Notch wanted a freelance writer to write a funky written piece for after the player defeats the ender dragon. He finds one and they agree on a price via email. Notch likes the result, integrated the writing into the game and pays the writer the agreed-upon amount.

During due diligence of the MS purchase, the lawyers want the contract formalized. The freelancer erratically responds, writing self-contradictory emails to various people in the company.

Company lawyers don’t want to deal with the nonsense and decide they can win a legal challenge if it ever comes to that, based on the initial agreements between notch and the freelance writer.

The game releases and gets more popular. One day the freelancer writes a substack article. The end.

I'm gonna guess it's something like: this guy is using a "friendship" narrative because it's his best argument, but it's not the reality. He accepted, via email, a deal for what Mojang thought was a nice sum for writing an ending to their game.

Later he wouldn't sign the contract stating what he accepted in email.

Markus was seemingly very generous to everyone he felt was important to the success of Mojang. I sincerely doubt he didn't consider this guy. Markus is not so selfish that he wouldn't make the guy a millionaire if he felt his contribution was important. Or shout out his stuff.

The guy thought he was cozying up with the big boys, but he was a fiverr hire.