Crysis 2 disappeared silently from Steam, sparking speculations that Electronic Arts has decided to pull it off and make it exclusive to its newly launched digital distribution service, Origin.
EA's latest title, Alice: Madness Returns, is also not available on steam although all other older titles are still there. This seems to confirm that EA plans to keep the downloadable versions of all new titles exclusive to its own Origin service, but both Alice and Crysis 2 are still available at other e-retailers such as Impulse and Direct2Drive.
EA issued a statement claiming that Crysis 2's removal from Steam "was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA."
"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service -- many of which are not imposed by other online game services," EA explained. "Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam."
In an unrelated interview, EA Games President Frank Gibeau explained that EA doesn't plan to limit its digital games sales to Origin only. "I think long-term you'll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for our products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible," he said. "But at the same time if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we're going to do that because we're growing a platform."
