Markus Alexej Persson is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known for creating Minecraft, which became the best-selling video game in history.

After the success of Minecraft, Markus said there was no connection between him and the game's fans and that he did not want to be responsible for the company's ever-growing operation.

He sold Mojang, the company responsible for the game, for approximately 2.5 billion dollars in 2014. This transaction made him one of the most successful game developers in the world.

Since 2016, he has been involved in controversies on Twitter where he wrote about his beliefs that trans women are not women, that the QAnon conspiracy theory is "legitimate" and that those who criticize a heterosexual pride day "deserve to be shot", among others.

In 2019, Persson's tweets were censored by Microsoft, which subsequently removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (deleting one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration.