'From Dust' DRM to be removed in the next 2 weeks

[Rii]

Parasitic would imply there's no benefit to it, however that's not an accurate description at lets be honest here. You personally might not care for Steam, but a considerable number of PC gamers do, and it has nothing to do with 'love' and everything to do with it being a great service that they use daily.

No end benefit for EA. Of course there are benefits in terms of Steam having a large customer base (established, as referred to previously, at least in part by means that could reasonably be described as 'nefarious') and thereby serving as a solid advertising/sales portal, in addition to the distribution, etc. services that Steam offers. Both of these things make Steam particularly attractive for smaller developers. But EA has the expertise and resources to assume the latter burdens themselves, and thinks that it has the market clout to compensate for the former factors such that the end sum turns up in Origin's favour. Assuming they're right - and I suspect that they are - why shouldn't they go for it?

[Kadayi]

No end benefit for EA. Of course there are benefits in terms of Steam having a large customer base (established, as referred to previously, at least in part by means that could reasonably be described as 'nefarious') and thereby serving as a solid advertising/sales portal, in addition to the distribution, etc. services that Steam offers. Both of these things make Steam particularly attractive for smaller developers. But EA has the expertise and resources to assume the latter burdens themselves, and thinks that it has the market clout to compensate for the former factors such that the end sum turns up in Origin's favour. Assuming they're right - and I suspect that they are - why shouldn't they go for it?

I think the benefits are there in that by going through Steam they don't have to compete in terms of delivery a similar standard of experience. Sure no one denies that EA have good marketing (though their game trailers leave a lot to be desired at times), however to hark back to something Nalano said, there's no point having 2 cables when one is sufficient for the task in hand. A few years back there were calls for Steam to be spun off from Valve as a separate entity and in many ways I wouldn't be against if they could maintain standards, still have room for indies and all the big publishers were on board and fully committed.