News - Why Battlefield 3 won't be making an appearance on Steam

[aidanjt]

Honestly, I have been desperate to see a BF3 ever since I started playing BF2, which was an extremely long time ago. I think I've got about 600+ hours of BF2 experience, used to play it a heck of a lot at one point.

Now though, I've got a shedload of games through Steam sales, meaning I'm in no rush to acquire new ones at full price, no matter how good they are (still haven't played Portal 2 for instance). And my entire games library is on Steam. I have it running all the time, it's extremely convenient and I'm comfortable running it as my only games platform.

I have games on Origin, but they were all free - there's no way I would fork out money for anything on Origin. Steam makes my life a heck of a lot easier now I've done away with discs and the like, and there's no particular incentive for me to do away with that convenience and start complicating things again.

If EA want to leave Steam out of the equation, then fine, it's up to them. But I won't be buying it.

The last non-Steam enabled games I purchased were a few for the Hexus LAN, because I didn't have them and they were overpriced on Steam direct download. Before that, i.e. when not forced to by circumstance, it was probably CoD4 in 2007. Not certain, but it's the last one I can find in my order histories.

This.

Times a billion.

EA can get stuffed if they try to use a game release as a launch driver for their own game platform. I need each publisher to have their own game distribution platform like I need a bullet in the head.

[Rob_B]

Steam is useful but is it really as amazingly-amazing as people seem to be making out? Its a platform after all, is it really such a pain to put a disc in to play a game?
I mean, putting aside all this talk of 'omg having to use a real ye-olde-disc' and multiple platforms (Origin is a download/patch thing after all & doesnt need to run to play the game unlike Steam) then what are your genuine issues with this?

Mine are that choice is limited by not being on Steam, that's all, it's no deal breaker though, if Gamestation didn't sell it I'd not be that bothered (yes I realise it's not exactly the same)
I got it cheap from EA, if not I'd have bought it wherever it was cheapest regardless of whether I could integrate with Steam or not.

It's upto each individual to say if they will/won't buy the game though, personally I think this will play out exactly the same as MW2 boycott did (I'm not meaning you guys posting in this thread in particular, just in 'general' - you lot are probably more stubborn that most gamers )

I'll be playing away on release day, did I mention I got it for £17?

[.havoc]

I'll be playing away on release day, did I mention I got it for £17?

On behalf of the forum - you.






I kid i kid, we love you really!

back on topic - i am a fan of steam, i like having my library organised and being able to create playlists and what not, its just easy. Plus the sales are awesome! but as you say its not a deal breaker, least not for me - if game/gamestation (same bloody company - annoys me that does) hmv etc etc drop it down to nice price soon enough i will buy it, otherwise i will wait. i got a big list to complete anyways!

would prefer it on steam though - as i dont actually have a cd drive (my case was too pretty to ruin it with one)

[Rob_B]

Don't get me wrong, i do like Steam however I prefer physical copies (a recent reinstall of crysis 2 is a great example of why!)

If you could pop the retail key in steam and have a hard backup for reinstalls (like you can do with BF3?) then great, even better than buying direct through Steam surely?!

[danroyle]

EA can get stuffed if they try to use a game release as a launch driver for their own game platform. I need each publisher to have their own game distribution platform like I need a bullet in the head.

*coughs* steam was pretty much launched by being forceably attached to half life 2 i seem to remember



personally i like having a cd/dvd for backup the whole EA origin thing of being able to add most of myolder Ea games to my origin so i can download them is good as some of my older discs are temperamental.

I just buy the game were its the cheapest as long as it works and i can play multiplayer you are only double clicking a shortcut to load it who cares if that shortcut runs through EA Origin or a monkeys Butt Crack

[Roobubba]

*coughs* steam was pretty much launched by being forceably attached to half life 2 i seem to remember



personally i like having a cd/dvd for backup the whole EA origin thing of being able to add most of myolder Ea games to my origin so i can download them is good as some of my older discs are temperamental.

