A couple of weeks ago, EA essentially re-branded their EA digital download store as “Origin.” Nothing exactly Earth-shattering, and it didn’t even feel it was worth discussing at any form here. Yeah, there was the bit about Star Wars The Old Republic being an Origin exclusive, but for a yet-to-be-released MMO, it didn’t really register as note-worthy. Now things are starting to get interesting. RPS posted an article alerting us that Crysis 2 has been pulled from Steam and Alice: Madness Returns is no where to be found on Steam as well. Also, interesting is that there have been zero hints of Battlefield 3 pre-orders on Steam, especially with EA and DICE pushing pre-orders hard elsewhere, as we discussed yesterday.
Of course the conspiracy theorists already have BF3 as an Origin exclusive, meaning if you want to buy BF3 digitally, direct from EA will be your only choice. While that may end up being the case, there is one small problem in that logic: you can currently preorder BF3 on Direct2Drive and also on GamersGate (at 10% off). To make things more interesting, you can still by Crysis 2 digitally on Direct2Drive and Amazon, so it doesn’t appear to have become an Origin digital exclusive, at least not yet. Is Origin solely targeting Steam? We’ve heard in the past from other retailers and some publishers that they felt that Steam carried too much weight by dominating the digital download market, and maybe EA is trying to strong arm Steam by not making available some high profile titles there. They’ve done it on the used game market of console games with “Project $10”, so maybe Steam is their next focus.
I understand from a publisher’s perspective the downside of Steam. Obviously, Steam takes a cut of the game sales, but that’s true of D2D, GamersGate, Amazon, and even brick and mortar stores like Gamestop and Best Buy. Steam, however, works a bit differently on the technical side, requiring a somewhat rigorous approval process for not only the games but all patches — and let’s not forget that Steam games need to have separate patches applied to them which isn’t true of games purchased digitally elsewhere (except, obviously, if it’s a Steamworks game.) So, maybe it’s more about having to maintain two different versions of a game and less about trying to forcefully limit market share of Steam. Or maybe it’s some crazy argument over fees or other back-room deals that have really nothing to do with anything gamers should care about. The point is, we really don’t know and I’d wager that most gamers don’t care. They want to buy the games they want, where they want to, that’s it.
I have some, friends, actual real people, who only buy their games from Steam. They will buy their games from Steam, even if better deals can be found elsewhere, and many times, will never buy a game simply because it’s not sold on Steam. The question is, if BF3 is never sold on Steam, will those people buy it? Between this and the pre-order shenanigans, have you been soured on BF3 any, or are you full steam ahead? Yes, the bad pun was necessary.
If you’ve been paying attention to the EA / Steam battle, you could have guessed that Mass Effect 3 wasn’t going to be on Steam, regardless of the fact that Mass Effect 1 and 2 are currently available. If you were really in tune to the situation, you would have also guessed that Mass Effect 3 would require Origin to play on the PC. Bioware has confirmed both facts over the weekend, explicitly stating that Origin will be required even if you buy a boxed copy and that it wouldn’t be available on Steam “at this time.”
Yes, I’m a fan of bad puns, get over it. After 
