The confusing back-and-forth between Steam and Electronic Arts continues. Crysis 2 and Alice: Madness Returns listings all disappeared from Steam earlier this week, followed by a statement from EA stating certain business terms had changed.
The change violated an existing agreement Crytek had regarding Crysis 2 with another company, EA said, thus forcing Crysis 2 to come down from the store.
That didn't really explain what happened to Alice: Madness Returns, though.
Alice: Madness Returns returned to Steam today. EA sent me an odd statement explaining why.
"EA Partners and Spicy Horse Games appreciate Steam’s decision to sell Alice: Madness Returns," said the company. "The game is also available on several other download services including Amazon, Gamestop and Origin.com."
This doesn't answer several questions: why isn't Crysis 2 back? Why was it "Steam's decision" to allow Alice: Madness Returns back into Steam? Will Battlefield 3 ever show up? Does this impact future EA releases? What business terms changed that prompted this in the first place?
At E3, EA launched Origin, a proprietary digital platform for serving up EA content. Though neither company has said so, there's reason to believe these moves have to do with Origin.
I'm asking all of these to try and learn more. When (and if) I hear back, I'll let you know.
weird decision
So are we thinking now that it might have been Steam who took the games down as a jab at EA for promoting Origin so heavily or something?
This whole situation is bumming me out. No one wants a different digital distribution service, EA. Steam killed your last thing and they'll trample over Origin. Just knock it off...
Everyone is stupid.
EA acting so weird, it's like they saw the internet rage and are now just pointing fingers at Valve going
'It their fault, honest!'
Seems very playground to me...
Will probably pick Alice up now considering it's cheaper and I won't have to use Origin.
This translates to "it wasn't selling well enough on the PC platform"
@Matte_G said:
Or, you know, Steam actually did take the games down since they haven't come out and said "no, we didn't do that." It's interesting that people are so quick to assume that EA is at fault when Valve has offered literally no explanation or even denial of EA saying that it wasn't their fault the games got taken down.
Patrick, after a night of making people salty at SSF4AE still hard at work.
I am pretty sure, Ea is playing the EA Game
The direct download space is definitely getting more interesting, but I can't see Steam getting knocked off so easily. I'm sure the meetings EA and Valve have been having have been a mix of legal jargon and thinly veiled challenges.
Am I a bad person to still want steam achievements for the game?
I'm also unclear if Alice was ever there, either.
EA has been having games go up very late on Steam for months. Which is weird with EA being Valve's console publisher of choice recently.
@benjaebe: How do you know Steam took the games down?
We don't know anything as of yet, just EA pointing fingers with not actual facts about the situation.
My point is still valid even if Valve was the instigator in this, EA has handled this poorly imo.
yes! just yes!
I think EA are trying to confuse the issue here. Alice was exclusive to Origin until today. The origin page had a message saying this. They weren't selling it on any other digital distribution services until today. It was clearly a marketing plan to get people to use Origin. They removed it from steam because they weren't going to be selling it there (or anywhere other than origin) until a few days after launch. And June 17th has rolled round and they've started selling it elsewhere, including steam, just as intended and just as was always going to happen.
The whole "we appreciate steam's decision..." stuff seems like spin. They're trying to paint Valve as the big bad monopoly of the digital download space when in reality absolutely everything has gone to plan with Alice's digital release, and there was never any question of it not going to plan. It's release today rather than on Tuesday has nothing to do with Steam and is an EA decision.