Gabe Newell Believes EA Still Has A Lot To Learn With Origin

Ever since Origin was released, Electronic Arts has moved to have all of their games exclusive to the digital platform that rivals Valve’s Steam.

However Gabe Newell, the head honcho over at Valve, believes that EA still has its work cut out with Origin if it is to ever catch up to Steam. Speaking in an interview, he said that although EA has “a bunch of smart people” working on Origin who may eventually “build stuff in the future” that’s actually useful to both consumers and developers, “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.”

He added: “I don’t think they’re doing anything super-well yet.”

Fair enough but remember, GabeN, it took Steam a good while before it took off as a digital distribution platform. Origin, though unnecessary, is still in its early years.

“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,” he continued.

“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.”

Newell once again stated his interest in having EA’s now Origin-exclusive titles back on Steam so that both EA and Steam customers could be happy.

“We think their customers would be happy if their games were on Steam, we tell them that on a regular basis,” he said. “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] whatver they’re trying to do to create value for their customers is not a zero sum game.”

Enough said?

I have to admit that although I don’t appreciate the existence of Origin since it means yet more complication when I want to play games on my PC, I do understand the willingness to differentiate and therefore offer Origin-exclusive titles. After all, how else will they get gamers to move over?

The problem comes with attempting to create a world with multiple digital platforms. Origin and Steam aside, how many more platforms might rise up in the coming years? Why is this something that needs to happen?

I’d much prefer a single, all-encompassing platform, as Steam once was. What about you?