EA confirms Dragon Age 2 DLC caused Steam removal
EA has issued a statement regarding the removal of Dragon Age 2 from Steam, confirming that it's due to "restrictive" DLC policies from Valve.
EA has confirmed in a statement that Dragon Age 2 was pulled from Steam due to a conflict with Valve's new policy on downloadable content. We suspected as much yesterday when the story broke, but EA senior VP of global e-commerce David DeMartini puts the reasoning in no uncertain terms, even calling Steam's policies "restrictive."
At EA, we offer our games and content to all major download services including GameStop, Amazon, Direct2Drive and Steam. Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content. No other download service has adopted this practice. Consequently some of our games have been removed by Steam. We hope to work out an agreement to keep our games on Steam.
Left unsaid are the exact terms of Steam's new policy. As reported yesterday, the new terms seem to restrict games from being sold if their associated DLC can't be sold directly through Steam. Dragon Age 2 (and Crysis 2 before it) sold new content with BioWare Points, and were yanked from the service. The word "new" is important, because games can apparently use the same DLC distribution system and be grandfathered in, as long as they don't introduce any new downloadable content.
It's all a bit muddy at the moment, and it's good to know that EA is at least attempting to work out an agreement with Valve. In the meantime, fans will have to grab certain EA games elsewhere.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, EA confirms Dragon Age 2 DLC caused Steam removal.
EA has issued a statement regarding the removal of Dragon Age 2 from Steam, confirming that it's due to "restrictive" DLC policies from Valve.-
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More correctly: let me only spend my money with a service I enjoy and support in hopes its continued success will illicit positive changes in a callus/greedy/dickish competitor.
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Well the scenario I'd like to avoid is this:
1. It's 2015 and I feel like firing up BioShock 2.
2. I fire up Steam and re-download the game.
3. Hey, looks like I can't get the DLC from Steam, I have to get it from GFWL where I had to go to buy it in the first place.
4. No worries I'll just... hey, looks like GFWL died two years ago and all the servers went away. So I can't get my DLC downloaded anymore even though the rest of the game is available from Steam.-
i think everyone wants to avoid that situation. taking a game i work on out of the equation and going back to generalities, i think all companies want to not die and all consumers want to access their content - and to a consumer, lumping it in the same system logically makes sense. that's not really what this problem between EA and Valve is really about. it seems to be about maximizing profit off DLC on both parts.
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Same thing could happen to Steam. And now your entire digital collection is no longer available. So your point is moot. Steam's actions are not benign. They are money related. They want DLC transactions to go through their storefront, needlessly, so that they can take a cut out of the sale price. Why can't I just get DLC for my games through the in game system? Remove an entire step from the process.
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Valve's policy makes complete sense and IMO is great, both in terms of selling more DLC as well as providing a service that is actually really good for their customers. If you sell a game on Steam and the DLC is all listed and ready for purchase right there on the same page, the DLC is going to get far more exposure right from the start. People will be more likely to buy it, you can include it in Steam sales, you can throw up an ad for it on the front Steam store page, you have the option to click one button and automatically add all of it to your cart, etc. Compared to wading through a pile of clunky GFWL screens or dealing with the Bioware social community website and buying special "currency" or "points" or "coins" or whatever other incredibly mediocre-at-best third-party solutions are out there it's a wonderful setup that benefits everyone.
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No one knows for sure. I'd gather that Valve wants it so that the DLC simply can be available on Steam, not that it must be on Steam.
If that's true, I'm totally with Valve.
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EA is not trying to work it out there willing using this rule by steam as a reason to get them to drop there own games to make steam look like bad guys and to try and lure people to Origin.
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yup, that's exactly it
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Agreed, this is a cold war of EA versus Steam, and they're using in-game stores and loyalty clubs as an excuse.
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100% correct
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I agree with EA in that they are not confined by any "law" that says they have to have their games on Steam other than at the altar of everyone's ease and instant gratification of having everything under one digital roof.
