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Deleted member 102362
Unconfirmed Member
That's a client-side decision, though. Valve doesn't actively control that.
Unless the Mikes Abrash and Ambinder figure out mind control.
Thanks for the clarification.
Notch speaks again about Minecraft not being on Steam
- Thread starter Omikaru
- Start date
Thanks for the clarification.
Delusibeta
Banned
GOG sells it. Fairly sure Desura does as well.
Out of curiosity, what is Garry Newman's relationship to Valve? Is he an actual employee or no? (I've seen conflicting info)
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Deleted member 102362
Unconfirmed Member
He owns and operates Facepunch Studios. He does not work for Valve.
Please stop. Minecraft.net is not a digital distribution store dedicated to sell all sorts of games (1st and/or 3rd party), it does not compete with any DD store whatsoever, therefore you can't speak about minecraft.net threatening other DD stores with monopoly policies.
He is operating a monopoly on his game. 100% of Minecraft sold on PC is sold on Mojang's website. It is a highly regarded, very popular game that as far as I know has never had a single sale because there's no reason to do it on his website since they only sell one game.
If it were available on a proper storefront, a sale on Minecraft would drive a lot of traffic to that site and thus it does have an influence on the market by being absent. For example, Amazon could use a Minecraft sale to drive traffic and possibly loyal buyers to their site.
That's what sales are for.
Everyone has the right to sell their product where and how they choose. Doing so is not a monopolistic practice.
All the Steam talk aside I'm amazed by this:
I'm going ahead and assume he is talking about the PC version which the article covers and not including the iOS/Android/XBLA version. The game officially released 1.0 in November 2011 so about 9 months ago, and it's selling faster than ever? how in the world is this possible.
I'm going ahead and assume he is talking about the PC version which the article covers and not including the iOS/Android/XBLA version. The game officially released 1.0 in November 2011 so about 9 months ago, and it's selling faster than ever? how in the world is this possible.
It might be that Mojang has the resources to run its own distribution/financial backend, but as Brad "put-the-sandwich-down" Wardell alluded to previously, other developers agree to that 30%-70% split to avoid having to deal with any of that backend-related work (including bandwidth costs), and be able to focus all of their resources solely on what they're interested in - game development.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Being better at everything than everyone else probably fuels that fanatism.
Yes, it is. He has the right to sell it where he wants but selling it in only that one place keeps the price artificially high and thus harms the consumer. Now, I don't think a court would rule against him if it ever went to court but it's still a monopoly of a fairly benign nature.
Lol what's happening in this thread. Now people aren't supposed to sell their own products anymore?
Now would be a good time to stop.
The Wizard
Member
So he wants to make more money offering consumers a worse user experience. Okay.
IrishNinja
Member
The price isn't "artifically high." The price is the price because that is the price that has been asked, and people are apparently willing enough to pay it that the creator is happy with sales.
It's simple supply and demand, and not even in the same ballpark (or even sport) as a monopoly.
Sure, but the developer (publisher) dictates the price of the game, not the store - the store may merely suggest it. And Mojang has a strict policy of not lowering the price, so it wouldn't happen even if it was available elsewhere.
And they don't have a monopoly, they have an exclusivity. On their own product, not because they forced a 3rd party developer to sign an exclusive contract because they have a monopoly in the video game digital distribution space.
diffusionx
Gold Member
No. This is completely wrong. I'll refer to Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
Not a single word of that can apply to Minecraft. Minecraft competes with all other games. Including many Minecraft clones.
Let's say, tomorrow, Mojang decides they want to triple the price of Minecraft. What will happen? Less people will buy it. They will buy other games.
Mojang has some market power (read the Wiki), but that's because they produced a very fun and popular videogame. Steam has market power too. That market power does give Mojang some leeway in determining the price and means by which people can acquire the game. But there's nothing wrong with that, and is inevitable in a creative industry (as opposed to selling oil or matchsticks or something).
Look, people are going to be more lenient on this because it's a luxury product but how do you decide where supply and demand meet if only one person sells it and it's always the same price? Who's to say there wouldn't be significantly more demand at a lower pirce? If it's only sold in one place, the market isn't being tested for supply and demand.
People are paying the price because that's the price. End of story. This can't be subjected to the rules of supply and demand if there's no competing supply.
Subliminal
Member
Ok, I think we hit the crazy page here.
(Note: I'm not an economics student or anything)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is when one entity has control over a market or a product, When talking about the Direct Download PC games market. Most people exclusively use Steam, alot of games suffer abysmal sales if they're not on steam and Valve can basically throw money around to squash competition, Notch didn't say that they were a monopoly, just that they are in a position where monopolistic practises would lead to one.
When someone sells their own product that's not a monopoly, People don't say that Nike has a monopoly over Nike trainers.
Also, since when has the Minecraft price been kept artificially high? I suspect a large ammount of people here bought it at the super cheap beta price..
(Note: I'm not an economics student or anything)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is when one entity has control over a market or a product, When talking about the Direct Download PC games market. Most people exclusively use Steam, alot of games suffer abysmal sales if they're not on steam and Valve can basically throw money around to squash competition, Notch didn't say that they were a monopoly, just that they are in a position where monopolistic practises would lead to one.
When someone sells their own product that's not a monopoly, People don't say that Nike has a monopoly over Nike trainers.
Also, since when has the Minecraft price been kept artificially high? I suspect a large ammount of people here bought it at the super cheap beta price..
