Xbox Shakes Up Mojang: New CEO from Reddit and Meta

Ever wonder who's calling the shots at Mojang, the studio behind Minecraft? Well, there's a new boss in town, and her background might surprise you.

As part of Xbox's massive restructuring—which includes 3,200 layoffs—Maria Angelidou-Smith has been named CEO of Mojang. She takes over from Kayleen Walters, who's moving to a new role as president of XP, a division focused on extending Xbox franchises beyond games, like TV shows and movies. Given the success of A Minecraft Movie and Walters' producer credit on its sequel, the move makes sense. During her time at Mojang, Minecraft gained over 250 licensees.

So who is Angelidou-Smith? She's no stranger to leading at scale, but her experience is more in social media than gaming. From 2014 to 2022, she worked at Meta, handling app monetization and later Facebook Groups, Dating, and more. After that, she spent time in other industries before becoming chief product officer at Reddit in November last year. Now, she's in charge of Minecraft.

In an internal memo shared by The Hollywood Reporter, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma explained the hire: "Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together." Sharma added that Angelidou-Smith's first priority is "to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special."

If you're feeling a bit cynical about this, you're not alone. Bringing in someone with a background in monetization and user retention could signal a shift toward more aggressive monetization tactics—something Minecraft has largely avoided, unlike Roblox. There's no official word that Microsoft plans to change things, but the possibility is there.

Minecraft is a juggernaut that has resisted many of the more concerning practices in gaming. Will this new leadership keep that spirit alive, or will we see a push toward more monetization? Only time will tell.

What do you think of the new CEO? Will you be keeping an eye on how this affects Minecraft? Let us know in the comments!