Indeed. In that case I will visit those troll-infested Steam forums and enjoy their sweet, delicious tears.

The proof is that EA are claiming that is the case and Valve have chosen not to comment. Sometimes saying nothing is enough. If EA made this all up to make Valve look bad then Valve could easy release a statement to refute that claim or even persue a legal case against EA. Valve have done none of these things. The things Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 have in common are both games were released in 2011 and both games were pulled within days of launching DLC which is not available on the Steam store.

Not in the base game, no. The second expansion added the downtown area where you could gou out on dates. (The first, House Party/Living it Up was only what has been called a "stuff pack" in Sims2 and 3, just containing new items.) The later expansions added more areas of various themes.

And Steam did get a new agreement when they launched those F2P games. They do plan on making money of those and if EA's way of selling DLC get's in the way it's "give us a cut according to this new agreement or get off Steam". Something to that extent. Can't say I blame EA, can't say I'm happy with the Origin pricing also.

The next logical step in this emerging digital content delivery system war is that different delivery clients will refuse to co-exist on the same PC, the same way like earlier some DVD games refused to install if you had e.g. CD image software running..

"Steam client detected. Uninstalling, please wait..."

I foresaw this clash of systems already several years ago when I was complaining about Steam. Some people seemed to think back then that Steam is already the de-facto standard for delivering games digitally on PC, but I was quite sure the big ones, especially EA, will make their own content-delivery systems later.

Which of course makes it that much more painful for us end-users. Having several different game accounts, after some years some of them will lose the battle, close their servers and deny access to games, etc...

Yet, even today some people say this is exactly what end-users want.

"you used a lot of the same cave, tell me about that?"
"Well, you know, we worked so hard in origins that we thought that the game would sell just by it's name and EA wasn't helping at all. Timeline was what it was.."
"all the changes were good?"
"No, but we were under a lot of pressure so we froze."
"Why didn't there was higher tactical camera?"
"as you propably noticed, we used the same cave and there wasn't space to move, so it just went there."
"what would you change?"
"Propably hell of a lot."
"Why the "epic" town was so empty?"
"Our artists were on coffee brake."
"ten years of epic tale as advertised was pretty lame or what do you have to say?"
"Yeah, well.. We made origins about 7 years and 2 came in 2 years, there are some highlights."
"like what?"
"I don't remember."
"You did know that pc-people will not let you go easily with this game.. This really isn't even a sequel.."
"Well, we thought that.. to be honest, we weren't thinking."
"Why did you made this game?"
"What do you think? For the money of course."
"But you are Bioware, people who buy the game, they deserve more."
"That time has passed."
"What was the best thing in the game?"
"propably using the same cave over and over and that little magic elf, she was cute."
"This game wasn't great."
"We know, but game making takes time and we made couple of bad decisions."
"Only couple?"
"..."
"Silence only makes your position weaker"
"So what, we are Bioware, we have Mass effect 3 coming, if that doesn't succeed we are boned"

...That was me speaking in my third person character. Of course you noticed that if you even read that.. It's so long and tedious.

Just passing the time. And practicing english.

The money from those comes from using the Steam Store features for selling items which basically perfectly match F2P games anyway since they always have ingame items for sale for real cash. With Steam they can streamline that so people will be easily able to pay for that using their accustomed service or even the info they already have in their Steam. It's obviously very beneficial for F2P games.

I read up on it and apoligies to Delixe for that, there *is* some kind of new agreement and that conflicts with Crysis (and now DA2 no doubt). I doubt they'd lie about that.

The thing is though, we don't know what part disagrees with it. It can't simply be DLC from different stores because there's more games that have that and those haven't been pulled yet, there has to be more to it. Perhaps the way they want to deliver it, or they may require games to have DLC be offered locally now as well (this would probably prevent situations where it might not be compatible with the steam version as well).

Either that or it only applies to new games, which is possible, but then we'll see more games getting pulled I'd assume.

If anything though the timing together with the relaunch of Origin is simply suspicious at best, and even though it may not have been instigated by EA itself, they could be using the situation to their own betterment. It's not like they weren't already making a pretty obvious statement by not having the DA2 preorder at *all* on Steam until the exact day after a month long promo.



I hope it doesn't come to another whole range of DD exclusive games again, it was just starting to come together nicely and now they're trying to rip eachother apart again.

Anyway, if it does happen I'd hope someone, somewhere builds a client which will basically collect all the games you have from different services and puts them all under a sleak usefull client that does pretty much what Steam/EADM try to do ingame now. (Ideally with install/uninstall linked as well)

so which would be the next ea game that will be pulled of steam ?
i think its going to be dead space 2 or nfs hot pursuit

As far as I know at least that's simply a conclusion that has been drawn. It's possible that the new agreement means they want the DLC to be offered on Steam as well. (which certainly would help prevent compatibility options). And yes, that means they want/get a cut.

I highly doubt though that they said they want a 25% cut off stuff even if it was sold somewhere else.

Don't have Crysis 2 but I understand it has an ingame DLC store. Similar to F2P games ingame stores. If under the new agreement Steam gets a cut from all such stores it means Crysis 2 would enter under that. If I'd be EA I wouldn't agree to that. Not in a million years.

You are right, Valve can't get their cut if DLC is sold somewhere else but they'll pull the games from Steam unless DLC is sold through them so that they'll get their cut. They are bullying developers into giving them more money then. If that's true I'm glad EA didn't let them get away with it.

The only games we will see on steam by end of year are those that are no longer updated or have any new dlc. I forsee all new games or well supported games being pulled.

This is turning into two children fighting over a sweet and at the end of the day the only people that wll come out the worst is the customers as we will end up only being able to use EA platform to sell games and since they then can charge what they want (Mass effect 3 Digital Delux for £55) this will end up being a bad time for suctomers to purchase EA games.

So does the Sims though, and that hasn't been removed yet, it's even been on Sale.

I rather think it's something to do with delivery of DLC than ingame store purchases. (doesn't mean i'm right xD)

F2P? Fear to play?

Edit: I have played somewhat much crysis 2. Don't know about dlc:s but it's a good game but it would be much better if it wasn't so closed.
First crysis really wins hands down. Well.. Maybe those hands has a chance to stun in middle ground +60%