Electronic Arts
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EA is one of the largest publisher/developers in the video game industry.
Electronic Arts Joins Steam
Good to see EA getting into the swing of things.
EDIT: However, they don't "appear in my region" (UK). Lame.
It's notable that the games will only use Steam's DRM, at least if what's true of Mass Effect holds true for the rest. (Thanks to Kloreep who spotted this.)
That a great thing that the PC is getting a some sort uniform platform. Oh and also, how long will we wait until they releases the Need for Speed super pack.
Too bad this didn't happen before when I downloaded Spore from EA download service. Ah well, I don't think I'll be wanting to redownload that game anytime soon anyways.
As I've said elsewhere, this is both good and bad. It would be awesome to eventually have every video game attainable through one central download service, though it seems like a bad idea overall to have just one service in charge with all that power.
I think if it ever *is* going to happen, then Steam is the best service out there currently. It's easy to use, has had extensive testing and bug removal, has excellent uptime (especially with the sheer bandwidth being thrown at its servers), includes community features, forums, an IM chat service a-la Xbox Live or X-Fire; basically everything you need from a digital game distributor. They also do what other digital distribution methods haven't done so well, from what I've seen, and offer price cuts generally in line with retail prices and specific sales. And, for the moment at least, Steam doesn't force you to pay an additional $5 for "insurance" to be able to re-download your game a few months or even years down the road.
I still worry, with the sheer number of games I now have on Steam, what will happen if the service ever goes under, or what I will do if I find myself unable to afford a decent net connection sometime in the future.
Now I want them to team up with gog.com so that we can also play the old stuff they now have the license to, such as Theme Hospital.
OH GOD
IF I KNEW THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN I WOULD HAVE WAITED BEFORE I GOT SPORE!
gah
that's very annoying
oh well, at least mirror's edge will be fine
This is very good to see, steam is hella awesome as we know and its good to see EA games on there without EA's horrible download service.
Maybe it's just coincidence, but a couple buddies and I weren't able to play one successful game of Left 4 Dead last night. Network lag, studdering and disconnects made it nigh impossible to play. Not since November 2004 have I had anything bad to say about Steam until yesterday. Not to mention half the game was pink.
The Steam SPORE doesn't seem to have the activation limitations that the other versions do. If it does, Steam is doing a lousy job of letting one know. I mean the Far Cry 2 entry in Steam lets you know you only have 5 activations. At least the community side of steam is still run by a bunch of autists.
@JaxDaxter: Not likely. I've tried registering many non Valve games on steam and none have worked. I especially doubt EA would go for this.
EDIT: @GreggD: That's because Crytek had EA publish the boxed version under EA's Partner's program. The games listed in this article are all IPs owned by EA. Crytek still owns Crysis. Not that funny.
Thats Awesome!
But what is going to happen to there download thing?
Will it only be for patches now or will the EA Download manager disappear completely.
I'd buy stuff off of steam, except they charge Europeans 1:1 in euros for dollars.. That is, a $49.99 game is 49.99€ which of course really is $69.
Good job Valve; Your Steam prices with your latest changes are now even more expensive than buying from stores, something that was never cheap here to begin with. It was already bad enough with US price + VAT, but this just takes the cake.
Oh yeah the EA thing? That's cool, I guess. If only I could take advantage of it.
I wish that some of these publishers would also start to publish onto Stardock's Impulse, unless Valve is being evil and signing exclusivity contracts with the publishers to only distribute on their services i don't see what is stopping them. It would be better for everyone to have competition in the digital distribution space. Even though Valve is a good company it would still get bad quickly if they end up having a monopoly on PC digital distribution.
But not for Europe and they did a big price increase on all our games and acted like they were doing us a favor. They lost allot of good faith when they decided to convert the prices. Still, not that anyone cares about Europe, most sites give a games price in English pounds when mentioning a European price, which is just insulting.
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