I don’t know about you, but EA has been popping up in my news feeds a lot over the last few weeks. Even ReadWriteWeb, who doesn’t cover games exclusively, decided to list the reasons why EA is on their deathwatch. They’re the only game company I can recall that has people continuing to write articles about how reviled they are. And I’m old enough to remember the EA Spouse incident.

EA v. Steam

As you likely already know, EA’s Origin service has been contending against Steam for over a year, with Origin getting somewhat exclusive access to some EA titles and Steam gamers not getting access to them. It can be hard to follow specifically why, because EA is pointing to some allegedly unfair Steam terms and saying that they are unique and unprecedented in the digital distribution arena. Steam has a few people quoted that they would love to have EA’s games on the platform and that they hope EA would see the value in being on Steam.

EA’s official policy on the Steam incident points all the blame at only one download service (but it’s a big one) and claims some mysterious policy is preventing the new games from appearing. EA only talks about wanting to communicate with and provide updates and support to their players. But I think shoulder shrugging and saying, “We offer our entire catalog, but some games don’t get approved for some reason,” is disingenuous.

What’s really going on?

Because the nature of EA’s rub has been unclear to me, I just asked Quora if anyone knew anything about it. Responses are pretty limited, but the best one so far points to a Shacknews article from last year. In it, it was revealed that Crysis 2 was pulled because it was selling some DLC exclusively through Direct2Drive (now Gamefly). Based upon his comments, it’s clear that EA’s digital boss DeMartini knew this the Crysis 2 distribution thing was going to be a conflict, and it’s likely that EA chose to push through Direct2Drive only to counter the argument that it was excluding 3rd parties like Steam from content.

I tend to look for exceptions to prove the rule. And, indeed, there are similar examples and non-examples where Steam interacts with various versions of the third-party “problem." Here, I’ll list some:

Games for Windows Live games have been historically allowed on Steam. In the cases that I’ve seen, even some updates have actually happened through the GFWL client. BTW, even on a good day, that user experience may be best described as, "Imagine getting through the turnstiles of an amusement park, and then being searched at an international customs counter before you board each ride.” But Steam has permitted that trash for very recent games and it “competes” with Steam. Valve sells its own games digitally outside of Steam. Stores such as Impulse and Gamefly have been carrying their downloads for a while, now. At the very least, that indicates there’s not an exclusivity double-standard and that Valve is willing to share the revenue cut with other storefronts. Lots of games come with retail CD or digital keys that can be activated on Steam. Entire sub-forums are dedicated to finding these at discounted prices to activate on your Steam account. A comment by a Puppy Games dev made it clear that there is no charge to comp Steam keys for your game’s existing customers. So, Steam is not saying, “You use our bandwidth, you pay our bills.” This seems pretty bloody generous. Many games sell DLC outside of Steam (such as via Amazon) that will activate on the Steam copy of the game. Steam gets no additional revenue from those sales, so there is no requirement that all sales must go through Steam.

So, what is the license term at issue?

Even after all that, I still don’t have a definitive answer (because Steam’s agreement with a dev is never disclosed publicly). But, by eliminating all of the above scenarios, I think it’s safe to say that Steam’s unfair term looks like this:

The Game (or product) will offer for sale on Steam all game-related content that can be obtained for it.

This makes sense from a customer experience standpoint, and it reduces bait-and-switch effects a bit. It’s similar to Apple’s iOS App Store rule about digital content, but Apple goes farther and prevents even pointing users towards acquiring content outside of the in-app purchase system (FWIW, EA has games on iOS, too). Steam is playing on a much more level playing field here.

All that to say, this isn’t about communicating with customers as EA purports it to be. I reckon Steam probably still doesn’t care if you want to update pieces of your game using another CDN. Your customers will probably hate it, but you are most likely free to do that even under the new terms. This is about EA’s backhanded attempt at siphoning customers and money out of Steam and into a walled garden where they get to continue closing off the ecosystem.

So feel free to ignore DeMartini when he says things like, "I am absolutely not at this point saying, ‘hey, it’s Origin versus Steam,’ It’s never been about that.“



Instead, take a hint from EA’s community manager : "The good news is: you’ve got plenty of choices.”

Exactly.