mojang minecraft notch oculus rift virtual reality
Markus “Notch” Persson (left) and Jens “Jeb” Bergensten (right) pose with Oculus Rift developer kits.

Mojang, the company that developed everyone’s favorite indie game success story, Minecraft (2011), might be the first in the world to have received the Oculus Rift developer kit. Two weeks back, Oculus Inc. shared the latest on their manufacturing progress. The first Oculus Rift pilot run had been completed which resulted in 40 developer kits. Though Oculus said they still had some changes to make after the pilot run, we speculated that some of those 40 kits would be going out to prominent developers and it seems we may have been right.

oculus rift creeper minecraft
One of gaming’s most feared foes wears the Oculus Rift

The photo above, which shows Markus “Notch” Persson and Jens “Jeb” Bergensten wearing the Oculus Rift developer kits, was reportedly tweeted earlier today by another Mojang employee and taken down shortly thereafter. ‘DullDieHard’, a quick-thinking Reddit user, appears to have saved the image before it was taken down.

Notch has formerly said that he’d definitely be making his latest game project, 0x10c, compatible with the VR headset. He’s also said that Minecraft Oculus Rift support is likely. He claims to have backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter with $10,000, which would mean 33 developer kits for his company, Mojang.

I’m doubting that all 33 kits were delivered today along with the two shown above. Rather, these are likely pilot run units which Oculus Inc. sent to Mojang as thanks of their support of the Kickstarter. It’s also possible that Notch didn’t order a full 33 kits, but rather donated some extra cash because he wanted to see the project make it through the Kickstarter.

If Mojang ended up with the Rift units from the pilot run, it’s likely that other developers will be receiving them too. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Oculus sent units to the following: Valve / Michael Abrash, Adhesive Games (Hawken), Epic Games, id  / John Carmack, Roberts Space Industries (Star Citizen), Cliff Bleszinski, and Unity.

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Update, 2/19, 9:47 AM: It looks like the reason for the removal of the photo is that Mojang accidentally broke an embargo set by Oculus. Notch acknowledged the mistake just a few hours ago:

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Andreas Aronsson

    Saw this. Got me excited. Then I remembered how slow development is on Minecraft nowadays :P or at least it feels that way to me, is anyone else than Jeb actually working on it? O.o In any case I really do wonder if they will get support done before the consumer Rift is released, hehe. I would love to try it, and it could revitalize the game for me… oh, and nice Photoshop, lololol!

    • Ben Lang

      Don’t hate on my skillz!

      • Andreas Aronsson

        Wat? Hate? :D I would never! It’s wonderful to see people who share a passion with me :D (‘shopping Rifts onto any and everything)

        • Ben Lang

          Haha, I had to warp the crap out of that photo to get it even close. Not my proudest work.

  • somenerd

    That’s actually Jakob Porser, co-founder of Mojang. Jens looks a bit more like this: http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/38917/pressbild_jeb.jpg

    And it sounds like the Kickstarter is limited to 10 units.

    • Ben Lang

      After careful beard analysis, I’m not convinced that the photo above is of Porser — I couldn’t find any photos of him with long hair and his hair looks quite a bit more dark than the person in the photo. I know that Jeb’s hair looks very orange in that photo, but there are other’s where it matches the picture a bit closer (http://media-mcw.cursecdn.com/c/cd/Jeb_.jpg)

      Though in this photo, Jeb doesn’t look as tall compared to Notch as we see in the image at the top of the article:

      http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/01/IMG_1302_2.jpg

      Looks like we’ve got a genuine mystery on our hands!

      • Ben Lang

        Adding to the evidence for Jeb as the one in the photo is that he tweeted to Notch that the Rift had arrived (https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/303439157592727553), while Porser is reportedly the one who posted the photo to twitter, which means it’s likely that he took the photo, rather than being in it. I’m happy to hear alternate hypotheses though ; )!

  • jessjr

    yeehaa this means we might get some developer videos or summat soon!!!