So why isn't Minecraft on Steam?
 

Here's the reason in a nutshell

It's odd, but with EA, I had the impression that EA is only doing this for monetary reasons. With Notch and Minecraft, it literally seems that he cares about how he's affecting the user base, splitting it up unnecessarily. Sure, you can add the game to your Steam games, but integrating it into the API naturally is an entirely different story.

While there's no big rift between Notch and Valve on this, it is rather telling that for all of the advantages Notch may have on Steam, he chooses to keep close to his customers with the system that works best for him and his company.

"But Jagos, how does this really make Notch any different from EA? Stupid Notch Defense Force leaps to defend Notch's actions here after ripping into EA over it!"

"Except they're completely different reasons, and for no ulterior motives as in the case of EA."

What is EA's ulterior motive? Cause their motive is to make money. Is their ulterior motive to summon the Dark Gods of Videogaming?

Ulterior Motive(s) for EA: Make extra money through system glitches/iron grip on their ability to fuck you over in terms of redownloading previously puchased content or downloading such product in the first place, limit digital distribution options for their products to a piece of bloatware, slams steam for having restrictive TOS while it's own platform is significantly moreso.

Ulterior Motive(s) for Minecraft: Free maps/content, unified userbase, absolute control over sales/prices for random free weekends/giveaways that can be done spur of the moment instead of preplanned and submitted for approval, shared content sources without steam verification, less system resource consumption for end users.

Based only on openly demonstrated actions already done by said companies, all verifiable.

Yet Minecraft is gonna be on Xbox360, and Microsoft is known for being harsh and restrictive with content on XBLA. Doh well.


EDIT: Not a slap against Notch not putting Minecraft on steam mind you, I seem to come off as the Super-Steam Fanboy in another thread. There is no reason for it to be on Steam, it is not on any other DD platform but his own, cause he basically gets free advertisement from word of mouth, and he has oodles of money already.

I rather slap Notch around for being one of the laziest game devs I have ever seen.

The real reason is that Minecraft would crash EVEN MORE

Don't forget promoting Piracy with bloated, shitty DRM.

I've seen people apologize to Notch for pirating Minecraft, and then buying a legit copy or two because they had so much fun they felt bad.

EA? The justifications flow aplenty.

edit: As I hear it, MC on XBLA isn't going to be exactly like MC on PC, and MS is working on it with in-house programmers.

Even though it totally serves that purpose (among many others) a lot of people do not view Steam as DRM these days because of all the stuff valve improved on it.

And pirates pirate games for any reason anyway, I see people pirate games becasue the game itself "is not up to the standards for me to actually buy it".

Everyone's a critic.

And pirates will still crack it in a few hours just because
 

It serves the purpose in a way beneficial to the consumer.

EA DRM serves the purpose in a way that is painful, overreaching, cost consuming, at times a direct hinderence and/or costly to the consumer.

It also doesn't serve its purpose any better then not having any DRM at all, which makes the shit worse. Eventually EA is going to solve the pirate problem by loading their games down so heavy there isn't anything to actually play.


TO COUNTER: PEOPLE Pirate games for any number of reasons, ranging from 'just because' to 'I refuse to actually pay money for this bullshit bloat they want to infect my PC with' and everywhere in between. There is no "Pirate" caste you can just point a finger to and just say "Yeah, all of them are pirates". Anyone could be a pirate and, with enough reason, everyone could be.

Piracy is mainly about two things. One, underserved customers? Valve works to eliminate that

Two? The more legal places to play games, the less likely you need to pirate games. I would think our Brazilian gamers here could back me up since games are really over $100 USD for games that cost $60 here.