Crysis 2 ditching Steam not an EA decision; Origin-exclusive titles planned

@Faceless Troll

Well, if you go against the rules of something, you'll generally end up being thrown out.

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies The problem is these rules are new and seem to be designed as anti-competitive. But since nobody's talking it's all speculation as to what they are.

@Faceless Troll

I would say it's a bit more anti-competitive of EA to make any of their titles or DLC exclusive to Origin.

@(Unverified) ever notice u can only buy valve games from Steam or retail, hows EA doing the same any worse?

@ShadowSoldier89 You do realize that Valve owns Steam, yes?

@Faceless Troll

His point stands whether he does or not.

@Vidikron He didn't really make a point. Have you ever heard of a console yanking an exclusive from its platform because another console got it later on? Because that's really about what this is like, but I guess Valve doesn't want sales.

@ShadowSoldier89

Well considering how there are around 25 million steam accounts or so, Valves games are much more easily accessible to most people (pretty much everyone that games on a PC).

Have you ever tried using the EA download manager (which from what I hear is just the old version of what Origin is now)? It's not fun, easy or beneficial to use. Plus, why exclude your games from steam at this point? Everybody knows about it, millions use it. Being on steam gives EA another revenue stream (especially with all the promotions and sales steam offers to its users.

EA making you use the Origins service is not beneficial to it's users at all, and I really hope it remains an optional service.

@liquidsoap89
This way EA gets all the cut from their games. Also those promotions don't come out of what STEAM makes per sale, they come out of the publishers.

I like STEAM but it isn't this friendly gift from god everyone makes it out to be. Hell I hbear D2D is more dev/pub friendly. However STEAM is more userfriendly.

@Faceless Troll

Lame @ Valve and EA. I understand protecting your distribution channels and enforcing rules. But pulling titles that are already listed leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Personally I would much rather see these platforms working to cooperatewith each other so that users could use the better one rather than bickering with each other and requiring users to have 3-4 bloatware distribution platforms installed and running on their systems.

Steam is handy, but sadly has very much ventured into bloatware. And I can almost guarantee any rival digital distribution system will also fall into this category.

@Faceless Troll

Your reply is confusing. I was just addressing your reply to Shadow. He was defending EA having exclusives and compared it to Valve only distributing their games on Steam. You then pointed out that Valve owns Steam... which really has nothing to do with his statement. Now you reply to me by also defending EA? I'm confused.

@Faceless Troll

Yeah, it's lame from Steam and Valve.

you can still buy all those games from other online distributors like Direct2Drive and Impulse. Proof that this is Valve's doing in trying to armstring publisher than EA removing it from Steam.

@logicbus

I'd say you were onto something. Making their dlc exclusive for their service would definitely be a deal breaker. It would also mean that ultimately it was EA's decision to pull their games from steam. Personally I don't want to be part of a distribution model that can ban me from playing the games I paid for because some douche mod on a forum got upset. They are going to lose so much money doing this, how can they honestly believe they'll be able to compete with steam?

@(Unverified)

Anyone that has already bought any of the pulled games can still play and download those games.

It's only purchases that are affected.

@creid8

That's what I've been thinking as well. They need The Old Republic to be a fairly big success or else it could do substantial damage. Limiting its distribution won't help their cause.

@Heisenberg

It seems to me that E.A. is making the mistake of betting too heavily on Old Republic.
They are clearly hoping that this new mmo can not only pull away a substantial number of WoW's subscribers, but that it can also pull a way a substantial number of Steams subscribers.
Clearly they are hoping there is a strong overlap between the two and that if they pull enough customers from blizzard they will also do so from steam.
However, this seems an odd strategy that can only hurt them.
WoW isn't a steam game. Even if you pull a user from wow it does not certainly mean a steam migration. They are certainly betting that the user would rather an origins user and a Old republic player than being both steam and old republic.

