EA explains why Crysis 2 was pulled from Steam

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defiant007

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http://www.ea.com/news/demar-at-ea-we-believe-in-choice

I’ve been at EA for 13 years – mostly on the studio side, developing games like March Madness, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and The Godfather. In 2007 I began leading EA Partners and had the honor of working with marquee studios like Harmonix, Crytek, Insomniac, EPIC, Double Fine Studios, Respawn and Valve.

More recently, I was asked to lead EA’s consumer platform, Origin. Origin connects gamers with our franchises across PC and mobile devices. It is the new name of our EA Store, and an application that allows you to download EA games directly to your PC. My new role means that I’m involved in shaping EA’s policies for how players download our online games and services, and we always try to avoid misunderstandings with our players.

Some confusion came up a few weeks ago, when we started seeing stories and forum posts that suggested that EA was in conflict with one of our download partners, and that we had removed our games from that service. This is absolutely not true. I want to make sure our players understand EA’s policy on selling games through our download partners. As such, today we posted our official policy on selling games on third-party download sites, which you can view here.

At EA, we want to bring the best possible content to our players. This was a key factor during my time in EA Partners, where we found great studios and worked to make their games available to as many players as possible. Here at Origin we have the same principle. We want our products available to as many players as possible, which means we make them available in all the places that gamers go to download games and services. To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam.

As you know, games and how they are made have both changed. Today, we continue to extend the experience with new maps, vehicles and other content that adds hours of fun and more value for our players. We also enhance the gaming experience with features like friends lists and in-game chat using the Origin application. Most importantly, we always want to be sure we provide this content and service at the highest possible level of quality. To ensure this, any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players. You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience. This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers.

Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve. At present, there is only one download service that will not allow this relationship. This is not our choice, and unfortunately it is their customer base that is most impacted by this decision. We are working diligently to find a mutually agreeable solution.

Going forward, EA will continue offering our games to all major download sites. We will also remain committed to providing you, our players, with the best possible content, services, and gaming experience that we can.



David DeMartini

SVP, Global E-Commerce
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There you go, EA had a hissy fit because they want to be able to spam steam users direct with bullshit marketing and also want to seize control of the patching process and sale of DLC.

My view....EA can go fuck themselves, I'm not interested in having a relationship with them. I want to buy my games and play them, a very simple and straight forward commercial transaction.
 
defiant007 said:
There you go, EA had a hissy fit because they want to be able to spam steam users direct with bullshit marketing and also want to seize control of the patching process and sale of DLC.

My view....EA can go fuck themselves, I'm not interested in having a relationship with them. I want to buy my games and play them, a very simple and straight forward commercial transaction.
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Wow. That's a pretty arbitrary interpretation. Biased much?

So Steam is the only partner that decides to do things their way and cut EA out of the provision of patches and so on, contrary to the agreement EA has with its resellers. That makes EA the dicks?

You can spin it either way if you have an agenda. Try thinking instead of just foaming at the mouth at the slightest hint of someone criticising Steam.

No, wait, FUCK EA THEY JSUT WANTED 2 SPAM US WITH MARKETING AND VALVE WOULDN'T LET THEM GO VALVE WHOOOO
 
Yes it is biased, because over the years EA online services have been nothing but a steaming pile of shit and now all of a sudden I am supposed to forgive and forget? I think not.

P.S. There are very good reasons why I use steam over EA's "other partners", if you are not aware of the reasons then I am sure others will fill you in on them.
 
I agree with defiant, up to this point steam has proved to be a useful well managed download service, while EA has proved to be vampiric horse crap.
 
defiant007 said:
http://www.ea.com/news/demar-at-ea-we-believe-in-choice
There you go, EA had a hissy fit because they want to be able to spam steam users direct with bullshit marketing and also want to seize control of the patching process and sale of DLC.
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Yeah which was obvious from day one, but it's nice to see the guy responsible for Origin stepping up and admitting to it. This is all very simple... EA wants a slice of Valve's cake and possibly steal the cake if they can. This is the purpose of Origin and nothing else. If you do not comprehend this then you are naive like no one has ever been naive... but more likely you have an agenda... They just further proved as always that they don't give a shit about the customer. They want a "relationship" with us by forcing it upon us with a service concept they copied from another company and called it Origin! This is amazing.
 
Jellylesg said:
Wow. That's a pretty arbitrary interpretation. Biased much?

