Yes, but I think the point the parent comment was making is that the value was created by one person. He didn’t HAVE to hire those people and it still would have eventually made a billion dollars.

This isn’t to say that the other people who worked on Minecraft provided no value, they definitely accelerated the game’s success.

I do not think you can assume the guaranteed success of Minecraft. Sure, it bottled lightning, but to go from an indie hit to a Microsoft buyout has a lot of work in between.

Early development of Minecraft had a recurring joke about how Notch did not want to work too hard. If development had stumbled because it was still all on one guy, some mechanically identical competitor game could have grown into the cultural zeitgeist.