Last August, Electronic Arts confirmed that the PC version of its upcoming first person shooter Battlefield 3 would not be made available to purchase and download via Valve's Steam download service. Now, according to a new rumor from the BF3Blog.com site, EA and Valve are currently in talks that if successful could see Battlefield 3 show up on Steam's download store after all. The report, which cites an unnamed source inside Valve, claims that EA and Valve are in 'late-stage" negotiations for such a deal to happen.
EA has said previously that the reason that it could not sell Battlefield 3 on Steam was because of Valve's alleged rules concerning downloadable content for games. An EA statement said back in August, "Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content. No other download service has adopted these practices." Valve has not commented on its DLC rules for Steam-based games.
Earlier this year EA decided to pull two of its previously released PC games off of Steam, the first person shooter Crysis 2 and the fantasy RPG Dragon Age 2. Similar to EA's conflict with Battlefield 3, EA said Valve's alleged restrictions on how it handles patches and downloadable content were the reason for their actions. So far, no other game publisher has pulled games off of Steam for the reasons EA has described. If EA and Valve do reach some kind of agreement to sell Battlefield 3 on Steam, its unknown if Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 will be placed for sale on Steam again.
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