After the spectacular success of the Steam Summer Sale, I wondered again why Minecraft still isn't on there. Looking back at developer Markus Persson's blog post on the subject a year ago, it seemed like the things they couldn't previously do on Steam are now possible. So I asked him: that?
It's a candid and interesting reply, full of intriguing hints, so I'll quote it in full to avoid taking anything out of context:
As much as I love Steam, I do somewhat worry about the PC as a gaming platform becoming owned by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold. I'm hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games. Perhaps there's something we could do to help out there? I don't know. If nothing else, we might work as an inspiration for people to self-publish.
It's probably obvious from this reply, but we're trying to figure out what we want to do long term with the position we have now. We only recently decided to stay as independent as possible and cancelled an unannounced project that we were doing in collaboration with someone else. It's going to be an interesting future.
That project is probably the one codenamed Rex Kwon Do, which we know nothing about – Notch tweeted recently to say they'd cancelled it to focus on projects they wholly own.
He's not kidding about Minecraft still selling fast. In the last 24 hours, Minecraft sold another 11,660 copies at $27.95, a daily revenue of $314,237. In other words, it's still taking almost a million dollars every three days.
From a gamer's perspective, does Steam's dominance worry you at all? Could Mojang help, and how?
beta-biome pic <3
"As much as I love Steam, I do somewhat worry about the PC as a gaming platform becoming owned by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold"
Steam is a great plataform, developers trust it, has dedicated servers, offers, great games, friend system with chats and loads of **** and also gives an opportinity to know new games... I want to know what's wrong with Steam, since a large percent of the money of the sales go to their respective developers...
I agree.
Basically, what Notch is saying is that they don't have a solid plan for minecraft and making a move to Steam, beneficial in many ways though it may be, would eliminate other options in the future that they don't want to rule out quite yet.
Steam is the best method of exposure, and publishing a game can have. Its a solid, well used platform, and an extremely (by industry standards) high percentage of revenue goes directly to the developer. They don't have to host their own content, they barely have to advertise, they don't have to pay for the bandwidth.
Notch sounds like hes talking from a point of greed. You could sum it all to "we don't even need steam, thats how much money we make."
And them not wanting to use steam because they make good money is bad? By now, over 50% of the world has to know about minecraft. they don't need steam.
Personally, I think its arrogant. But I didn't ever say anything was universally "bad" or "good". I think honesty to the "community" is important, most of what I read was just fluff and a pretty way of saying the obvious underlying thought. It was clear they wanted to keep their options open without committing outwardly to anything.
I think steam has a lot of features that could expand minecraft as a whole. Direct server connection immediately comes to mind. Achievements have potential. Etc. Most of this just renders the article as a whole pointless.
There's some value in staying off of steam, however. Something I've seen as a recurring problem with steam is that it splinters the community. A large sum of people who buy the game through steam may never even know that there is a place to go to talk about minecraft. Furthermore, they have a certain disconnect on relevant points of interest.
I'm like that with terraria, I don't know a damn thing going on in the community because I never had a vested interest when I bought it on steam, now everything I know about it is old news.
Suddenly the Steam forums become those peoples' only outlet and you get other users who've been to the curse network forum lording it over steam users and calling them idiots for not going there for answers to their questions first.
The whole thing becomes a mess, but it's sort of a non-issue seeing as so many games do this already and the resulting communities, although somewhat insular, adapt.
The steam workshop is just a microcosm of the exact same issue.
"I'm hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games."
"If nothing else, we might work as an inspiration for people to self-publish."
I support this!
i can definitely see where notch is coming from, but some games, good or bad, just dont make it out to many ears or eyes if they keep it as their own instead of say putting it to steam. some games dont get the advertising they deserve (most indie games) and vice versa. regardless i agree with notch for the most part.
Why not Desura?
It's not as popular as Steam, and making a jump to Desu wouldn't net them as much revenue! o:
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Rex Kwon Do reminds me of my nick for some reason...
Well i would be cool if it was on steam but why should he do that ? he proves he didn't need it, as the post said the game is still getting purchased likaboss !
The problem of steam is not about money but about liberty of movement: when you work with steam, you stay with steam (we saw that with crysis 2 and origin).
Besides, not all indies can work alone.
The only fear I have of minecraft going on steam is that my friends will know how much of it I play :/
Steam could do so many things wrong, but valve does a good job with their platform. A single entity controlling it is ok if it is a good entity
TLDR;
Notch doesn't want to share his vacation money, since he got a free ride to fame from the ******* community.