EA gets hate for not putting games on steam but not blizzard

@Kidavenger said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

competition is always good for consumers.

Since when is taking your games out of the market competition?

Origin is starting to sell 3rd party titles, which might push them to have cheaper prices. If a games 60 on steam and 55 on origin ill buy off origin. The people that already owned those games still own them if people wanna buy them now they just got to get it off origin, i dont see a problem as at the end of the day its there games they can sell them where they want.

Comparing a publisher that puts out tons of games a year (EA) to Blizzard is laughable.

@PenguinDust said:

@zudthespud: Yeah, although I wonder how much their Activision overlords steal from the coffers. Anyway, I'm not complaining, I just don't think people expect to see Blizzard games on Steam because their release schedule is so lengthy. I may be wrong in this since it's been a couple of years since I was in Azeroth, but I think you can buy the WoW expansions through the Blizzard installer which to need to play WoW anyway.

Blizzard doesn't work for Activision. They work for Vivendi, who owns both Activision and Blizzard. It is, therefore, not possible for Activision to take Blizzard's money.

@Shinjitsu said:

Comparing a publisher that puts out tons of games a year (EA) to Blizzard is laughable.

why?

@doobie said:

@Shinjitsu said:

Comparing a publisher that puts out tons of games a year (EA) to Blizzard is laughable.

why?

because.

@jetsetwillie said:

@Shuborno said:

That's where we might disagree. I was somewhat interested in Battlefield 3. Battlefield 3 is not available on Steam. I can safely say I will never purchase Battlefield 3.

If it's some franchise I have some huge investment in and really want to play, sure, I will buy something outside of Steam. (eg. StarCraft II, a Blizzard game) I do keep it listed in my Steam list so I can launch it via Steam though (and thankfully it updates itself).

EA franchises don't have that kind of pull for me, outside of Mass Effect, which I started on 360. I've purchased some EA games on a whim from Steam but I can guarantee that will never happen with games only on Origin. I will not impulse buy Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, SW:TOR, Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age II ever. Those are absolutely games I would have considered purchasing on Steam.

sounds like the only person that looses from your weird steam love is you.

There is always a game as good on Steam as the ones not on Steam. This industry has a lot of high-quality output.

It's simple: I know and trust Steam. I have my games there in a neat little library. Why would I want to start buying games on Origin as well? Simple: I wouldn't. To me it's similar to having my games spread out all over my apartment in a huge mess, or having them stacked neatly on a shelf. In alphabetical order. I just prefer the latter.

I want my digital games in one, easily accessible spot and I could have it that way until EA decided to stop playing ball by adding their own, inferior marketplace. And that makes them a bunch of annoying bastards as far as I am concerned. I don't give annoying bastards money as a general rule.

I even have a free code for Battlefield 3 I haven't used because I just don't want to install Origin.

I don't play Blizzard games, so I don't actually care if they are on STEAM or not. Though I would play them if they were. However I play EA games and when I have Mass Effect 1 and 2 in my collection but now 3 will never be permanently listed on my STEAM profile I become rather upset. Same goes for Crysis 2.

I generally only buy non-STEAM games if I'm getting them for one of my consoles. I'm a STEAM fanboy. I just want it for convenience sake and the fun of keeping a digital collection all in one place. Problem?

I also don't understand this whole competition thing. Digital prices will never go down so long as retail prices remain at an all time high of 60 dollars. Competition has nothing to do with it. I just want EA to play ball so I can have all my games in one place. Until then, no STEAM, no sale.

@Shuborno said:

@jetsetwillie said:

@Shuborno said:

That's where we might disagree. I was somewhat interested in Battlefield 3. Battlefield 3 is not available on Steam. I can safely say I will never purchase Battlefield 3.

If it's some franchise I have some huge investment in and really want to play, sure, I will buy something outside of Steam. (eg. StarCraft II, a Blizzard game) I do keep it listed in my Steam list so I can launch it via Steam though (and thankfully it updates itself).

