EA have confirmed that Battlefield 3 won't be coming to Steam. Eurogamer report on an official statement made on the EA Forums in which developer "seeson" blames Steam's "restrictive" terms of service for Battlefield 3's no-show, saying that they interfere with EA's ability to deliver patches and DLC. "No other download service has adopted these practices," he adds.
When Crysis 2 was taken down from Steam earlier this year EA cited similar reasons, but added that the specific problem was down to a DLC agreement between Crytek and Direct2Drive. More recently, Dragon Age 2 also vanished from the Steam store. EA again put the disappearance down to Steam's " restrictive terms of service ."
The particular terms of service EA are conflicting with aren't known, but there's no sign that EA and Steam will resolve their differences any time soon. "We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3," say EA.
Battlefield 3 is still available to pre-order on other major digital retailers, including Direct2Drive, Gamersgate and EA's Origin. You'll find the full list on the Battlefield 3 site .
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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.
