Last month, controversy erupted over the culling of Crysis 2 on Steam. Publisher EA released a vague statement on the matter, calling it a licensing conflict between Valve and Crytek. Turns out the catalyst was DLC.

EA Origin frontman David DeMartini has told industry site Gamasutra that the crux of the issue was a exclusivity agreement Crytek made with Direct2Drive. Valve’s policy is to only sell DLC that is accessible directly through Steam.

This arrangement interfered with Valve’s policy, and so they took the liberty of pulling Crysis 2 from Steam entirely.

“Crysis was taken down because the DLC was not available through Steam; it was available through [Direct2Drive],” said DeMartini.

He added, “That would, I guess, be a situation where two partners didn’t see eye to eye, and by their choice, they were going to take that product down because they were insisting that the DLC be available through Steam.”

It’s a shame it had to come down to this. Still, Valve’s decision makes sense, it wanted to avoid fragmentation. Having DLC on Steam that isn’t directly tied to your Steam account seems rather convoluted.

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