Notch is Funding Age of Wonders III

Eurogamer is reporting that Triumph Studios' mysterious big partner for Age of Wonders III turned out to be Notch, who was apparently contacted by the developers thanks to a Minecraft loading screen. The gaming industry can be a rather interesting place:
"We noticed Minecraft's random title-screen blurb mentioned Age of Wonders," he told me, "so I thought what the heck and I sent Notch an email.

"We had a demo for Age of Wonders 3 and talked to various parties including traditional publishers. There was certainly interest but the prospect of having Notch help fund was a dream come true, as he's a fan of the game and didn't insist on owning it like many of the publishers do these days when they fund development.

"It certainly didn't happen overnight," he added, "and he kept a healthy business sense towards the project. His biggest concern was that it would cost him a lot of time, so it helped that we made this sort of game before and were at an advanced stage of development.

"Notch is pretty much hands off. He's a super busy man, now even more so then when we approached him."