EA’s Origin platform gets possessive

Crysis 2 and Alice: Madness Returns have disappeared from Steam and were briefly being touted as ‘Origin only’ releases.
EA’s Origin download platform was announced and launched earlier this month, along with the unsurprising news that flagship EA game Star Wars: The Old Republic would be only be digitally available from their service.
The Crysis 2 case is a little different, as until yesterday it was very much available on Steam (incidentally, if you did previously purchase it on that service you can still play the game). Oddly, though, despite being flagged with an ‘Origin only’ label on EA’s site (which has since gone missing), Crysis 2 was still available from other digital sites like Direct2Drive. The same applied to Alice: Madness Returns.
So it’s difficult to read this as anything other than an attempt by EA to wrest back some of that digital download revenue from Steam. Previously, EA would of course have received a cut for every Crysis 2 sale, but presumably they’d prefer every slice of that profit pie for themselves.
EA have muddied the waters a bit, however, stating that the Crysis 2 disappearance was “not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.” Instead, they explain the situation as follows: “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.”
The big question now is what will EA do with Battlefield 3? It’s possible (though entirely unconfirmed) that this title could be an Origin-specific release (at least in the digital realm) too.
Sources: Rockpapershotgun, VG24/7