EA franchises don't have that kind of pull for me, outside of Mass Effect, which I started on 360. I've purchased some EA games on a whim from Steam but I can guarantee that will never happen with games only on Origin. I will not impulse buy Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, SW:TOR, Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age II ever. Those are absolutely games I would have considered purchasing on Steam.

sounds like the only person that looses from your weird steam love is you.

There is always a game as good on Steam as the ones not on Steam. This industry has a lot of high-quality output.

yeah and EA puts out a good portion of that high quality output. seems madness to me to deprive yourself of that.

but thats just me. i care more about games than all the politics of the industry

@Rohok said:

I don't play Blizzard games, so I don't actually care if they are on STEAM or not. Though I would play them if they were. However I play EA games and when I have Mass Effect 1 and 2 in my collection but now 3 will never be permanently listed on my STEAM profile I become rather upset. Same goes for Crysis 2.

I generally only buy non-STEAM games if I'm getting them for one of my consoles. I'm a STEAM fanboy. I just want it for convenience sake and the fun of keeping a digital collection all in one place. Problem?

I also don't understand this whole competition thing. Digital prices will never go down so long as retail prices remain at an all time high of 60 dollars. Competition has nothing to do with it. I just want EA to play ball so I can have all my games in one place. Until then, no STEAM, no sale.

wow. some of you guy really love steam dont you. lol steam fanboy haha

Well, when I downloaded Dragon Age II from Origin, I only got the 1.0 version and had to download both the patch and the hi-res texture pack. So that's annoying. I could understand not doing automatic patches, or maybe I just have to activate that, but why wouldn't you just push out the most recent version for fresh downloads?

I did get double the download speed, so it has that going for it.

Blizzard is exempt from criticism.

I will never love Steam or Origin or Playstation or anything more than I love video games. If you care more about the thing you play games on than the actual games I feel bad for you son I got 99 problems but irrational console loyalty ain't one hit me.

@doobie said:

@Shuborno said:

There is always a game as good on Steam as the ones not on Steam. This industry has a lot of high-quality output.

yeah and EA puts out a good portion of that high quality output. seems madness to me to deprive yourself of that.

but thats just me. i care more about games than all the politics of the industry

I'll stick to 360 to play those high quality EA games (eg. ME3).

I just want PC to be as simple as 360 and Steam makes it happen.

The difference is Blizzard has only a small number of games that they release years apart. These games are also all tied into their Battle.net system which works great and is something people generally really like. They also don't force you to use a shitty client or go through pathetic customer service to get help.

@Kidavenger said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

competition is always good for consumers.

Since when is taking your games out of the market competition?

Origin is starting to sell 3rd party titles, which might push them to have cheaper prices. If a games 60 on steam and 55 on origin ill buy off origin. The people that already owned those games still own them if people wanna buy them now they just got to get it off origin, i dont see a problem as at the end of the day its there games they can sell them where they want.

I think the issue for me is that I don't want to install another client for managing games on my machine that offers me nothing except a worse experience than I get on steam.

Blizzard has its own stuff that has never been on steam, but it is either contained within an individual game or is done via a webpage and doesn't require another additional client to be running on my machine just for the sake of it. Contrast this with the situation with EA, they have actively removed games from steam and want to force a pointless extra client on me.

The other issue I have with origin is that if it is successful then other companies will also try and do the same and we could end up in the stupid situation where we have far too many publisher-only clients that all lock out their games from rival platforms with a net result that gamers have more hassle and higher prices due to the lack of competition.

I rarely manage to make enough time to plays games as it is, so I expect the likes of ME3 and other EA games I was considering will just drop to the back of my list and I'll get round to them on the 360 instead at some point, well after they have dropped drastically in price.

@President_Barackbar said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Kidavenger said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

competition is always good for consumers.

Since when is taking your games out of the market competition?

