EA’s Origin service to continue deviating from Steam’s approach

EA won't be mimicking Valve's excessive sales approach with Origin.

Origin head David DeMartini told Gamesindustry International that the practice of regularly discounting games "cheapens" IP. He said their perspective is different — more like Nordstrom than Target.

"When I say that, I mean good value, we're trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don't look for 75 per cent off going-out-of-business sales," DeMartini said.

"We don't believe in the drop-it-down, spring-it-up, 75 per cent off approach, but we've got something else that we do believe in that we'll be rolling out," he added.

Origin is now the second most popular direct-to-consumers service with over 11 million users. It launched last year. Steam boasts over 40 million users.

Considering the numbers, Valve boss Gabe Newell isn't threatened.

"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," he said. "I think they're recognizing what the challenges are with building and scaling out this kind of system."

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[Eurogamer]