EA's Digital Download Battle with Steam Heats Up
More re-wording that a badly constructed dictionary
EA's ongoing battle with Steam does not look likely to calm down. It's gone into high gear to explain why Steam's business practice have stopped Crysis 2 being sold... on Steam and it's done so without mentioning... Steam.
The EA blog states, "Any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services for the individuals and communities that play our games. These players are connecting to our servers, so we want to provide them with the very best service. This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers."
Fair enough. The we get to the meally-mouthed meat of the matter:
"However, when a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services – it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us. At present, this is the case with only one download service. "
That would be Steam then.
"While EA offers its entire portfolio to this site, they have elected to not post many of our games. We hope to find a mutually agreeable solution to this issue soon," continues the post.
Not happy just to post a corporate blog though, EA has also called on SVP, Global E-Commerce, David DeMartini to speak up.
David says, "Some confusion came up a few weeks ago, when we started seeing stories and forum posts that suggested that EA was in conflict with one of our download partners, and that we had removed our games from that service.
"This is absolutely not true..."
"Here at Origin," he continues, "We want our products available to as many players as possible, which means we make them available in all the places that gamers go to download games and services. To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam."
He details how EA will achieve this sort of all retailers but possibly not, "we always want to be sure we provide this content and service at the highest possible level of quality. To ensure this, any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players. You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience."
Given that EA is responsible for its games (or 'experiences') and would face outrage from gamers not getting patches, this all sounds very fair indeed.
So, if the policy is indeed one of making a relationship with gamers and ensuring patches are directly available via EA, might we expect a change to PSN and Xbox Live?
What do you think?
The EA blog states, "Any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services for the individuals and communities that play our games. These players are connecting to our servers, so we want to provide them with the very best service. This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers."
Fair enough. The we get to the meally-mouthed meat of the matter:
"However, when a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services – it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us. At present, this is the case with only one download service. "
That would be Steam then.
"While EA offers its entire portfolio to this site, they have elected to not post many of our games. We hope to find a mutually agreeable solution to this issue soon," continues the post.
Not happy just to post a corporate blog though, EA has also called on SVP, Global E-Commerce, David DeMartini to speak up.
David says, "Some confusion came up a few weeks ago, when we started seeing stories and forum posts that suggested that EA was in conflict with one of our download partners, and that we had removed our games from that service.
"This is absolutely not true..."
"Here at Origin," he continues, "We want our products available to as many players as possible, which means we make them available in all the places that gamers go to download games and services. To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam."
He details how EA will achieve this sort of all retailers but possibly not, "we always want to be sure we provide this content and service at the highest possible level of quality. To ensure this, any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players. You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience."
Given that EA is responsible for its games (or 'experiences') and would face outrage from gamers not getting patches, this all sounds very fair indeed.
So, if the policy is indeed one of making a relationship with gamers and ensuring patches are directly available via EA, might we expect a change to PSN and Xbox Live?
What do you think?
Companies:
Electronic Arts
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