Microsoft says Maria Angelidou-Smith, Reddit’s departing Chief Product Officer, will become CEO of Mojang and Minecraft on October 19. Reddit says her last day is October 14. The Xbox leadership announcement also moves Kayleen Walters from Mojang to lead a new Xbox division focused on experiences beyond games.

The announcement answers who is taking over, but it does not announce a Minecraft product change. Microsoft says Angelidou-Smith’s first priority will be learning from Mojang’s teams and the communities around Minecraft. Players may still ask what her appointment means because her previous work was at social and workplace technology companies rather than a game studio.

What changes at Mojang and Xbox

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Kayleen Walters will leave her role at Mojang and become President of XP. The new division groups four areas: film and television adaptations, products such as licensing and merchandise, brand partnerships, and physical experiences such as events and theme parks. Both Walters and Angelidou-Smith will report to Sharma.

Xbox says the division is meant to organize experiences built around its franchises outside games. Walters spent 13 years at Lucasfilm and helped lead Minecraft consumer products and the Minecraft movie. The company says that consumer-products business has more than 250 licensees and is multibillion-dollar. It also calls A Minecraft Movie a top-five release worldwide. These figures help explain why the reorganization pairs a studio leadership change with a broader franchise-business role.

The new structure puts game development and franchise extensions in related but separate leadership roles. Microsoft says Walters will focus on film, products, partnerships and locations, while Angelidou-Smith will lead Mojang and Minecraft. The company has not said that XP will take over game design or that Minecraft’s development teams will be reorganized. That distinction matters because the announcement combines two appointments, but only one is the studio’s new chief executive.

Concept graphic separating game-studio leadership from film, product and event extensions under TWO DIFFERENT ROLES.
Xbox announced separate leadership roles for Mojang/Minecraft and XP's franchise extensions; this is a conceptual illustration, not an official organization chart.

Why Microsoft chose a product executive

Microsoft says it looked for someone with experience building products for large communities, leading technical teams and connecting creators, product, technology and monetization. Angelidou-Smith spent nearly a decade at Meta; Xbox says she led Facebook Groups, used by more than 1.8 billion people each month, as well as Events, Creators, Search, Profile and Monetization. She later led product and technology at Personio before becoming Reddit’s Chief Product Officer. Xbox describes her as a product and engineering leader who has built services used by billions of people.

The background explains Microsoft’s stated choice; it does not establish that Minecraft will adopt Reddit or Facebook features. Xbox described the game’s player community as something that helps shape its product and said Mojang already has a strong development team that knows its players.

Xbox describes Minecraft’s community as people who play, build, teach, watch, mod, run servers and build businesses around the game. That breadth helps explain why Microsoft emphasized community experience in its search, while leaving day-to-day creative work with the existing studio team.

What players know so far

The change is at the top of the organization. The announcements do not list new game mechanics, pricing, advertising, moderation rules, release dates or changes to Mojang’s development teams. They also do not say that the incoming CEO will personally direct game design. The next leadership step at Reddit is separate: its Chief Technology Officer, Amit Puntambekar, will lead the product team while the company searches for a permanent Chief Product Officer.

An r/Minecraft discussion drew questions about whether experience at Reddit fits a game studio and about future monetization. The post had 2,003 points in the captured snapshot. Some commenters questioned the transfer from a social platform to a game company; others said a CEO’s work is broader than designing game features. That is one community’s reaction, not a player poll or a planned product change.