My familiarity with notch is only superficial: we met in person 3 times, once before MC got big, once when it was starting to get big, and once after it was already big. Before that we used to hang out in the same game dev irc/forum circles and chatted on occasion there.

I won't pretend that makes me really know him as a person but I can say I've never got the impression he cares much about empire and/or massive ego building. I would venture a guess that by now he accepted the fact that MC was his one massive strike and that he likely won't have another one & would be content to live his life of luxury with that.