14 DAY TRIAL // Crysis 2, the first-person shooter from developer Crytek, a game published by Electronic Arts, has been removed from Steam this week and a lot of industry watchers were quick to speculate that the move was done in order to make the game an exclusive digital offering on the new Origin distribution service from EA.
Now the company has issued a statement saying that it has not actively worked to take Crysis 2 away from Steam and that the move has originated with service creators Valve.
EA has issued a response to the game's removal, mentioning that it was "not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA," saying instead that the game was removed because an agreement that developer Crytek made with "another download service" violates an unspecified rule Steam has for its distribution partners.
Electronic Arts also states that Crysis 2 continues to be offered on other digital distribution services, including Origin among them.
It's not clear which other digital distribution service Crytek could have an agreement with in order to violate the terms of service that it had agreed on with Steam.
Alice: Madness Returns, a newer game than Crysis 2, is at the moment only offered on Origin, but it seems that the title will also be coming to other digital distribution services in the next few days.
Origin is at the moment a desktop application that requires an account in order for players to access the library of video games that they have downloaded from Electronic Arts.
The publisher says that it will be delivering more features to Origin in the near future, aiming to make it a more attractive platform than Steam by allowing for more social networking elements.
There are more than 150 games available on Origin at the moment, which is significantly less than the 1,500 delivered by Steam.