The latest Minecraft update makes a few changes to the decade-old phenomenon, none more notable than the fact the game’s splash screens have removed all mention of Minecraft’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson.
Previously, the game’s splash screens—the yellow text you see when Minecraft boots up—would display random messages, and some of them referenced Persson with stuff like “Made by Notch!” and “The Work Of Notch!”. As of the 19w13a snapshot released earlier today, those are all gone now.
We’ve reached out for official comment on the reason Persson’s name is now missing from the screens. As possible background, though, Minecraft is a game played by millions of kids all over the world, and is now owned by Microsoft. Meanwhile Notch has become a conspiracy theorist whose increasingly erratic twitter behaviour has led to a situation best described as:
Note that while his name has been removed from splash screens, Persson is still listed as the game’s creator in Minecraft’s credits.