The issue is Valve wants any DLC to be made available on Steam if the game is on Steam. They do not care if someone else sells it too, as long as it's on Steam for the Steam users to buy from.
From a consumer point of view it makes perfect sense. Buy the DLC from the same place you bought the game and not have to goto a 3th party to get that content that should have been on the consumers choice of vendor.
I see this as EA forcing the consumer to have to go somewhere they do not want, to get the DLC. I want my DLC from the vendor I purchased the game from. I've never bought a digital distro game from anyone other than Steam, and I'm reluctant to start now. Especially with an EA game, where as already outlined EA has a shit history in continuing that so called 'direct connection with consumers'. Really? You stay connected with consumers by shutting down servers for online games 1 to 3 years after release? By enforcing download limits from your previous online store? Putting in legal bullshit about losing everything in my Origin account if it's idle for a couple years?
I really want BF3, but I'm getting closer and closer to just skipping BF3 altogether like I did BF2, BF2142 and BC2 (until it was $10). There's already enough games this fall/winter that I wouldn't even miss it.
Hell, I might even buy MW3 on Steam as a quiet protest, when I had zero interest and dont want another CoD game at full price. But Black Ops did a lot of things right, one of them was Steamworks integration. The suits at EA are fucking stupid.
This comment was edited on Aug 6, 2011, 14:45.