Minecraft arriving on steam?

[RitualBlack]

The "Top Notch" is a new hat which should be in tf2 pretty soon. It was added in the most recent patch (seen here). Minecraft wasn't supposed to come to steam, so what do you guys think?

 

 

pic of the hat:http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/6/6e/Backpack_Top_Notch.pngpic of Notch:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W8a35n5CVnU/TbVkeusXh8I/AAAAAAAAAQA/zKfcuA94N0A/s1600/notch-minecraft-wurm-mojang-Markus-persson.jpg

 

hmmm... pretty similar :biggrin:

 

And it was awarded to only the creator of Minecraft himself, apparently :tongue: .

[Beriallord]

Why would Notch need steam to market his product? Why cut them in on it? He has gotten all the popularity he needs through his own website. Most people that do any gaming have heard of Minecraft by now, he doesn't need Steam to sell the game for him. If he wanted to reach the Steam audience, he could just buy some advertising on their website which would cost less than splitting the sales of the game. Edited November 24, 2011 by Beriallord

[RitualBlack]

Ya, but why else would he have his own tf2 hat? (there also was a hat and item in the patch for the new assassins creed game to be released soon). Its not like valve would just all of a sudden say "like your game, have a hat of yourself even though we have nothing to do with each other" :tongue: . It doesn't much matter to me as I use steam, and own a copy of minecraft, but its odd that the hat is in game :confused: .

[Vagrant0]

It might be because the last few updates have literally overwhelmed his update servers. Marketing isn't the only reason.He did however make it clear from earlier that he didn't think Steamworks was right for his game since it would remove some of his control over it. hard to say how that went.

[RitualBlack]

I had no idea the last few updates overwhelmed his servers, so that would be a good reason to go through steam. I suppose that most people who want the game already own it, so at this point it may be worth while for him to take a bit of a profit cut on sales and let someone manage server tools (if applicable), transactions and update distribution for him. I previously though he was strongly against steamworks which is why I found it so odd to just appear like this all of a sudden :tongue: .

[MrTastix]

It's always a possibility but I hope it never happens.

 

As for server issues relating to the popularity of the game (both pre- and post-release)? Mojang has sold over 4 million copies of the game. The game cost about $13 USD when it was in Alpha, and everyone since then has paid at least that much for the game, essentially making Mojang over $52,000,000.

 

Even if you were to take out staff costs (for the development team, lawyers, and pretty much anyone else) that's still a lot of money. I don't see them having spent millions on advertisements (in fact, most of the popularity of Minecraft seems to have come from viral marketing).

 

Where am I going with all this? Well, with that much money (and counting), they could easily pay for their own in-house server system (and probably do).

 

[e] On a side-note, I don't see any issues with the site at present. Though, their download servers could always be separate to their websites (which wouldn't be a bad idea).

Edited November 25, 2011 by MrTastix

[Vagrant0]

Where am I going with all this? Well, with that much money (and counting), they could easily pay for their own in-house server system (and probably do).

It's probably a matter of location, cost, and security. Sure, they could buy servers in various countries, hire people to setup the stuff, try to get it secure, and anticipate demands... Or they could make a deal with Steam to do all that for them using fairly reliable services that scales with their demands automatically, and allows for various promotional tie-ins at the cost of some profit from sales and some service dependencies.

 

Really though, it doesn't bother me personally. I use Steam regularly and have many games that are connected through Steam, so all together it is a fairly good service for my needs. It also keeps my desktop clear of even more shortcuts since I can tie in some common applications into Steam to free up even more room.

[Beriallord]

It might be because the last few updates have literally overwhelmed his update servers. Marketing isn't the only reason.He did however make it clear from earlier that he didn't think Steamworks was right for his game since it would remove some of his control over it. hard to say how that went.

 

Looking at the potential profits he has made already, not sure why such a thing would be a problem for him. He certainly has the finances for server upgrades. Spend a few hundred thousand on server upgrades, problem solved. Sharing 30% of the profits with steam on a potential couple more million copies being sold = loss.

[MrTastix]

I can see a benefit in using Steam to deliver content patches for your games (Steam almost forces you to update a game each time a patch is released, which may reduce the amount of support tickets sent) but it's such a minor gain for the effort put in.

 

Personally, I'm not a fan of singleplayer games on Steam because I simply do not feel the system is good for them. Setting aside the ease of content delivery and an achievements system, I just find it better for multiplayer gaming. In this regard, Minecraft doesn't need Steam because I don't think Mojang have official multiplayer servers yet.