EA Returns to Steam With New Games
Electronic Arts is once again publishing new games on Valve's Steam platform, the publisher announced today.
Electronic Arts and Valve have partnered to put EA games into the hands of the players on Steam. Starting next spring, the EA Access subscription service will be making its way to Steam.
The partnership kicks off with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order launching on November 15—and available for pre-order today. In the coming months, players on Steam will also be able to play other major titles like The Sims 4 and Unravel Two. Multiplayer games—like Apex Legends, FIFA 20, and Battlefield V—will become available next year, and players on both Origin and Steam will have the ability to play together.
A library of titles awaits you in The Vault, but beyond the games themselves, EA Access offers rewards. You can get the red-carpet treatment with exclusive catalog-wide discounts, and in-game member benefits for some of our biggest franchises.
EA Access first launched in 2014 on the Xbox One (a PC offering, EA Origin Access, followed in 2016) and, five years after initially being denied by Sony, the service came to PlayStation 4 in July. EA Access subscriptions on console and PC cost $4.99 per month and provide access to over 200 titles.
EA's return to Steam marks a change for the company's PC gaming plans, which for years have focused on Origin as its primary sales channel.
In 2011, when EA announced that Battlefield 3 would not be available on Steam, EA cited Valve's "restrictive terms of service" that made it more difficult to distribute patches and DLC through the game client itself. The fact that EA didn't have to pay Valve a 30% revenue cut for sales through Origin may have also played into the continuing decision to avoid Valve's storefront.
But Origin faced pushback from a contingent of Steam-invested gamers almost immediately.
Later EA tried to set Origin apart by introducing the Origin Access subscription program, adding features like game refunds and offering regular free game downloads through its "On the House" program.
Currently, Valve faces a large-scale competition from the Epic Games Store. Epic is opening access to a variety of third-party publishers and using free game giveaways to attract attention, while also being criticized for a relative lack of features by many Steam fans.