I just buy the game were its the cheapest as long as it works and i can play multiplayer you are only double clicking a shortcut to load it who cares if that shortcut runs through EA Origin or a monkeys Butt Crack

I care.

I care that my steam friends list allows me to quickly chat with my good mates, that I can join their games/easily chat to them in games/host and invite them very easily.

I doubly care because every single one of the Battlefield games bar none has had an unusable, bugged, slow, awkward and friend-unfriendly menu/server browser which is at best woeful and at worst an insult of mortal proportions to coders the world over.

I don't want a disc, I have enough of them cluttering up the place as it is. I was properly put off disc installs from Neverwinter Nights, where they decided to use a font for the serial key which did not distinguish in any way between many letters/numbers. For example, D, O and 0 all looked identical, as did 8 and B (I found this out only after comparing the serial with a mate's version). It took me the best part of an hour trying various different combinations of serial keys to get that bloody game installed. Never had a problem with any game through steam...

[Noxvayl]

*coughs* steam was pretty much launched by being forceably attached to half life 2 i seem to remember

Had to correct this... Steam was launched as a patch platform to keep Valve games up to date. That is a MASSIVE difference between a store platform intent on making a profit.

The goal of Steam was for customer benefit, it's early feature set are testament to that; It has evolved into what it is now. Origin on the other hand doesn't have that same honesty surrounding it.

------------------------------------------------------

As for the discussion...

I'm not opposed to Origin, but I don't like the fact that gaming is becoming split by what download platform the game comes with; It is really annoying. The only people loosing out are gamers, which shouldn't be acceptable.

I am more put off by the price of BF3 and it possibly using PunkBuster than not getting it on Steam.

It all boils down to a few simple questions for me: Does the game have limits that inconvenience legitimate users? How much of an inconvenience are those limits? What is the possible benefit to me of accepting those limits?

If the benefit is enough to outweigh the draw backs I'll get the game. So far I haven't missed out on anything I wish I had played and have found there is a large portion of games that I love to play that don't have as many inconvenient limits I dislike. So far it's been WIN - WIN

------------------------------------------------------

Now for the article...

Does anyone know what restrictions Steam have in place that EA are unhappy with?

I am inclined to believe that EA are either too lazy to continue to produce patches in a way that Steam would like or are using this as an excuse to omit Steam for their biggest launch of the year. There are other EA games available on Steam, what is the big difference here?

[.havoc]

its an interesting choice as i have just checked the user stats for the last 48 hours and there was a peak of 3.6 million gamers on steam, with 3.4 on at the time of this post...

really? not going to put your product that delivers the game straight to the desktop of 3.4 million gamers and hold the potential for how many million sales? *sarcastic clap*

(btw my criticism is for both parties here)

[aidanjt]

Steam is useful but is it really as amazingly-amazing as people seem to be making out? Its a platform after all, is it really such a pain to put a disc in to play a game?

Lets put it this way. Would you rather have 4,000 DVDs and a room surrounded by rows upon rows of shelves, having to keep it alphabetised, people asking if they can borrow them, having to keep track of them, getting stressed out when someone messes with your filing system, or, would you rather have a specific platform for downloading TV shows and movies on your big fast storage system, being able to find and launch what you want immediately, and probably save a whole lot of money on shelving and a whole lot of space in the process, while being less of a contributor to consumption pollution and waste?

By every practical measure, online content delivery is considerably superior.

TL;DR: Yes, it's too much of a pain of the arse digging around for discs.

[Rob_B]

lol, 4000, you're a busy man

I prefer discs to downloading 7 or 8 gigs (which WILL be rising in the future) to install a game, my connection is 'ok' ~ 6meg but even at 800k/sec it takes a long time to download, longer than the time taken to get the disc every time I want to play totalled up over the lifetime of the game (if you even need to eg Crysis 2 doesn't need it)

Like I said I have no issue with Steam but it isn't the handed-down-from-god platform its sometimes made out to be

[Noxvayl]

lol, 4000, you're a busy man

I prefer discs to downloading 7 or 8 gigs (which WILL be rising in the future) to install a game, my connection is 'ok' ~ 6meg but even at 800k/sec it takes a long time to download, longer than the time taken to get the disc every time I want to play totalled up over the lifetime of the game (if you even need to eg Crysis 2 doesn't need it)

Why do I get the feeling you are highly impatient..?