So Steam is the only partner that decides to do things their way and cut EA out of the provision of patches and so on, contrary to the agreement EA has with its resellers. That makes EA the dicks?

You can spin it either way if you have an agenda. Try thinking instead of just foaming at the mouth at the slightest hint of someone criticising Steam.
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From my experience, I don't think it's too far from the truth. At least, EA isn't being as honest as they're trying to make themselves out.

If they want to be in control of the patching process, they can build that into their game client. If you look at any MMO that is available on Steam -- the client patches the game, and it comes directly from the patch servers just like retail copies of the game. This tells me that Steam does allow the game to patch itself.

It also says to me that EA wants to push more than just game patches and Valve said no. I think it's more along the lines of DLC, or whatever they're calling patches. To me, a patch is something to correct a problem in the game, not to give me a new map or more guns.

Did Crysis do something with DLC that other EA games didn't?
 
defiant007 said:
There you go, EA had a hissy fit because they want to be able to spam steam users direct with bullshit marketing and also want to seize control of the patching process and sale of DLC.
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Pretty much my reaction as well.

And no, I'm not a Steam fanboy.
 
defiant007 said:
Yes it is biased, because over the years EA online services have been nothing but a steaming pile of shit and now all of a sudden I am supposed to forgive and forget? I think not.

P.S. There are very good reasons why I use steam over EA's "other partners", if you are not aware of the reasons then I am sure others will fill you in on them.
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Go on then. Steam's cheaper? Got better support? Allows for refunds or reselling? It's more secure?

If you answer "yes" to any of the above you are the one unaware.

Also, you say it's biased because over the years EA's online service has been shit. A: that has no relevance to the article. B: Origin is not their old online service. It is a new delivery system designed to replace their shitty old on.

Do you read The Daily Mail, by any chance?

Since I'm capable of reading things without kneejerking I am going to wait until there is some solid information before frothing at the mouth.

Demon10000 said:
From my experience, I don't think it's too far from the truth. At least, EA isn't being as honest as they're trying to make themselves out.

If they want to be in control of the patching process, they can build that into their game client. If you look at any MMO that is available on Steam -- the client patches the game, and it comes directly from the patch servers just like retail copies of the game. This tells me that Steam does allow the game to patch itself.

It also says to me that EA wants to push more than just game patches and Valve said no. I think it's more along the lines of DLC, or whatever they're calling patches. To me, a patch is something to correct a problem in the game, not to give me a new map or more guns.

Did Crysis do something with DLC that other EA games didn't?
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I would be very surprised if that is truly the case. Valve is all about the DLC, Just take a look at the store, and their own products. TF2, for example.

There's no way this is a case of Valve being righteous and noble and putting their foot down, refusing to sell DLC. It's probably far more likely that Valve wanted a bigger cut than EA was willing to give them for the delivery of their content now that they have Origin, so no deal was made. It's a misguided impression of how much money Origin will make them, not a "hissy fit because they can't spam marketing at the customers". That's downright retarded.
 
Jellylesg said:
Go on then. Steam's cheaper? Got better support? Allows for refunds or reselling? It's more secure?

If you answer "yes" to any of the above you are the one unaware.

Also, you say it's biased because over the years EA's online service has been shit. A: that has no relevance to the article. B: Origin is not their old online service. It is a new delivery system designed to replace their shitty old on.

Do you read The Daily Mail, by any chance?

Since I'm capable of reading things without kneejerking I am going to wait until there is some solid information before frothing at the mouth.
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Steam is cheaper than the EA Store for Aussies such as Defiant and myself. Plus the Australian EA Store never has sales.
 
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Jellylesg said:
So Steam is the only partner that decides to do things their way and cut EA out of the provision of patches and so on, contrary to the agreement EA has with its resellers.
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That public letter came smelling of week-old self-serving bullshit and deserves all the scorn one can muster.

If it had simply stated the truth: "We believe we can make more money by fully controlling the delivery platform" then it'd been another matter. Actually, even then this use of "Origin" is enough to make me think they're all assholes. They'd have to call it something else too, something which didn't piss all over the memory of company and product line loved by gamers.

You can spin it either way if you have an agenda. Try thinking instead of just foaming at the mouth at the slightest hint of someone criticising Steam.
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Great advice, you should take it up some time.

If they don't want to be on Steam, that's not something I have a problem with, provided they continue to support the people who already invested in EA products /there/.

