Origin Vs Steam / EA vs Valve
The opening salvo of the looming war has been fired...
In what many are saying is in direct response to Steam’s announcement, yesterday, that they were launching a “Free-to-Play” initiative, EA have today mysteriously “withdrawn” Crysis 2 from sale via Steam. Furthermore they now list Crysis 2 as “only on Origin” in it’s product information page, despite the fact it can still be acquired from number of other direct download vendors… EA are clearly not particularly concerned with Valve’s “experience” of their mutual (for how much longer) relationship…
We say? Want an EA game on Steam? Buy it quick!
- Rax
I will not let EA bully me and tell me how to buy my games. I’d rather spite EA and buy games from developers that don’t treat me like a b!tch.
Fail by EA. Steam is the future…
smart move, they have a lot of really awesome selling pre-order games coming out soon, this way they’ll pocket more of the cash from their digital sales, I mean honestly if you could make more money vending your wares and cut out a middle man wouldn’t you?
The general trend in the digital content industry (encompassing music, movies, video games, developer software, etc.) with the exception of specialized niche industries (like embedded systems software) is a “freemium” model. The more companies that shift to this business model the more customers will expect it, and the more legacy business models will suffer.
Digital Rights (micro) Management does NOT stop pirating. No DRM has proved un-hackable, but there have been all too many cases of DRM snafus wherein legitimate paying customers are unable to utilize a product they payed for. In the end, it only serves to enrage the same customer base the publisher or distributor seeks to appeal to. The same customer base that perhaps switched from pirating to paying for content due to a Steam sale, or switched due to a recent elevation in socioeconomic status, may sooner pirate EA games out of spite than play into the hand of a money hungry proprietary system.
If EA could make more money from this move, I’m sure they would. Perhaps the out-of-touch goons at EA HQ believe it will generate more revenue, but I guarantee it won’t.