Electronic Arts Joins Steam

Good to see EA getting into the swing of things.
EDIT: However, they don't "appear in my region" (UK). Lame.

Steam is awesome... Such a good service, I like it better than Live :)

Thank gosh,i've been waiting for this ever since i got my new PC.

Now we wait for MS to realize than Live sucks and join Steam too.

This is monumental! Huzzah!

It's notable that the games will only use Steam's DRM, at least if what's true of Mass Effect holds true for the rest.  (Thanks to Kloreep who spotted this.)

That a great thing that the PC is getting a some sort uniform platform. Oh and also, how long will we wait until they releases the Need for Speed super pack.

No support for europe AND 1 USD=1 Euro. Valve apparantly hates europe now.

Too bad this didn't happen before when I downloaded Spore from EA download service.  Ah well, I don't think I'll be wanting to redownload that game anytime soon anyways.

NA only sucks

"Good to see EA getting into the swing of things.
EDIT: However, they don't "appear in my region" (UK). Lame."

I am glad to hear it. Steam is a great service and it only made sense that EA would join it, eventually.

As I've said elsewhere, this is both good and bad. It would be awesome to eventually have every video game attainable through one central download service, though it seems like a bad idea overall to have just one service in charge with all that power.

I think if it ever *is* going to happen, then Steam is the best service out there currently. It's easy to use, has had extensive testing and bug removal, has excellent uptime (especially with the sheer bandwidth being thrown at its servers), includes community features, forums, an IM chat service a-la Xbox Live or X-Fire; basically everything you need from a digital game distributor. They also do what other digital distribution methods haven't done so well, from what I've seen, and offer price cuts generally in line with retail prices and specific sales. And, for the moment at least, Steam doesn't force you to pay an additional $5 for "insurance" to be able to re-download your game a few months or even years down the road.

I still worry, with the sheer number of games I now have on Steam, what will happen if the service ever goes under, or what I will do if I find myself unable to afford a decent net connection sometime in the future.

Now I want them to team up with gog.com so that we can also play the old stuff they now have the license to, such as Theme Hospital.

Steam is awesome... This is really good news! The EA download manager thing sucked hard.

Hopefully this one day results in American McGee's Alice ending up on the service. Been meaning to play that for years.

OH GOD
IF I KNEW THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN I WOULD HAVE WAITED BEFORE I GOT SPORE!

gah
that's very annoying

oh well, at least mirror's edge will be fine

Rofl, looks like that whole ea download bs didn't work out so well for them. Go figure.. screwing your customer over wont get you anywhere.

The good guys always win.

Im glad to see EA doing this. I have been very impressed with them as of late. I hope they keep it up, and they could be one of my fav's.

This is very good to see, steam is hella awesome as we know and its good to see EA games on there without EA's horrible download service.

Ye, I love steam, only annoyance is that you arent able to get the manual when you bought the game via steam, not that I've found anyway.

Now if they would only bring the EA stuff to europe and get a more sensible convertion rate from USD to EUR and I'd be all kinds of happy.

I'll be able to play dead space on my PC on Steam? There IS a Santa Claus!

Yes yes yes yes awesome awesome awesome!  Too bad I already bought red alert 3 :(

Maybe it's just coincidence, but a couple buddies and I weren't able to play one successful game of Left 4 Dead last night. Network lag, studdering and disconnects made it nigh impossible to play. Not since November 2004 have I had anything bad to say about Steam until yesterday. Not to mention half the game was pink.

Is this Gd Or is This Bad
 I Dont NO How to React

Funny thing about this, the Crysis games have been on Steam's store for months, now.

great news but its not for europe, lets hope that changes as soon as possible, also do you think that now means you can register ea games that youve bought previously to steam

steam rocks...simple as that

Valve is, like, my favorite game company ever. I listened to the designer commentary in Left 4 Dead and every time they said something genius I realized the difference between a meh and awesome game.

I don't do a lot of downloads, so I can't say I'm "o YEAH" or "aaa...what?"

That's it Valve needs to release a Steam console...that'd be amazing.

The Steam SPORE doesn't seem to have the activation limitations that the other versions do. If it does, Steam is doing a lousy job of letting one know. I mean the Far Cry 2 entry in Steam lets you know you only have 5 activations. At least the community side of steam is still run by a bunch of autists.

@JaxDaxter: Not likely. I've tried registering many non Valve games on steam and none have worked. I especially doubt EA would go for this.

EDIT: @GreggD: That's because Crytek had EA publish the boxed version under EA's Partner's program. The games listed in this article are all IPs owned by EA. Crytek still owns Crysis. Not that funny.

Steam is the only place I buy PC games.

Valve rocks.  I am happy EA is on Steam.

Dope, well i assume they will piss off there download service now, know i hope they do.

Awesome. Long live Steam then, I guess. This seals Steam's supremacy without a doubt. Oh wells for EA download service.

YAAAY!

Thats Awesome!
But what is going to happen to there download thing?
Will it only be for patches now or will the EA Download manager disappear completely.

I am so glad that EA is finally losing this whole "gamer's enemy" persona that it has had for the past couple year. And that people are finally realizing that EA puts out quality product.

Finally some positive news. Good job EA.

Mind? Blown.

I'd buy stuff off of steam, except they charge Europeans 1:1 in euros for dollars.. That is, a $49.99 game is 49.99€ which of course really is $69.

Good job Valve; Your Steam prices with your latest changes are now even more expensive than buying from stores, something that was never cheap here to begin with. It was already bad enough with US price + VAT, but this just takes the cake.

Oh yeah the EA thing? That's cool, I guess. If only I could take advantage of it.

this is amazing news something ive been waiting for, for a long long time. 

Too bad it's only in America. :(

I wish that some of these publishers would also start to publish onto Stardock's Impulse, unless Valve is being evil and signing exclusivity contracts with the publishers to only distribute on their services i don't see what is stopping them.  It would be better for everyone to have competition in the digital distribution space.  Even though Valve is a good company it would still get bad quickly if they end up having a monopoly on PC digital distribution.

Good!

But not for Europe and they did a big price increase on all our games and acted like they were doing us a favor. They lost allot of good faith when they decided to convert the prices. Still, not that anyone cares about Europe, most sites give a games price in English pounds when mentioning a European price, which is just insulting.

Wait... you mean that there are other currencies than the one used by the english speaking country?

This just blows my mind.