A great example of a similar practice is from Apple who recently required all reader apps (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc) to remove in-app purchasing as well as buttons that lead out of the app into a browser for purchasing the content online. However the Apple iBook app still has these features. Apple requires a 30/70 profit split and they didn't like that they were missing out on the market share so they crippled the competition not with making a better reading app (the Apple version still doesn't even have a night reading mode) but hamstringing the very ease and instant gratification that the other apps offered.
If what EA says is true, that Steam wants a piece of every sale hosted through its store, then I have no ill will toward EA for wanting to keep as much as their profits as they can. Is it really such a big deal to have a different digital store to go to? Heaven forbid we have to bookmark another site. It is a free country and you and I are free to shop from whomever we want.-
One thing to consider from Valve's side.
There's no question that the loss of Valve's cut of the DLC as a possible influence. But consider also from Valve's perspective, having DLC go through Steam means they are able to provide better support for future patches and DLC for the games they support because they can confirm what files the client has and the like. It makes it less a maintenance headache for Steam to deal with X configurations of a game maintained by Steam than to support the base game that may or may not have DLC added to it bought from a different store.
And as to the overall solution, if it is just money, it would seem that EA simply needs to be able to sell Steam redemption codes to reap in the larger benefit (CAVEAT: I have no idea if Valve collects anything off redeemed codes or not). -
Honestly, the problem I have with EA at this point is the way they make you buy dlc with points and don't let you put more than one item in a "cart" which seems like pretty fucking basic functionality in 2011.
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These problems started with Crysis 2 immediately after Steam introduced the Free to Play model for Steam. It's not inconceivable that Steam changed the terms for sales of DLC to capture some of the revenue for in game sales since on f2p games, that is literally all of the revenue.
I suspect that's what the core of all this is. There was a change for F2P, and it's gotten EA all crossed up.
However, I think Dirt 3 has launched some GFWL DLC recently. Not sure how it's not effected if all of what I said above and in the piece is true.
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The reason is two-fold:
#1: Every move Valve has ever made with Steam has been to enhance the experience of PC gamers. This move is to make sure that all DLC is compatible with the Steam release, and comes out at the same time on the Steam platform.
#2: We've been burned by EA before with DLC. There are a few of us who cannot get the Crysis 2 DLC to work with the Steam version of the game because of issues with it. In addition, A number of us have had huge issues with EA DLC and support in the past.
So we will root for Valve because we have never see them make an anti-consumer move, and they make an active effort to enhance the platform. They even give out middlewear for free (Steamworks) to make game development on the PC easier.-
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It has to do with the mycrisis account not being tied properly to the EA account and the Crysis/gamespy account. We have a shacker here who's been trying to get his DLC working for days because of it.
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I'm tagging this for future reference.
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i love valve and i applaud what they are doing and i think they are a great company for advocating for consumers. but what they are doing is not only for a good consumer experience: it's to make sure that in the world where DLC and microtransactions are growing rapidly, they get a cut so they don't just sell the base game and then see nothing from subsequent transactions. they are smart and have made a good storefront, but that base concept is the same as apple's. apple just has a less good storefront.
while some people may like buying everything through steam, some others might want the choice to buy elsewhere, and in the eyes of a company like EA, i see them wanting to make it go through their store for maximum control and profit which is exactly the same desire valve has. just EA is the owner of the product and valve is in this case the reseller/distributor.-
That's making a big assumption. Valve does not have a problem with DLC bought from other stores. Dirt 3 has released DLC post the start of all this that is exclusive, and they're still on Steam.
It's something else.-
My supposition before is that the DLC is not compatible with the Steam version, much how EA releases patches that are incompatible to intentionally give them exclusive access to fixes and make the other stores look bad.
They did this with NFS: Hot Pursuit. The patch that went up was designed not to work with non-Origin/Retail versions. It took them a whole 3 weeks to release this magical update for Steam.
Fixing it involved changing a single line in a text file. I am impressed it took EA 3 weeks to solve this 'issue.'-
Here we are. The version.txt file.
Steam version: "1.0.1.0s"
If you changed it to 1.0.1.0 it would let you use the retail patch. The 'steam update' took 3 weeks. Meanwhile Steam users could not play with retail/Origin NFS users.
