Wed, Jun 15, 2011 | 19:40 BST
Decision to pull Crysis 2 from Steam was not made by EA
EA has responded to an earlier report stating it pulled Crysis 2 from Valve’s Steam service, and according to a company representative, the game was pulled as a result of Steam’s policies, not due to a decision made by EA.
“It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service,” the EA rep told GameFront. “This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.
“Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam.
“Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more.”
Kotaku reported earlier today that Crysis 2 was sporting an “Only on Origin” label, suggesting EA was restricting the bestseller to its newly-announced Origin distribution service.
Like the EA representative’s statement confirmed, the game is currently still available digitally via Direct2Drive, Amazon, Gamersgate, and Impulse. It is not known at this time if the “agreement” with “another digital download service” was in fact EA’s new Origin platform or not.
Alice: Madness Returns is likewise available from multiple digital services – but not Steam. Battlefield 3, EA’s next major PC title, is also not available for pre-order through Steam.
A number of other EA titles are still up on Valve’s platform, including both Dragon Age and Mass Effect, Need for Speed and Bulletstorm.
[Story by Brenna Hillier, contributed by Stephany Nunneley]
54 comments
Older Comments
#51
xxJPRACERxx
16/06/11, 3:11 am
Lot of stupid haters here. Origin is 100 time better than Steam, want to know why? Because you only use it to purchase/download your game. After that you can close the client and play your game without having to start the client ever again.
Steam is “ok” but I hate the fact that to play the game you must start the client app.
#52
darksied
16/06/11, 5:05 am
@51
LoL, you’ll get a lot of bad replies for that
But I’m with you. I won’t go so far as to say the steam client is THAT bad, because it has a LOT of upside. But like you, I like having the game activate ONCE, then being able to close the client and never having it open again unless I need it (offline or online, doesn’t matter; you don’t need to open the program again after you activate once). The EA download manager (Origin, whatever) has been my favorite so far.
#53
darksied
16/06/11, 5:16 am
@8 (replying a bit late, but whatever)
I don’t know what you mean here. How can the client crash the game? They’re completely separate. If anyone else is having problems with Origin playing a game, then guess what …? Turn the program off. You don’t need it running in the background to play ANY game, even if it’s an online shooter. Start your task manager, close everything related to origin and EA, then play the game. If it still crashes, it’s the GAME, not the Origin client.
@9
“I mean I am not against them selling their products where they want; I just don’t see myself buying from Origin when I don’t trust their business tactics.”
This is a false argument. You’re using a weak argument to justify your not liking them. You say you don’t like their business tactics because they put pre-order stuff in BF3? “Carving up BF3?” First, the stuff is free. Second, EVERY ONE ELSE DOES THIS. Even Valve, in some ways (ps3 version of portal 2 had a FREE PC copy; did xbox 360 people complain? not NEARLY as much as BF3 “fans”). Every big name title now is going to do this, to some extent. There’s no getting around it. It’s not ruining the game, so we shouldn’t really complain. Now, if it turns out that the stuff they release DOES really unbalance the game, then you can complain and they’ll get those balanced so they’re normal. But I don’t see this happening.
P.S. I’m tired of people blaming EA for Dragon Age 2. While I would like to agree with everyone and say EA sucks because of that, at the end of the day you have to realize that EA is the publisher, Bioware is the developer. Bioware made the game, EA did not. If the game sucks, it’s because Bioware didn’t do a good job. All this “EA forced them to release it early,” “EA made them release a half-finished game,” and all of that is complete crap (and whoever says it knows it, but you like arguing). If EA forced them to release it early, then the game would be actually broken (there’s not many bugs in the game) and would be missing graphics, and be a 10 hour game. It’s in fact a 40 hour game, and there’s people out there who still think it’s awesome and better than the first, in fact (not me, but I can understand).
#54
Tenebrous
16/06/11, 10:35 am
#51, #52 – You can still run (most of) the games outside of steam. Just find the EXE in the steamapps folder (on a PC at least).
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