EA Comes Back To Steam With New Games (arstechnica.com) 33
DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: For the first time since 2012, Electronic Arts is once again publishing new games on Valve's Steam platform, the publisher announced today. [You still need an Origin account.] A preorder page for next month's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is already up on the Steam store, and EA promises that "other major titles," like The Sims 4 and Unraveled Two, will be available on Steam in "the coming months." Multiplayer titles like Apex Legends, FIFA 20, and Battlefield V, meanwhile, will be available on Steam "next year," with cross-play between the Steam versions and those on EA's existing Origin service.
What's in an acronym (Score:2)
Sorry Electronic Arts, EA means 'Early Access' on Steam now.
You'll need to come up with a new acronym.
Re:What's in an acronym (Score:4, Funny)
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No thanks. (Score:3)
EA lost my business a long time ago.
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EA lost my business a long time ago.
Incidentally what do they need to do to get it back? In a time when Epic games is fragmenting the community by bringing the worst of the console world to PC (paid exclusivity for 3rd party titles), EA deciding to share their catalogue outside of their own store is a move that will gift them a lot of goodwill.
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EA lost my business a long time ago.
Incidentally what do they need to do to get it back? In a time when Epic games is fragmenting the community by bringing the worst of the console world to PC (paid exclusivity for 3rd party titles), EA deciding to share their catalogue outside of their own store is a move that will gift them a lot of goodwill.
Can't speak for OP, but for me EA lost my business for all time when they started putting DRM in software that snooped through people's efile tax documents and disabled ReadWrite CD-ROMs from working.
Re: No thanks. (Score:2)
A gesture of goodwill is meaningless when your company continues to engage in toxic, predatory and outright evil business practices.
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EA lost my business a long time ago.
Incidentally what do they need to do to get it back? In a time when Epic games is fragmenting the community by bringing the worst of the console world to PC (paid exclusivity for 3rd party titles), EA deciding to share their catalogue outside of their own store is a move that will gift them a lot of goodwill.
Get rid of Origin for a start.
They're coming back to Steam because their own platform has failed and only resulted in lost sales, the same of Ubisoft and their platform.
Competition is a good thing but exclusives and trying to force gamers to install your platform is the opposite of competition, its lock in. we've been fortunate in the PCGMR in that Valve and Steam have been benevolent overlords, they could have acted like Microsoft and used their power to crush competitors but chose not to.
Imagine
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This means nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that you still need Origin to actually download and play the games (as far as I an see), all this is is another way to give the greedy bastards at EA some of your money. (i.e. it looks like Steam is just a way to buy a license key for the game on Origin)
If they actually put new (or old) games on Steam where you could fully play them without needing the Origin client at all, THAT would be something I would care about.
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They were stuck. Due to content streaming services no one sees many adds any more, to sell product you have to get it in store and EPIC is a shite show. Just one long list of advertising images of games, no breakdown, no genre, no alphabet, just arseholes here go through this entire advertising list sucker to get to the bottom and not find any games you want, yeah right fuck off EPIC. Steam is no better forcing crap game updates and those updates being nothing but new privacy invasive agreements that kill a
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It's to at least in part take advantage of all the shit Steam provides that Origin doesn't like the steam overlay and the extensive social interaction possible on steam that's non-existent on Origin. It turned out that Origin was SHIT if you wanted to interact with friends using the service where Steam figured all this stuff out a decade ago and it's all free to use on the steam platform.
EA probably looked at how much money they'd need to spend to develop something akin to the Steam social experience that u
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probably looked at how much money they'd need to spend to develop something akin to the Steam social experience
I suspect the Epic store has also focussed minds and drawn revenue away from the Origin store.
People don't want to track game purchases through 17 different stores, so do EA go into a very expensive protracted fight that they haven't been winning against even just Steam, or do they ally with the market leader and fight off Microsoft, Epic, Ubisoft and others.
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I suspect the Epic store has also focussed minds and drawn revenue away from the Origin store.
I suspect this is the official corporate line presented at meetings, but the real reason is that EA games are shit, have always been shit, and they haven't had an original idea for 20 years.
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Given that you still need Origin to actually download and play the games (as far as I an see), all this is is another way to give the greedy bastards at EA some of your money. (i.e. it looks like Steam is just a way to buy a license key for the game on Origin)
If they actually put new (or old) games on Steam where you could fully play them without needing the Origin client at all, THAT would be something I would care about.
oh whoa whoa whoa that is not the way i read that. I thought maybe I'd just need to sign into an origin account but you're saying it's just a key that I transfer to origin? wow then what's the point?
Origin account? (Score:2)
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What does it exactly means "still need origin account"? Do I have to run Steam + Origin client?
Pretty much. From the game's page [steampowered.com] on Steam:
Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA on-line activation and Origin client software installation and background use required.
So basically Origin is an extra layer of DRM wrapped inside your normal Steam DRM. Welcome to the future.
If you've been avoiding Origin then this news means nothing to you.
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They probably just use the Origin DRM. If they use Steam's then they give steam free data about usage even if the user launches from the desktop or from Origin, and why do that?
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Yup, that's probably exactly how it works. I bought Ghost Recon: Wildlands off of Steam, and all steam does is launch the Ubisoft client. So I can....launch the Ubisoft DRM client and run GR:W that way instead if I wanted to. It was weird and ultimately pointless, except for marketing I guess.
Fool me once (Score:2)
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Now that Bioware has gone down the crapper, I have precisely zero reason to buy an EA game ever again.
Excuse my French... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck Origin.
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Yeah but do so gently. On the other hand the Epic store...
Who? (Score:2)
Are those guys still going? Have they stopped charging for buggy crap?
Yeah... pass. (Score:2)
Origin was such a piece of ass-backwards bug-ridden dog shit, turned me off EA. Permanently.
Taking a pass on everything EA.
You still need an Origin account. (Score:2)
Well, fuck you then. It doesn't change anything.