Messrs Persson and Porser wanted to concentrate on making games and so approached Mr Manneh, Mr Persson’s former boss at another Swedish start-up, to run and develop the business itself. It also has Mr Manneh as chief executive rather than its co-founders, Markus Persson – creator of Minecraft, better known as “Notch” – and Jakob Porser. Minecraft has become wildly successful on smartphones and tablets despite eschewing the dominant free-to-play – “freemium” – model of games such as Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans. It has taken no outside investment, rebuffing numerous venture capitalists and other would-be backers that include Napster founder Sean Parker. Mojang’s approach to business has also been different. On the march: 'Minecraft' has become wildly successful on smartphones and tablets Instead, players set about building just about any kind of virtual world they can imagine : creations include entire cities, sets from films, space shuttles and even a replica model of Denmark. Minecraft’s success is all the more remarkable for what it lacks: the graphics are blocky and unsophisticated, it has few characters and not much of a plot. By the end of June it had sold about 54m copies, a figure that is rising all the time – in 24 hours at the start of this week, 18,537 people handed over €20 or the equivalent for a PC copy. Since it was created five years ago, Minecraft has become a technology phenomenon and one of the biggest-selling games in history. Carl Manneh, Mojang’s chief executive, says: “This year we wanted to do something completely different and this is something most Swedes – at least from Stockholm – do when they are young and stupid.”

Minecraft profile maker