EA Blames Dragon Age 2 Disappearance on Valve

[VulakAerr]

Hey, everyone. Come and have a look at this black and white stripy horse. I've never seen one quite like it before.

I should have realised from March Madness but so many people here are Valve fanboys, blinkered to everyone else, ready to believe anything other than the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Valve is a business mostly just out to make money. Are we really all that surprised that they are getting slightly douchebaggy with EA because EA want to set up a new online store?

Edit: And to those people who think this is a smear campaign: you need to get real. Do you have any idea the amount of damage it would do to EA if it were discovered that the official company stance, approved by its PR department, is to actually LIE? The internet is full of hate, but it's also full of idiotic conspiracy theorists. No, there's no smear campaign. Yes, it is within the realms of reason that Valve pulled EA games in response to the startup of Origin. Don't be such fools.

 

[silwerwolf]

Hey, everyone. Come and have a look at this black and white stripy horse. I've never seen one quite like it before.

I should have realised from March Madness but so many people here are Valve fanboys, blinkered to everyone else, ready to believe anything other than the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Valve is a business mostly just out to make money. Are we really all that surprised that they are getting slightly douchebaggy with EA because EA want to set up a new online store?

Edit: And to those people who think this is a smear campaign: you need to get real. Do you have any idea the amount of damage it would do to EA if it were discovered that the official company stance, approved by its PR department, is to actually LIE? The internet is full of hate, but it's also full of idiotic conspiracy theorists. No, there's no smear campaign. Yes, it is within the realms of reason that Valve pulled EA games in response to the startup of Origin. Don't be such fools.

ok this finger pointing has to stop.
yes we are taking valvs side in this with, good reason.
EA has not biin doing a good job of buiding cofidens latly, or havent you notist.
and yes valve is a buines they want t make money.............so, hey have bin treating ther fans good and EA has not it is that simple

 

[walrusaurus]

I really don't see what EA thinks they're going to get out of this. Its obvious that this is part of their push to set up their steam-clone. Problem is it isn't going to work. Steam is massive, not putting your game on steam is like not putting your album on iTunes.

Yes, they will get gamers to come to their store to buy the game. But its not like those people are going to switch to Ea's platform just because of that one game. Their going to use it to download the game they want and then go back to steam for everything else. Unless EA puts some crazy drm on it they'll even play it through steam so they can keep the overlay.

Beyond that think of all the customers their going to loose from the lack of promotion steam brings. Plus, i know some people who will flat out refuse to play something that isn't on steam. Given the fanatic love for valve a lot of steam users exhibit i can imagine some people not buying it just for the perceived snub.

Just another example of EA thinking like a Corporation, instead of a video game company.

 

[Brownie101]

Good thing that I'm pre-ordering ME3 at a retail shop. I want the nice box.

But I have not bought a single DLC from EA, because it's just so much easier and more convenient to just use one single account for all my game-related downloads. I think that by doing this, they're going to lose a portion of sales. Whether or not that portion is big enough for them to take notice, remains to be seen.

 

[Siby]

I think a lot of people seem to think that Valve's new policy disallows systems apart from steam from selling DLC. This is not true, I think the policy is that any new DLC must also be offered on steam (ie as well as other services/platforms), which I think is fair enough. Look at Fable III and SF4 Arcade Edition, they sell DLC via GFWL, but also offered it through Steam; because those companies actually read and understood the terms of service they agreed to and didn't break them like EA. Valve is not stopping publishers from using their own system as long as they also offer the DLC via steam, this change came about to accomodate the F2P games. I'll say again VALVE are not stopping companies selling DLC via other channels.

However one thing I will note is that it seems if you buy the game on Steam, the DLC also has to be bought through Steam (at least for Fable II and SF4 AE) which is something I don't agree with.

 

[Generalissimo]

oh no, a bad game goes missing, on a popular distribution system. who could of done it?

me?
a traitor?
or maybe even...
THE CREATORS OF THE SYSTEM *GASP*

ea you thick jerks >.>

 

[Arehexes]

I mean like I said we never heard Valve's side, but EA is pretty much known for a bad track record and with origin coming out (And Battlefield 3 not going out on steam but on Origin gee that's not odd at all).