Just don't expect me to hop on over to "Origin" anytime soon.
 
defiant007 said:
Yes it is biased, because over the years EA online services have been nothing but a steaming pile of shit and now all of a sudden I am supposed to forgive and forget? I think not.

P.S. There are very good reasons why I use steam over EA's "other partners", if you are not aware of the reasons then I am sure others will fill you in on them.
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Ive been an EA Download manager user for several years and it is pretty blah.

See heres the deal. Steam was invented to be a group client. Then it blew up and became a store. Valve never had any intention of causing undo stress. Always everything is a social experiment for the betterment of gamers. EA has never given gamers anything. Valve near constantly does crazy shit that doesn't buy them anything but goodwill. GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS. Valve will never be the "bad" guys.


EA isn't doing anything for us. Origin is a new business model they want to shove down our throats and hope it takes. $$$$$$$

It makes me mad because Steam actually works just great. I like having all my friends on one client I like my friends being able to see and join my games. Origin is going to make people lives just that much more difficult.

It reminds me of UT3. I tried for an hour last night trying to login to try the multiplayer. I could not fucking get in and I'm a goddamn certified engineer. No wonder that games dead. I see EA taking the exact same path. BTW BFBC2 Friends is still broken YOU FUCKWADS.
 
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I've been using Steam since 2004 & I'm very satisfied with the service. I recently started using the EA Download Manager (now Origin), which works quite well for all of the newer EA games that I own. Both have their strengths & weaknesses but overall they provide what I need. I'm feeling very neutral on the topic since neither have done me any wrong. Quite surprising to see people being very militant about Origin when most complaints come from the actual lack of experience in using it. It's improved a bit since EADM was in it's infancy.

In short (if TL;DR): I think everyone should give Origin a try before categorizing it as a PoS.
 
Jellylesg said:
Go on then. Steam's cheaper?
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Significantly cheaper, as noted by Plague feel free to compare prices offered by Origin's AU store to those on Steam's AU store.

Jellylesg said:
Got better support?
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Steam gets routinely patched and Q/A'd, and I can't say the same for Origin which runs like a bloated turd.

Jellylesg said:
Allows for refunds or reselling?
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It definitely allows for refunds, as for reselling what fucking universe are you living in that you think EA would ever allow their digital games to be resold??!!

Jellylesg said:
It's more secure?
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Already had my details compromised thanks to EA...I wouldn't leave them in charge of my toothbrush.

Jellylesg said:
If you answer "yes" to any of the above you are the one unaware.
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Or more likely you have an agenda or a giant chip on your shoulder.

Jellylesg said:
Also, you say it's biased because over the years EA's online service has been shit. A: that has no relevance to the article.B: Origin is not their old online service. It is a new delivery system designed to replace their shitty old on.
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Delusional much? I see lateral thought has no place in this discussion. P.S. their new delivery system is just as shitty as their old system....perhaps you should try it some time before extolling it's virtues to us.
 
Ironic that this alleged "policy" does not extend to other EA games such as NFS: Hot Pursuit, just one example.

When what state is "just policy" when clearly it is no such thing, it is pretty transparently obvious that you are nothing but liars in this regard.
 
Also, as an aside, I had to join Origin last week in attempting to update some EA game or other.

What a pile of crap. Good lord, fellas, have you logged onto Steam and seen what the competition is doing ? And if so, how on earth do you think your "service" stands a chance of competing ?

Morons.
 
Demon10000 said:
Did Crysis do something with DLC that other EA games didn't?
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nope, nothing about their service excludes first party distro, if you choose to integrate this into your apps, instead of using the steam store/overlay apis. as you can see plenty of other devs do it this way, for all sorts of content including patches and dlc. look at ubisoft for a similar case with their uplay network, settlers7 has their own fully integrated dlc platform, that you download from their app instead of steam.

Jellylesg said:
There's no way this is a case of Valve being righteous and noble and putting their foot down, refusing to sell DLC. It's probably far more likely that Valve wanted a bigger cut than EA was willing to give them for the delivery of their content now that they have Origin, so no deal was made. It's a misguided impression of how much money Origin will make them, not a "hissy fit because they can't spam marketing at the customers". That's downright retarded.
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the story is simple. their goal here is to create incentive, and force relevance to a platform that people do not yet have a reason to use. this is why all the spoonfed pr bullshit and misdirection about quality, and choice - because they know that doing so will actually reduce both.

so as a consumer your decision is, does this product have the value to compensate for the reduction in quality, and choice? if they have to mislead you in order to sell it, then the answer is obviously no.
 
