Recently Valve and Electronic Arts have been having difficulties maintaining their relationship as publisher and distributor. EA has alluded to recent policy changes as the sole catalyst for the company to be pulling some of their games from Valves distribution service, Steam. The company has also announced that one of their biggest games of 2011, Battlefield 3, won’t be offered on Steam when it releases this fall.
Gabe Newell recently made his first public comments on the situation at Gamescom, in a interview with Develop. The Valve founder is hoping to mend the issue with Electronic Arts, and that his company has plans to show EA that it is a smart business decision to have their games on Valve’s platform.
“I don’t think Valve can pick just one thing and think the issue would go away if we fixed that,” he said. “We have to show EA it’s a smart decision to have EA games on Steam, and we’re going to try to show them that. It’s our duty to demonstrate [value] to them,” he said. “We don’t have a natural right to publish their games.”
Gabe didn’t get into too much detail about the precise reasons that EA and Valve are at odds. It was also recently announced that Battlefield 3 will require a connection to EA’s Origin Network for all PC play.
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