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well thanks for the compliment - and again, i'm not advocating anyone's store. i haven't used Origin and i hated their last implementation. i just understand the battle that's going on and while i love valve and don't think what they are doing is evil, i also don't think people should think that EA is trying to fuck people because this happened (or are lying here).
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I post above an example of exactly that: EA intentionally screwing over non-Origin/Retail customers.
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i honestly don't know enough of that backstory to know whether what you are saying is completely true. from where i stand and how i know patches work at my company, i really think it's implausible they would do something so blatantly terrible for the consumer that is so easily found out. but it's EA, so you never know - i can't take a stance on it - but unless i knew more than what you posted, i can't say i believe you because i also know that gamers often think things are true and fucking them over on purpose when in fact they aren't and sadly because of the way the industry is, a full explanation to a consumer isn't possible.
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I posted a full summary below (a reply to your first in this thread) which includes the patch time frame. You can still see the various different versions of the patches up on the NFS site: http://www.needforspeed.com/downloads
A record of the history of this is here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1722641.html - I was involved in all this, so I remember it distinctly.-
i'll check this out later tonight when i have time - thanks for the link. again, i don't know the full story and sometimes even internet sleuths come up with hilariously wrong situations and companies don't respond. that being said, i'm not a fan of EA's practices, so i would never say you are wrong!
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The issue with your post however is steam does not require them to be the SOLE retailer for the DLC, they just require it to also be available through their platform.
I doubt its so much getting a cut of the profits as covering their ass from cases like the bad company 2 where they got hit hard, and EA just laughed.-
sorry, i didn't mean they required exclusivity. they don't do that. i know they want to provide it and if you don't want to provide it through their system, they won't even sell your base game. that's not actually in the consumer's best interest. better to allow as much as possible (ideally) and then let the consumers advocate for more content on your system.
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To me, it seems that they want to ensure that you're able to get the same experience on their platform as on other platforms.
That's not unreasonable and I think it's a must if they want to have a storefront with integrity.
They stopped offering Dawn of Discovery because Ubi wouldn't patch the Steam version of the game, too.
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Sorry, let me restart the issue at hand and the evidence:
History: DA2 is pulled from Steam after release of new DLC. EA says this is part of a new 'agreement' with Steam.
It is assumed this is the result of a new 'Must sell in Steam' policy; however, DIRt3, which was released post DA2, releases DLC on an exclusive store, Game For Windows Live, and not sold in Steam. This occurred after the new 'agreement' with the most recent DLC coming this week. - Therefore: There is evidence that there is no 'must sell DLC in Steam.' policy.
Loiosh's supposition: Steam's deal is actually that DLC be Steam-version compatible, or land day-and-date on Steam and other platforms.
Evidence: EA previously released Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit free DLC which was (intentionally or not) delayed to non-Origin/Retail versions. They did this by not sending the patch information to the other digital stores and placing a version check (version.txt) in the Retail patcher. It was demonstrated this patch was compatible with Steam and D2D versions of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit by modifying the version.txt file.
Incidentally, this patch/free DLC prevented Steam and D2D users from playing with Retail/Origin customers until the patch was released on Steam. The Retail patch was released Jan 19th, The Steam/D2D version was released Feb 1st, 13 days later.-
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What do you think about my hypothesis that this is a DLC must work on all versions?
I'm trying to think of other causes and coming up blank.-
Not a damn clue. It's obvious this problem is much more complex than we anticipated, since EA has a bunch of different games which do DLC differently and are affected differently. I think, based on some stuff I've been hearing, that they do NOT want to segment the market and do want their products back on Steam.
Speaking candidly for a moment, my prediction is that 1) something will probably happen where EA makes an agreement to do future DLC in a way that ends up being better for them in the long run, and 2) Valve changes their terms of service to only apply to F2P games (or something that more tightly controls these corner cases), and 3) things go back to normal.
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Yeah, in this particular case I'm not sure I support Valve or EA on this decision, however, I dislike EA probably about as much as I like Valve so that biases things a bit.
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I 100% Valve in this.
