EA games coming back to Steam

https://www.ea.com/news/ea-and-valve-partnership

So this is a pretty big deal considering the PC scene mostly seems to be going the opposite direction with more launchers and exclusives than ever. It sounds like its rolling out slowly over time but I approve of any softening of exclusivity. I wonder if this will boost Apex even more if such a thing was possible.

This also says EA access will work with Steam as well but doesn't really give much detail on how that will happen just yet.

The Fallen Order steam page also seems to have Origin listed as a requirement so it'll probably be Ubisoft style where uplay is running underneath it also.

Some EA business VP looked at a graph and noticed Valve's cut doesn't cancel out lost sales from not being on Steam quite as obviously as it once did.

I feel like their intended plan already worked for the most part. The EA games I have that I care about I already own on origin, so they got me to adopt it.

This is a nice surprise, I wonder if this will bring a second life to some of the indie games EA published like Fe and Unraveled, because honestly I forgot a lot of those existed after they came out since they don't get the promotion of a Battlefield or Star Wars game and I never have origin open regularly.

Not happy on Valve's effective monopoly getting even stronger, but this is probably the smart move for EA. And I do like the idea of Valve adding support for the impending subscription models. Its the same logic by which I like having my various TV subscriptions through Amazon as I kind of trust them to manage data more than HBO or Cinemax or whatever.

I actually liked Origin, for what it is worth. Client was clean and effective. But once Battlefield moved away from their web gui (Battle Eye?) I saw little to no reason.

Tangential rant: The BF3 (and 4?) server browser was fucking awesome. I already have chrome open in the background so being able to adjust my loadouts and set up server filters in a crisp browser window was great. Same with spending my queueing time browsing the internet without having to worry about alt-tabbing back to the game in time. But it was Different and everyone hated it. ... Also it was not horribly uncommon for the game to crash out when it was launching directly on to the server.

But it was awesome.

I honestly didn't notice they were not on Steam. I guess that shows how little I care to play majority of EA's games.

Damn I just bought Sims 4 for Origin, hopefully they allow me to bring it to steam but that's probably not realistic.

Think I have everything I want from them on Origin. But good news going forward for future releases - more choice is always good.

But no Need for Speed: Heat... not that I want even more pieces of DRM to worry about, though.

Would be nice if games you bought on Steam were activated on your Origin account, like how Uplay does it.
Not a huge fan of EA games but i'm happy to buy the upcoming C&C remaster on Steam, also Steam's community features will be great additions to those games, should be good for The Sims.

I still don’t understand the difficulty of just opening a second launcher. I don’t necessarily need everything in one place unless it’s an aggregator. That just creates a monopoly like Steam has had.

I’ve actually liked what EA has done with Origin actually and EA access. It actually works well.

All that said, doesn’t sound like Origin is going anywhere. It’s just another place to buy EA games. Which from that perspective, sounds good to us consumers.

@maxszy: Presumably you'll still need Origin to run the games even if you buy them on Steam so it's not relieving any perceived hassle, it's about consumer choice.
I prefer Steam, i would rather directly support Valve than EA, and the community features on Steam are an added bonus. I totally understand if EA wants to sell its own games on its own store exclusively that's fine, it's the Epic situation regarding third party exclusives which i find anti consumer, however given the option i'll use Steam.

The EA Star Wars community manager (what an awful position that must be) just confirmed Jedi Fallen Order won't have Cards and Achievements at launch but they are working towards it. So it sounds like once they're up and running these games will basically have all the Steam trimmings which is nice. I'd curious to see how visible the Origin stuff will be. Is it going to be uplay style where we have overlays within overlays?