Origin is starting to sell 3rd party titles, which might push them to have cheaper prices. If a games 60 on steam and 55 on origin ill buy off origin. The people that already owned those games still own them if people wanna buy them now they just got to get it off origin, i dont see a problem as at the end of the day its there games they can sell them where they want.

I highly doubt that EA has any intention of selling games cheaper, that doesn't sound like EA.

That's kind of the problem with publisher owned stores, not just Origin, all of them, they don't have much flexibility with their prices if they don't want to upset retail. EA still relies on retail too much to play with prices the same way Steam does.

It be pretty great to be able to buy lost vikings for dirt cheap on steam, but battlenet is a great service that predates steam and I understand why blizzard doesn't put their games on steam. WTF would u do that when u have battlenet and can directly talk to your customers?

(Note I don't think origin is a bad idea, they just need to make the prices compatible with Steam.)

@jetsetwillie said:

not trolling or anything

Yes you are.

Because it's the cool thing right now to hate EA irrationally, and about silly things that make no difference on anything.

But guys! EA us EVIL. Electronic Art$ amirite?

1: EA releases A LOT more games than Blizzard

2: There is precedent for EA releasing its games on Steam

3: The reason EA abandoned Steam is because of their super exploitative and consumer-hating DLC and pre-order plans

4: Blizzard has Battle.net, which is great

5: EA has Origin, which sucks ass

I don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand: Valve is a great company. They treat their customers incredibly well and offer them great prices on games (see recent sale). Blizzard, while not offering the same kind of savings incentives, is still a great company to deal with as a customer. EA on the other hand may as well be a bag of dicks. That's the difference.

It be pretty great to be able to buy lost vikings for dirt cheap on steam, but battlenet is a great service that predates steam and I understand why blizzard doesn't put their games on steam. WTF would u do that when u have battlenet and can directly talk to your customers?

(Note I don't think origin is a bad idea, they just need to make the prices compatible with Steam.)

Blizzard is a god tier developer; all of their games are absolutely amazing at what they seek to do. They call the shots unlike other developers and release games on their own schedule. The same holds true for Valve. Their games are genre-defining, not rushed crappy cash grabs.

EA is a publisher so it's hard to compare it to them; but their modus operandi is poles apart from blizz/valve.

Valve games are not available on other digital services, but Valve doesn't publish very many games. You don't have to play them.

Blizzard games are not available on other digital services, but Blizzard doesn't publish very many games. You don't have to play them.

Some EA games are not available on other digital services, but because EA publishes SO many games, the potential is there that they could restrict a considerable number of games to be Origin-only. They could even restrict games that are made by 3rd-party developers that aren't even owned by EA, if EA has the publishing rights. This concerns people.

All three are exclusive with their games in similar ways, but people don't like EA because they're way bigger and could theoretically restrict way more games to their service than Valve or Blizzard.

Why are people even talking about Blizzard at this point? Blizzard doesn't really exist anymore in the form it used to, it's now ACTIVISION Blizzard. Also people keep talking like Blizzard actually still acts like they did in the past, that stopped quite some time ago. The development in World of Warcraft and its expansions, the way how they split a single game into three thus forcing people to pay for it several times while preventing the first one from ever getting much cheaper till the last one is released and lots of other things clearly show their new direction.

Anyone who thinks they're not in for the money and only the money is delusional.

All I'm gonna say is this. The platform is PC. The distribution method is Steam/Origin/Battle.net. Loyalty to one company on any platform is kinda funny. Hey, guys remember when Squaresoft only released games on Nintendo platforms? And how that's still going on to this d-oh wait a minute, no it's not. Things change. The dynamics of the industry are ever-changing, so you just kinda have to go with the flow. Point is, buy what you like, stop getting enraged about things you have no control over, and if you didn't like EA's games enough to continue buying them post-Steam, then why are you even in this thread and arguing?

@jetsetwillie said:

@amir90 said:

Because I trust Blizzard, and I know they will be around for a long time.

Which may, or may not be the case for Origin.

well you defiantly win the award for stupidest reason so far.

