Crysis 2 Was Removed from Steam Over DLC Distribution Deal

I've been just as frustrated as you about the lack of clarity from Electronic Arts and Valve over Crysis 2's removal from Steam. Then, when EA said it "appreciates Steam's decision" to allow Alice: Madness Returns on Steam, things became more confusing.

I have some answers.

Alice: Madness Returns was not pulled down from Steam--it wasn't there to start. As others pointed out to me, EA has a habit of placing its games on Steam at the last second. Alice: Madness Returns was the latest, but there was a similar situation with Dragon Age II.

As for why Crysis 2 is no longer on Steam, an EA spokesperson explained to me that Crytek had brokered a deal for another digital distributor to host the game's downloadable content. Because Steam could not distribute the content, Steam took the game down. It's still not available.

"EA had nothing to do with Steam's decision to drop Crysis 2," said the company in a statement.

EA did not make that point completely clear in its previous statement about Crysis 2's removal.

"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service," it said last week, "many of which are not imposed by other online game services."

The reasons for suspicion over EA's relationship with Steam come from the launch of Origin, EA's new distribution platform revealed at E3. Origin will be the exclusive home to the digital version of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The question that lingers: what about Battlefield 3?

"No new information on BF3 or what Steam will decide to do with other EA titles," said the company. "We are glad they chose to post Alice on Steam."

Steam does list some upcoming releases, but not many. While Battlefield 3 is not listed, Rage, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and Dead Island are, and can be added to a Steam wishlist.

Weird 
 
Edit: Nice. Now, did EA realize that Crysis 2 was bound by such terms or did they broker another deal with the intent of it being kind of a "fuck you" to Valve? This could either be an innocent misunderstanding, or a fight between the two companies. Hopefully not the latter.

So it was Cryteks fault?

Maybe I'm just tired but I still don't get why they haven't put it back up...

I hate it when people get greedy and destroy things by taking them away from people.

They were quick to associate the blame with Steam in the first place though.

By which I mean that without the clear up today, the previous statements sounded like passive aggressive snipes at Steam.

EA is really on its way to make sure its version of GameSpy is loved by all.

"While Battlefield 3 is not listed, Rage, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and Dead Island are"

Yeah, because Rage, Warhammer and Dead Island aren't EA, while BF3 is. EA seems reluctant to put their stuff on Steam, hoping people will pre-order it from them out of desperation first.

I wish Valve would make a statement.

Sooooo , a misunderstanding/screw up then? You got to love corporations these days :\ , oh well I was kind of tired of all the speculation about Origins etc. Whatever happens will happen I suppose.

So is it that EA want's all the pie when it comes to DLC revenue?

Makes sense. Of course, I'm sure somehow this will be slanted as EA's fault or as if there's some kind of malicious intent even though Steam took it down as a result of some kind of DLC terms.

I have no doubt BF3 will be coming to Steam. People are kind of over exaggerating the situation between the two companies.

OK, now I'm even more confused. How does Steam deal with other EA titles like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, where you buy Bioware points and then download the DLC from EA? 
 
And in Battlefield Bad Company 2, you can buy a code for DLC and then just type it in from within game to unlock it. You can completely avoid a Steam purchase there. 
 
This story never gets easier to understand.

I could see a case where someone buys Crysis 2 on Steam, and the in-game DLC menu offers to sell the player some DLC and it goes to some other non-steam vendor to sell and download it. Who knows what kind of mess that could make. If the update is bad, users blame Steam even though it's not part of Steam. Or the Steam update system can't verify your local cache because you updated via this other hosting company so it overwrites stuff, breaking the game.

Naturally, it's the users that end up suffering.

So if Steam sounds like they don't allow games which host DLC other places but not on steam itself then why are games like Mass Effect still on steam? You have to go through the bioware/ea crap to get dlc for those games, and buy bioware points...

I hope Steam lightens this rule, because refusing to put games on Steam that don't sell the DLC through them exclusively is a dick move, and will only lead to developers looking else where. This also seems like something totally unlike Valve. Making it an option for them sure, but demanding that everyone uses it just seems silly.
 
This also really confuses me, because games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Sims 3 all use an external source to buy all the DLC with. 
 
I R CONFUZZELED!

This is why DLC and DRM is bullshit. There's nothing enjoyable or beneficial to me as a customer ot have to deal with going through fucking hoops and various registrations and accounts and logins and processes just to buy and download and install and access additional DLC shit for your fucking game, like the bullshit you have to deal with for Dragon Age games on Steam, not to mention the uncertainty of "how long can I still have access to this before you take it away?".

As for EA games appearing on Steam - you can bet they'll appear only after they've milked everything they can out of pre-orders for physical stores and their shitting "Origin/EA Download" bullshit. Once they've done that, they'll make it available for Steam. Probably without all of the game-changing "bonuses" that will be timelocked for Steam players, no doubt.

