It was almost too good to be true: the creator of Minecraft funding the sequel to Psychonauts. One of the most beloved game developers going at the moment, spearheading one of the most eagerly desired sequels in recent memory as well.
Unfortunately, as Venture Beat reports, Markus "Notch” Persson is no longer interested in funding Psychonauts 2.
It all began almost a year ago when Persson tweeted to Tim Schafer, head of Double Fine and the studio that gave birth to Psychonauts: “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen."
Notch later clarified on his blog that he would go ahead with the initiative "if the numbers worked out". Turns out, they don't.
On Reddit, not too long ago, Persson explained:
"I somewhat naively thought ‘a couple of million’ was two million. I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily. Turns out they wanted 18 million dollars, haha. I don’t have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an 18 million dollar deal. Perhaps in some distant future when I’m no longer trying to make games, I could get into angel investing. I’ve made one private investment into a game so far, at $100K, and it’s frankly a lot more work than I thought."
This comes not too long after it was revealed that Persson has about a hundred million in bank due to the success of his game, from just 2012 alone, so him being all of a sudden frugal might frustrate some.
Still, one can't blame a person who wanted to being smart for his money, even if he could easily finance several sequels to Psychonauts and have plenty left over.
As for Double Fine, they're still hopeful for a Psychonauts 2, eventually. For the time being, their energies are focused upon the adventure game that was funded via Kickstarter last year.
