UPDATE: This was due to a conflict between a contract involving Crytek and new rules set out by Valve, read the new article.
EA has taken Crysis 2 from Steam’s clutches, and put it on Origin. It’s not unusual for a developer or publisher to decide where something can or cannot be sold, but they did, even though EA is already in the bad books with some gamers over the Battlefield 3 controversy.
Even though Crysis 2 can be gotten at Direct2Drive and other digital retailers, they’ll likely have the games pulled in short order once someone finds the list of publishers that have Crysis 2 on their catalogues.
This news isn’t far behind other stories such as Star Wars: The Old Republic being an Origin exclusive. Whenever this will result in EA pulling their other properties from Steam or not will remain to be seen. If they do, and they take it a step further, purchases of EA games on Steam might be pretty much “erased”.
I really have no idea what they’re thinking. They’re responding rather poorly to the (rather overblown) issue with Battlefield 3, and now they’re damaging their relationship with gamers who use what is likely one of the biggest digital retailers on the internet.
EA already has their own digital store, but the communication features are lacking in extreme levels if they exist at all. Origin is EA’s answer to Steam, but trying to pull people from Steam is like selling bottled water at a drinking fountain at this point. They know it will work however, with Battlefield, Crysis, and Mass Effect being incredibly well-selling games. If they didn’t have those properties under their belt, doing this would normally be nothing short of suicide for a company.
