You might think the developer of Minecraft, who sold his video game to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, would be living the dream.
But according to a series of tweets over the weekend, Markus "Notch" Persson is pretty unhappy with his life and his huge wealth.
Persson sold his wildly popular game a year ago. Since then he bought a 23,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills for $70 million, reportedly outbidding Beyonce and Jay Z. But even those ultra-luxury digs aren't enough to make him happy.
"The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance," he wrote at the start of series of tweets.
His depression apparently struck a cord with the twitterverse. Nearly 1,400 people retweeted that first tweet, and 2,200 favorited it.
But Persson wasn't done there. He followed with tweets about never feeling more isolated.
Part of the isolation apparently comes from having nothing to do, just sitting around waiting for friends and family.
Persson feels unappreciated by the workers at his former company, who he said he made sure were taken care of in the sale to Microsoft (MSFT).
And apparently part of his loneliness comes from not being able to date the woman he would like to, because of his wealth. She apparently wanted to date a "normal person."
Some people suggested he follow the example of Elon Musk, who took the fortune he made from selling his stake in PayPal (PYPL) to eBay (EBAY) and used it to start businesses he was passionate about. Musk, of course, launched Tesla Motors (TSLA), which is trying to combat global warming by developing an affordable electric car, and SpaceX, which is trying to create an affordable rocket to take people to Mars. But Persson rejected the idea of such visionary efforts.
The tweets brought encouragement from some others who had enjoyed sudden success, although maybe not actual billions. It also brought offers from people who said they'd be willing to hang out with Persson and be his friend. He said he appreciated all the offers and reassurances.
And when one person tweeted him about his regretting the sale to Microsoft, he responded early Monday that "selling out was the best thing I ever did."
He seemed to be taking a more positive view of things in his tweets Monday morning, saying he was having a nice day. And he mocked news reports about the tone of his melancholy tweets over the weekend.