ZombieSupaStar
Member
will only buy if comes with exclusive tf2 hat...
thats what I use desura for. I wonder if desura is what prompted valve for their community indie game voting system they are gonna do?
My word. That's just not true at all. Most people don't use Steam exclusively, they go where the sales are or just buy games in general.
Also when has Valve "thrown money around to squash the competition and more importantly how exactly would they do that?
You guys convinced me though. Mojang is not a monopoly and neither is Valve so Notch can just shut the hell up on that count.
It is whirlwind of zealousness and wiking!!!
Minecraft doesn't maintain the same price because he acting monopolistic. He maintains the same price because it sells well.
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Deleted member 102362
Unconfirmed Member
We're playing a message board version of Monopoly or something.
I think I'm getting dizzy.
now that's just fucking hilarious
besides a bunch of other reasons, you should rally look at how steam works for countries outside of yours against what Origin does
there's a whole world out there you know
the ultimate "lol EA" comes after Origin was released. It's the other way around man.
Interfectum
Member
Seems every Valve thread devolves into "LOL SO Valve isn't perfect, their fans are crazy" bullshit.
CosmicQueso
Member
Sooooooo... to sum up... Notch doesn't want to go on Steam cuz they charge 30% and he's making bank doing it this way and he likes things just the way they are.
And we're all cool and acknowledge he has the right to make that choice, riiiiiiiight?
And we're all cool and acknowledge he has the right to make that choice, riiiiiiiight?
If he weren't also calling them a monopoly to try to justify it, sure.
IrishNinja
Member
im not sure how you arrive at the first bolded bit, but can you cite an example of the 2nd one at all?
I'm the complete opposite. Well, not complete. But other than a few rare exceptions, I will still wait to buy games I am very excited about until they significantly drop in price. Why pay more? I can be patient, the game is only going to get better over the next year or two while I wait, and there are plenty of games to play in the meantime. The obvious exception is multiplayer centric games, which do get worse with time.
I've edited to say not complete because I have bought a few games near release day just out of excitement - Skyrim and Witcher 2 being recent examples. But both of those I got significant price cuts on, around 40%. Even those games I would never have purchased anywhere near full price.
I guess I can't be the majority though because Steam and its partners seem convinced the race to the bottom is a good thing, which I am thrilled about.
Woo-Fu
Banned
It was the only way to reach the 360 market. Steam isn't even close to the only way to reach the PC market.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
That's the thing here, looking for lightning to strike twice with the word of mouth marketing that Minecraft had to get it going with their next game. He might be changing his tune when he puts his next game up on steam and it gets more sales because of it.
I think he's saying that it's a possibility nut I don't see how they'd even go about doing that. I guess they could hypothetically start offering to sell games with 100% of profits going to the devs if they had something amazing to offer but there are so many games available on PC in any genre that I can't see how that'd be enough to beneficial to them unless they did it in such a wide reaching way that it would ironically be detrimental to them.
CosmicQueso
Member
Good point... but an Indie dev being a bit dramatic about this stuff isn't quite shocking, is it?
Yes but I'm not ok with him saying incorrect things that have a negative connotation with them, like monopoly, to justify his own greed. Everyone would be ok with it if he just said "I want the most money I can make" as long as he doesn't go the EA route and sacrifice customers at the money altar.
There's tens of thousands of competing products out there. All in ample supply.
How is it incorrect to say he's afraid of Steam getting too much power? You're saying he's lying, he's not afraid of that? You might disagree with him, but it's the dude's opinion, and since it's his game we're talking about, his opinion is kind of important.
So if I make clothes and sell it in my store only, that's wrong?
He has not called steam a monopoly. He says that it moving towards something like it. For all we know, he might be right.
It's incorrect because it's not happening and not even close to happening. He's either using it as a scapegoat to take away from his I want all my money statement or, worse, he's paranoid enough to actually believe it in which case I have some juicy 9/11 stories I want to share with him that I think he'll like.
And your line of thinking is why some devs are scared of Steam. "$27, the game needs to come on steam so that I can wait for a sale and get it for $5."
But Amazon and other stores have the same and/or better deals. Why do sales have to affect only Steam negatively?
Amazon sold Spec Ops for 50% off when it wasn't even a week old. No one complained, except for the people who bought it day 1 maybe and that's justified.
God only knows what would have happened if Steam did that.
jim-jam bongs
Member
this is one of those issues which is such a total non-issue that I honestly wish people would stop hassling the guy about it. don't get me wrong, Notch is an interesting character so his opinions are generally interesting too, but how many times and in how many ways do people need to hear "no" before they get the message?
Good. Developers/publishers should be scared of consumers. They are producing throwaway entertainment after all.
Except Notch's exact words were:
Yet you said:
He didn't even say "monopoly" unless I'm just missing something. Where did he even say something to match your 9/11 paranoia comparison? Saying "I do somewhat worry about X happening" doesn't sound to me like paranoia or panic to me. It seems like a somewhat reasonable concern, if unlikely.
Obviously he's in a good place in terms of supply and demand, and obviously there doesn't seem to be a reason to lower the price when it's selling well (see also: ArmA II on Steam and its reduced sales compared to other games), and obviously he likes making a steady stream of income off the game. It just seems reasonable to me, and the suggestions of him having some sort of monopoly by trying to sell his own product on his own store are boggling my mind.
And don't get me wrong, I don't even agree with Notch on everything. If 0x10c ever comes out I want to get it, but I don't plan to go the paid subscription route since I really dislike that approach. He disagrees, that's life. *shrug*
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
More people would probably have bought it.