I remembered where the proof was. Fable III. When that was launched on Steam the DLC was available on Steam but wasn't activated on Steam. You bought it on Steam then activated it on GFWL so it's nothing to do with compatibility, it seems simply that if you want to sell DLC you have to make it available on Steam. It's a cash grab and I'm more than a little surprised Microsoft agreed to it and EA were the only ones to pull out.

It's very likely EA geared up for the Origin re-launch knowing that these problems were coming when they saw the new Steam agreement. Again this only affects Steam. EA games are still available on GamersGate and D2D and AFAIK retail games also still activate on Origin.

You don't relaunch in a week/matter of weeks. That was most likely *long* in the planning combined with TOR being launched through it and Popcap games being bought etc.

Look at Battle.Net, that was years in the planning and has a schedule with third party sellers *years* down the line already pre-planned.

Strange, it's 20€ in the Belgian Origin store (and has been at that price for a while IIRC).

It wasn't a launch or even a re-launch it was a re-branding. All they did was change EA Download Manager to Origin.

I believe it's Valve shooting themselves in the foot and causing quite a PR mess with this one. I see nothing wrong with EA's current way of delivering DLC, its not like you need origin for them, they're ingame stores, just like TF2 and Portal 2 have, the only difference being they aren't Valve games.

Valve as a company are acting in a ridiculously stupid way by doing this, they're losing sales and their image of a company that cares about gamers is simply disappearing.

I just wonder why EA doesn't just put the goddamned DLC on steam, at a premium price. That should shut the valve execs up, while still allowing EA to make most of the money through the (cheaper) in-game store.

Because it would require them having to re-engineer the way the game operates with DLC.

I agree that Valve doing this is pretty stupid. I'm a bit of their fanboy, but this is one of the two annoying elements about them.

Something similar happened with SSF4:AE. I don't know the details because I bought it from D2D but I remember reading on the Steam forums that DLC bought from GFWL wasn't going to be compatible with the Steam version. They had to wait until Capcom released the Steam version of the DLC which would come later even though the game uses GFWL.

Not necessarily. They could give you a CDkey with your STEAM purchase. You activate that CDkey on the Bioware site, just as you do with preorder or special edition bonuses. And that's about it. Its the same way it works with DLC for GFWL games on STEAM.

after reading a thread like this, now I love gog even more, if that was possible.



PC games in brazil are cheap, newest games in stores cost usually R$100,00 wich is a little more than the US$49.99 they charge you online plus you get the box and manual.
Console games are the expensive ones because they have to be imported and there is 60% tax on them (not totally sure about the %), PC games on the other hand are manufactured here.

I highly doubt that. It's the people who are already Anti-Steam who seem to take this as a confirmation and 'loss of confidence'. The Steam fans simply see it as Valve trying to assure the content is delivered on and through their favorite platform. I certainly would prefer it to, and making sure DLC are delivered through steam at least somewhat assures they are made compatible with the Steam versions.

They are compatible, at least for Bioware games. Their DLC consist on modules, you just download a file and activate it in game, much like it works with Oblivion or Fallout 3/New Vegas.

EDIT: And I'm not anti-STEAM. I have over 250 games on the platform, Dragon age 2 and both Mass Effects being among them.

I was more talking about the people on the Steam forums but yes me too. Of course there's always exceptions :)

OH please! Tell me where i can get Dead Space 2 for R$100 or less then. I guess i'm just out of luck, because i can't find it in any way.

So there are points made on both sides. EA could rewrite the code to appease steam but then again steam is the only platform where devs have to make separate versions and give steam a portion of dlc sales. After a while, it must get really annoying. It seems to me this rule about dlc sales was grandfathered in and any future dlc added to existing games that have a separate store will be removed too.

I wish steam fans weren't so overly dramatic though. It's been proven time and time again a game can sell extremely well on pc and not need steam to do it. Blizzard, pre-orders of Old Republic, minecraft, other mmo's etc.