Battlefield 3 on Steam Hinted at By New Evidence

Battlefield 3 was released last week around the world by DICE and Electronic Arts, with its digital PC version appearing exclusively on EA's Origin service, but it now seems that the shooter might still make it to the much more popular Steam service, at least according to some new evidence.

Battlefield 3 was eagerly awaited by many fans, but the PC version has experienced quite a few problems, mainly because it requires the Origin service to be installed when playing. This led to a lot of heated debates, many of which are still going on.

Now, however, it seems that the game might still appear on Valve's Steam digital distribution service, which is much more popular among the PC gaming community, as new evidence has been rounded up by members of the NeoGAF forums.

First up, there's a special competition being held by graphics card vendor Sapphire for its Select Club members, with one of the prizes being "one (1) PC Game code for Battlefield 3, redeemable for the game on Steam."

While that might be just a mistake, probably because most other games were given away through Steam codes, another piece of evidence, this time a bit hidden, also points to a Steam release for the game.

More specifically, people have started going through the code of the Punkbuster application which serves to prevent cheating in Battlefield 3 online matches. This code mentions some of the possible install locations for the game, including ones in regular Steam folders, like:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Battlefield 3\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\battlefield 3\
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\battlefield 3\
C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Battlefield 3\

This might be another mistake, especially considering EA made it clear that it had "nothing to report" concerning Battlefield 3's appearance on Steam, but it could hint that negotiations between EA and Valve are finally coming to a close and Steam users will be able to get the game on their preferred service.

As of yet, however, there's no official word from Electronic Arts.