Electronic Arts has Origin. Valve has Steam. Both want you as a customer for their online game store. And so far, neither can work out their differences enough to ensure that Electronic Arts’ games will be available on Valve’s massive computer download service.
But things still haven’t come to a complete impasse, at least not according to Valve co-founder Gabe Newell.
“We really want EA’s titles on Steam,” Newell told Kotaku during a Gamescom interview. “We want to be useful to every developer. To provide useful tools to everyone.”
Right now that’s not happening. Electonic Arts’ Origin service is home to all future PC titles and with each new release (and, retroactively, with some older ones) comes news that that game won’t be hitting Steam.
Most recently, EA confirmed that Battlefield 3 will not be available on Steam.
“The service limits our ability to deliver patches and downloadable content directly to players,” EA told Kotaku at the time. “No other download service has adopted these practices. At EA, supporting our players is a top priority, and we are happy to partner with any download service that does not restrict our ability to connect directly with our own consumers.”
That echoes what EA said when Crysis 2 dropped from Steam.
But Newell remains hopeful things will work out.
“I think with any developer, the onus is on us to show them we have value, that we’re creating a set of services and capabilities and bringing an audience to them,” he said. “We want to do a good job showing EA that we have value on Steam.
“We’ll try to work hard with them.”
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