Here you go modders, I've done half of the work for you.

Done and done.

Runic welcomes our digital distribution overlords.

After serving as the game driver for Runic CEO Max Schaefer while IGN's Charles Onyett interviewed him for a last-minute Torchlight 2 video preview (which will be up next week), I got to pick his brain a little on Torchlight mods, plus his thoughts on Diablo 3, Steam, and what his team at Runic might do after Torchlight 2's out of their hands and into yours.Oh gosh. I hope someone does that. I'd play it.Yeah, absolutely. I love the Diablo stuff. We are not in conflict with Blizzard. We have no part of any kerfuffle involving angry developers. We like those guys. They also had an impossible task with that game. There's no way you can fulfill people's expectations for Diablo 3.Well no, I didn't approve of a lot of decisions. But they shouldn't be making what I want, they should be making what their team is into making. You have to make things that way.Yes, otherwise they're clones, and no one is fully emotionally invested in making it, and no one's making a game they want. It's just a bad way to do it. You've got to make what you're inspired to make. These are physically and mentally challenging tasks, making these.Everyone's got their own ideas. My personal notion is that I want to infuse some of the sandbox of Minecraft into this sort of game. So there's more building and more resources, and a little less relentless monster grind. I love that about Minecraft, that you build a house, and you eventually build railways to your friends, and you do have monster fights. I'd have a little more monster involvement than that, and not just have a world of cubes, but you know, bring some of that sandbox rather than amusement park into the genre.But hybridizing it with other types of games. But yeah, I'm open. I play all kinds of things, from Words with Friends to, whatever. I'm gonna crack out Borderlands as soon as I can.I love the loot. Who doesn't like loot? But I've gotta catch up on a lot of things. The last few months I haven't played anything.Sort of. It's funny: people say "Why are you releasing right when Borderlands 2 is? That doesn't make a damn bit of sense." But Borderlands 1 released within a week of Torchlight 1, so I think we're just on synchronized schedules.Yeah. We're very, very much, probably more than anyone, a Steam-based company at this point. I would guess that it would probably do over 75% of its business in total on Steam. Most of the rest will be on our site. The other digital distributors almost do no business, it seems. Steam has just taken over. But they just do it better than everyone. They're easier to work with, they've got Steam Workshop, and cloud saves for your characters, and all that stuff just works, and they're easy to deal with, so we're happy.Steam makes this possible. Steam is why we're able to make a $20 game. Back when we were starting Blizzard North, we would sell a $50 box. But when you sell a $50 box at Walmart, we would get about the same as we do from a $20 download at Steam. So we're not really getting less than we used to, it just makes it easier for more people to buy it.Yeah. Torchlight 1 we had all these deals with box people, and all the different digital distributors, and it's like, well, we should've just done this one. All those were a pain, because every time we made a patch we'd have to make a different patch for everyone, and it was a monster pain in the ass. So we were like yeah, this is good. We had no idea this was going to be the case, but Steam does all the business now.And those are huge days when we do that. Our revenue goes up 4000% on those days. And then it doesn't go back down to where it was afterwards. It'll spike up for that day, but then come part of the way down and then steady out again.Oh god, tons. Who knows? There's no way to know. I just hope people are enjoying it.Hopefully this one is better. Ithis game's better. I just hope people still like it. I don't know, I'm in that mode right now where I'm panicking over stupid things at this point. We really would have to screw it up right now to screw it up. We'd have to do something really dumb.Couldn't have come at a better time. I mean, it's disproportionate, I think. I mean, yes they made some dumb decisions, I hate the auction house and all that, but gosh, it's still a really fun game, you know?So for the love of god, someone make this man a Diablo 2 total conversion when Torchlight 2 comes out on September 20th! Yeah, it's possible Blizzard would send a cease and desist, though for all the flack it's gotten recently, Blizzard has a fairly magnanimous history when it comes to modders. It even reaching an agreement with the StarCraft 2 MMO modder where he was able to keep developing it on the condition he changed the name from World of StarCraft to StarCraft Universe. Of course, that was a modStarCraft 2 so... we'll just have to hope someone tries it and see what happens. Also, I hope they call it 'BloTorch. That one's free, modders!