A couple weeks ago, Electronic Arts relaunched their digital distribution portal. Previously called the EA Store, the service's name was changed to Origin on June 3. The EA-only service also included a download client, which is easily comparable to Valve's own Steam store. There has been some question as to how Valve would respond to EA's new digital distribution service, and today only has me scratching my head more.
EA and Crytek's "Crysis 2" has suddenly disappeared, "Alice: Madness Returns" is nowhere to be found, and there's no pre-order option for "Battlefield 3."
I can't say it's entirely surprising that EA would pull their titles from Steam. If the company is looking to push their own digital distribution client, it's completely plausible that they want to see those sales coming in-house directly. Well, that would have made sense, except "Crysis 2" is still available on other digital distributor sites like Amazon and Direct2Drive. Strangely, EA is now claiming that their titles were not removed from Valve's service by their own hand. Talking to Giant Bomb, the publisher claims that the games were removed due to new Steam store policies.
"It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed 'Crysis 2' from their service. This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA," the publisher told Giant Bomb. "Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of 'Crysis 2' from Steam."
It's not immediately clear what those "business terms" are, but it certainly seems to allude to Valve not allowing the sale of titles across competing content providers. Well, that's what it sounds like, anyways. The odd thing is, there are still other EA titles currently for sale on Steam. EA's own "The Sims: Medieval" – which incidentally was released after "Crysis 2" – is still available through the Valve client. The game is also for sale on Origin for $15 less than it is on Steam.
This whole thing is a little confusing, but it certainly seems as though we may not see future EA new releases on Steam. We've reached out to Valve for comment on the matter.