There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity.
Here’s the full list:
Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection
SimCity 3000 Unlimited
Populous
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
Populous: The Beginning
Dungeon Keeper Gold
Dungeon Keeper 2
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack
The Saboteur
Steam wins on market share. You’d think they would have started on steam if it was to make more money, or added them to Steam a long time ago. I’m sure their reasoning is sound, just curious what it was. Licensing deals, listing cost, whatever. Maybe they waited for all the true believers to get it on gog and now hope they’ll all buy again on steam for the achievements. By pride do you mean the Origin failure?
Steam takes a 30% cut of the profit last I read. EA tried to avoid this with Orgin to not pay that 30%. I assume Steam sales have to be pretty good VS Orgin numbers keep using Steam.
People hate using extra launchers, and EA has a reputation of being comic book villain evil. I assume any tiny bits of good will they get from customers is rare and this is low hanging fruit. People also love Steam to the point of not buying a game without it. The 30% cut probably seemed worth the trade for the wriggling masses running EA.