Several days ago it seems that publisher Electronic Arts was suggesting that the PC version of its highly anticipated first person shooter Battlefield 3 would not be sold on Valve's popular Steam service. Today another report also seems to suggest that the game won't appear on Steam either. The Develop web site reports that Baird, a financial research firm, claims to have had meetings with game retailer GameStop.
According to the story a representative from Baird states, "The upcoming EA title Battlefield 3 will be sold as a download through GameStop, but not through Steam." The rep added, "Given Steam's dominance – and insistence on users downloading a Steam client application – publishers are likely to be receptive to a competitive alternative."
Earlier this month a page on the Battlefield 3 web site posted up a list of retailers that would sell the PC download version but Steam, by far the biggest provider of such games, was not among those listed. Since we first reported on this story, that page has been removed from the Battlefield 3 web site. So far neither EA nor Valve has officially commented on the availability of Battlefield 3 via Steam.
EA recently relaunched its PC downloadable store as Origin and has already announced a couple of upcoming PC games will be available for download exclusively via their new service. The sci-fi first person shooter sequel Crysis 2, published by EA, was also recently removed from Steam. At the time EA said they had nothing to do with that decision, saying, "Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam."
56 Comments - Add comment