Table said:
I agree with defiant, up to this point steam has proved to be a useful well managed download service, while EA has proved to be vampiric horse crap.
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Exactly. EA sure in hell isn't doing it for their customer's benefit.
 
Does anyone really care? It's a shitty game that should not have been released anyways. You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill.
 
Well so far I've never had an issue with steam; ea on the other hand there was all sort of crap with outages and other shit that ruins the experience (ala dragon age dropping dlc et all).

Clearly David DeMartini appears very good at pr crap but to date the design/performance of their (EA) system is 'screw the customer' not 'give the customer the best possible experience'. Naturally this is my opinion and one can argue the issue but I certainly do not find the 'experience' very good and am very sad they purchased bioware.
 
Thank god Crysis 2 was such crap or we might actually be missing something on Steam. EA totally screwed up the DLC for Dragon Age 1 & 2. I actually bought all the friggin DLC for both games and I couldn't even play DA1 for a week because their servers were screwed.
 
I think it's totally reasonable for EA to want to control the distribution path for their DLC. But to restrict the patching process to their own proprietary software is very lame and I don't blame Valve for objecting. That's one of their big selling points for Steam. You buy the game and Steam automatically keeps it up to date.
 
I love the comments on EA's website. EA's link to the "official policy" is more of a forum post than anything official. And includes this nugget:
However, when a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services – it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us.
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Given this guy's position at global e-commerce and his letter, I guess "control the distribution" means they want to "directly" contact me to sell other services. This is what I like about steam, i don't get contacted about crap I don't want. The game/client gets patched, and that's it.
 
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. That is exactly how Steamworks titles that are bought via Impulse, Amazon, D2D, Gamersgate, GOG or any other DD service work. Valve should let other publishers do the same thing with games sold via Steam.
 
Table said:
while EA has proved to be vampiric horse crap.
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this made me snicker and lol a bit, awesome!


hfk said:
EA wants a slice of Valve's cake and possibly steal the cake if they can. This is the purpose of Origin and nothing else. ....They want a "relationship" with us by forcing it upon us with a service concept they copied from another company and called it Origin! This is amazing.
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agreed.

piscian18 said:
EA isn't doing anything for us. Origin is a new business model they want to shove down our throats and hope it takes. $$$$$$$

It makes me mad because Steam actually works just great. I like having all my friends on one client I like my friends being able to see and join my games. Origin is going to make people lives just that much more difficult.
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Having your friends in one place is great! This reminds me of Microsofts Xplay (or whatever its called now), where if you have a steam game, you still need a MS account to play it. You need friends both here and there, does that sound retarded? Having to log into two accounts to play one game? EA is dong the same.
 
I love Steam, for the record.

But it seems like no one remembers the early days. The pure, hot hatred peopled heaped on Steam when HL2 was released. It was buggy, it was slow, people went nuts because it HAD to be installed and HAD to be running just to play a single game! I mean, the nerve of these Valve jerks!

It wasn't until a couple years, many client updates and some significant store tweaking that Steam became the gamer's darling and the savior of PC Gaming.

So I do think it's very short sighted to outright dismiss other attempts at launching a similar service. Steam is great, but it could be better. One of the tried and true methods of making a product or service better is giving it strong competition.

Rather than grind my teeth, I prefer to give EA the benefit of the doubt. Best case scenario is the turn Origin into a great DD platform that improves Steam through competition and expands consumer choice. Worst case scenario is that it's a piece of shit and I just keep using Steam.
 
black_b[ ]x;1037481316 said:
This is what I like about steam, i don't get contacted about crap I don't want. The game/client gets patched, and that's it.
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I played some Homefront on Steam yesterday, and when I quit the game, up comes an ad from Steam advertising their current sales. Is there an opt-out setting that I am missing?
 
Isn't Dragon Age 2 still on STEAM? And it has DLC, patches, you login to the Bioware network from within the game, where it can give you messages. What is the deal with Crysis 2 in particular?
 
GullyFoyle said:
I played some Homefront on Steam yesterday, and when I quit the game, up comes an ad from Steam advertising their current sales. Is there an opt-out setting that I am missing?
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Yes, there is an option in the client to disable announcements. I don't have it in front of me to give the specifics though.
 
