14 DAY TRIAL // Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of hit independent game Minecraft, believes that the growing influence of Valve’s Steam service on the digital distribution segment of the market is worrying, and he hopes that other independent developers start selling their titles on their own.
Steam is the most popular digital distribution service on the PC and Mac platforms and many games are released on it every single day. Its owner, Valve, is even trying to crowdsource the approval process for these titles through the upcoming Steam Greenlight service.
This huge popularity isn’t that great, however, as Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus Persson has told PC Gamer that it could lead to a dangerous monopoly.
"Minecraft has kept growing very fast (and is selling faster than ever), which combined with us not being on Steam leads to some potentially interesting strategic positions. I'm not quite sure what those are, but we're a bit wary to submit Minecraft to Steam without knowing more about what we want to do," he said.
While Persson approves of Steam and its strategies, its ubiquity on the PC and Mac platforms could have some dangerous side effects.
"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."
Persson went on the record earlier this year when he praised Electronic Arts’ Origin digital distribution service for managing to compete against Steam.
While Minecraft managed to reach millions of units sold without being on Steam, this performance will be hard to reach by other independent games on the PC.