Microsoft is bringing Mojang and King closer to the core of the tech giant’s gaming division.
Amid a wave of layoffs today, July 6, Microsoft has announced that it is bringing Mojang and King directly under the Xbox umbrella, streamlining Microsoft’s internal gaming structure.
“Mojang and King will now report directly to me,” wrote Xbox chief executive officer Asha Sharma in an announcement on X. “These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players.”
Since Microsoft acquired Mojang — the Swedish game studio behind Minecraft — in 2014, Minecraft has grown to become one of the most popular games in the world, with Microsoft crediting the game as a major driver of Xbox business growth during its Q3 2025 earnings call. Candy Crush developer King, which Microsoft acquired as part of its purchase of Activision Blizzard in 2023, represents roughly one-third of the game company’s operating income, and is Microsoft’s primary foothold within the mobile gaming economy.
Microsoft’s decision to bring Mojang and King officially into the Xbox organization reflects these studios’ evolution into full-fledged gaming platforms — and their growing importance within Microsoft’s gaming strategy. In her announcement, Sharma flagged that the move would “bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to Xbox.” As part of the changes announced today, Xbox has also elevated Helen Chiang, who has served as the corporate vice president for the Minecraft franchise since 2020 and and the studio head at Mojang since 2018, to the role of chief operating officer.
The integration of Mojang into the Xbox fold reflects a shift in strategy for the company following its May 2026 decision to appoint the veteran gaming industry analyst and investor Matthew Ball as Xbox’s new chief strategy officer. In 2021, Ball wrote a blog post highlighting that investors at the time believed Minecraft was on par with Microsoft’s entire Xbox division in value. Ball is also known for ringing an industry bell about the potential explosive growth of Roblox in a 2024 essay.
Creators in the Minecraft ecosystem have long wanted to be able to sign more independent brand partnerships related to their content on the platform, but Mojang’s end-user license agreement prevents the majority of third-party creator brand partnerships. Microsoft’s move to bring Mojang and Minecraft into Xbox’s broader media business could portend a thaw in these policies, according to some industry observers.
“Matthew Ball’s greatest feat as an analyst was identifying Roblox’s potential; at Xbox, it will be nurturing Minecraft’s,” said user-generated content expert and UGCon organizer Ben Sarraille in an interview with GamesBeat. “UGC gaming is the fastest growing segment of the industry, and there are only four true incumbents: Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto. How can Xbox reach its potential without maximizing its greatest asset, and building the creator platform the next generation of players crave?”
In her announcement today, Sharma said that Xbox is “not healthy” as a business, citing operating margins that she said were up to 10 times lower than “comparable platform and publishing businesses. The decision to move Mojang and King to the Xbox organization is part of a broader “reset” to Xbox’s content portfolio, with Microsoft reducing its number of in-house studios and laying off 1,600 staffers today, with plans to cut 3,200 employees by the end of the 2027 financial year. As a whole, Microsoft is eliminating about 4,800 roles today across both gaming and other divisions, representing roughly 2.1 percent of the company’s global workforce.
“It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested,” Sharma wrote. “As we reset Xbox, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision.”