Nenagh author's Minecraft link

Julian Gough frees story rights to hit video game

Award-winning Nenagh author Julian Gough made international headlines again last week after he released the rights to a story he wrote for one of the world's most popular video games.

Julian penned the only narrative passage in multi-million-selling game ‘Minecraft’. He wrote ‘The End Poem’ 11 years ago but never signed a contract to hand over the rights to his work.

Now Julian has decided to release his work into the public domain for free. In a lengthy post on his ‘The Egg and the Rock’ website, the Nenagh writer explains in detail a falling out he had with previous friends and creators of the game, resulting in his decision to make the story free for anyone to reuse in any format. He has thereby entered his work into the “gift economy” and took out a Creative Commons licence for it.

“The End Poem is now covered by a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication,” Julian wrote.

“That means you can all now use it. It’s free to play with, like Shakespeare, and the Bible. And a lot of less glamorous books.

“The End Poem is finally free, as I suspect the universe always intended it to be. Rather than sue the company or fight with my old friend, who founded the company, I am dedicating the poem to the public domain.

“Anyone can now play with it. Have fun.”

Son of Dick and Betty Gough, Knockalton, Julian went to school in Ardcroney and St Joseph’s CBS, Nenagh.

He was the frontman with local rock band Cryptic Orchid in the 1980s. He moved to Galway for third level education and fronted the more well-known Toasted Heretic band.

Among Julian's many accolades for fiction writing is the British National Short Story Award (2007). His Irish Book Awards shortlisted 'Rabbit and Bear' series for children has been translated into 30 languages. Now based in Berlin, he still regularly returns to Nenagh and takes part in local literary events.

Microsoft purchased the rights to the ‘Minecraft’ game for some €2.5 billion eight years ago. But Julian refused to sign over rights to his writing. On his web post last week, he said the game's creators "just played the standard capitalist game, as they are free to do. But I am an artist, and I am free to disagree with how they play that game.

“I didn’t like the way they played it, and so I didn’t sign the contract. And now, after a lot of thought, I have transferred those words to the gift economy.”