RIPATI said:
Rather than grind my teeth, I prefer to give EA the benefit of the doubt. Best case scenario is the turn Origin into a great DD platform that improves Steam through competition and expands consumer choice. Worst case scenario is that it's a piece of shit and I just keep using Steam.
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No, the worst case scenarios is you loose access to all of your games on origin and have no choice but to keep using steam.
 
Origin sucks because there is a limited download window. You are only guaranteed to be able to download your purchase from them for up to a year. Whoever made that decision deserves to be fired.
 
RIPATI said:
I love Steam, for the record.

But it seems like no one remembers the early days. The pure, hot hatred peopled heaped on Steam when HL2 was released. It was buggy, it was slow, people went nuts because it HAD to be installed and HAD to be running just to play a single game! I mean, the nerve of these Valve jerks!

It wasn't until a couple years, many client updates and some significant store tweaking that Steam became the gamer's darling and the savior of PC Gaming.

So I do think it's very short sighted to outright dismiss other attempts at launching a similar service. Steam is great, but it could be better. One of the tried and true methods of making a product or service better is giving it strong competition.

Rather than grind my teeth, I prefer to give EA the benefit of the doubt. Best case scenario is the turn Origin into a great DD platform that improves Steam through competition and expands consumer choice. Worst case scenario is that it's a piece of shit and I just keep using Steam.
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They HAVE tried for years now man. They can't get it right. Steam took heat, and deservedly so, but they did get it right.

I for one just don't want multiple services running to play my games. And I just want ONE friends list.

"Oh! Billy Bob Thorton is playing BF3 on Steam. Well let me join him!" is all I want really.

Spare-Flair said:
Origin sucks because there is a limited download window. You are only guaranteed to be able to download your purchase from them for up to a year. Whoever made that decision deserves to be fired.
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And this!

Although to be fair my BF2142 has been on my account since launch umpteen years ago. Even there on Origin now.
 
It looks like I will not be buying any EA games if this continues to be the case... Not that I do too much anyways as their games are usually so recycled they are not fun. But I was thinking about picking up Crysis2 when it was on sale for cheap

Bottom line is I already have steam and have about 200 games on it. i have no need for another digital downloading mega service like Origin - I had impulse and I hated running 2 services all the time so I will stick with steam...

Has anyone heard anything about a response from Valve about this situation?
 
GullyFoyle said:
I played some Homefront on Steam yesterday, and when I quit the game, up comes an ad from Steam advertising their current sales. Is there an opt-out setting that I am missing?
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Settings> Interface tab> Uncheck the notify me about Steam announcements blah blah

I never tried this because it is not a big deal. In fact I like being aware of sales.

It also amusing me how people are complaining about running multiple services. Because memory is so expensive and our computers are so slow because of it. Years ago I would agree but not anymore.
 
RIPATI said:
Best case scenario is the turn Origin into a great DD platform that improves Steam through competition and expands consumer choice.
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That is simply never ever going to happen.

Maybe if they got Activision, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Capcom, THQ, Bethesda and Take Two on board... But somehow I don't see any of these guys handing a cut of their profits over to their biggest competitor.

Spare-Flair said:
Origin sucks because there is a limited download window. You are only guaranteed to be able to download your purchase from them for up to a year. Whoever made that decision deserves to be fired.
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Pretty sure they scrapped that rule in EADM long before I'd even heard of Origin.
 
GO VALVE WOOO I NEVER GET POP UPS ABOUT GAMES I HAVE NO INTEREST ABOUT FROM VALVE WOO HOO GO STEAM I WANT GABE NEWELL INSIDE ME1!!!!
 
WarriorX said:
Settings> Interface tab> Uncheck the notify me about Steam announcements blah blah

I never tried this because it is not a big deal. In fact I like being aware of sales.

It also amusing me how people are complaining about running multiple services. Because memory is so expensive and our computers are so slow because of it. Years ago I would agree but not anymore.
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I used to have it disabled, but the truth is I'm a sucker for new games, updates and deals. I don't wanna miss nutin!
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
Pretty sure they scrapped that rule in EADM long before I'd even heard of Origin.
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I asked about it once and they explained it to me as "Look we have to have a disclaimer some we don't get sued for not having BF2142 for download 15 years from now." They only guarantee a game will be downloadable for X amount of time, but I've re-downloaded BF2142 atleast a couple times in the last 3 or 4 years with no problems.
 
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