Earlier this month we reported on the launch of EA’s new Origin service, which has replaced its old digital distribution platform for PC games.
At the time of launch, EA stated that Origin would offer exclusive content for EA games, such as trailers, demos, online betas and even EA games.
It became clear that the publisher was not kidding the following week when during E3 it had all videos of the Battlefield 3 E3 trailer pulled from video hosting sites such as youtube in an attempt to make it exclusively viewable in the Origin store. Of course, this was a strategy that was doomed from the start, and eventually EA relented and the video is now freely viewable across the interplox.
This week EA is moving in an unexpected direction, and has had Crysis 2 pulled from Steam. It is however still available on Direct2Drive, but it remains to be seen for how much longer. Many are assuming that this is the first step in EA’s plans to make all its future PC games exclusively available digitally on Origin.
It is worth noting that loads of other recent and old EA games are still available on Steam, including Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2 and Shift 2: Unleashed.
It is also now confirmed that EA’s next big release, Alice: Madness Returns, won’t be available on Steam.
Many are anticipating that Battlefield 3 will be an Origin exclusive, and EA has already announced the StarWars: The Old Republic will not be available on any other digital platforms. These are two of 2011’s most highly anticipated games, and exclusivity would go a way to promoting the new distribution platform.
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