Crysis 2 Was Removed from Steam Over DLC Distribution Deal

Valve really wants that Horse Armor eh

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.

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.

@Tennmuerti: Origin is not a competing service with Steam because no third party games are sold through it. Only things published by EA. That's no competition.

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?    

@TheHT said:

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.

still want to hear from steam about all of this.

Oh so EA wanted all that sweet, sweet pre-order sauce for themselves. I don't think anyone was fooled.

Steam wants to be able to offer their customers the full game including DLC, not a crippled version. Reasonable. The EA doublespeak and marketing drone talk isn't fooling anyone.

@Tennmuerti: How can you consider a service that ONLY sells games from one publisher a competitor to Steam? Steam's main competitors are other digital distribution outlets like GoG, D2D, Games for Windows Marketplace or others. Origin is nothing more than a digital outlet for EA to sell their games. It's no more a competing service than EA Download Manager was- and it wasn't a competitor at all. The closest thing I could liken it to would be Battle.net.

I'd be more concerned about Valve's complete silence on the issue since EA has come out pretty plainly and said that Crytek made a deal with another digital distributor involving DLC and it violated some kind of Steam terms of use.

@Pinworm45 said:

@Jimbo said:

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

You mean EA signing a contract and then not fulfilling it and thus Valve terminated it?

Without seeing the contract I've no idea what EA agreed to or when. Could be there's a 'If we (Valve) introduce new terms and you don't agree to them then your game will be removed etc.' clause. How EA have worded it implies that this is a new condition though. Regardless of when it was introduced, the clause still amounts to "Give us everything or fuck off". What else is in the contract? "Do not undercut us on another service, or fuck off"? At what point does it become Valve abusing their monopoly?

To be honest I don't really care who is technically responsible for the game coming down. Valve have such a dominant position in digital distribution that they can dictate terms to pretty much anybody, and due to an unhealthy lack of competition in the market, most developers have no choice but to agree to whatever Valve demand. If EA have decided enough is enough and that they can manage on their own then good for them. I have no problem at all with Steam no longer being the be all and end all of digital distribution.

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.

EA's just pissing in the wind here. All they're going to accomplish by splitting away from Valve is a fractured client base. Steam's success is solely in their partnerships with other companies. Even still, it took years and years to get to where it is today. EA don't play that way. They'll place a huge initial investment in it, and when it doesn't pan out by the end of the year anybody stupid enough to get suckered in is stuck with a poorly supported and broken service. I'll eat Brad's hat if I'm wrong. 

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.

I'm pretty sure that other digital distributor is Origin. In that case it's neither EA's or Valve's fault as Crytek signed a deal with Origin/EA which broke the agreement they already had with Steam/Valve.

@Tennmuerti: Origin is not a competing service with Steam because no third party games are sold through it. Only things published by EA. That's no competition.

@Tennmuerti: How can you consider a service that ONLY sells games from one publisher a competitor to Steam? Steam's main competitors are other digital distribution outlets like GoG, D2D, Games for Windows Marketplace or others. Origin is nothing more than a digital outlet for EA to sell their games. It's no more a competing service than EA Download Manager was- and it wasn't a competitor at all. The closest thing I could liken it to would be Battle.net.

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?

Crytek are INSANE if they don't figure out a way to please Valve and get Crysis 2 back on Steam. They will lose A LOT of money otherwise! As a side note, EA is pretty stupid if they think they will make more money from selling their games through their own digital download service (Origin) over Steam. After the whole Spore & DRM fiasco throughout the PC gaming community, PC gamers still aren't fully happy with EA. I, as a PC gamer, use Steam, trust Valve, & love Steam & Valve. EA on the other hand...

People keep looking at Steam in a bottle when it's clearly owned by Valve - A game developer and producer.  You have to put Valve in the same category as Microsoft or Sony and Steam in the same category as Xbox Live and PSN.  From that perspective EA is simply trying to deliver games to a platform like any other.  
 
Origin is simply the best way EA can create a new platform and enter the race beside all the other competitors so they don't have to give Valve (the game producers and their direct competitors) resources. It'd probably be too costly for EA to make a console now and the market is far too flooded anyways.
 
