It has been nearly a year since the software giant Microsoft paid $2.5 billion to acquire Mojang AB, the Swedish company that created the worldwide gaming sensation Minecraft.
Minecraft Billionaire Markus Persson Hates Being a Billionaire
A warning to would-be billionaires: It’s lonely at the top.
The deal made Markus Persson — best known by his in-Minecraft name Notch — a billionaire, with a personal net worth of about $1.3 billion, according to Forbes.
And he doesn’t seem to like it one bit.
In a series of melancholy tweets early this morning, Persson complained about how his life has become lonely and kind of empty since he closed the deal to sell his company. In a bit of a warning to all those striving to become billionaires like him, he says he’s “never felt more isolated” than while hanging out in Ibiza with friends and partying with famous people.
Hard to feel sorry for him? Maybe. He wouldn’t be the first billionaire to wonder out loud about the philosophical implications of sudden wealth and how it can strain old friendships and make romantic relationships more complicated. But it’s also not hard to imagine how longtime friends might be put off by other obvious changes.
Example: Last year Persson outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for a Beverly Hills megamansion. As Curbed reported at the time, Persson paid $70 million, or the highest price ever paid for a house in Beverly Hills. Apparently, it’s not exactly a house but an “overwhelming sensory experience,” as the listing read, outfitted with insane amenities like M&M towers, vodka and tequila bars, a movie theater and 15 bathrooms, each equipped, we’re told, with Toto Neorest toilets that cost $5,600 each.
Here are Persson’s tweets of woe anyway:
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637562496056995840
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563038258868224
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563226755067904
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563481139638272
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563733124980736
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637565210266570752
https://twitter.com/notch/status/637569407208849408
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
