you do is live on only necessities to get by on and classify things
    • I'd be more worried about blowing a one time paycheck on something that required that much upkeep.

      • At a measly 1% rate of return, he'll make 25 million a year for life on the interest from that one-time paycheck. If he'd gotten $100M for Minecraft and just spent $70M of it on the mansion, I'd agree with you. But he got $2.5 billion. If he doesn't want to maintain the mansion, he can just give it away and buy another one every other year for the rest of his life and he'll be okay.*

        I'm ignoring taxes and stuff. I have a headache.

        • From what I recall, notch splits the 2.5 billion with 2 other people and his share is about 70%. I can't find a citation right now (grr) but pretty sure I read it back in september.

          I was also happy to hear that he shared 3 million dollars with the 25 mojang employees. It is nice when a business owner that sales the business shares something with the employees who made the business a success.

          From what the articles have said, part of the reason he sold was he couldn't take the stress and fan anger directed

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 )

      How much good? None... If he gave $70 million to charity, it would do no good. It really doesn't in the long run...

      So you feed a bunch of starving children? Great, now they just grow up and have more kids, who also need to be fed. It is a self-reproducing problem.

      Until people learn how to take care of themselves, giving them charity just makes the problem bigger, not smaller.

      This is why we still have homeless people. Oh sure, some of them are homeless via no fault of their own, but most aren't.

      • Your logic is... flawed. Well fed, educated children have fewer children than those that live in poverty. And the mentally ill account for a full third of the homeless. Add in those genuinely down on their luck and in need of a better safety net, and we'd be over half the homeless through no fault of their own.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 )

          No, my logic is perfect, your heart is speaking, not your brain... Your feelings don't override the facts, as much as you might not want to hear it.

          Whatever percentage it is, it doesn't matter. Even if it is only 10%, if you feed them, you just end up with more of them.

          Look at the billions and billions and billions that have been sunk into Africa... still for the most part, a crappy sinkhole of money and poverty that isn't getting better. It will get better when they pull themselves up and actually star

          • The African billions were spent on despots and corruption with very little trickle down effect.

            • Right. And it's very difficult to have the money directed instead to the poor. I suppose you could send in an army to overthrow the despots and give money to the poor. Now you're in charge and responsible for running the whole place. Or you head home and leave a void, so that a new despot takes over.

          • Re: Waste (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Actually, you're neglecting to note the other billions spent in Africa to destabilize local governments, support compliant dictators and allow the extraction of billions more in resources.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

            Look at the billions and billions and billions that have been sunk into Africa... still for the most part, a crappy sinkhole of money and poverty that isn't getting better. It will get better when they pull themselves up and actually start improving their own lives.

            Ah, the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth. Who knows -- perhaps once the majority of Africans have overthrown brutal despots, eradicated malaria and other diseases, and found reliable clean water they'll be able to start working on that.

            A crazy amount of money is given to charity every year, and yet the problem doesn't go away.

            How much time, money, and effort did it take to build a prospering American country and society -- from a largely empty land brimming with natural resources? Oh, and, how much of that came from Europe? "Self-made", indeed.

          • The UN disagrees with what you say. There are reports that come out every year that says World Hunger is going away over time. Every bit we can donate helps it go away faster. And if you think about it: Look at first world countries, the more wealth a country has, generally the lower the birth rates are.

            • I would also write such reports if I had their agenda, which is to transfer wealth from wealthy nations to poor nations.

              The world produces enough to feed everyone, yet nearly a billion people go hungry... just moving the food around won't solve it, but clearly you and many other people don't want to hear that.

              That's ok...

          • I stated facts, which you ignore. You also ignore the fact that the majority of humans have something called empathy, a natural instinct that keeps the species from destroying itself. While instinctual empathy tends to be limited to those around us, it does extend for some to those more distant that are suffering. That will keep those people fed and, yes, breeding. The only logical way to reduce that population growth, given the existence of empathy, is thus to bring those people out of poverty, and ple

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Bengie ( 1121981 )
          There's many chicken and egg issues going on in Africa. Send food, and the incoming food becomes like money and manages to help fund local war lords. This actually happens. Sending food causes people with guns to start to show up and find a way to exploit the situation.

          You also can't send money or send technology. All of those things cause issues with exploitation. One of the few ways that have actually worked is making real demand for work in those areas.

          Any artificial support creates exploitation, you

    • 23,000 square feet, with 15 bathrooms and eight bedrooms [aaroe.com]

      It's his money to spend and I wouldn't stand in his way, but what a waste.