Heck if you look closely you'll notice that Portal 2 was distributed through EA's distribution network because Valve didn't have the resources to do it themselves but don't think they wouldn't try if they could.  Would you buy a game from Valve if it was on disk and not distributed by EA?  Yes?  Then no complaining when EA tries to do the same in digital space.

Still not sure why this was being applied retroactively but only selectively. Maybe the DLC deal was to put advertising in the game for the store in some way inconsistent with Steam's policy because, just from a cursory glance, here are two other new(ish) titles that do their DLC from a different store (and even have a button/interfaece in the game to open that store):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/99810/

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/Bulletstorm/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/8850/

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/BioShock-2/

@Shivoa said:

Still not sure why this was being applied retroactively but only selectively. Maybe the DLC deal was to put advertising in the game for the store in some way inconsistent with Steam's policy because, just from a cursory glance, here are two other new(ish) titles that do their DLC from a different store (and even have a button/interfaece in the game to open that store):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/99810/

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/Bulletstorm/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/8850/

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/BioShock-2/

Yeah, that's pretty strange, and there are other games like that too, most of them using GFWL for DLC distribution, but some where the DLC is only available for purchase on the developer's or publisher's websites, like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which does have a GOTY Deluxe edition available on Steam which includes all the DLC, but also the standard GOTY edition which does not, in which case the extra DLC is not available from Steam, but only from Bethesda themselves, and of course, most of the MMO's have in-game DLC stores directly tied to the publishers (Star Trek Online and Guild Wars for example, both of which are sold on Steam).

@JamesKond: Guessing they're just not playing the point the finger game and waiting for the resolution. Could be wrong of course. But you're right not many companies just keep quiet like this, especially with the amount of comments this is drawing.

Crysis 2 on Steam would therefore not be able to update on its own and so it would basically not follow with what Steam provides its customers, easy automatic updates.  EA sure as hell knows that pulling DLC off and updates means Steam cannot in good conscience keep the game up.

I'd rather not give my money directly to EA after what happened to PSN and Sega, and I've always been a fan of Steamworks. If EA is really this stingy about making $$$ then I may have to find... alternate means of attaining BF3 (I'm implying nothing illicit whatsoever, pirates totally deserve being strung up and hung because they're totally evil and not at all conscientious of greedy company practices, duh >.>).
 
@Tennmuerti said:

@benjaebe said:

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.

Which is why we are seeing so many comments coming out of EA with no real clarification. Logical.

Weird thing about C2 is they stopped people from being able to buy it but those that already did (such as myself) can still download it.  Makes no sense to me.
 
I recall reading somewhere I would be refunded but I guess since I can technically still access my game (without dlc or patches it seems) then they don't have to? fucking assholes.

thanks Patrick, its a shame about crysis 2, I have faith they wont be stupid enough to fuck up battlefield 3.

Seems a bit controlling of Valve to demand this. But, if the only thing I'm missing is EA DLC then I'm going to continue not caring.

EA should stop being greedy the only reason I buy there games is because there on Steam. If they want me to use their online store no thank you I will buy the ToR but from a retail store not online if EA is going to be like this.

This isn't surprising. Steam would prefer games to be exclusive to its program and EA would like to sell stuff from it's program. Both want money. Is any side "evil" for wanting to make money? No.

Are you sure that A:MA was never on steam? I clearly, clearly, clearly remember seeing ads for it on Steam - you know, those ad windows that pop up everytime you start steam? I definitely remember seeing an ad for Alice on one of those. Maybe it wasn't purchasable, but it certainly was advertised.

There is no way in hell I'm gonna buy Battlefield 3 through Origin. *sigh* If I have to I guess I'll just buy a boxed copy of BF3 and activate it on Steam afterwards.

I think it's really dumb to complain about the lack of BF3 considering it's nowhere near that game's release date. It's not like you can't turn to literally a million other places for your dumb military shooter fix people.
 
As for Crysis 2, I wonder who got the DLC deal? It's probably Origin, but who knows. Direct2Drive/Gamefly is the next biggest, right? But maybe Crytek has a soft spot for the little guys? The Gamersgate and Impulses of the world ?

Hope that BF3 is on Steam! not too excited about having to get another service or app to get DD games

called it.

@Lazyaza:

What part of that doesn't make sense?