I've never needed to be able to install a game immediately, or within thirty minutes. I can download any game, now or in the future, overnight. I'll gladly do that rather than waste excessive amounts of resources and space just to hold on to a physical copy of a game for the primary benefit of reducing the time between accessing the game from 180-480 minutes down to 8-30 minutes.

Heck you could just spend a measly £30 on a hard drive that can hold all your games so you never have to re-install them. I don't know anyone with a games library bigger than 500Gb, even then an extra £10 will get you a 1Tb hard drive.

It's a null argument to me.

Like I said I have no issue with Steam but it isn't the handed-down-from-god platform its sometimes made out to be

I think you are exaggerating the usefulness people talk about in that expression.

People don't make it out to be a omnipotent platform, they merely express their experience of it being useful for them, something a physical copy of a game cannot provide.

Steam quite simply is a much more efficient, useful and beneficial system than the incumbent physical copy alternative. Other digital distribution systems have the same status, with differing effectiveness due to features provided and how they are implemented.

[GoNz0]

This is all well and good im all for getting patches etc right away, and i also understand that you want to push your own service (Origin) .... but why in gods kitchen are you the dearest place to buy the dam game ?

Nuts .............

I will be buying it anyway, just not from Origin.

this is a direct copy and paste from the EA mailing list i am on for BFBC2, i wont name who and have taken a small section from a post

EA has anti-competition laws to follow.
ORIGIN can't undercut a retail store to promote itself above retailers unless it is in the form of a sale etc.

[Rob_B]

Why do I get the feeling you are highly impatient..?

I've never needed to be able to install a game immediately, or within thirty minutes. I can download any game, now or in the future, overnight. I'll gladly do that rather than waste excessive amounts of resources and space just to hold on to a physical copy of a game for the primary benefit of reducing the time between accessing the game from 180-480 minutes down to 8-30 minutes.

Heck you could just spend a measly £30 on a hard drive that can hold all your games so you never have to re-install them. I don't know anyone with a games library bigger than 500Gb, even then an extra £10 will get you a 1Tb hard drive.

It's a null argument to me.



I think you are exaggerating the usefulness people talk about in that expression.

People don't make it out to be a omnipotent platform, they merely express their experience of it being useful for them, something a physical copy of a game cannot provide.

Steam quite simply is a much more efficient, useful and beneficial system than the incumbent physical copy alternative. Other digital distribution systems have the same status, with differing effectiveness due to features provided and how they are implemented.

But I can download any game + install it if I have a capped internet connection I don't want to/cant tie up for hours on end which a large amount of people do, I'd say many times more than people who don't, people on here & most gaming forums are not an 'average' consumer.
Excessive resources & space, a DVD box? Oh come on...for the very few with 4000 games then yes, I'll give you that, but they're a tiny, tiny, tiny minority.

My arguement isn't that DD is rubbish but that if it isn't on Steam people cry on as though someone has just burst into their home and shat on their couch.
It's life, no-one is owned anything. You sometimes get what you want, sometimes you don't. It's EA's product, let them decide how to sell it, boycott it if you wish, thats a good thing to do if you believe so strongly about it but, in my opinion, it's no big deal and I doubt highly that I'm in the minority.

[aidanjt]

lol, 4000, you're a busy man

I prefer discs to downloading 7 or 8 gigs (which WILL be rising in the future) to install a game, my connection is 'ok' ~ 6meg but even at 800k/sec it takes a long time to download, longer than the time taken to get the disc every time I want to play totalled up over the lifetime of the game (if you even need to eg Crysis 2 doesn't need it)

Like I said I have no issue with Steam but it isn't the handed-down-from-god platform its sometimes made out to be

I'll grant you that BT sucks, and with ADSL initial acquirement may take longer than driving to a retailer. But then again, steam doesn't need to sleep, or close on your time off because of municipal requirements or lack of trade, and if you have a modern internet connection the waiting time is more like half an hour or less.