      Sometimes such a purchase is mostly an investment, albeit a comfy investment that you can live in. Its highly likely he is expecting a "greater fool" to come around and pay much more even after adjusting for inflation and the safe alternative of buying US treasury bills instead.

    • It's his money to spend and I wouldn't stand in his way, but what a waste. Makes you wonder what kind of good could have been done or how many lives could have been saved with that $70 million.

      Indeed. I'm sure you give all your excess money to charity rather than buy yourself a TV, DVDs, go to a restaurant or on vacation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Indeed. I'm sure you give all your excess money to charity rather than buy yourself a TV, DVDs, go to a restaurant or on vacation.

        Interesting false equivalence. Ignoring the fact that I said nothing about how much money he should give to charity, do you really equate a $400 television and a few $12 DVDs to a $70,000,000 house?

    • Whether it's a waste depends on what he wants to do with it. What if he wants to do a lot of code jams? Hmmmm, "Where should we get a half-dozen programmers together for a weekend?" "How about Notch's place?"

  • I heard you liked Minecraft and Mansions...

  • I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:19PM (#48655263)
    After 8 years of onsite computer repairs, I have a deep insight into this sort of thing. At my company we have a nickname for people who make $10,000 a month and have $5,000 of it go to their 5000 sq ft mansion. They're "poor people living in a big house." Why the hell do people spend that much money on a house? If I won $200,000,000 in the powerball, I'd buy a 3000 sq ft house. Then I'd spend the rest on awesome stuff. Who the hell wants a giant house like that? Plus, that's how NFL players keep going broke. You know if you make it to the NFL or make Minecraft that you're making a ton of money ONCE. Like one and done, surprise you're poor. I'd hoard that money like crazy and budget it out over 100 years. What and idiot.

    To anyone about to say real estate is an investment, go look at his electric bill, cleaning bill, and property taxes.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

        by the_B0fh ( 208483 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @06:20PM (#48656247) Homepage

        75mil is how much of 2.5bil again? 3%. Much less than the 25% you are wasting.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kidbro ( 80868 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:31PM (#48655371)

      You are quite right. His remaining $2.43B are not nearly enough to cover living expenses now that he wasted almost 3% on a house.

      • Sweden has some pretty hardcore taxes for the rich. Don't get me wrong, he's still a very monied guy (he made plenty before the sale as well) but it isn't like he got to keep all the cash. Sweden doubtless took their cut.

      • I didn't know he was a tax-exempt non-profit who gets to keep the entire sale price of his product. That's astonishing news.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ProzacPatient ( 915544 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:39PM (#48655457)

      ... and property taxes.

      Pretty much this for *alas* you unfortunately never really own your property but basically lease it from the government so people who come into a lot of money always go and get the biggest house they can afford but forget that they have to pay property taxes on that multi-million dollar mansion.

      I do have to say though, in my opinion, that if you're going to invest your money somewhere the best place to put your money into is property, not multi-million dollar homes but acres upon acres, for land rarely ever loses value but usually appreciates value because of the limited supply whereas a swimming pool of cash just inflates and loses value.

    • Well, this is just a guess, but maybe Notch kind of likes beautiful, elaborate structures and will derive great pleasure from living in such a place.

    • It's called chasing the American dream by keeping up with the Jones.

      Big house? Check!
      Big cars? Check!
      Expensive clothing? Check!
      Happy? Oh, hell no.

      The sooner you stop chasing the American dream and start living a modest lifestyle, life becomes more rewarding.

    • Assuming it is a moderately large slice of $2.5B.
      To hit the top 1% of earnings in the UK, you need to be on ~150K.

      This can be hit easily at 2% or so interest on a capital of 10M.

      Arrange it properly in trusts so you can't ever touch it - and you're set for life - to a reasonable degree.

    • It is the same fucktards who spend $100,000+ on a watch. Hell, even spending $10,000 on a Rolex are idiots -- Who knew the price of vanity was so high!

      > To anyone about to say real estate is an investment, go look at his electric bill, cleaning bill, and property taxes.

      Spot on!

      If it costs you money it is a liability
      If it makes you money, it is an investment.

      People who buy watches over $5,000 only prove that they have more money then brains.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Andrio ( 2580551 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @05:08PM (#48655751)

      You are right on most things, however this put up a red flag for me:

      "Then I'd spend the rest on awesome stuff."

      Keep this in mind: Poor people spend their money on consumables. Middle income people spend their money on liabilities they think are assets. Rich people spend their money on assets that make them money.

