”We wouldn’t be able to, say, sell capes or have a map market place on minecraft.net that works with Steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy,” Persson explained, ”It would effectively split the Minecraft community into two parts, where only some of the players can access all of the weird content we want to add to the game.”
It seems that Valve’s requirement that updates be handled via Steam rather than in-program, which is the reason Electronic Arts pulled some of its major games off Steam, is the barrier for Persson. “We are talking to Valve about this, but I definitely understand their reasons for wanting to control their platform. There’s a certain inherent incompatibility between what we want to do and what they want to do,” the developer revealed.
Persson likes Steam - as a customer - stating it’s the “best digital distribution platform” he’s ever seen and he’s spent “incredible amounts of money on it.”
But as a publisher? He wants more control.
Minecraft will be released on November 11, 2011.
