News EA: 'Dragon Age 2 DLC caused removal from Steam'

I'd much rather games journalists ask valve for their take, and keep asking until they get an answer. Much of games journalism seems to be spreading press releases rather than asking too many questions. This isn't a slight on Bit-Tech/CPC as they are better than most in the industry. But I've not read on any site (and I have just had a good old look around multiple sites) "We've asked for valve to comment but have not yet received a response". Which would put pressure on valve to come to the public and state their view on the situation, rather just reprinting a EA PR response.

Games journalism should be much better than it is, for the size of the industry, you wouldn't see this in other sectors.

However I'd like to draw your attention back to the post I made that other games (Dirt3 and Batman for sure in my personal collection) sell DLC through other means for games they sold on steam, notably GFWL sells DLC for Dirt3 and Batman even if you have the steam copy theres no other way to get the DLC.

And both are STILL on sale, I just checked, so theres more to it than Valve wanting a slice of the pie.

 

+1 with added orc-bashing damage whenever there's a full moon!

It would be nice to get some real investigative journalism, or a more obvious attmept at it, from the industry media.

And it can't be a coincidence that all this nonsense started when Origin got fired up... My personal feeling is that EA are trying to protect their commercial interests a little too vigorously, but it would certainly help if we had some constructive responses from both sides.

 

the problem with steam is ....
EA cant update games on the same time .. every patch has to be checked by valve before publishing via steam
all DLC from EA has to be checked by valve too ... this needs days or weeks ..i dunno ..
but EA wants the stuff out then its done ... valve allways needs time and publishers have no time ;-)

if u buy via steam and game gets patched ..on steam you get the patches later... steam users are allways late and think its EAs fault ....

once i loved valve BUt valve starts to become the new EA ...micro payment in game ... tf2 is a good example .. u can find crates in game..but the keys for crates are only availabel in the steam tf2 store for real money WTF ?!?!?!?

 

Do you have any evidence of that? Is there any reason that EA couldn't have a game patcher, hell even have origin do the updating, like GFWL does for Batman? They could do the updating like other games do with their own updater bypassing steam updating process, do you have any evidence that this is the problem? Or are you just making it up?

Because as it stands there are other ways to update your games in the steam store. So it seems that you're just running on assumption rather than fact.

You're entitled to your opinion but I don't begrudge Valve monetising TF2 after the YEARS of literally HUNDREDS of free DLC, and the fact they've now made the game free, and at release the Orange Box only cost ~£28.00.

I think you've got unrealistic expectations of what a company can do without monetisation.

 

You say that as if you don't think Valve are mega-rich.

Like some people have said, I think Valve's new ToS came in when the F2P games appeared, Valve had to make sure that the F2P games were bringing in money for them so now DLC/micro-transactions must go through Valve so that they can get their cut.

The F2P games/ToS change arrived on June 14th and Crysis 2 DLC came out shortly after, hence it got booted, just like DA2. All games released before the 14th are exempt from this new deal.

The only game that sticks out is DiRT 3 as it breaks the rule (DLC not on Steam) and it could be something as simple as they have a different deal with Valve, or this whole theory could be nonsense. I don't think this has anything to do with Origin at all.

 

Well I actually referred to Valve being mega rich a page or two ago.

I still think that after many many years of free DLC Valve wanted to try something new (micro transactions) and had internal pressures to monitise TF2 again after all the work/man hours they put in. Valve is a business after all.

They even referred to it in the TF2 blog when announcing the store.

It will be interesting to see how the whole thing shakes out in the end, I like third part stores, impulse, D2D and Steam, I don't want to see every publisher only sell things in their own store which is my only real concern.

 

This thread only has 1 page on my screen so

I don't have a problem with Valve making money, just that they seem to be going down the same route as Apple by saying "we get a cut of everything or you can't sell here".

All it takes is for a rival with a bit of weight behind them (yes, I mean EA!) to come along and offer much better deals to publishers and then things get interesting.

It will be a fun time to see what happens in the future.

 

Thing is that valve is a developer with a publisher attached, whist EA is a publisher that owns some development houses.

Very different ethos I don't see other big publishers offering their games on EAs platform is unlikely IMO, it's more likely that they'll launch their own competitors to sell their games. So we will end up with 5-6 stores installed.

 

I'm fairly sure this "meeting" between EA and valve involved a table with a pile of cash on it, and 1 representative from each scrambling for the most cash.

Subsequently valve won, and EA took their ball home

 

what, you mean it isnt annoying as hell having to use an external website and service to buy DLC for the games I bought on Steam rather then offering the DLC on Steam doesn't limit your reach to customers? I think EA really needs to fire their mentally challenged management staff, hire people who aren't idiots, and undo the previous management's stupidity.

 

in general I dont see the issue. I believe the ToS likely states that game sold here, DLC sold here. It does not disallow games and dlc to be sold on other services. This is just EA proving once against they dont give a damn what their customers want.

 

Arrggh..this annoys me, I was just about to buy DA2 but if it ain't on Steam I can't be bothered. I like all my Games in one place 'Steam'. That's Crysis 2 and Dragon Age now...not to mention the fact that the DLC options from Bioware are a flaming nightmare, I had so much trouble with ME2 that I vowed not to be anything from Bioware not via Steam ever again

 

Personally it annoyed me that I had to go to this funny website to get my mass effect + dragon age DLC. I'd much prefer it all to be done though steam - I don't want an origin login, I don't want to have to buy origin points or whatever they were. I just want one system to buy and update all my games - simples.

 

I had the bf3 alpha, but couldn't play it because of origin, which is a beta in itself. My own view is origin is just too late to market, steam was extremely rubbish when it first launched (how many years ago?) but is now an extremely polished product. And I've built a big collection of games on steam, so its not like I can stop using it. I will be buying bf3 regardless, but if EA keep acting like morons they may join Activision and ubisoft on my "do not buy" list.