Clash of the Titans: EA pulls Dragon Age II from Steam

by Steven Mostyn - Jul 29 2011, 09:27

Bad news for PC gamers who’ve not yet downloaded BioWare’s RPG epic Dragon Age II from Steam: Its availability has been yanked by third-party publisher Electronic Arts (EA).

“At EA, we offer our games and content to all major download services including GameStop, Amazon, Direct2Drive and Steam,” said EA’s David DeMartini, senior vice president of global e-commerce, in an IGN report.”

“Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content,” he added. “No other download service has adopted this practice.”

As a result of EA’s apparent unwillingness to tolerate Valve’s new terms of service, the publisher has pulled a selection of its titles from Steam’s virtual shelves. Other EA-branded games that have also been recently removed include the likes of Crytek’s first-person shooter Crysis 2.

Industry rumours suggest the ongoing standoff will result in EA withholding its hotly anticipated military shooter Battlefield 3 from Steam when it launches this coming October.

Although EA is clearly unhappy with Valve’s apparently iron grip, it has said it hopes “to work out an agreement to keep [its] games on Steam”.

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