14 DAY TRIAL // At the beginning of the week we heard that Mass Effect 3 on the PC would appear on Electronic Arts’ Origin digital distribution service, as well as on a few other third party digital retailers, but not on Steam.
This didn’t surprised anyone, as EA has kept most of its recent products away from Steam, the biggest digital distribution service currently active on the PC platform, because of the restrictive terms required by its owner, Valve.
In case you aren’t up to speed or forgot about last year’s ‘battle’ between EA and Valve, here’s a brief recap. Steam’s terms mandate that every downloadable content pack for games offered through it needs to be sold through the actual service.
This didn’t go so well for EA, whose recent titles, like Crysis 2 or Dragon Age II, sold their DLC packs separately from Steam, through EA’s own services. As such, these two titles were no longer listed by Steam and newer games made by EA, like Battlefield 3, haven’t been offered through the service.
Mass Effect 3 looks set to follow Batlefield’s lead, but at least from the official statement we got from EA, it seems that there might be a few loopholes that could see the role playing shooter appear on Steam at one point in time.
First up, here’s the full statement made by BioWare community coordinator Chris Priestly this week.
“During initial release Mass Effect 3 will be available on Origin and a number of other 3rd party digital retailers, but not on Steam at this time. Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. We are intent on providing Mass Effect to players with the best possible experience no matter where they purchase or play their game, and are happy to partner with any download service that does not restrict our ability to connect directly with our consumers.”
As you can see, EA is still adamant on avoiding Steam due to its restrictive terms, but does set up a couple of loopholes that could allow Mass Effect 3 to appear on Valve’s service.
The first of which, as you can clearly figure out, is the mention of the initial release of the game. After that, Priestly says that it won’t appear on Steam at this time, so who knows what the future might bring.
Our educated guess is that, while Mass Effect 3 won’t be available on Steam right now, after all the DLC and patches are launched for it, a possible Mass Effect 3 Game of the Year or Complete Edition might be eventually released through Steam.
EA’s Origin is slowly gaining fans, but Steam already has tens of millions of fiercely loyal users. As such, EA can’t really afford not to release Mass Effect 3 on Steam, at least at some point in time.