I think most of them didn't actually read it and instead skimmed a few paragraphs, saw "$20,000", and rushed back to comment.
I agree with other commenters that the author is greedy and petty. He accepted €20,000 for his work, a decent amount. Then he decided that he should make way more money because the game was successful. Then he tried to take advantage of the fact that he hadn't signed a contract, even though he had obviously accepted the terms when he accepted the money. He behaved shittily by not honoring an informal contract. He tried to paint it as some huge company legal dept vs little guy thing based on the fact that it's now Microsoft and yes, work for hire contracts drafted by corporate lawyers do look evil. But he had already reneged on his handshake agreement, after spending the 20K, even before big companies or professional lawyers were involved.
Now he's trying to parlay his brush with fame into Substack subscriptions. Good luck to him.
It's kinda worth it to get access to elytra and shulker boxes but they do tend to make you a bit OP. Then again to make sensible use of elytra you need a gunpowder farm and once you're building farms like that, you're already on the way to domination...
One of the first objectives was always getting something like an Elytra, since it makes the game more pleasant imo.
https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Hang_Glider
Despite clocking hundreds upon hundreds of hours in the game, I too have yet to defeat the dragon.
To me the agreement sounds like they bought the right to use the story as the ending to the game. They didn't agree on signing over the rights to the story, and he said if he knew that would have been part of the deal he wouldn't have agreed. He was caught by surprise when he found that language in the contract. Sure he was negligent in not following up when the contract didn't match his expectations, but so was Mojang for not ensuring the contract was signed before using his work.
Did he not honor the informal contract? What did he not honor?
If anything, Carl didn't honor the informal contract, he was the one saying Minecraft would promote his work, and no a name in a tiny credit is not doing that... but I'm feeling generous as let's be honest that's a bullshit clause that corporation always try to use that line without meaning much so it's to be expected.
Julian said he was never giving all its rights away. That was part of the informal contract. That's the thing that made him not sign it.