Valve’s Steam service is a widely used and liked online distribution platform. However, Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson thinks that there should be other platforms for the sake of competition.
“I love Valve, but out of principle, I find the idea of one platform a bit scary,” he said. “So I like that there are others competing – for example, Desura and Impulse, who recently got bought by GameStop. It’s a good thing that there are more. Origin does a couple things badly compared to Steam — which is impressive since they had eight years to study Steam. They should definitely have a chance to do their thing, but they might want to move away from titles that make people use it and show people why they should use it. But I think, in principle, it’s a good thing.”
Persson noted that the reception to the launch of EA’s Origin was not unlike how Steam was initially received. “If you go back and dust off the transcripts of when Steam first came out, it had the same reaction. People didn’t like it. You were obligated,” he said. “[Valve] provided, over the years – to Gabe and the team’s credit – value to the gamer. Those first 12 months were very rocky.”
Source: GameSpy
