EA's digital game distribution service, Origin, has taken a lot of criticism from the gaming community, but Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson thinks it's ultimately a good thing -- if only to avoid a monopoly by Valve's Steam.

"I think it's a bit dangerous to only have one digital distribution platform like Steam," he said. "I love Valve, but out of principle, I find the idea of one platform a bit scary. So I like that there are others competing," he said in an interview with GameSpy.

That doesn't mean he thinks Origin is a great product, though.

"Origin does a couple things badly compared to Steam," Notch said, "which is impressive since they had eight years to study Steam.

Origin currently has 9.3 million users, with 1 million active each day -- versus Steam's user base of 35 million - but it racked up many of those users by forcing them to sign up to play any EA game. That's a practice Notch thinks EA should drop if it wants to challenge 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," he said.

[escapist]