Mojang StudiosCopied

On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's 11th birthday, Mojang announced that it was now Mojang Studios. The company's post on minecraft.net explained that the developer had grown into several teams working on multiple games across more than one location, and that the new name and identity were meant to reflect that.

Video Games Chronicle reported the details. The new logo is modular, built from small pieces the company calls Mojangs, playing on the fact that the name roughly means gadget in Swedish. The previous mark, which combined a dragon, an apple, a candle and a sewing machine, was retired. Both sources quote Thomas Wiborgh, who said play is at the heart of Mojang Studios, the blocky backbone of its games and even entangled in its name.

The reasoning is straightforward. Mojang was no longer just the Minecraft company, even if most people still think of it that way, and a studio that wants to make several games needs an identity that is not shaped by one.

The gadget idea is the clever part. It gives the logo a reason to vary, it nods to the studio's tinkering culture and it ties the visual system back to the meaning of the name. Few rebrands manage to make the etymology do actual work.

The announcement on minecraft.net was written in the house voice. It asked whether you would still wear the outfit that perfectly defined your style in 2009, joked about eating a lot of cake, and explained that the company had grown from humble beginnings in Stockholm into a multi-title, multi-location business, with Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons followed by plans for a feature film, a live show and new games. Several studios around the world, it said, inspired the name in a stroke of genius. Self-mockery suits a company whose biggest asset is a game about blocks, and it makes a modest rename feel like an event.

The risk with modular logos is that they become a toolkit nobody uses consistently. Here the building blocks feel close enough to the blocky world of Minecraft that the variations still read as one studio, which is the whole point.