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No Battlefield 3 on Steam

[Aug 06, 2011, 12:35 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The EA Forums have a confirmation of widespread suspicions that Battlefield 3 will not be sold through Valve's Steam platform (thanks Planet Battlefield). As was theorized, there is a terms of service conflict at the root of this because DICE's military shooter will include the ability to purchase DLC from within the game:

Gamers can pre-order Battlefield 3 at Origin.com as well as over 100 digital retailers worldwide. EA offers games to all major download services. Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices.

We are intent on providing Battlefield 3 players with the best possible experience no matter where they purchase or play their game, and are happy to partner with any download service that does not restrict our ability to connect directly with our consumers. We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3; meanwhile, gamers can pick from the more than 100 digital retailers listed at http://www.battlefield.com/digitaldownload, or go to http://www.origin.com.

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155.

Re: No Battlefield 3 on Steam

Aug 8, 2011, 12:14

Verno

Blizzard has historically forced retail sales and up until recently provided no digital distribution options at all. People have cried plenty about it over the years, I don't see the lack of a rage filled topic right now as evidence of anything. When Activision Blizzard tries to put Call of Duty behind the Download Duty client then it'll be a directly comparable situation and I suspect the results will be similar. Expectation is a large part of it, people have never really had the option of getting Diablo on Steam so they aren't that upset about it. You can give people something but taking it away is a different story. Blizzard also has built up a lot of goodwill with gamers over the years so it takes public opinion awhile to shift on things like that sometimes. There's a lot of reasons it isn't the same thing basically or that people don't see it as the same thing. Some of those are flawed but many are founded on history and reason.

Back to the topic, I'd note that this whole spat is a very similar situation that happened when EA tried to play hardball with Microsoft and Xbox Live. I'm also very skeptical of EAs reasoning here as other games do sell DLC direct outside of Steam and also have update mechanisms that do not include Steam at all(MMOs for example).

This comment was edited on Aug 8, 2011, 12:27.




Playing: Faster Than Light, Tales of Graces F, Fire Emblem 3DS Watching: Ghost in the Shell, Hannibal, Oblivion

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