      Most "Awesome things", like cars, boats, electronics, etc, lose value pretty fast (Sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth, those were the first things that came to mind when I read "awesome stuff"). Eventually, you'll lose all your money. If I won 200 Million, I'd probably spend a tiny portion of it on buying nice houses for myself and my family, and use the rest to buy things like boring stock in boring companies. Boring, but secure companies that have been around for a hundred years and have offered dividends for decades.

      • If I won a 9-figure lottery (the only kind I could win, I generally throw a dollar or two in if I notice it's gone over 200 million), the first thing to do after dealing with taxes, etc. is to set up at least one pretty iron-clad trust designed to pay me a nice solid upper-middle-class "salary" every year, with a lot of restrictions on how I could break any principal out of it. I suspect this would also impact taxes if done properly.

        Once you have your perpetual senior developer-level salary set up, **then**

      • Most "Awesome things", like cars, boats, electronics, etc, lose value pretty fast

        The most awesome cars, bought at just the right time, will only appreciate. And now there are numerous shows which will help you identify those vehicles at the right time, and not afterwards, notably stuff we can all watch on Youtube these days. But yeah, those other things are just ways to bleed money.

        I think the point, though, was that even at a pretty high burn rate, if you have big stupid money you can spend your whole life just spending your money on awesome things as long as you don't waste it on stuf

    • Let's assume he earns 3% interest on his money. That's in the ballpark of realistic. Let's also assume (for the sake of argument) that he took out a 30 year mortgage on that $70M mansion, like those people you have a nickname for. That means he'll pay maybe $150M total for it over 30 years, or $417k per month.

      He earns $6.25M per month on interest alone, so his house payment would be less than 7% of his income. (Let's say less than 15% taking into account electricity, cleaning, taxes, etc.) That doesn't

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      Everyone's different. For some people owning a house is their hobby.

      The catch is that it's a long-term investment, so you had better appreciate living in a big house, and not just enjoy the novelty for the first few months.

      • My grandparents built a house for like $14,000 and sold it after about 55 years. Adjusted for inflated and estimating all property taxes and maintenance costs and insurance, it cost them 3x the final sale value of the house to live there. It's roughly equal to living in a very expensive apartment for 50 years except people don't cut the lawn or plow snow for you.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by upuv ( 1201447 )
      Do you have any concept of how much 2.5 billion is? The average person in the United States will make a grand total of $3.4 million in just one life time. That's 735 lifetimes of money. All upfront. 1% interest on $2.5 billion is $25,000,000. This guy makes more on 1% interest in a year than the average person makes working in 7 lifetimes. That's 1%. Do you know how hard it is to only make 1% interest. Banks are going to borrow from this guy. He he were to covert this into 1 dollar bills and stack

  • And I should care, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @04:25PM (#48655305) Journal

    why?

  • Looks like he was mostly paying for location.

    • Speaking of "location", Beverley Hills 90210?! The guy's obviously a sell-out that betrayed his geek roots.

      I'd have expected him to move to Lebanon, Missouri. Or- at a push- Plymouth, Florida.
  • I guess I'm old. I'd prefer a counterstrike map of the building at work. :-)

  • Fashionable Fire Extinguishers? (Score:3)

    by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Monday December 22, 2014 @05:19PM (#48655847) Homepage

    Can someone tell me if I'm smoking crack or are there three separate fire extinguishers in this picture [1]? Why are there fire extinguishers in a bathroom?

    The whole "open space car garage" seems way outlandish, and the use of glass is pretty atrocious, but the views and decor seem pretty awesome. I wonder if the cost to upkeep and maintain such a home might exceed my mortgage costs.

    [1] http://images.prd.mris.com/ima... [mris.com]

  • What's astonishing with these rich people is that all this is insanely tasteles. Personally I'd have to invest roughly another 10 million to get all the crap removed. For instance: WTF are these fountains noisily piddling into the pool constantly and blocking the view?? Which architect had that brilliant idea? ... I'd fire the guy instantly. ...
    Rich people: Lot's of money, no taste.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bwcbwc ( 601780 )

      Most places have an off switch for the fountains. It costs an extra $million, but these people can afford it. /jk, but you know what I mean. Sometimes you want to look at the view, and other times LA is covered in smog and the fountains look nice.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The water fountains could be done with the new particle effects.

    It's a nice creative build.

  • I can just see them asking the seller "who the f--- is this Persson guy anyway?" OTOH, if they have kids of a certain age, they know.

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