Newell: "We want EA's games on Steam"

Gabe Newell has for the first time spoken about the recent removal of EA games from Valve's download service, Steam, saying: "We want EA's games on Steam and we have to show them that’s a smart thing to do."
Officially, EA says the removal of its games is due to Valve's restrictive terms and conditions on DLC and patches, but it is believed in some quarters to be EA's way of pushing customers onto its Steam rival, Origin, which launched in June. Either way, Newell remains hopeful that the impasse can be resolved.
"I don't think Valve can just pick one thing and think the issue would go away if we fixed that," Newell told Develop. "We have to show EA it's a smart decision to have EA games on Steam, and we're going to try and show them that."
While Steam users would obviously prefer to have all available games on their platform of choice, Newell recognises that it is far from a prerequisite that publishers sell their wares through Steam purely by virtue of it being the market leader.
"Companies have to earn the right to install content on their customer's PCs on a regular basis," he said. "The same thing is true of Steam. We have to prove we are creating value on an ongoing basis, whether it's to EA or Ubisoft or whoever.
"We really want to show there's a lot of value [in] having EA titles on Steam. We want EA's games on Steam and we have to show them that's a smart thing to do.
"I think at the end of the day we're going to prove to Electronic Arts [that] they have happier customers, a higher-quality service, and will make more money if they have their titles on Steam. It's our duty to demonstrate that to them; we don't have a natural right to publish their games."
The first signal of EA's discontent came in June, when it removedCrytek's Crysis 2, which it published, from Steam. That move came just days after the launch of Origin, and while EA would later justify the removal by revealing Crytek's DLC exclusivity deal with Direct2Drive, the timing suggested it was anything but a coincidence. At the time, EA's David DeMartini insisted: "We believe in absolute freedom of choice to allow customers to buy through whatever retail outlet [they choose]."
Late last month, Dragon Age II was removed from the service, with EA blaming Valve's terms and conditions, and last week it confirmed that, unless things change, Battlefield 3 will not be released on Steam when it ships in October.
"Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content," the publisher said. "No other download service has adopted these practices. We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3."
EA may be right about Valve's terms, but that it has only taken umbrage at them since its launch of a rival service can be no coincidence. As such it is to Newell's credit that he remains open to resolving the dispute, and while he surely has business considerations of his own in mind - EA is one of the world's biggest publishers, and Battlefield 3 is expected to be the most popular PC game of the year by some distance - he at least appears to have gamer interests at heart, and it is to be hoped that EA does too.

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