After it was already almost a forgone conclusion, we now have word that BF3 is really, really, really not coming to Steam — for reals. The word comes from both the official Battlefield Twitter account and a forum post on the EA forums from staff. Again, they mention Valve’s restrictions on DLC and post-release support. Interestingly, we haven’t heard much from Valve’s side of the story, and we still haven’t heard much from other devs and publishers about these restrictions EA keeps bringing up. The exact details are still unavailable as to what EA is looking to do with BF3 that Steam won’t let them.
Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices.
Of course, there is still a chance that EA and Valve come to some sort of terms before the launch of BF3, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. In turn, with BF3 not being available on Steam, it provides EA will a bit more leverage to sell it on Origin, as we discussed here. So while I’m sure EA would love to sell BF3 everywhere possible, not being on Steam can’t be bothering them too much. EA squarely places the blame on Valve, but rarely things are that simple.
Is no BF3 on Steam a deal breaker for you?
funk
I have been involved in both computers and video games since a very young age, cutting my teeth (literally) on an Apple IIe and an Intellivision. I've been writing about both for fun, off and on throughout the years, which eventually led me here -- still playing games and casually writing about them off an on.
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I think that this was inevitable. Which is what scares me about Comcast purchasing NBC. And what has always concerned me with Sony. When the content producers also become the means of distribution you have a conflict of interest.
Now, in this case, competition is good in the software delivery business. (Not that Steam is all about delivery, hello Steam crashes.) The major players I can think of are Steam, Amazon, D2D, and now Origin. I do think that Valve has been more “friendly” to the gaming community vs. EA in the past. Who knows if EA’s complaints are legit or if they are just smokescreens for exclusive content. I do believe that I cannot purchase L4D or TF2 from anyone other than Steam. So, this is certainly nothing new.
Will it impact if I buy the game or not? Not really. I am more concerned if I want to have yet another “realistic” army shooter sitting on my computer.
Origin is the worst software I’ve ever used in my life. I have downloaded BF3 twice, called tech support, ultimately purchased the game on DVD and I still have only played for about an hour due to all of the problems Origin brings to the table. I will be hacking it to work out of Steam and disable Origin from communicating in any way with the game or the internet since EA obviously don’t know what they are doing.