Crysis 2 Pulled from Steam, Now Origin Exclusive (Updated)

EA has pulled Crysis 2 from Steam and now offers the PC game exclusively on its just-(re)launched Origin online store.

Thanks to the keen eyes of numerous Steam users who noticed that Crytek's new FPS is no longer available,  Electronic Arts has reportedly pulled the PC version of Crysis 2 from Valve's digital distribution platform. It now appears on EA's own revamped distribution platform called Origin as an "exclusive title."

Currently Crysis 2 is still up for sale on GamersGate and Direct2Drive, leading to speculation that EA may be shunning Steam specifically. Still, Alice: Madness Returns, which was launched on Tuesday, has yet to appear on Steam, and the publisher already stated last week that BioWare's upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic would be an Origin exclusive when it launches later this year. A special edition of Battlefield 3 is also slated as an Origin exclusive.

"In the case of Star Wars we're trying to build an audience for Origin," said EA Games president Frank Gibeau. "And it's also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing. For a lot of reasons it made sense for an MMO, which is a highly complex deployment."

"I think long-term you'll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for out products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible," he added. "But at the same time if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we're going to do that because we're growing a platform."

The company confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to offer more digital titles exclusively on Origin as well as other unique Origin-specific content. Right now EA still has its own special micro-store set up on Steam's platform, offering recently-published titles like Bulletstorm, The Sims 3 Generations, Dragon Age II and many more.

UPDATE: EA said that Crysis 2 was pulled by Steam because of a change in its terms. "It's unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service," an EA representative clarified. "This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA. Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service - many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, 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. Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more." -Thanks Tim!