The writer behind 'The End Poem' on 'Minecraft' has revealed Microsoft or Mojang never owned it.
Julian Gough has claimed he was pressured to sign over the rights to the poem - but he declined - and now he's made it free for all to play.
It's been released into the public domain, under CC0 1.0 Universal, since December.
He tweeted: “I was put under a lot of pressure to sign [the contract]. But I never signed it. So Microsoft has never owned the ending to Minecraft. I own it. And from today on, I’m letting anybody play with it."
The English-Irish musician - who was the singer for the group Toasted Heretic - called out the "standard capitalist game" studios play.
Gough added: “I don’t want anyone to be mean to [Mojang co-founders Markus Persson or Carl Manneh] or even Microsoft. They just played the standard capitalist game, as they are free to do. But I am an artist, and I am free to disagree with how they play that game. I didn’t like the way they played it, and so I didn’t sign the contract. And now, after a lot of thought, I have transferred those words to the gift economy.”
Since his comments on the micro-blogging site, Gough has been sent "PayPal donations from Microsoft employees.”
And he said he's not the only one who has been "screwed over" by gaming giants.
He told Kotaku: “And I’ve had some eye-opening DMs from writers, and other creatives, who feel they were screwed over by big games companies, but who are afraid to say anything in public, because they worry they will be quietly blacklisted. There’s a lot of hurt out there."