[jim]

Steam is useful but is it really as amazingly-amazing as people seem to be making out? Its a platform after all, is it really such a pain to put a disc in to play a game?
I mean, putting aside all this talk of 'omg having to use a real ye-olde-disc' and multiple platforms (Origin is a download/patch thing after all & doesnt need to run to play the game unlike Steam) then what are your genuine issues with this?

For me, yes. I anticipate having a PC at home, a PC at uni, and a laptop. With Steam, I can take my entire games collection with me, wherever I go - and with no discs taking up space. When space is at a premium (taking stuff to and from uni and small rooms means it definitely is), that's important.

Then I've got automatic patching that I don't have to think about, and Steam Cloud that means my savegame is seamlessly copied from laptop to uni PC to home PC.

So game disc option for me is now a real last resort - it's a monumental inconvenience that would genuinely reduce my playtime and enjoyment of a game. And therefore is intrinsically worth less to me.

I'll readily admit that Origin covers most of the bases, but I have 3 major issues. Last year at uni I was completely unable to use Origin - it just couldn't work on the uni network. Steam had no such issues. So last year Origin was completely worthless, even worse than a disc-based game. Secondly it just isn't quite as good - game downloading and storage is far more messy and needlessly complicated design. Thirdly, it's overcomplicating things. When I want to run a game, I go to Steam. I don't want to have to start up another piece of software solely for 1 or 2 others - I'll just stick with the ones on Steam. Maybe that comes across as lazy, but I like order and consistency on my PC.

Mine are that choice is limited by not being on Steam, that's all, it's no deal breaker though, if Gamestation didn't sell it I'd not be that bothered (yes I realise it's not exactly the same)
I got it cheap from EA, if not I'd have bought it wherever it was cheapest regardless of whether I could integrate with Steam or not.

Well as you've admitted, it's a poor analogy. I routinely buy Steam enabled games from Amazon (Call of Duty, Total War, Football Manager) and install them via Steam retail key activations. That's a closer set of circumstances to your Gamestation example (same product, different retailer) and I do it all the time.

It's upto each individual to say if they will/won't buy the game though, personally I think this will play out exactly the same as MW2 boycott did (I'm not meaning you guys posting in this thread in particular, just in 'general' - you lot are probably more stubborn that most gamers )

I'm sure it will. I'm still boycotting MW2, although I'd take it if someone wants to give it away for free

Your last point is probably the most accurate - stubbornness. Yes, I could buy it on Origin. And I probably would enjoy it just as much as if I'd bought it on Steam, even if it was a little less convenient.

But when EA decide to start telling me how I will play their games so they can play their part in some petty corporate squabble, I'll exercise my right to stick two fingers up at them.

And yes, I've noticed the irony in that this sounds a little bit like one of Saracen's posts

[Rob_B]

I'm with O2, I'm not capped thank god, moving soon so that'll change

The problem with 'modern internet connections' is that most people don't have them, you probably do, HEXUS is a terrible benchmark for Mr Joe Average as we tend to be into/own better tech than the general public, and that's where the profit is for EA, those million of people who don't really know/care about DRM, DD, publishers etc.

I already had Origin installed as I've got 9 games on there I've probably paid about £5 all-in for (excluding BF3 and due to sales, cokezone vouchers etc) so for me, it's not an issue. For Mr J Average he probably buys from Game for £45 anyway.

Again it's just choice, I applaud anyone who doesn't buy something they would no doubt love for what they see as a valid reason, for me though, non-Steam is a non-issue.
If I played MP, then maybe thats a problem as Steam seems to be liked for that (?) But I don't, so again, for me it's a non issue.