Novelist Julian Gough, who wrote Minecraft's "Ending Poem" (opens in new tab), has written a lengthy article explaining his experience creating Minecraft's "ending" and why he released the poem's text under a Creative Commons license on Published on Substack,

while explaining the simple mechanics, Gough writes, "I've been working on this for a while." I never signed an agreement giving Mojang the rights to The End of Poetry, and Microsoft (which acquired Minecraft from Mojang) has no ownership rights."

I dedicate this poem to the public domain.

As to why, Gough gives a very simple reason: "I wrote the story for a friend. But in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend. I was hurt."

Gough tries to paint Minecraft creator Marcus "Notch" Persson, Mojang, and Microsoft as villains, but Gough admits that Persson "went off the deep end after that. This refers to the Minecraft developer and billionaire having his name removed from the game (opens in new tab) due to cruel public remarks directed at women and the LGBTQ community. 'It's sadder and more complicated than that,' Gough wrote. 'No one is evil. That's why it took me years to understand what was at stake.

Incidentally, Minecraft's original survival mode added a final boss and victory conditions in the 1.0 update. Julian Gough was asked by Persson to write the end poem (opens in new tab), a nine-minute scrolling dialogue with the player that appears before the credits. It is a warm and humanistic text, reminiscent of "Undertale" and Jon Bois' "17776" (opens in a new tab).

Gough presents the writing of the poem as a deeply personal process undertaken on behalf of a friend. The author was then overwhelmed and frustrated by the business aspects of the project. In other words, Gough approached his conversations with Persson and Mojang's managing director, Carl Manneh, not as contract negotiations, but as casual conversations between artists and friends. Gough admits this as a failure on his part, but he resented what he saw as an attempt to get an unfavorable contract signed.

The End Poem was released without Gough's contract being finalized, and according to the artist, he was paid a flat 20,000 euros without signing a final contract.

What hurt Gough was his treatment on the eve of Microsoft's acquisition of Minecraft in 2014, when he not only pressured Persson and Manneh to sign a non-disclosure agreement to clean house before the $2.5 billion acquisition was finalized, but also to po claims that they also pressured him to sign the original agreement that he waive his rights to and receive no further compensation for his work.

Importantly, Gough is not demanding more money at this late date in 2022, but rather what he deems an impersonal process, an agreement favorable to Gough who says he is struggling to make rent today while someone he considers a friend gets over a billion dollars. It's about venting his frustration that he hasn't seen more daylight.

"I gave him the ending he wanted but could not write. And his reward for me was to try to trick me into signing a contract I didn't remember agreeing to," Gough wrote, "and now he's mad at me. Ugh. I felt lousy."

Gough never signed that contract.

It is unclear what the legal consequences would be, and Gough is quick to assert that he does not want a legal battle with Microsoft. Gough writes that he wants to "liberate" the poem, and by extension himself: "I hereby release the poem from the corporate economy where it has been illegally detained since 2014 and officially place it in the gift economy.

Gough seems to have no problem with the poem's continued use in Minecraft. Rather, this was a cathartic act related to a work of art that earned Gough's former friend $1.8 billion, to which Gough contributed at least partially to less than one-tenth of that income. After the text of the substack post, Gough published the original text of "The End Poem" and the Creative Commons license that puts it in the public domain.

Neither Julian Gough nor Microsoft responded to requests for comment in time for publication.

There was nothing illegal or non-standard about Persson or Manneh's treatment of Gough, which seems to be part of the problem he is promoting: the inherent conflict between the creative economy and creativity.

Gough's stories include the ousted creators of Disco Elysium pursuing legal action (open in new tab) against the current owners of the studio, composer Mick Gordon being treated unfairly by id Software management in the production of the Doom Eternal soundtrack, and Bayonetta actress Helena Taylor manipulates public opinion (open new tab) in a dispute with Platinum Games, echoing the recent clash between the artistic and economic aspects of game production. .