EA's Moore: "There's no feud" with Valve
COO addresses Origin's rivalry with Steam, says it's a terms and conditions issue
COO Peter Moore has denied the existence of any bad feeling between EA and Steam operator Valve.
"There's no feud," Moore told Eurogamer.
"Remember, we're the guys who published Left 4 Dead and Portal 2. It's Valve. Gabe's a great friend of EA's. We're a great friend of his, we like to think.
He also addressed the difficulties faced since EA launched its rival to Steam, Origin. EA games soon disappeared from the Valve platform, with EA citing restrictions on customer interaction.
"They have different terms and conditions that they put on their games that don't meet what we would like to do with our gamers. They insist on being a layer between the game developer and publisher and the consumer. They take a piece of the revenue stream. And they don't allow us to go directly to the consumer to do patches and updates. So we just agree to disagree. It's not a feud. They have their terms and conditions. We do. They don't meet."
In April Valve boss Gabe Newell said they spoke to EA regularly about featuring their games on Steam again.
"We'd love to have their games on Steam. We think their customers would be happy if their games were on Steam. We tell them that on a regular basis," he said.
But Moore was clear that the terms and conditions were non-negotiable.
"We're very clear on what we want to do to be able to put a game on a platform and interact with the gamer," he said. "The current terms and conditions of Steam don't allow that. If they change to meet the contract with the gamer we set out to do, then of course things might change. But until then, nothing's going to change."
And while EA isn't planning to publish any Valve games in the immediate future, the digital distribution rivalry won't stop that happening again.
"We've always enjoyed that publishing relationship. And it is my team that does it," said Moore.
"But there are no conversations going on right now. I don't know what their plans are right now. So, of course, we've had a great relationship from the publishing end, and I'd like to think they've enjoyed us publishing their content. I certainly think we've done a good job."