Will EA games ever return to Steam?

[Mumziz]

So my question is will any EA published games return to Steam? Personally i despise Origin so damn much and EA. But they got some really good studios, like DICE and Bioware.

I mainly want them back because they seem to change their attitude. With Battlefield 4, Battlefront and Mirrrors Edge coming out I would love to have those games on Steam.

[TastyToast]

Messaggio originale di NL:

Messaggio originale di TastyToast:

yea i looked at your links, if its down for 15 minutes and i dont see it its not my fault. most of it said people in games wouldnt be affected anyways so if im playing i wouldnt know. i dunno why you would be upset over a 15 minute downtime though. you must hate MMOs lol. ive seriously never noticed a steam maintanence.

If you are already playing a game you might not be affected but if you are not logged in in you can't. Also their estimation of how long it is going to be down is often way off. Look at the other thread and you will get a better picture of how often and how long it is down. So ya, you don't play as much as you think.

never log out never been affected. im totally lying about playing all day and having no life on the internet for cool points? thought it worked the other way.

[DaveMoo]

Messaggio originale di crunchyfrog:

Messaggio originale di Dave Mo:

You missed the important point. If the game is on Steam, people like me will opt to buy it on Steam instead of on Origin. When Mass Effect 3 was released on Origin, EA got all my money. If it would have been released on Steam, they would have lost a substatial portion of the value of that sale.

Say Steam took 20%. Imagine most people will still buy a game on Origin. Heck, I hated Origin a few years ago, but still bought Mass Effect games on there. Say 1 million would buy a game full price if it is Origin ony, but 1.1 million would buy if it is Origin and Steam. Say of the 1.05 million, 5 million would but the game on Steam instead of Origin. If the game cost $50, in the EA only scenario EA gets 50 million in revenue. In the Steam also scenari, EA gets $30m from Origin, and they get $20 million from Steam. So in this scenario, they get the same revenue $50m, but it took more units to get that same revenue. Change the percentage that steam gets and the breakdown of where people get the game and EA could do better or worse.

It seems to me that the vast majority of PC gamers would buy a game on Steam over Origin if it is available on both. There are in fact people who hate Steam, but pretty much all of them hate Origin even more.

I agree with part of what you say, but I didn't miss anything. Allow me to explain.

From what you said, you claimed lost sales were less than Steam's cut. This is pretty impossible.

Sales on Origin, EA get 100% of the revenue.
Sales on Steam, they get it less whatever Valve's cut is.

So, a lost sale on Steam being LESS than Valve's cut would have to mean that Valve's cut is GREATER than that of EA's, which is EXTREMELY unlikely - no dev/publisher would go for an agreement where Valve would get more than they themselves who created the product.

In other words, let's consider a few examples:
Assume Valve's cut is 20%
An Origin sale of a £10 game would net EA £10
A Steam sale of a £10 game would net EA £8
In this case the "lost" sale would amount to £8, which is obviously more than £2 Valve get.

Assume Valve's cut is 60% (which would be outrageous)
An Origin sale of a £10 game would net EA £10
A Steam sale of a £10 game would net EA £4
In this case, the "lost" sale would amount to £4, which would be less than £6; Valve's cut.


Some would indeed buy EA games if on both, or Steam exclusively, there's no doubt about that. I don't believe it would be a great number comparatively, though.

I think you are wrong with your final paragraph. I own multiple Origin games, but will always buy on Steam if there is an option. Ask around. There are lots of PC games that feel the same way.

You point about Valve's cut is irrelevant. If someone buys a game on Origin instead of Steam, no sale was lost. It also makes no difference whose cut is bigger so I have no idea why you mention that. What matters is the amount of money that EA received. You keep mention the money Valve gets, which is just a red herring. It is irrelevant how much Steam receives. What matters is how much money EA leaves on the table when games are bought on Steam instead of on Origin. Look at the example I gave previously. That is the math that matters.

We also haven't discussed another important point -- growing the Origin platform. The more people use it, the more accepted it becomes. Origin right now is way better than Origin when it first came out (which was truly horrible). As more people have games on it, more people will buy games on it. While I would rather have all my games on Steam, I also appreciate having less distributors taking cuts. Granted, EA is often just a publisher and not a developer, but at least they can spend more on games if they know that they will be paying less for distribution.

[DaveMoo]

Messaggio originale di TastyToast:

Messaggio originale di crunchyfrog:

No, I wasn't talking about retailers in the physical sense.

When you have a game put on Steam, the cut is going to be dependent on a number of factors, basically how many of the features you're opting to use. So, if you use Steamworks, servers, etc you can expect to pay more of a cut (I'm not sure if they even charge for Steamworks, I'm just using that as example). Obviously, it is normal for companies that are going to shift more are going to get more favourable deals too.

So, I would greatly expect EA to not pay 30% at all, but something a fair bit lower than that. However, there has been at least one indie developer who has stated his contract was around that figure.

But what you can compare it to are music contracts, or film contracts, or even management/service contracts. With music contracts, for example, a studio that doesn't get a flat rate for it's services (pro-rata), it will be a cut of the sales for the repsective tracks, often around 25-30%, depending on how much service they give (such as whether they provide all the engineers, producer, etc).

