What you need to know
Maria Angelidou-Smith, formerly Reddit’s chief product officer, will become Mojang CEO on October 19, replacing Kayleen Walters, who will lead Microsoft’s new Xbox XP division. Xbox says Angelidou-Smith will learn from Minecraft’s teams and communities; whether the leadership change affects the game’s approach to monetization remains unclear.
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Xbox has named Maria Angelidou-Smith as the new CEO of Mojang, the studio behind Minecraft, bringing in an executive with a background in social media products rather than game development.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the move in an internal memo on October 8, shared with staff and later reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Angelidou-Smith, most recently chief product officer at Reddit, starts on October 19 and will report directly to Sharma. She replaces Kayleen Walters, who has run Mojang since February 2025 and is now moving into the newly created role of president of Xbox XP, Microsoft’s division overseeing how fans experience its franchises outside of the games themselves, including TV and film adaptations, merchandise, and licensing.
In the memo, Sharma framed the hire as a deliberate shift, saying, “Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together.”
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Sharma added that Angelidou-Smith’s “first order of business” will be “to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special.”
When Sharma announced 3,200 layoffs across the Xbox games division in July, she had both Mojang and King report directly to her, describing them as studios that have effectively become platforms. Minecraft remains a massive draw, reportedly pulling in more than 300,000 first-time players on an average day, with its first new dimension in over 14 years, The Sift, due in 2027.
What priorities has Xbox outlined for Maria Angelidou-Smith as Mojang CEO?
What will Kayleen Walters oversee as president of Xbox XP?
How does Minecraft’s monetization approach compare with Roblox‘s?
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That said, hiring an executive whose career has centered on monetization and community engagement at platforms like Facebook and Reddit, rather than game development, is likely to raise some eyebrows. Minecraft has largely avoided the more aggressive monetization practices seen in competitors like Roblox, and there’s no explicit indication Microsoft intends to change that. Still, the leadership change leaves the door open, and it remains to be seen how the studio evolves under its new CEO.
