Games Thirst – Amazing Life
Valve boss Gabe Newell has said although EA’s new online service Origin can be something good in the future, it still has a long way to go as it’s not doing anything “super-well yet”.
The venerable developer said this while speaking with the Seven Day Cooldown podcast, where he also said that there are a group of smart people working on the service who could turn into into something unique.
“They have a lot of work to do to get to where they need to be and where I, as a customer would want them to be. I don’t think they’re doing anything super-well yet,” he said.
“They have a bunch of smart people working on it but I think they’re still playing catch up to a lot of people who have been working in the space for a while. I think they’re recognising what the challenges are with building and scaling out this kind of system.
That’s not to say they won’t build stuff in the future that is useful to software developers or to gamers but they haven’t done that yet.”
As for EA pulling all its titles off Steam, Gabe reckons it was a bad move, adding that he’s still talking to EA about the situation. Newell believes EA’s games on Origin and Steam would make both firms customers happy.
“We think their customers would be happy if their games were on Steam, we tell them that on a regular basis. I think EA wants to take their shot at building their own alternative to Steam, and if they’re successful at that and their customers like that then that’s great.
[But] whatever they’re trying to do to create value for their customers is not a zero sum game.”Via VG247.