How is that stupid?

Almost all the games I bought from blizzard have been a blast, my experience with them is sufficient that I trust them.

They are also a stable company and provides a good enough service on battle net, where I can link all my blizzard games.

I dunno. I just like having all my games on Steam in one place and account. I'm not mad about it, per se. I'm just not going to buy any of EA's newer games on the PC anymore. If I see cheap games on sale, and they activate on Steam damn right I'll go ahead and buy them. I see DA:O and DA2 on sale and they only activate on Origin? Ehhhh. But that's just me. I don't really want an account for a single publisher's titles. And why would I buy Third Party titles they sell on Origin, when I can get those on Steam/Activate them on Steam for cheaper?

@jetsetwillie said:

sounds like the only person that looses from your weird steam love is you.

I had to mention that apparently this is true.

For the first time Steam totally won't launch for me right now. I'm having to hunt down forum instructions and back up my games and reinstall.

The only game I have installed that I could play right now is a Blizzard game!

@CL60 said:

Because it's the cool thing right now to hate EA irrationally, and about silly things that make no difference on anything.

Judging by this thread, there are a fair amount of people who are trying to make it cool to mislabel rational dislike of a company's policies as an irrational hatred.

@Doctorchimp said:

People trust Blizzard the same way they trust Valve with their money. They'll release the one product and you'll buy it. Their business model lends itself to people latching onto them because their first priority seems to be to innovate the space they're in and just release the games they want to release.

EA always seemed like they want to make the buck first. They don't try at all to put up an illusion, it's very transparent that EA is just a business where Blizzard and Valve have the manners to make it seem like they care.

Agreed 100%. It's to bad people gloss over actually reasoning to make their dumb points "People hate EA because THE INTERNET!!!111 herp derp." Sure every company wants to make money, some are just more blatantly disgusting about it and EA is the king of this.

@Crowlands said:

@CL60 said:

Because it's the cool thing right now to hate EA irrationally, and about silly things that make no difference on anything.

Judging by this thread, there are a fair amount of people who are trying to make it cool to mislabel rational dislike of a company's policies as an irrational hatred.

I would love to see where this rational hatred you speak of is. Because all I see is crying that they can't use Steam, and fear mongering bullshit.

EA is losing money not using Steam if they put their games on it they would make a lot more money. Many people wont buy EA games because they are on Origin and not on Steam.

@JoeyRavn said:

@DjCmeP said:

EA already had games on Steam, Blizzard didn't.

I think it all boils down to this. Blizzard never even touched Steam, EA removed many of its games from the platform.

Yep, yep, yep.

Blizzard games don't come out on a competing platform. They just install, on their own. That's the difference. I don't need a new application to start just to start the one or two blizzard games I own, but I do to play BF3. Two programs, really, because you need a browser to browse servers and all that.

Blizzard doesn't make games, they make virtual narcotics.

I don't like Blizzard games so I don't care if I ever play them. Same arguments apply to their games though should one ever release that I want to play. Also, blizzard games don't require you to install an entire digital store to play their games and yes you are just trolling.

@Crowlands said:

@CL60 said:

Because it's the cool thing right now to hate EA irrationally, and about silly things that make no difference on anything.

Judging by this thread, there are a fair amount of people who are trying to make it cool to mislabel rational dislike of a company's policies as an irrational hatred.

I would love to see where this rational hatred you speak of is. Because all I see is crying that they can't use Steam, and fear mongering bullshit.

This is probably because Blizzard never had their games on Steam, while EA retroactively removed a number of their highest profile games from Steam and THEN adopted a no-Steam policy.

EA already had games on Steam, Blizzard didn't.

well EA had games on steam and then removed it. EA came out with a new service that is just a big rip off of steam. 
 
blizzard doesn't have a service. they barely make any games, they have  WoW, starcraft 2 came out, they're working on warcraft game and who knows when that is going to come out. 
 
my opinion, EA is just out there for the money. they don't really care for their game. blizzard and valve is a trusting company. they listen to their fans about problems.