"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service," it said last week, "many of which are not imposed by other online game services."

@kidko said:

I could see a case where someone buys Crysis 2 on Steam, and the in-game DLC menu offers to sell the player some DLC and it goes to some other non-steam vendor to sell and download it. Who knows what kind of mess that could make. If the update is bad, users blame Steam even though it's not part of Steam. Or the Steam update system can't verify your local cache because you updated via this other hosting company so it overwrites stuff, breaking the game.

This is what you have to do for Dragon Age games on Steam And, I believe, Mass Effect. It's a fucking obnoxious hassle. You have to go to EA and create an account on their website and tie it to your Steam account and redeem your serial and bonus codes and then login to their "social networking" system on EA and then figure out where the content actually is (harder than necessary) and then download it and then you can install it. Fuck, you even have to do this just to get the higher resolution textures for Dragon Age II so it doesn't look like total shit. Steam should do everything they can to eradicate that sort of inconvenience and bad taste from games on their service.

Also, if I can't get BF3 on Steam, then I will buy a physical copy from Amazon. I will never buy anything from "Origin". I am a little worried that they're going to continue the Battlfield tradition that started with Bad Company, though. Where you have to jump through 800 marketing bullshit hoops to "earn" all the content in the game. Fucking twats. Fuck them.

@crusader8463: It seems like if the developer sells the DLC directly through the game there's no problem (BioWare games). The situation here seems to be that Crytek made a DLC deal with a separate digital distribution service to exclusively provide DLC.

I think everyone is misunderstanding the statements.

As for why Crysis 2 is no longer on Steam, an EA spokesperson explained to me that Crytek had brokered a deal for another digital distributor to host the game's downloadable content. Because Steam could not distribute the content, Steam took the game down. It's still not available.

Everyone is taking that to mean "Crytek brokered a deal for another distributor to host the games DLC, and because steam could not distribute the content, they took the game down" to mean that Steam said "fine, if we can't sell the DLC, then we won't sell the game either, so neener neener!".

It seems obvious to me that the point here to notice is that Crytek brokered a deal with another distributor and STEAM COULD NOT DISTRIBUTE THE CONTENT. Meaning, perhaps, that there is no way for people who buy the game on Steam to get access to that DLC content for use with the Steam version of the game. It is unlikely that Valve would unnecessarily stir things up in this regard unless it was because the decisions by Crytek were preventing their own (Steam) users from having access to the content in some way.

I don't know why everyone is taking the comment as if Steam is throwing a tantrum and going home with their ball, for fuck's sake.

@Branthog said:

This is why DLC and DRM is bullshit. There's nothing enjoyable or beneficial to me as a customer ot have to deal with going through fucking hoops and various registrations and accounts and logins and processes just to buy and download and install and access additional DLC shit for your fucking game, like the bullshit you have to deal with for Dragon Age games on Steam, not to mention the uncertainty of "how long can I still have access to this before you take it away?".

As for EA games appearing on Steam - you can bet they'll appear only after they've milked everything they can out of pre-orders for physical stores and their shitting "Origin/EA Download" bullshit. Once they've done that, they'll make it available for Steam. Probably without all of the game-changing "bonuses" that will be timelocked for Steam players, no doubt.

I totally agree. DRM just frustrates completely legitimate customers and does nothing to deter the pirates. DRM is the reason I had to buy the Witcher twice...I can't even believe I bought it for the second time. The first time for like $30 which didn't work due to DRM crap. The second time I bought it off of GoG seeing that they promised it was DRM-free for $5. If it was any more than that, it would have still been no dice. Guess what, the game magically worked when I installed teh DRM-free version...oh wow, who would have guessed.

Fark corporate!

OK, now I'm even more confused. How does Steam deal with other EA titles like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, where you buy Bioware points and then download the DLC from EA?  And in Battlefield Bad Company 2, you can buy a code for DLC and then just type it in from within game to unlock it. You can completely avoid a Steam purchase there.  This story never gets easier to understand.

I like to buy a fucking boxed game, install it and play through the campaign, then uninstall and move on to the next game. All these services they tie my games to with social features I will never use and DRM that just gets in my way makes me an annoyed customer. Why do they want to annoy their customers?

If some people want this stuff great, have it as an option. Stop forcing any of this bullshit on me though, I don't want it. I like games as a PRODUCT, not as a service, thanks anyway Gabe and the rest.

@TheHT said:

"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service," it said last week, "many of which are not imposed by other online game services."

Curious. Very curious.

EA's way of saying that Origin is better then Steam without actually "Saying It", even though Steam hosts dlc for games without them being exclusive, EA just wants the exclusivity for their games without sharing the profit because.. its EA for fucks sake.