Also it kinda does matter who took what off, if it was Valve then that means they won't work with EA and if it's EA then it means they will saw screw Valve and we will use Origin.

So? They have a bad track record. EA is a corporation, they make a lot of unpopular decisions for the sake of money. That shouldn't be news to either of us. But Valve is ALSO a corporation, they've probably made some unpopular decisions as well, but everyone refuses to see them because that might mean valve isn't perfect. I never tried to argue Valve was evil. Just that it may have taken down Dragon Age 2 and the evidence looks that way. I never said it was for sure. I never said they were evil, I just said they may have done this specific thing and people should stop treating any company like the devil incarnate for their name so much as APPEARING next to Valve's or even HINTING at the POSSIBILITY of valve being imperfect.

For the love of...
If your whole argument is based off" people are fanboys of Valve, therefore Valve must be the bad guys" save it.
We are looking at the the issue at hand, where a company is accusing the other of having restrictive terms and so pulled their games.

The obvious thing about it is that EA are launching their own service and this just coincidentally occurs around this time. You'd have to be quite literally blind to the fact that this is not a coincidence.
You'd also have to be blind to not notice that no other company has this issue with Valve at all except EA.

Now lets look at the history of both companies. One is known for shutting down branches of its own company after ruining it with executive meddling, treating its consumers like criminals and trying to nickel and dime them for everything they have.
The other gives the community free content, does regular sales despite not needing to,takes regular feedback and generally are decent all around.

Yeah I wonder which one I should trust
Seriously if your argument is based off of" herp derp people blindly praise Valve, which means I've got to say that despite the facts and histories of both companies, that EA is in the right" then you can stop right now.

I wasn't saying Valve was evil. Look at every single comment I've made in this thread (or in all my history). I said their fanbase is a rabid dog that mauls anything that so much as looks at Valve funny, but I never said Valve did anything "wrong" or accused them of any wrongdoing whatsoever. So put away your Valve-brand pitchfork and torch and be reasonable.

All i said was Valve may have pulled Dragon Age 2 off of steam and the evidence looks that way. If this makes Valve look evil to you and you think that obviously merits you burning me at the stake then you should probably realize you may be proving my point by simply refuting it.

And simply saying "EA is wrong and evil because they did this in their past." is like accusing a litterer or vandal of murder because, hey, they've done bad things before, OBVIOUSLY that means they committed the murder too!

My argument was so far from " herp derp people blindly praise Valve, which means I've got to say that despite the facts and histories of both companies, that EA is in the right", i was merely pointing out that EA may not have pulled Dragon Age 2 and that it may have been Valve's decision. Go ahead, take your time reading all of my arguments and try to find where, specifically, I said that.

People blindly praising Valve bugs the hell out of me, as does anyone who blindly praises the fuck out of everything. I hate fanboys. Period. They will jump to the defense of whatever they are a fanboy of even if they murdered every baby in the world and fed them to rich, fat, republicans whilst voting for gay marriage to be banned.

Again, in all my arguments, I was merely saying that Valve may have pulled Dragon Age 2. If that's wrong, then I'll leave that up to everyone else because I never use Steam. But I was also pointing out that even if Valve WAS doing something wrong, valve would never need to defend itself because its metaphorical pet dragon (its fanboys) will shred anyone who dares to even IMPLY that valve may have done something even REMOTELY bad.

As evidenced by your response to my rational arguments, which weren't even trying to insult valve in the first place.[/quote]

But the problem is you keep saying "Well the evidence points to this or that", but the only "evidence" we get was from EA. And wouldn't you think a company would try to spin something in their favor to make the competitor look "bad". I can't listen to your arguments anymore because it's pretty much "Fan boys piss me off because fan boys love a company and never want to say anything bad about it". You say "Well the evidence points to Valve removing it" when the only one who spoke is EA who most likely is trying to spin the issue to their favor.

I never said they did for sure. But why would EA just bold-facilely lie? You know that it's against the law for them to do something like that and they could be sued for slander, right?

