14 DAY TRIAL // The hints that the upcoming DICE made first person shooter Battlefield 3 will not be coming to the Valve created Steam digital distribution service have been coming for some time but only now has publisher Electronic Arts made the position official and offered some explanation for it.
The Twitter account for Electronic Arts says, “BF3 will not be available on Steam as the service restricts our ability to directly support players.”
A post on the official forums that the company maintains adds a further explanation, saying, “Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices.”
It seems that Electronic Arts is continuing to talk to Valve about how Steam operates and hopes to reach an agreement that would see Battlefield 3 and, presumably, Dragon Age 2, return to the digital distribution service.
EA is not saying exactly why only its biggest video games are affected by the changes in the Terms of Service for Steam but it probably has something to do with the fact that the company is, at the moment, busy pushing its own digital distribution service, Origin.
The big problem is that Electronic Arts is interested in selling downloadable content to players directly, without going through the Steam check out process, while Valve is interested in getting a cut out of all transactions that go through its system.
All those who put down a pre-order for Battlefield 3 on Steam will get access to the beta stage for the game.
There are also a number of pre-order bonuses linked to various brick and mortar retail chains.
DICE and EA have big hopes for their first person shooter and they are aiming to make the game a serious competitor for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, from Activision Blizzard and Infinity Ward.