Notch worries PC gaming is owned by Steam

The man behind indie sensation Minecraft has explained why his game is not on Steam, and expressed his concerns that the service is dominating the PC.

This is not the first time Notch has said no to Steam, but a year after his blog post on the subject, some of his reasons are no longer applicable.

"It seems like pretty much all the things we wanted to do are possible on Steam now, which is brilliant!" Notch told PC Gamer.

"Since I made that blog post, Minecraft has kept growing very fast (and it 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."

Aside from the business angle, Notch has other, more philosophical reservations when it comes to the PC’s leading digital distribution platform.

"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," he said.

"I’m hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games."

Notch has become the face of independent games, and it comes as no surprise that he is interested in helping others take the same route as Mincraft in its ascent to fame.

The importance of maintaining Mojang’s freedom is paramount to Notch, and the developer says that this has been the cause of some recent changes, and will be a determining factor as the studio procedes forward.

"We’re trying to figure out what we want to do long term with the position we have now. We only recently decided to stay as independent as possible and cancelled an unannounced project that we were doing in collaboration with someone else. It’s going to be an interesting future."