What strikes me as odd though is that they aren't doing it in a way which would actually create a rival to steam.
By creating a system of "exclusive publisher download platforms" they are only going to create a system of fragmented DD methods if they succeed at best, instead of the multi-publisher system that steam is.
If they actually want to compete with steam, they need to offer not just a comparable service, but a comparable market platform that is open to every developer (like steam). Instead we are seeing them trying to make their games into "no steam" games.
In the end, this can only hurt them at worse and completely fracture the PC market at best (imo this is something PC gamers should be flat out against; I'm all for rival platforms but not each publisher having their own exclusive systems). Considering how much they have invested into Old Republic it's a very risky strategy (so risky that I've opted to sell all my E.A. stock I've accumulated over the years from various mergers).

@akeso Yeah,I agree, itdoesn't make much sense to seperate Old Republic from Steam. That game needs all the help it can get.

@Heisenberg

Valve limited the distribution of Half Life 2 and other of it's title and they are doing just fine. I wouldn't worry to much about EA.

Lame.

@(Unverified) Male.

@Danthaman I believe you can't download a game if it is not offered in the Steam store. If you haven't downloaded the game yet than your pretty much screwed.

@Minelbp

Not true. I bought Indigo Prophecy a while ago, but never got around to installing it until a couple weeks ago. When I looked on the store again it was gone (for reasons unbeknownst to me...). So it seems you CAN still play it, at least I was able to.

@Danthaman
It's still available for download (it's uninstalled in my library and I can load the install files just fine)
Steam just isn't selling new licences.

@akeso Pretty much the same thing happened to me when D2D pulled all of the Serious Sam games off. I'm still able to download Serious Sam Gold's games.

@Danthaman lucky for you I looked into it and turns out, you can actually continue to download and update through Steam. Before if the game was removed from steam you were screwed.

@BrianH

Man... and here I was looking forward to B3.

@(Unverified)

Yep.

@(Unverified) Oh no! You have to visit A DIFFERENT WEBSITE? What is this world coming to?

@Once known as Shadsy

It's really not as simple as that.

@Once known as Shadsy

Oh no you have to download a brand new platform that's untested and whose rules and terms might be shaky, have yet another content platform using resources on your computer, one that you will have to give your credit card or paypal info to to be able to buy the games

Wait, that's not just signing up for a website at all. Derp.

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies

I've always been midly surprised that people are so willing to put all their eggs in one basket.

@BrianH
*prays*
God, please don't let this be true....='(

@Once known as Shadsy

Download limitations
Users were given one year from the time of purchase to download a game, but this limitation does not exist anymore. There currently is no time limitation for redownloading games through the platform.[6] However, according to EA's terms of service[7], an account may be canceled after 24 months of non-use.

^ "ELECTRONIC ARTS TERMS OF SERVICE". Retrieved 2011-03-08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(digital_distribution_platform)


Yeah, go buy a game then don't use your account for 2 years and get EVERYTHING you had deleted...

@Vidikron

I'm an organizer. I like to keep everything categorized properly and to me things should be grouped a certain way. When I want to "game", I go to steam. I don't like having 45 different places I have to navigate, remembering what is where. Plus, remembering different passwords for everything is starting to become a pain (THANKS HACKERS!).

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies So visit a store, or Amazon, and buy the damn disc. My God people here will whine over the smallest things.

At the end of the day, if you want to play these games, then you'll have to go through routes other than Steam. It sucks, I get it, I love Steam too, but there are other avenues besides them and that's just the state of the gaming world we live in.

@Vidikron
I'd rather have a great basket that makes a nice egg gem once in a while and is privately owned by people (if you look at the history) that care a great deal about the end-user. Instead of a basket that makes a lot of games, is publicly owned in part by investment bankers with one goal in mind( And they have had quite a dark past)

@Vidikron
Are you trying to imply that putting your payment information on multiple sites is more secure? It just gives people more places to acquire your info.

Your analogy implies that your payment info would be safe unless someone took it from every site or service you used, which couldn't be further from the truth.

@whateveryousay

especially since GFWL is god awful still.

@CaptainProtonX
Amen brother. That's why I won't be supporting SWTOR now. =P

@trinica Your loss.

If you people are so petty as to pass up a game like that, just because it's not on Steam, then you don't deserve to play it.

@jblank

A game like what? TOR isn't even out yet, and the gameplay's barely been touched by people, and you're already singing its praise 100%, and claiming people "Don't deserve to play it"?