Gamestopped: You Won’t Find Battlefield 3 On Steam

Seeming to confirm reports from last week, an article on Develop quotes an unnamed Gamestop executive as saying that Battlefield 3 won’t be on Valve’s Steam retailer—though it will appear on Gamestop’s online service, as well as Electronic Arts’s own online retailer, Origin.

“Given Steam’s dominance—and insistence on users downloading a Steam client application—publishers are likely to be receptive to a competitive alternative,” a report from financial research firm Baird is quoted as saying.

The conflict between EA and Steam appears to have started when Steam removed EA’s Crysis 2 from their store right around when Origin was launched.  Last week, an EA representative was quoted as saying that the two companies were “working diligently” to resolve the conflict, but it looks as though whatever talks there were have broken down.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the forthcoming megahit, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will also be an Origin exclusive.

But hey!  Steam has new servers! That’s pretty cool!

Via Design