But going back to physical stores, yes, the mark-up on new games is terrible. Brick-and-mortar stores aren't this evil entity that some publishers would have you believe. If you're a small store and are ordering around 25-50 units at a time, you will have a net mark-up of around a quid or less (or regional equivalent). I've a few friends who own stores, and at least one of them gave up on new because they only made 25p per new game sold at one point. Of course, if you can shift more units, then your take is going to be more. But it's dreadful when you consider that a lot of goods operate on around 80-100% mark-up.

well that sucks for us that would rather use steam other than all the other digital drm services, i really hate not having everything in one place. i wish EA and steam could work something out, even if steam doesnt make much off of it, they should do it for their customers =)

Buy a NAS

[McCrank]

Battlefield 4 joins Mass Effect 3 as two games I'd really love to play if they ever make it to Steam...

[NL]

Messaggio originale di Dave Mo:

I own multiple Origin games, but will always buy on Steam if there is an option. Ask around. There are lots of PC games that feel the same way.

A lot of people do prefer Steam and it really confuses me sometimes. Like Far Cry 3. Why would you ever buy that on Steam and have to log in to Uplay also? Why not just get it on Uplay? Some games do not even use Steam to patch and many require 2 log ins with Steam when the stand alone game is fine. Path of Exile is a new good example. It patches itself and has it's own log in. For these games Steam is just a storefront and another unneeded layer of possible problems that I would like to do without.

Steam is great for many games but for others it is just another software layer running in the background being useless.

[Brohan]

If a game is exclusive to Origin it definitely deters me from buying it, but not completely. I'll just make sure I buy it from an overseas store for 1/4 of the listed price because Australians get raped on game prices for some reason.

[FaustusBoB]

Messaggio originale di Brohan:

If a game is exclusive to Origin it definitely deters me from buying it, but not completely. I'll just make sure I buy it from an overseas store for 1/4 of the listed price because Australians get raped on game prices for some reason.

I tried Origin and it anoys me. It's just not up to standard.

[crunchyfrog]

Messaggio originale di NL:

Messaggio originale di TastyToast:

steams down? what? ive never seen steam go down in at least 8 of the 9 years ive used it, and im on pretty much all day everyday. occasionally i lose conenction and steam reconnects after 30 seconds but i assume thats my internet and not steam. steams always had awesome prices and they were the only digital distributor for a long time. seems good for consumers to me.

I call BS. Steam is often down a couple times in the same day. You must not play much. I own an Internet Cafe and I am well aware when STeam is down, even if for a minute and it happens very regularly. 10-24-2013 the servers went down most recently.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=35032330#post35032330
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=784745

Also Greenmangaming can beat Steam prices most of the time. Keep your eyes closed.

No, saying "Steam's down" means it's down EVERYWHERE.

I've only seen a possible case of this once (emphasis on the possible). The fact that I and others haven't been down who you have, shows it cannot be Steam being down - it's just your servers.

Although I do get your point about offline.

[NL]

Messaggio originale di crunchyfrog:

No, saying "Steam's down" means it's down EVERYWHERE.

I've only seen a possible case of this once (emphasis on the possible). The fact that I and others haven't been down who you have, shows it cannot be Steam being down - it's just your servers.

Although I do get your point about offline.

You must be blind. I posted links showing how often it is down. If it is down for my region it is down for me. I don't really care if it is up in China or not. Lets talk about the USA, where it is often down several times a week and never goes a month without being down. I would post the proof yet again but obviously you want to remain in denial.

[TastyToast]

Messaggio originale di NL:

Messaggio originale di crunchyfrog:

No, saying "Steam's down" means it's down EVERYWHERE.

I've only seen a possible case of this once (emphasis on the possible). The fact that I and others haven't been down who you have, shows it cannot be Steam being down - it's just your servers.

Although I do get your point about offline.

You must be blind. I posted links showing how often it is down. If it is down for my region it is down for me. I don't really care if it is up in China or not. Lets talk about the USA, where it is often down several times a week and never goes a month without being down. I would post the proof yet again but obviously you want to remain in denial.

15 mins of scheduled downtime that no one even notices isnt worthy of noting. trying to activate game keys on Origin for 6 hours because the authentication servers have crashed is worth noting. or the origins friends list being down all day. get over yourself lol!

[NL]

Messaggio originale di TastyToast:

Messaggio originale di NL:

You must be blind. I posted links showing how often it is down. If it is down for my region it is down for me. I don't really care if it is up in China or not. Lets talk about the USA, where it is often down several times a week and never goes a month without being down. I would post the proof yet again but obviously you want to remain in denial.

15 mins of scheduled downtime that no one even notices isnt worthy of noting. trying to activate game keys on Origin for 6 hours because the authentication servers have crashed is worth noting. or the origins friends list being down all day. get over yourself lol!

Dude, I notice it as it cost me money. I guess what you are saying if you don't notice it then it does not exist. We are not talking about god which relies on faith. Valve even posts when they have planned downtime but it must not happen because you are sleeping.

Also often when buying games from Steam they run out of keys. I have had to wait 2 days for Valve to get more keys so I can play a game I bought, longer than the 6 hours Origin was having issues and this is a common recurring issue on Steam that has been going on for years. They sell games even when they do not have them in stock, they do not notify you, you just have to wait.

Steam community has been down for hours many times.

[Dog]

He's correct Steam is offline for several hours ever few days and sometimes even daily for a while.

Origin however is like, never down at all.

[NL]

Messaggio originale di el Dog.?:

He's correct Steam is offline for several hours ever few days and sometimes even daily for a while.

Origin however is like, never down at all.

Servers have issues, they have to be brought down for maintenance plus they sometimes break. No one has a perfect zero downtime system despite the claims of a few ignorant people.

[TastyToast]

i want what you guys are smoking.

[Dog]

Messaggio originale di NL:

No one has a perfect zero downtime system despite the claims of a few ignorant people.

Indeed no service is perfect or exempt, it's just extremely rare on Origin yet Steam it's daily.