Battlefield 3 won’t be coming to Steam, apparently

Just when I thought EA‘s bizarre behavior regarding Steam couldn’t get even more bizarre, EA has proven that it can, in fact, do something stranger. EA released a list of all digital distribution services Battlefield 3 will be available on, and Steam isn’t one of them.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with all of the strange happenings as of late, here’s a primer: earlier this month, Crysis 2 and a number of other EA titles were mysteriously pulled from Steam. In a statement to Giant Bomb, EA claimed that Crysis 2 being pulled was not their call, but they didn’t comment on the MIA status of the other EA titles. Here’s EA’s statement:

“It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service. This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA”, the statement reads. “Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam. Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more.”

Steam has a massive, loyal fanbase, so I can’t help but feel as if EA is shooting themselves in the foot by not including Steam in the list of digital distributors. Regardless of the politics and corporate sorcery going on behind-the-scenes, money is money. There are a signficant number of players who will only play a game if it’s Steam-enabled, and so I can’t see anything good coming out of this for EA financially. I suppose it is possible that EA could have a change of heart and, for all I know, it could be a mistake, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Source: EA (via Joystiq)