EA's Moore: "There's no feud" with Valve
COO addresses Origin's rivalry with Steam, says it's a terms and conditions issue
COO Peter Moore has denied the existence of any bad feeling between EA and Steam operator Valve.
"There's no feud," Moore told Eurogamer.
"Remember, we're the guys who published Left 4 Dead and Portal 2. It's Valve. Gabe's a great friend of EA's. We're a great friend of his, we like to think.
He also addressed the difficulties faced since EA launched its rival to Steam, Origin. EA games soon disappeared from the Valve platform, with EA citing restrictions on customer interaction.
"They have different terms and conditions that they put on their games that don't meet what we would like to do with our gamers. They insist on being a layer between the game developer and publisher and the consumer. They take a piece of the revenue stream. And they don't allow us to go directly to the consumer to do patches and updates. So we just agree to disagree. It's not a feud. They have their terms and conditions. We do. They don't meet."
In April Valve boss Gabe Newell said they spoke to EA regularly about featuring their games on Steam again.
"We'd love to have their games on Steam. We think their customers would be happy if their games were on Steam. We tell them that on a regular basis," he said.
But Moore was clear that the terms and conditions were non-negotiable.
"We're very clear on what we want to do to be able to put a game on a platform and interact with the gamer," he said. "The current terms and conditions of Steam don't allow that. If they change to meet the contract with the gamer we set out to do, then of course things might change. But until then, nothing's going to change."
And while EA isn't planning to publish any Valve games in the immediate future, the digital distribution rivalry won't stop that happening again.
"We've always enjoyed that publishing relationship. And it is my team that does it," said Moore.
"But there are no conversations going on right now. I don't know what their plans are right now. So, of course, we've had a great relationship from the publishing end, and I'd like to think they've enjoyed us publishing their content. I certainly think we've done a good job."
It's already been confirmed that it's a Terms and Conditions issue. Specifically, it's almost entirely down to DLC and Patches ( http://uk.gamespot.com/news/origin-not-sticky-enough-ea-6382162 )
And by "interact with the gamer" he means the EA-owned BioWare store should be the only place to be able to purchase ME2 and 3/DA2 DLC. At least he's honest about the revenue-stream aspect.
Anyways... Peter Moore thinks EA should be subject to different T&Cs than all the other publishers and developers? Mmm... Good Luck with that. :)
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 16th August 2012 12:04pm
In any event, as shown with Crysis 2, their games will return to Steam, once they're in compliance with the T&C. Mass Effect 3 GoTY, for example. :)
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 16th August 2012 5:24pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Hugo Trepanier on 16th August 2012 6:38pm
I want to clarify exactly what's causing this problem, in case people don't understand through layers of PR FUD:
Steam has a policy that all DLC and patches you plan to release for your game must be available on Steam. This doesn't mean they must ONLY be available on Steam, just that they have to be there, so purchasers can ensure they get a consistent experience across the board through Steam's current policies and features. Steam does this partly to get a cut of sales, but also to make sure users have access to automatic patching and updating and full integration in the Steam environment regardless of what game is purchased on Steam. This is part of what has created such strong consumer confidence in Steam. It's reliable and convenient and they want to make sure that experience is consistent so people will keep buying their games on there.
EA doesn't want people to be able to buy DLC from anyone but them, which is absolutely their right, but it's EA who's restricting the way consumers interact with their product, not Valve. You are welcome to sell DLC through other services (there are a number of Games for Windwos Live games on Steam, for example) as long as you're also providing it on Steam. This is the part that EA refuses to bend on.
Quick summary: Valve = You can sell your content where you want, but if you want to be on Steam it has to be on Steam as well. EA = You buy from us or you don't buy at all.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Nicholas Pantazis on 16th August 2012 7:23pm
For example, if a game uses a matchmaking server those servers might need to be taken down and updated in conjunction with a patch release. So the flow might be Team A at EA has the patch ready to be propped, and tells Team B to take the servers down for an update. Team A props the patch to production so that users can get it, and Team B then brings the updated matchmaking server back up. If Team A jumps the gun, people will patch and might not be able to access the matchmaking server because it hasn't been updated. If team B jumps the gun users might get to the matchmaking server, but can't play because they don't have the latest version of the game.
Now if you add an additional vendor to the mix as far as propping a patch it adds a degree of difficulty in coordinating timing wise. It's not impossible, but there is more surface area for errors and the external vendor may not have the flexibility that someone internally would have.
I can imagine there might be other difficult scenarios around content propping as well.