If a policy like this means that you are guaranteed 100% DLC compatibility with a game purchased on steam then in the long run that is a good thing. EA DLC has a history of not working with steam versions when purchased outside of steam which cost Valve money due to returns, support, and potentially lost sales from customers int he future who had a bad experience with a purchase on steam.-
If it's an issue with making sure that DLC works then I can't fault Valve for it, if it's a money grab from free-to-play games then I have issue. Sounds more like the former than the latter though.
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Apple's change benefits customers too. It ensures secure payments, and provides a more consistent experience. If you upgrade to a newer iPhone, for example, you'll easily be able to access your new content, something that may not be the case if content is purchased outside of the Apple store.
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This is a valid point, assuming we understand the conflict.
I love Steam and Valve, but _IF_ its a case of "You must also offer any added DLC for purchase through our storefront for the same price you offer it on other services." then I can see why EA isn't too keen on it.
_IF_ that is the case, the trouble is then issue is not cut & dry. Say you buy Dragon Age 2 on Steam. Say EA restricts DLC purchases through Origin only. Suddenly Steam is in the position of hosting content delivery for EA -- OR -- Steam no longer provides one of its major benefits: keeping your game up-to-date automatically.
Both companies have a valid stances with the conflict.
Regardless, as a customer I'm annoyed with EA because I prefer to use Steam.-
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According to the wording we've seen, it's not, it's just a case of Valve saying "You have to give them the opportunity to buy through Steam as well," and EA's saying "Add specific Steam keys that players could add to the EA sites and let people download the DLC installers through your service? What consumer-friendly, tiny-amount-of-work-adding madness! You get out of here, you crazy people you, while we milk one near-libelous perspective on this for all it's worth."
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If they were literally making it up, don't you think Valve would come forward and say it's incorrect?
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Yah if this was all EA, I'm sure Valve would make a statement on this. But they have been very tight lipped the EA issue.
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All ToS are "restrictive", so what is there to deny? EA has been pretty vague. They've only said the ToS is restrictive in regards to the way DLC is sold. Pretty much everything in a ToS contract is restrictive, so that doesn't really tell us anything other than it involves DLC sales.
The fact that EA won't specifically say what the issue is, makes me think the ToS is not unreasonable. Coupled with the timing of the Origin launch, it makes me doubt EA is being forthright, however we won't know for sure until they say exactly what the specific issue is.
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Apparently so was DA2.
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why can't they just let their customers know by posting a notice on the steam page for the game saying, hey the DLC is only bought through an external developer site instead of valve pushing this... oh they want the money from the 10 dollar DLC purchase. they're basically forcing EA to have a separate version of the game just for steam if they want to do DLC.
oh but, valve goggles. FUCK YOU EA YOU FUCKING FUCKS! I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR SHUTTING DOWN _____ STUDIOS in 199_!-
this does not seem to be accurate. The issue seems to be that DLC purchased elsewhere must work in the Steam version of a game. See Loiosh's subthread above. And I will never forgive them for shutting down Studios]s}r X in 199_. That fades though when they are being asses right now
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not if it was like the NFS patch http://www.shacknews.com/frame_chatty.x?id=26392042#itemanchor_26392042
but it's pretty hard to know anything without more details
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How can I get Valve goggles as a hat for Team Fortress 2?
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I bet it's that Steam is like: "You must also offer your DLC on Steam," and EA is like: "NUH-UH!!!"
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I don't think anyone has bothered to ask.
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so did this remove it from steam if you already bought it?
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I could not for the life of me figure out how to buy the Crysis 2 DLC. I spent an hour or two one night trying to find it and I couldn't. I kept finding links to announcements about the DLC, but nowhere was there a place to buy it that I could find. I never had trouble buying DLC for Mass Effect 2 (I bought all of it) or Dragon Age: Origins (i bought a lot of it) but somewhere along the way EA decided to make it complicated to find and I gave up trying before I could give them my money. If this is what Valve is trying to help fix, I am all for it.
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In favor of Valve, compare finding DLC for a steamworks game with finding the DLC for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. The former is absurdly easy, the latter is an enormous pain in the ass.