This is tiresome.

Valve doing whatever it takes to protect Steam's monopoly then? "Give us everything or fuck off." basically. I wonder what other terms Valve force other, smaller developers to accept in order to be on Steam.

I still suspect this was motivated by EA announcing their intentions to make their biggest games exclusive. Valve can't just sit back and let the industry slowly cut them out of the loop.

Waiting for the other shoe, which is that the other deal is an exclusive DLC distribution through Origin.

@fallen_elite said:

@AndyS said:

OK, now I'm even more confused. How does Steam deal with other EA titles like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, where you buy Bioware points and then download the DLC from EA? And in Battlefield Bad Company 2, you can buy a code for DLC and then just type it in from within game to unlock it. You can completely avoid a Steam purchase there. This story never gets easier to understand.

This is a good point. WTF

If i had to take a guess there needs to be a system in place for steam to "Trust" where it's game data files are getting patched from. This relationship would of been set up with EA/developers and who knows perhaps Steam (valve) were getting a piece of that pie even though it was done in game.

As soon as you put yet another party into the mix selling/distributing DLC then they need to have an agreement with Valve as well which EA I'm going to guess didn't discuss with Valve ahead of time. There's possibly also something in Valves contracts saying the developer (specifically only the developer) is allowed to update game files. If the files are coming from somewhere else then once again we have something that won't work.

This is all just speculation of course but I'm trying to think of something that would cause this.

Everything in a corporate world takes a lot of time so I'm not surprised this hasn't been resolved yet.

Maybe it's just some favoritsm on my part because of liking Valve for defending PC gaming for so long, but this whole deal seems really shady on EA's part. Especially the way they tried make valve the culprit for not selling Alice, even though they were the ones who opted to list it late.

Other digital retailers have to sell a game with Steamworks = All is good
Steam has to sell a game (in this case a DLC) with other digital retailer content = Valve is mad.
 
Hah, did I got that correctly?

So basically they're all fucking idiots and even digital distribution is too

hard to figure out right when it comes to licensing and distribution.

Valve doing whatever it takes to protect Steam's monopoly then? "Give us everything or fuck off." basically.

@Jimbo said:

Valve doing whatever it takes to protect Steam's monopoly then? "Give us everything or fuck off." basically. I wonder what other terms Valve force other, smaller developers to accept in order to be on Steam.

I still suspect this was motivated by EA announcing their intentions to make their biggest games exclusive. Valve can't just sit back and let the industry slowly cut them out of the loop.

No, Valve wants their customers to have access to every DLC released for any give game on steam too the "too" is the important part. It means they don't want exclusive DLC which is, in my book, a good thing.

Does Valve seriously not know how these kind of things work? If one party say some (untrue?) stuff you reply and call it bullshit and give a better explanation.. but wait, if Valve becoming some money-hunger machine? That's the opposite of the structure I would imagine for Valve.
 
Also, EA is still there publishing partner for consoles/retail right? If this does turn out bad, that would be on the table, right?

This kind of walled garden is poor business practice for Steam--they have always allowed developers to do what they want, they can't start imposing this kind of stuff now.

1. EA launches Origins.
2. Origins competes with Steam.
3. EA slings dirt at Steam through Crysis 2
4. People assume Valve are dirt bags.
5. Profit. $$$

@Tennmuerti said:

1. EA launches Origins.
2. Origins competes with Steam.
3. EA slings dirt at Steam through Crysis 2
4. People assume Valve are dirt bags.
5. Profit. $$$

And more then half the comments so far in here confirm that EA's strategy is paying off. Valve needs to step up and disclose the exact terms of contract breach, asap.

Or

1. EA launches Origins.

2. It doesn't compete with Steam because it's a rebranded EA Download Manager and nothing more - it's not even in the same league as Steam and isn't trying to be. Where was the outrage or competition two weeks ago? Nothing has changed.

3. Crysis 2 gets removed from Steam because of DLC terms.

4. People assume EA is at fault because Valve is the savior that can do no wrong.

5. Profit. $$$

Seriously, I love Steam as much as the next guy but I'm not stupid enough to believe that it's impossible Crysis 2 actually was removed without EAs involvement because of a DLC deal they struck with another distribution service that Valve didn't like.

If it's anything at all like it was for Battlefield Bad Company 2, they're not going to put Battlefield 3 up on Steam until right before the Open Beta, which is happening in September this time.

im still pissed i bought that fucking game, than hated it. Also never finished it. I think I might wait now instead of paying for games on steam early

I'm done with EA games for a while. Meh Effect 3 and Failwars:PoS will cause no end of headaches since Steam is my main multimedia platform.

I am still willing to bet this has something largely to do with Origin. No one else has ever complained about steam distributing content before.