So the company looks good, and you know what they are not the first. Look at Sega in the 90's, their campaign for the ads was in a nut shell "We have 'Blast Processing' while Nintendon't". The problem blast processing was not real, it was a marketing ploy. And other companies will try to discredit the competition to make themselves look better. And I know you think I'm a Valve fan boy because I am not defending EA or what ever, but I own and play more EA games then Valve games. If anything I would be a fanboy for EA, but the company has pull crap practices before so I take what they say with a grain of salt.

I argue that Valve may have taken down Dragon Age 2 and EA is calling them out on it. That's all we have to go off of right now. If we want to start bringing in speculation and track records then we may as well grab our Valve-brand pitchforks and torches because there's a witch that needs a burnin'!

It's funny you say that since your saying how Valve must have done it, with only EA's word and like you say a company is in it for the money. So EA wouldn't like to make themselves look as good as possible in this situation. I mean if they look like the good guys people would want to try Origin. But since I'm talking down on EA I must be a paranoid Valve fan boy with my tin foil hat on.

Could you honestly stand before a judge and say "Your honor, the defendant is guilty because he is a jerk who wants a lot of money out of me." and hope to win?

And could you say "Your honor, the defendant is guilty because I hate his fan base"?

You talk about people being hypocrites but your no better man, end of story.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

Bullshit it's about not being able to give stuff for free . What kind of dumb-arse company gives away free stuff when they can make money off it?

seriously?

I don't even know how to respond to that.

 

[Von Strimmer]

Bullshit it's about not being able to give stuff for free . What kind of dumb-arse company gives away free stuff when they can make money off it?

seriously?

I don't even know how to respond to that.

Seriously name me a company (charities and the like dont count) that gives away stuff for free without an alterior motive OR which doesn't benefit them financially in the future.

Why should Steam be any different? Why should we expect them to be different?

 

[DTWolfwood]

Well fuck you EA for making me buy physical copies of games. (And no i will not get Origin because i don't agree with its terms of service.) I don't want to have to scour my bedroom every time i decide i want to play the game and have to change out discs! (and yes im too lazy to "Crack" my game) or to re-install it! Which im pretty sure i can only do twice anyways with your bullshit SecuROM schemes D:<

God i wish they didn't own the franchise/publishing rights to BF3 and ME3 t.t

 

[dyre]

heh, alright EA, say whatever you want. If you're trying to win Steam users over to Origins, good luck with that.

Bullshit it's about not being able to give stuff for free . What kind of dumb-arse company gives away free stuff when they can make money off it?

seriously?

I don't even know how to respond to that.

Seriously name me a company (charities and the like dont count) that gives away stuff for free without an alterior motive OR which doesn't benefit them financially in the future.

Why should Steam be any different? Why should we expect them to be different?

Well, now you've changed the conditions. Your original statement was different

But anyways, they're both companies, but Valve has always been more of a "try to keep the consumer happy so he buys more of your stuff" company, while EA has been more of a "give the consumer the lowest quality product that he's still willing to pay for, and keep trying to rip him off after that" company.

 

[Jake Martinez]

Honestly, I don't really care about this one way or another. Every publisher can open their own digital download stream, and the only thing it will do is incurr them costs of maintaining an infrastructure to support downloads that would probably be equal to the cost of outsourcing it through Steam anyway.

They (EA in this case) evidently haven't considered the fact that other game publishers can act just like them, and in their best case scenario, they'll only be selling their games anyway through digital. It's highly debatable if the overhead associated with that endeavor would be worth it.

Anyway, as for Steam - It's highly unlikely I would leave them at this point. Not only do I have a ton of content with them after years of purchasing (This is the price, publishers, of coming late to the party) but they also have treated me very well as a customer. In fact, I would say their customer service overall is excellent in an industry that is known for telling it's customers to fark off and die in a corner if they have problems with nearly anything.

 

[Von Strimmer]

heh, alright EA, say whatever you want. If you're trying to win Steam users over to Origins, good luck with that.

Bullshit it's about not being able to give stuff for free . What kind of dumb-arse company gives away free stuff when they can make money off it?

seriously?

I don't even know how to respond to that.

Seriously name me a company (charities and the like dont count) that gives away stuff for free without an alterior motive OR which doesn't benefit them financially in the future.

Why should Steam be any different? Why should we expect them to be different?