I couldn't find any DLC link on the EA store page for those games (last checked a few weeks ago). To download Mass Effect 2 DLC, I had to navigate through several sub menus on the BioWare community site. The DLC link there brought me to a storefront without my DLC listed, even though I was logged in on my account. I finally find the DLC I owned in a page called "User_Entitlements". That page was simply a named list of the DLC's with download links next to each one. There were like 6 of them, so I had to download 6 separate installers. I'm not making this up. I'll have to do this any time I need to reinstall ME2.
The DLC storefront is just as bad. The preview pictures they have for what you are getting are hilariously small thumbnails that don't show off anything, and only include tiny fluff summaries of what the DLC includes.
To compare that with a Steam-compliant game, like Killing Floor, all DLC is automatically downloaded and installed for the game. It's all a seamless part of the installation process.
TLDR: All my past DLC experiences with EA have been a sad joke, whereas with Steam it has been perfect.-
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I just love how EA says "We offer our games and content to all major download services including GameStop, Amazon, Direct2Drive and Steam." and yet the way they handle the selling the DLC for their games (which last I checked counts as "content") is "You can only buy it from us and if you don't like it, tough."
That not contradictory at all! -
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The amount of naive people who somehow still trust EA reminds me of battered wife syndrome.
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If companies can get the same legal protections as a person, I am allowed to treat them like a person.
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That's just more reason for me to despise EA :/
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Not going to lie, I had to google "anthropomorphizing".
However I basically trust EA to do nothing right by me. Their entire modus operandi in recent history is to making decisions the effectively fuck over most consumers in an effort to squeeze a few more pennies out of those very same consumers.
They have some good games on the horizon so I really hope they don't keep fucking things up, but I find it quite difficult to support any of their decisions, especially regarding Steam currently. It took Steam years to become a good service and Valve already had a good track record when that started.
EA, on the other hand, has an atrocious track record and are going out of their way to force Origin down consumers throats. Maybe the service will end up being good, god knows EA has the resources to deliver, I simply don't trust them to do so.-
This is the shit that really gets me, it's like nobody remembers the last 20 years of gaming? Or we are so ingrained that we are supposed to think companies only exist to treat their customers and employees like shit?
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EA has a lot of quality games under it's belt if you only look at the surface.
When you look a bit deeper, all of those quality games were already well into production before EA bought the company, and any following sequels tended to be completely different. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 are perfect examples of this. While the combat in ME2 was fun, it was about the only good thing in there. The "story" was terrible, there wasn't nearly as much background in the codex, and I won't even get started on Dragon Age 2.
EA does not do good things for companies. They buy them out, squeeze them dry, and then sell off their remaining assets and drop them.-
When you look a bit deeper, all of those quality games were already well into production before EA bought the company, and any following sequels tended to be completely different.
This, a million times this. -
Exactly my fears as well. Also, this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2794-An-Open-Letter-to-EA-Marketing
Every time EA's rep is fought over, I think of this, and how much EA has strayed from its roots.-
Ah yes, that video. A great point with the worst spokesman ever.
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You must have hated reading Shakespeare in high school dahanese. It's pretty natural to describe things in human terms. It's where a lot of great word play and imagery comes from.
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It's literally a Nushack thing!
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Yeah, I agree with this. The fact that it's a "company" doesn't exclude us from making hypotheses about what is going on.
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I agree. Valve is very controlling and restrictive about who is allowed to use their service. Its their right, but it will hurt them in the end.
You don't need to buy a game on steam in order to use steam services for showing your friends you are playing a non-steam game, and using it as a vent server basically.
If they think that I'm not going to buy ME3, BF3, they have another thing coming, and its their loss.-
Valve is very controlling and restrictive about who is allowed to use their service
Do you have anything at all to back that up? Do you work in gaming? Ever had to get a game on steam? It's pretty much painless at worst and at best they are willing to help you a bunch.
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Man Valve and Origin topics are starting to reach Sony vs MS, KB/Mouse vs Controller, Coke vs Pepsi levels of full fag retard.
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