Blizzard is working on the starcraft heart of the swarm expansion; the next WoW expansion and Diablo 3. A lot of people have a peculiar relationship with WoW and have an irrational hatred to blizzard.

Another thing; Activision and Blizzard are *COMPLETELY SEPARATE*. Neither has any say in the other's development decisions. They are just under the same umbrella company; vivendi games.

Well, I don't care too much, but it's probably because EA HAD games on there, but they don't anymore. If I'm correct, I don't believe Blizzard ever did.

@Neeshka said:

Blizzard is working on the starcraft heart of the swarm expansion; the next WoW expansion and Diablo 3. A lot of people have a peculiar relationship with WoW and have an irrational hatred to blizzard.

Another thing; Activision and Blizzard are *COMPLETELY SEPARATE*. Neither has any say in the other's development decisions. They are just under the same umbrella company; vivendi games.

Neeshka, do you by any chance really believe what you're writing? Blizzard is not completly free of Activision and Robert Kotick pretty much runs the show. So if you were really interested in what's going on, it should be rather easy to look up a few of his statements and other leaks. Blizzard is pretty much going the same way all the other Activision franchises did, they're being used as a cashcow to squeeze as much out off it as possible and then sell the leftovers.

Just taking a short look at the developement WoW has undergone, the way they went about splitting Starcraft 2 in 3 parts thus making more money with one game and the facts we now know about Diablo 3 should be more then enough to clearly show what's going on. Real money auction house...

@ZeForgotten said:

Meh, most people (mostly little kids... I hope) just hate on anything because they have problems at home. First it's EA, then it's EA and their Origin stuff for, according to the same kids, "stealing secret James Bond information" or whatever it is that makes these kids super secret agents. Then you show them that Steam is "stealing" the exact same info and then they bitch and whine and go "it's not the same!!" even when it is exactly the same. It will never understand people like that, but they're damn funny and I can't help but laugh at them. I wouldn't be surprised if most people hate on Blizzard to without actually having a not-made-up-and-suuuper-dumb reason for it.

I kind of agree. It's the same with the whole DRM argument. Everyone bitches about DRM, but not about the fact that Steam is on huge DRM platform. You could say that this is because the Steam DRM works without inconveniencing the customer, but even with Steam things have gone wrong, leaving people unable to play their games. And yet... there was no outcry.

What I find appalling, however, is that there are people out there who actually want Steam to be the only one of its kind. What the hell happened to the importance of competition and the hatred towards big monopolies?

@Kazona said:

@ZeForgotten said:

Meh, most people (mostly little kids... I hope) just hate on anything because they have problems at home. First it's EA, then it's EA and their Origin stuff for, according to the same kids, "stealing secret James Bond information" or whatever it is that makes these kids super secret agents. Then you show them that Steam is "stealing" the exact same info and then they bitch and whine and go "it's not the same!!" even when it is exactly the same. It will never understand people like that, but they're damn funny and I can't help but laugh at them. I wouldn't be surprised if most people hate on Blizzard to without actually having a not-made-up-and-suuuper-dumb reason for it.

I kind of agree. It's the same with the whole DRM argument. Everyone bitches about DRM, but not about the fact that Steam is on huge DRM platform. You could say that this is because the Steam DRM works without inconveniencing the customer, but even with Steam things have gone wrong, leaving people unable to play their games. And yet... there was no outcry.

What I find appalling, however, is that there are people out there who actually want Steam to be the only one of its kind. What the hell happened to the importance of competition and the hatred towards big monopolies?

Pretty much hitting it on the head.

It's a weird double standard. I'm guessing most people are just lazy and want all their stuff in one place, even if that means stamping out all competition.

Everyone does realize that you can install EA games to your hard drive and add them as non-Steam games to Steam. This allows you to run the Steam overlay so you "fake" have EA games on your Steam account.