Well, now you've changed the conditions. Your original statement was different

But anyways, they're both companies, but Valve has always been more of a "try to keep the consumer happy so he buys more of your stuff" company, while EA has been more of a "give the consumer the lowest quality product that he's still willing to pay for, and keep trying to rip him off after that" company.

I tried to subvert the question a bit I admit . I'll agree with you with Valve being more intelligent with consumers. Honestly I agree with you on the EA delivering crap products. I still haven't gotten over the "replica plasma cutter" that came with dead space 2. Never again EA!

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

Here's what I think the "dispute" is: Valve wants a cut of the DLC sales. EA doesn't want to give part of their DLC profits to Valve.

I don't know who removed the game, but if Valve did it, it was probably because EA violated their ToS. Either way, I think EA initiated it and are doing so to lure people away from Steam and to Origin.

EA pulled their games from Steam because they were pissed that they couldn't have all of the profit. Really what I want to know is what is gonna happen to the people who already bought it on Steam? Are they getting refunded?

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

What "restrictive terms of service" was there exactly that prevents download off of Steam? I've got to call BS on EA on this part. It cannot possibly be purchasing downloadable content in-game, because many other games allow that including the just added new set of Free-2-Play titles that Valve ENCOURAGES!

Valve basically imposes a "We're the only ones to digitally sell this high profile product" clause. It's not a new concept.

No they don't. When they distribute a game, they have a clause which says they sell the DLC too. What EA are doing is making it so you buy the DLC directly from them, no matter where you buy it from. Valve said this is against their agreement. EA said so what are you going to do? Valve pulled the game. EA are upset that they can't get away with whatever they want anymore.

But that's all he said, she said. Largely unimportant. The fact of the matter is EA is costing themselves thousands of DLC orders. If EA are the ones being dicks, then they're cutting off their nose to their face. If Valve are the ones being dicks, they're still going to have the upper hand. They've proven that they aren't afraid to pull games in the past and EA should just give in to their demands.

My guess is it's all about pride.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

And could you say "Your honor, the defendant is guilty because I hate his fan base"?

You talk about people being hypocrites but your no better man, end of story.

I never said Valve did it for sure though. Point out anywhere where I said it. If you can't, then your arguments hold no water.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Again, look at what's actually happened versus what's been said.

EA pulled shiny new games with remaining sales potential. They left older games right there on Steam. This, despite the fact that both groups involve in-game DLC purchases that skirt Steam's cut as a distributor.

All signs point to EA intentionally breaching contract, forcing Valve to take down a handful of games, and then pointing to Valve as the bad guys in all of this - and all of that just ahead of the launch of their very own competing digital distribution option.

If hard evidence demonstrating Valve's unfairness somehow manages to rear its head, I'll absolutely blast them as the company at fault. But a "lifetime" of good behavior earns you certain perks, and one of those is the benefit of the doubt. Similarly, repeated offenses aimed at bilking as much money out of your customers as possible tends to earn you the opposite treatment. I appreciate the whole "innocent until proven guilty" bit, but I'm also keenly aware that unscrupulous persons tend to rely on that mechanism as a shield - and they will do everything within their power to continually obscure or spin the facts in order to maintain that shield.

 

[Kargathia]

My money is on a publicity grab for Origin.

After all, what better way to draw attention to your own Digital Distributor than to pick a fight with the king of the hill?

Exactly.

EA is run by suits that know how to use business politics to their advantage, and has a history of milking franchises and playing the balancing act between squeezing customers dry for cash and keeping them just satisfied enough to keep coming back.

Valve is run by gamers who once upon a time made a really people and successful mod for Quake, and has a history of interacting with their fan base, giving out free gifts, selling their products dirt cheap and exuding one of the greatest business philosophies in video game - entertainment as a service.

Yeah EA, we're sure you're taking a stand against the evil Valve corporation and not just trying to talk it down so people are more willing to try your soon to be abandoned project Origin.

That, or Valve is run by people who are a bit better at masking their Corporate Greed.

Seriously, the only real difference between EA and Valve is that Valve picked "making people like you" as part of their business plan. Their much-touted discounts aren't because they love us so much, but because they bet on that in the end they'd make them more profit.

They can't really be compared, so I can't conveniently tell you what business plan is working out best.