In what is yet another example of a corporate disagreement negatively affecting consumers it appears that EA and Valve have fallen out over how digital distribution works and as such EA are going to be withholding Battlefield 3 from Steam.
So why would EA withhold a game from a service that boats over 30 million unique users? Could it be that they have recently launched their own digital distribution service and are now playing unfairly?
Well according to EA this is not true and their new service, EA Origin, is not a direct competitor to Steam and they will still be launching all their titles on Valve’s dominant platform.
However according to a recent list that EA sent out Battlefield 3 won’t be available on Steam and this is because Valve recently pulled a variety of EA titles from the service after EA decided to interact with the users directly and offer direct patches instead of going through the Steam service, thereby breaching the terms and conditions bestowed upon them by Steam.
The lack of Battlefield 3 isn’t official yet and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see either side cave just to ensure this massive seller is available on the largest digital distribution platform in the world.
Source: Joystiq
Last Updated: July 11, 2011
