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Why no Steam, Notch?

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Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#121

Post by Goronmon »

DrStalker wrote: post #101
gamble wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft on 360 is never going to be more than a niche, given the type of game it is. If it's available through Steam, however, the majority of PC players will end up buying through Steam and that population will pressure the non-Steam PC players to move to Steam.

There's precedent for games purchased outside of Steam being available in steam, so there's no technical barrier to giving all existing Minecraft owners a copy of the Steam version.

But when Notch says that he is avoiding Steam due to the restrictions it will place on what he can do with Minecraft in the future, I'm not sure why this would be a positive outcome from Notch's perspective.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#122

Post by Goronmon »

niklas_a wrote: post #89
rmc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a monopoly on installing software on iOS. Steam does not have a monopoly on installing software on Windows.

But iOS is only 18% of all mobile devices. Windows is 90% of all laptops/desktops. You are not comparing oranges with oranges.

I'm not sure how this proves that you don't have to use the App Store to install apps on iOS devices?

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#123

Post by cookiecaper »

sliverstorm wrote: post #105
cookiecaper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to see Notch release the whole thing under a non-commercial license. They should set up a bug tracker, develop in public, etc., and otherwise run as a normal OSS project, with the caveat that it is not full Free Software because of the clause preventing commercial activity. I appreciate RMS and the Four Freedoms and what it's done for software, but I think we'd see a lot more code and a lot more r…

I don't know how you can publicly release the source and expect a license header to prevent people from compiling it at home, and jilting you of a sale. You can't have an activation function either- your customers have the source! Of course, he could just give up on the revenue, but I am sure like any real human being, he has probably grown fond of his new cash cow, and I don't blame him. Especially as this is his fi…

As I said in my post, you can't stop people from compiling it at home. But, you also can't stop people from downloading the object code. Minecraft is frequently pirated and traded. There is no effective difference. In fact, people who are interested in obtaining Minecraft outside of legal channels are just going to pirate the object code anyway -- it's not very likely they'll want to download and compile the source and go through that pain when they could just download the pre-built versions.

There is no additional risk to revenue. Individuals who want to circumvent the licensing requirements do it with or without source. Companies who may misappropriate the code know better than to do so because they know they will be sued and immediately lose, so they will buy licenses from Mojang anyway. Seeing the "cool stuff" that can be done by Minecraft's engine, etc., that hobbyists put together with the code, may in fact convince people with money to license it more than just keeping it closed altogether.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#124

Post by xiaoma »

leon_ wrote: post #116
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has worked hard to torch the bridges between Mojang and the open-source communities surrounding Minecraft. He doesn't like people hacking his code, or creating tools which interoperate with his releases. You might have noticed that some mods have been pulled into the main Minecraft tree; the person doing that pulling is always jeb, another Mojang employee. Notch himself isn't very happy about it. Projects like Bra…

Probably rather offtopic but: I've never understood the motivation behind "modding". Why put so much work into someone other's project instead of starting something own? I understand modifying/augmenting open source - because it's a community effort and the result belongs to all of us. But creating modifications for commercial products you will never have any real rights on and then being angry with the owner when he…

>Probably rather offtopic but: I've never understood the motivation behind "modding". Why put so much work into someone other's project instead of starting something own?

Why do people spend so much work into learning to sing someone else's song or arrange it instead of just writing their own?

Maybe they like the work despite the fact that it's not their creation. Maybe they don't have the skill to create something from scratch but they can do a great deal standing on the shoulders of others. Maybe they just aren't that concerned with how lawyers divvy up who "owns" what ideas.

It's probably a combination of the above.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#125

Post by daniel_reetz »

streptomycin wrote: post #10
daniel_reetz wrote: post #5

This is how the battle for openness is won. Not by endless online argument, but by building stuff. Stuff that, by virtue of its openness and flexibility, is too awesome to be needlessly and arbitrarily constrained. Beats the shit out of dogma. Good on ya, Notch.

The battle for openness is won by building proprietary software?

After reading comments here I read more deeply into the mojang/notch vs open tools stuff, and I rephrase my "good on ya" to a "nice delivery/flamewar avoidance in yer announcement".

To clarify my original comment, I was referring to the open playground approach of Minecraft, but making an unfounded assumption that the open playground model extended to the code. I made that assumption because of second-hand knowledge that mods were making it into the game. Mea culpa.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#126

Post by beagle3 »

0x0x0x wrote: post #103
grey wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notch has a similar attitude, as expressed at http://www.minecraft.net/about.jsp , specifically "once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source."

The difference of course is that id has a track record .

This comment would be meaningful when Minecraft has been out in the market for 3+ years.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#127

Post by Pyrodogg »

atomicdog wrote: post #115
bugsy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's right that GPL is draconian and limits freedom. But I am not sure your point because you didn't state it. You have a drive by post where you post some cryptic excerpt that seems unrelated to the topic with no commentary. Are you a posting bot, or are you a person with a point? Speak clearly. Explain yourself. If the intent is to be critical of notch, I can't see any fault in his saying he hopes to release source…

>GPL is draconian and limits freedom. How? Isn't the basis of GPL simply "Use this code however you want providing you make the source code you derive from it freely availble, too"?

For exactly the reason you pointed out.

The GPL guarantees that the code will forever be open due to the requirement that derivative works are released open and under the GPL.

What this complete 'code availability' freedom limits is what you can do with the code. For example, people are perpetually free to get that source but, you aren't free to incorporate it into proprietary software.

One entities freedoms can be a limit to another's freedoms.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#128

Post by zaphar »

sid0 wrote: post #93
niklas_a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But iOS is only 18% of all mobile devices. Windows is 90% of all laptops/desktops. You are not comparing oranges with oranges.

You aren't locked into Steam for all game purchases.

You also aren't locked into iOS for all mobile app purchases. My point is that this debate is usually really about whether you do or don't want to participate in a walled garden and less about whether you want to participate in a monopoly.

Using the loaded term monopoly feels like an attempt to use emotional persuasion rather than debate on the merits. Which is a shame because I think the walled garden deserves some good criticism in a lot of ways.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#129

Post by sid0 »

zaphar wrote: post #128
sid0 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't locked into Steam for all game purchases.

You also aren't locked into iOS for all mobile app purchases. My point is that this debate is usually really about whether you do or don't want to participate in a walled garden and less about whether you want to participate in a monopoly. Using the loaded term monopoly feels like an attempt to use emotional persuasion rather than debate on the merits. Which is a shame because I think the walled garden deserves some…

The barrier to buying a game off Steam given that you own a PC/Mac is much lower than the barrier to buying an app off the App Store given that you own an iOS device (ignoring jailbreaking as usual). These sorts of barriers are characteristic of monopolies.

Re: Why no Steam, Notch?

#130

Post by bryanh »

unwind wrote: post #109
bryanh wrote: post #37

I can understand Notch's position here, because really, the only thing Steam can provide Majong with is... eyeballs and distribution? Some sort of community? I don't know, but I don't think Minecraft needs any help with those.

Nit-pick: it's "Mojang", not "Majong". The latter is almost a classical board game ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong ), the former is most probably the Swedish word "mojäng" but with our exotic dots removed for a change. "Mojäng", btw, means roughly "gizmo", or "contraption".

Ah, thanks!
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