@Enigma777 said:
@ajamafalous said:
@Enigma777 said:
@SeriouslyNow said:
@Enigma777 said:
I still love how people are blaming EA when Valve is the one responsible here. I bet you can still buy DA2 from Amazon Digital, Impulse, D2D, etc along with Origin yet people choose to close their eyes and point a finger at EA and call them greedy.
Valve offers the content and they have a right to charge a percentage to host that content, including the DLC. EA doesn't want to pay that percentage. Those other companies don't host any content themselves beyond the basic game packages. Valve also has a much more successful, community driven approach than any of their competitors, they add a lot to the end user experience and that stuff costs money so they have a right to charge for it because it equates to better sales to a larger audience. EA aren't just being greedy, they are actually being foolish and cutting of their nose to spite their face in the hopes that BF3 and ToR will bring them an audience to equal that of Steam's collective bargaining power. It won't.
But in this case Valve isn't hosting any of the content... EA is, so they have no right to charge for it. Therefore they choose to remove the entire game. Sounds like Valve is the bad guy to me on this one.
And are you honestly trying to use the "We are bigger so we can do what we want" excuse? There's a reason why we have laws against monopolies...
If it's in the ToS between Valve and EA it's fair game. You're acting as if Valve has no right to protect their investment. If EA is indeed breaching contract, then Valve is doing nothing wrong.
You really think it isn't the fact that EA thinks that BF3 and TOR will bring in enough people to Origin to negate having their shit removed from Steam? That's clearly what they're banking on.
No. If they wanted to compete with Steam it means they also want to compete with everyone else and from what Iv'e seen that's not the case. But hey, I get it. People have a hard-on for Valve and think it can do no wrong. I just choose not to see the world from rose-tinted glasses.
@SeriouslyNow: And that phenomenal growth is swiftly turning into a monopoly... I for one, want to see some competition in the marketplace, because... you know... it can only be a good thing. Also the only reason other companies seem to be "quite happy" is because they're not big enough to do otherwise. Just look at Blizzard. You don't see any of their games on Steam yet people aren't bitching about that. But then EA pulls out TOR and BF3 and suddenly the sky is falling.
You've it backwards. EA is the monopoly here.
Steam isn't even trying to beone. It hosts numerous games with DLC that are also hosted on competing downloadable services and independent sites. The problem here is EA and their refusal to allow Steam access to host their DLC content. Refusal to share resources and products with others is the very basis of monopoly. Maybe it is justified by the fact that they created the content but it is still, by definition, a monopoly on that content.
If you are so much against monopoly, then why are you against Valve's attempt to fight EA's attempts at monopolizing their DLC content?
Blizzard also monopolizes its games in the digital download space. No one raises any questions because Battle.net functions better than Steam. It's deeply integrated into each of their games (WoW & SC2); it's trying something more than just being SteamLite for Blizzard games. If you use Battle.net, you know how much easier it is to manage your community interactions between SC2 and WoW.
Origin,on the other hand, IS SteamLite for EA games at the moment. Maybe they will integrate it into Battlefield 3 and The Old Republic but until then, it's just playing a losing game. EA also has a rich history of cutting off online access to games after 2 years. Given that we're talking online distribution here, it raises some serious questions about their long term commitment to the Origin experiment.
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