Valve isn't about to piss off all the people who bought Crysis 2 by removing it from their game collection.

What a clusterfuck. DLC, DD, region/retailer exclusive deals; why are publishers so keen to make us forget the reason we want to play their games in the first place these days?
 
There's ways to incentivise sales that don't require insulting your customers with ambiguous pricing/content structures, or forcing them to rethink their digital distribution habits. I'm savvy enough to know how to avoid the nickel and diming where possible (as I imagine most on this site are), but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 
 
But then I remember that a site such as this is not representative of the broader gaming population, and that publishers simply base these strategies on an existing precedent for gamers to put their money behind really shitty business decisions. Sigh.

I think we should do away with download clients, as much as I love Steam. Online stores should sell their current games DRM-free as GOG does with old games, and each publisher should have their own online store. DRM doesn't stop pirates and I believe that today it is not present for that purpose, but as a way of making some people pay more.

EA wants to compete with Activision and so they take away their latest DLC cashcow from the same network which made MW2 and Black Ops a hit on PC. Smart EA, really fucking dumb.

@Lazyaza:

What part of that doesn't make sense?

Valve isn't about to piss off all the people who bought Crysis 2 by removing it from their game collection.

@afrofools said:

I think we should do away with download clients, as much as I love Steam. Online stores should sell their current games DRM-free as GOG does with old games, and each publisher should have their own online store. DRM doesn't stop pirates and I believe that today it is not present for that purpose, but as a way of making some people pay more.

No way. Steam came about and became successful because being a PC gamer used to mean installing a game and then manually installing a bunch of patches with very little user support and often (at the time) these patches not being easy to find. SiN is a classic example of that, where to get the game mostly stable you had to install the game, then patch 1.3, then the expansion, then retropatch to 1.2 and it was still buggy. There's no way in hell I'm going back to that.

Also I live in New Zealand, and while many games get here relatively close to release - the Steam library and store is just so much more convenient. Even some online stores in NZ I'll go to order a game only to find it out of stock and therefore like a week or more away.

As to the issue at hand, similar to my other pre-Steam games there have been games where the Steam version and the non-Steam versions are incompatible. For example if I had ME1 on disk, I wouldn't have been able to import my data to ME2 - and the same goes with DLC. This seems to me to be the big problem, and Valve would get in a bunch more trouble if people could buy Crysis 2 on their platform and suddenly find that they can't get the DLC. I wonder how recently EA announced the exclusive deal - I suspect it was around the time that Steam pulled the game. There is a certain amount of big fish bullying here by Steam, but at the same time it's perfectly in the guise of trying not to mislead their customers.

Other than Alice: Madness Returns NOT being an Origin only title everything else makes business sense

I still remember the days when Steam wasn't a catch-all platform for PC game sales, but honestly, I don't remember when the actual tipping point was.

Lol @ people still doubting the truth in an effort to defend valve. Fucking fanboys.

I want BF3 pre-order on Steam... :(

I really don't like Steam any more.  
It used to be useful back in the days of Counter Strike and later as new games emerged but it's tedious these days.

@J12088 said:

Lol @ people still doubting the truth in an effort to defend valve. Fucking fanboys.

Doubting what truth? The truth is that Valve insists their game work with whatever DLC the game supports. Crytek penned a deal that excluded the Steam version of Crysis 2 from future DLC. Valve delisted them.

Is there something to defend in that? Quite frankly, that just looks terrible on Crytek's part. One of the major issues I have with Origin is that it does not auto-patch games. Good luck finding those patches you'll need in 5 years.

I suppose I'm going for a boxed copy of BF3 then.

@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.

Well, the Dragon Age Origins DLC never worked with my steam version of the game. That's how they deal with it.

Bad Company is the exception so far.

Sounds like they are just trying to give Steam a black eye to gain sympathy towards EA and Origin.

Probably gonna have to get Battlefield 3 on 360 anyway. I doubt my PC is gonna be able to run it.

I can't wait for EA to give up on Origins... so few more months.

in other news Nobody on the fucking Pc cares since they dumbed down Crysis 2 for console noobs and made the game look like crap even on PC's to run for console noobs. 
 
(and the game looks even more like crap on consoles than on PC and that is amazing since they lowered the Detail of the entire game to ass levels the PC.