It looks like the battle between EA and Valve continues with the latest game dropped being Dragon Age II. Instead of seeing the “Legacy” DLC available on Steam yesterday, those who were interested in picking up Dragon Age II and/or the DLC were greeted by a blank page. This isn’t too surprising though, seeing that AAA titles such as Crysis 2 were removed from Steam as well as EA confirming Battlefield 3 will be absent from Steam. The reason for EA’s recent retreat from Steam is speculated to be due to the recent opening of EA’s own digital distribution platform, Origin.
To be fair, there is a strong possibility that Valve was the one that pull Dragon Age II off of Steam due to a possible violation of Steam’s latest terms of service. The “Legacy” DLC was to be delivered via in-game store, which may be a no-no in Steam’s ToS. If this is the case, Bioware would have had to recode specific portions of the game just to accommodate Steam. Here is my question though. Steam is undoubtedly the largest and most successful digital distribution platform for PC. Why would you code your game in such a way that specifically violates their terms? I mean, if you found out your AAA title had something in it that would stop it from being distributed at a big box retailer such as Best Buy or Walmart, would you not change it?
Not saying that Steam is as big as Walmart, but you get my drift. The only thing I can think of is that they aren’t too concerned since they have their own distribution platform. Who knows; they may be concerned and are working it out with Steam right now. Maybe Dragon Age II complete with DLC will be back on Steam next week. Only time will tell… One thing is for sure though, for right now and the foreseeable future, you will not be downloading Dragon Age II via Steam.
[Source: Destructoid]
