Speaking to GameIndustry.biz, Jens Uwe Intat, the head of Electronic Arts Europe, said that his company continues to have a good working relationship with Valve Software, despite launching its own rival digital distribution services earlier this year. He is referring to the companies' continuing their retail relationship, and not necessarily the rivalry between its Origin digital distribution service and Valve's Steam.
"Valve is run by very clever people, and I would say that's also true for Electronic Arts, we're all good business people," Intat told GamesIndustry.biz. "So, Valve, when they're looking for distribution for their products, looking at which publisher could actually do that, then I think we're the best publisher on the planet, both in Europe and North America."
"We have a long history of distributing Valve products and I think for every title they will look for who will do the best job," he continued. "There's no strain on that relationship because we're competing in one space. We're basically competing and working with a lot of people. Every first party manufacturer is a partner of ours when we're distributing their product, and a competitor of ours with their own software. I think, as an industry, we're pretty good at competing and co-operating at the same time."
EA COO Peter Moore said in a separate interview that he was not sure that EA is taking Steam on with Origin.
"I'm not sure we're taking them on," Moore said. "We're a great compliment to that business. We want to be able to support our customer directly. If there are opportunities to do that, then we'll do that. If Valve, through Steam are willing to allow us to do that, then there are no issues whatsoever. In the instances where you're not seeing a game on Steam, it's primarily because we can't deal directly with our consumer to resolve issues and do things we want to be able to do."
One of EA's major contentions has been that Valve will not let EA deal with customers directly when it comes to certain things such as patching software on steam, and that is why it was necessary to create a service like Origin.
Source: GI.biz
Comments
Re: EA: We Still Have a Good Relationship with Valve
As Long as Crysis 2 gets back on Steam. I do not care about BF3 being Origins only.
Re: EA: We Still Have a Good Relationship with Valve
Sure, why not. Origin is inferior in almost every way to Steam. There is no reason for either party to be upset as there is no threat to either business.
Sure I'm disgusted with EA for making me use this piece of crap for BF3 and SW:TOR but I won't fault the developers of the games for it. They're stuck like we are with an arrogant publisher.
Re: EA: We Still Have a Good Relationship with Valve
it might be true that EA still has a good relationship with Valve.
However, they do not have a good relationship with their customers anymore.
Re: EA: We Still Have a Good Relationship with Valve
Oh, yeah?. Very nice, EA, very nice.
How about then if you fix the messy Mirror's Edge release you have in Steam?. Compatibility with the DLC, which should be free BTW, achievements and bugfixes would go a long way. Your customers are the ones getting the short end there, and many of us are thinking very seriously of stopping being your customers.