A recent post and poll on X from Markus "Notch" Persson, the solo developer behind Minecraft tests the waters for a "spiritual successor" to the voxel-powered sandbox game that everyone digs so much. He sold the original game to Microsoft in 2014 for a reported USD$2.5 billion, and while he's dabbled in game jams since, this is the first indication he's ready to dive into a bigger project. The poll asks the "serious question" of whether fans want him to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft or the "traditional roguelike" he's planning. Oddly he stated he's already "passionately working on" the roguelike, but says "sure I'd take that cash" when discussing knocking off his own creation. That's odd for someone with FU money, but in this post he says "I intend for the money to the [sic] spent for good," so presumably he's not adding a Scrooge McDuck vault to his 23,000 square foot Beverly Hills Mansion. In another post he does say he'd be willing to partner with IP-holder Microsoft for a smaller share if they were interested in an authorized sequel, "just to make it clear I'm not doing it with ill intent." That doesn't seem likely, as Notch's outspoken online commentary on race, gender, and sexuality caused Microsoft to exclude him from the game's 10th anniversary celebration, even before he refers to its stewardship of the game "shittification." After seeing the results of his poll, Notch "basically announced Minecraft 2":

I basically announced minecraft 2.

I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that's super similar to the first one, and I'm loving working on games again.

I don't super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know I'm making one, so I figured I'd absolutely be willing to give it an honest shot in the form of a spiritual successor to minecraft and put up a poll about it.

My intentions are to be clear and honest about it, saying that spiritual successors are usually kind of... you know... washed up. Tragic. The things I'm fearing my next game is going to be anyway and try to push myself to avoid. So why not do the thing that people DO want and are willing to give me, somehow, even MORE cash for.

I intend for the money to the spent for good, but my god have I learned I fail a lot. Winning is failing until you make yourself succeed.

Oh and I also very much value being a man of my word, so I also intend to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the microsoft shittification about.
And I respect them for doing that. It's their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me.