Dragon Age II Torn From Steam, And The Reason Behind It
Dragon Age II mysteriously vanished from Steam this week, and it happened just before the launch of the game’s latest piece of DLC. This comes as yet another blow in the battle between EA and Valve’s Steam service. A lot of people assumed that the game was taken down due to the removed due to the recent relaunch of Origin, EA’s own digital distribution service. This, however, is untrue. The reason the game was pulled was due to the DLC itself, as it doesn’t agree with Steam’s Terms of Service.
“Legacy,” as the DLC is titled, is delivered through an in-game store instead of Steam’s own client. As EA’s Senior VP of Global Online David DeMartini stated, “Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content.” He steadily hopes “to work out an agreement to keep our games on Steam.”
It’s still in the wind as to why EA wanted to offer up the DLC through an in-game transaction rather than Steam, but nevertheless the digital distributor isn’t happy. We’re waiting on word from Steam on the issue, so in the meantime players can find the game on other distribution services such as Direct2Drive and Gamestop.
