Battlefield 3 Logo
For weeks now Electronic Arts have been claiming that Valve’s terms and conditions were the reason that their highly anticipated game, Battlefield 3, had been forced from Steam – yet this week it was revealed that all versions of the game require an installation of EA’s proprietary download system, Origin, in order to function. This renders dubious EA’s professed intentions to see a Steam release for their game seeing as their product does not appear to leave room for Valve’s own DRM to function. EA had been initially leaking tidbits of information to suggest that Valve’s terms and conditions were getting in the way of their community management plans for the game, this week however a fuller picture of this situation has emerged, and while Lusipurr.com is sure that nobody wishes to think the worst of EA, it nevertheless appears that our favourite publisher has been playing somewhat fast and loose with the truth.
EA has this week announced that all versions of their marquee title, Battlefield 3, will require the installation of their propriety content delivery system known as Origin in order for it to function. It will additionally require the Battlelog service in order to have access to the vaunted multiplayer component of the game.
Obviously this move would render the product all but incompatible with Steam’s own similar proprietary DRM, and as such leaves many questions unanswered as to EA’s own good faith when claiming that Valve’s terms and conditions forced the game to abandon Steam, when in fact it appears to have been designed to be incompatible with Steam from the outset. Moreover, it raises the question of whether developers will wish to throw their lot in with a download platform belonging to a publisher who is viewed as having bad faith in their business dealings.
