Valve and EA: Mending fences (Time for wild speculation)

[Xanadu84]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/8093/

So, we all probably know about how EA has been pulling their games from Steam, or not adding them to Steam in the first place. EA blamed Steam and their guidelines, and in general, most people rolled their eyes at EA. Now, we have one of the first games games EA pulled being put back on Steam, with new content to boot.

Do I have any real evidence what this means? Of course not! But I can wildly speculate. I'm going to wildly speculate that EA is trying to sneakily justify not putting games on Steam at first so they can push Origin when games are first released, and then when they have gotten all those initial sales, they throw the game on Steam cause hey, a bucks a buck. It's short-sighted, but fairly rational in a traditional cutthroat business sense, and it will be interesting to see how long they can blame this delay on Steams policies.

Or I could have no idea what I'm talking about. Any other theories? (Or even more hard data?) Personally, I really am just hopeing this means that ill be able to buy ME3 and Battlefield 3 on Steam and not Origin.

 

[Moriim]

That sounds like something EA would do. The only issue I think is that that plan doesn't really hold up in the long run. Their initial justification for pulling things off of Steam was transparent, but at least marginally tractable. Pulling something like that again after already putting things back up on Steam would just be complete and utter indigestible BS.

Then again, EA hasn't exactly been the pinnacle of forward thinking in the past.

 

[Indecipherable]

Do I have any real evidence what this means? Of course not! But I can wildly speculate. I'm going to wildly speculate that EA is trying to sneakily justify not putting games on Steam at first so they can push Origin when games are first released, and then when they have gotten all those initial sales, they throw the game on Steam cause hey, a bucks a buck. It's short-sighted, but fairly rational in a traditional cutthroat business sense, and it will be interesting to see how long they can blame this delay on Steams policies.

Very astute. It's pretty hard to get people to use your shitty online delivery system if there's a better one that you already have available at the same time.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Perhaps they realized that Origin's service was shit compared to Steam, so they're trying to recoup losses by releasing on both platforms again?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Perhaps they realized that Origin's service was shit compared to Steam, so they're trying to recoup losses by releasing on both platforms again?

Exactly what I was thinking. Steam crapped all over Origin and EA realized that the money they were losing on lost steam sales was much higher than what steam charged them to have those games on there, and that they weren't making nearly as much of that up with Origin as they thought they would.

All I can say is, saw it coming. EA has never been one to stick to its guns when there's money to be made.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I can get crysis 2 now?

*Jumps arround all happy and what not*

 

[Fr]anc[is]

That would be kind of neat. Ten bucks or less in a steam sale is low enough for me to buy an EA product again.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

anc[is]That would be kind of neat. Ten bucks or less in a steam sale is low enough for me to buy an EA product again.

Especially since it's "voting with your wallet" for "get rid of Origin and go back to Steam; we all know that you broke up over the fact that you thought they were stealing your money."

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Something tells me Battlefield 3 still isn't going to show up on steam though since it requires Origin to start the game up. Kind of unfortunate, because I would have been willing to buy it over steam.

 

[Aric Flowers]

ME3 has slowly made "speculation" one of my least favorite words in the English language. I really want BF3 as well.

 

[ScatterBen]

As great as this could be, and as bad as EA is blah blah blah, wouldn't it be for the greater good if, instead of responding to (speculative) poorer sales by putting games on steam, they also went and fixed many of the issues with Origin? I've never used it myself (I'm not a huge PC guy) but I've heard it has a myriad of problems. Maybe if it were made more accessible then these (again, speculative) poorer sales wouldn't be such a problem. That's not to say their games shouldn't go on Steam, either (the fact that publishers can have a monopoly over digital distribution is ridiculous and has to be in breach of some sort of competition laws - I'm looking at you, Blizzard, with your ridiculous price-hikes which don't depreciate in the same way every other game does). A more varied market is a better market.

 

[Dryk]

Well they only ever really needed it to look like Origin actually had games at launch. Now that the initial teething period is over it makes sense for it to come back.

 

[Rednog]

I don't know if it really is a mending of fences, instead it's more of "oh we're releasing a 'maximum edition' and some of our users would get boned over because they bought a copy on steam and wouldn't be able to upgrade, might as well just release it on steam again".

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

Possibly a sign that things are getting better? I hope so.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I wonder how many people actually know why EA's games were removed from Steam?

It is because
1. Steam changed its DLC policy to were all DLC must be sold through Steam
2. EA likes to sell it's DLC through its own store, via in-game adverts on their game's launchers.

Neither side was more greedy then the other, forcing game companies to sell their DLC through Steam makes Valve big cash, they just had different versions of how to manage thier greed.

Crysis 2 came back because
1. It has ALL THE CONTENT in the pack
2. No new content is going to be made

thus allowing it to side-step the "all DLC must be sold through Steam" thing by putting all the DLC with the purchase.

EA's other games could come back under similar "ALL IN 1" bundles in the future, but that will only be after all the DLC is out for awhile.

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

I wonder how many people actually know why EA's games were removed from Steam?

It is because
1. Steam changed its DLC policy to were all DLC must be sold through Steam
2. EA likes to sell it's DLC through its own store, via in-game adverts on their game's launchers.

Neither side was more greedy then the other, forcing game companies to sell their DLC through Steam makes Valve big cash, they just had different versions of how to manage thier greed.

Crysis 2 came back because
1. It has ALL THE CONTENT in the pack
2. No new content is going to be made

thus allowing it to side-step the "all DLC must be sold through Steam" thing by putting all the DLC with the purchase.

EA's other games could come back under similar "ALL IN 1" bundles in the future, but that will only be after all the DLC is out for awhile.

That's quite interesting, because just off hand I know the Mass Effect games are still on steam, but their DLC isn't.

 

[teh_Canape]

that reminds me
I already has Crysis 2 on not steam nor origin
how would I get the DLCs? as far as I remember, Crysis 2 doesn't have client-based DRM, or DRM at all for that matter =P