Microsoft has announced this morning that it will be acquiring Mojang, the game studio behind Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. The wildly popular game is available on many different devices and is one of the most popular games of all time.

It's an interesting purchase for Microsoft, but the IP is highly valuable and the company will likely use the game to leverage many of its platforms.

The deal is not without its irony as Notch, the founder and creator of Minecraft, is not a fan of Windows 8. He has spoken out against the platform and was against certifying his game to run on that version of Windows.

Got an email from microsoft, wanting to help "certify" minecraft for win 8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform. — Markus Persson (@notch) September 27, 2012

Clearly his tune has changed as he has sold his company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. The press release says that the founders will move on to start new projects, so it looks like Notch will not become a Microsoft employee.

For those who have never played Minecraft, think of it as a digital version of Lego. The game, which is played in an 8-bit environment, allows the players to create content using various different blocks and strategies. In short, it allows players to build in similar ways that programmers create apps. It could be that Microsoft wants to tap into the up-and-coming engineers and developers of the world and introduce them to the Microsoft world at an early age.

Microsoft says that they will keep the game open platform too and will not limit the game to Windows-only products.

Source: Microsoft