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Minecraft creator Markus Persson recently released a statement on his blog addressing the issue. He said actually a lot of what EA had said with their decision to not release Battlefield 3 on Steam.

“Being on Steam limits a lot of what we’re allowed to do with the game, and how we’re allowed to talk to our users. 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.”

This sounds a lot like EA telling us why they pulled BF3. Steam apparently is very restrictive on how companies interact with customers, as well as microtranscations. EA was not totally in the wrong, if you thought this was on EA. Steam may need to rethink their terms at some point, although the majority of developers seem fine with putting their games on Steam. Some models just won’t jive with what Steam has to offer. I can see Steam’s side of things as well, they want a piece of the pie if you want to distribute through their service. As they should. They are the big boy on the block. Little companies can’t afford not to.

Minecraft can, EA can.

It will be interesting to see if at some point this changes. Markus also notes he is still in talks with Valve over some of the issues. It’s not necessary for Minecraft to be on Steam, but it would be nice if everyone could work together.

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