By Remember how I was telling you about Dragon Age II downloads and why you should hold off for a while?
That article was based around buying the game as a digital distribution and to do so by using Valve’s Steam platform. Since then a few things have changed but most importantly Dragon Age II is no longer available on Steam.
Dragon Age II thus becomes the second EA title to be part of a conflict between Steam’s selling policy and a publisher.
Dragon Age II
Even though unknown for some time not long after the disappearance of Dragon Age II from Steam, EA’s representatives came forward with an explanation.
Well, an explanation is saying to much, basically, they blamed Dragon Age II’s disappearance on Steam and their policies. These may be somewhat conflicting with Dragon Age II’s in game “store” for handling DLC packs.
By going this route, Steam would lose out on selling the DLC packs which would, in all probability, be very popular with a game like Dragon Age II.
That’s as official a story as we can get on why Dragon Age II disappeared from Steam but there’s more at the core of this decision than the simple matter of money made on a single game.
EA has been long ago harboring a desire to make their own online store to rival with Steam. By allowing certain titles to partially promote EA’s online distribution store, now called Origin, Steam would basically shoot themselves in one of their legs.
Steam Logo
Steam’s decision to pull Dragon Age II makes perfect sense and fans of the game will still be able to buy it on various other distribution medias so there isn’t that big a loss.
The only area which is Dragon Age II related and seems to be suffering from this decision is within gamer appeal.
After a few squabbles with the game itself, seeing this much of a scandal related to it makes more people speak out about the negative aspects of Dragon Age II than ever before.
