Speaking to PC Gamer, Markus “Notch” Persson explained not only why Minecraft was never been released on Steam, but also revealed that he has concerns about the dominance that Valve’s popular digital PC distribution service has over the market place.
Notch acknowledged that many of the problems that he had with Steam no longer exist, but the fact that Minecraft sales have skyrocketed without being on the service has resulted in some “potentially interesting strategic positions”. Persson didn’t expand on what those exact “strategic positions” might be, but he did express some concern over having the majority of the digital PC market dominated by one service.
“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.”
Notch concluded that they are still trying to decided what they want to do with the “long term position” they have created with Minecraft’s success. To that end, his company, Mojang, has decided to stay “as independent as possible” and recently cancelled an unannounced project that the studio was working on with another developer. Markus didn’t say what the unannounced project was in the interview, but he later confirmed that it was a first-person shooter that never made it past the “prototype stage”.
Source: PC Gamer, Joystiq
