Before today I didn’t think it was possible to hear about the cancellation of a game that I never knew about, but Mojang managed to prove me wrong. Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of Minecraft and head of Mojang, revealed today that his company had been working on a collaborative project with an unnamed third party.
Notch didn’t go into specifics regarding the now cancelled title, but apparently it was a first person shooter of some kind. He says that the title was cancelled because Mojang wants to remain an independent, autonomous entity, and that his team “did not want more external dependencies.” I know it’s dumb to get sad about a game we honestly knew nothing of substance about (see also: Versus XIII,) but given the innovation shown in Minecraft, I would’ve loved to see what Mojang’s take on the FPS genre would’ve been like.
In a statement to PC Gamer, Notch also voiced his growing concern over Steam’s dominance in the PC market. When asked why the mega popular Minecraft wasn’t available on Valve’s digital distro, Notch replied “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. I’m hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games.”
Most people seem to sing nothing but praise for Steam (well, except for EA,) so it’s strange to hear a PC developer call Valve out. Valve has been pretty consumer friendly (well, compared to most big publishers nowadays) so I don’t see a problem with Steam’s current dominance, but I can understand why Notch doesn’t want a single company to have a monopoly over the PC games market.
