Valve forbidding contact with players about new patches, content?

[Pave Low]

An explanation from EA as to why their titles, including Crysis 2 suddenly disappeared from STEAM store

http://www.ea.com/news/demar-at-ea-we-believe-in-choice

Some confusion came up a few weeks ago, when we started seeing stories and forum posts that suggested that EA was in conflict with one of our download partners, and that we had removed our games from that service. This is absolutely not true

any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players.

You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience.

This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers.

Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve.

At present, there is only one download service that will not allow this relationship. This is not our choice, and unfortunately it is their customer base that is most impacted by this decision. We are working diligently to find a mutually agreeable solution.

[Rocky]

Wow, they must feel strongly about it, to cut off a massive income stream like Steam.

[Dannik]

An explanation from EA as to why their titles, including Crysis 2 suddenly disappeared from STEAM store

Of course, EA pulling Crysis 2 from Steam because they don't wan't 3rd party sales of DLC wouldn't be the story, because it's easy to find EA titles for sale on Steam.

EA and others are already trying very hard to combat the used games market, because they can't traditionally make money from it. So, they are turning to a new method where you get the basic game in the box at retail/online purchase, and all the content beyond that is paid for separately. The more control, the more money.