Minecon was supposed to celebrate the launch of the finished version of Minecraft, but that's been overshadowed by disagreements between Minecraft's creator, Notch and the Yogscast team.
A couple of days ago Notch tweeted his disappointment at the alleged behaviour of the video podcasters, whose Minecraft-centric videos attract millions of international viewers every day. "Celebrity or not, you don't f-bomb kids," he said, adding that “Yogscast repeatedly insulted people, talked behind their backs, refused to cooperate, and acted like total spoiled divas nonstop.”
The Yogscast team have now denied this in a response on Reddit , saying "the quotes and actions that Notch attributed to us were not said by us or published anywhere by us."
"We are very disappointed by these tweets from someone we admire and respect. We can understand that it was the morning after the deadmau5 party and Notch was very tired, but we are still fairly upset," reads the statement, echoing their comments in the brief video response on Youtube.
"Regarding dropping f-bombs at the show - we apologise for this," the statement continues. "There were ample opportunities at the rehearsal for Mojang to inform us of problems, such as being careful about swearing, which is pretty common in our youtube videos."
Thankfully the dust seems to be settling on this brief fall out. Notch has since responded on Twitter, saying "it's likely the entire Yogscast scenario is just stress related misunderstanding. I apologize for bringing it online before talking to them." It looks as though everything's going to be fine. We suggest a cup of tea and a game of Quake 3 to smooth things over.
Impressions of the event itself have been mixed. The Yogscast statement took a bit of time to say that Minecon's "organisation was pretty bad" leading to "long and confused lines." Others have a more positive take. Frozen Synapse creators, Mode 7 blogged about their Minecon experience and highlighted the importance of Minecon as a huge event run by an indie company.
"It is a rare and precious thing that a big, successful company would invite essentially competing products to show off at its fan convention. I think that Mojang have a lot of foresight commercially by doing this, and it also sends a signal that they are still part of the indie games community," say Mode 7.
"It was amazing to be at the launch of an indie game in an expensive club with an A-list musician topping the bill. I never in a million years thought that indie games would become cool in a mainstream way – for better or worse, that is what is happening."
The final 1.0 update to Minecraft added a new zone called The End and a final boss fight, but it's certainly not the end for Minecraft. Notch is set to continue updating the game and guys like team Yogscast will continue to make videos as Minecraft continues its remarkable rise.
