When EA released its gaming service Origin in 2011, it stopped putting games on Steam. It was a bold move, considering that Valve's marketplace was the go-to place for PC game downloads at the time. However, the promise of not paying Valve 30 percent of game sales seemed to good to pass up, so EA took its games and went home.
From what anyone could tell, EA profited heavily from this switch-over. But now, eight years later, it looks like EA may be bringing some of its games back to Steam.
The first hints of the possible return came an unknown app called "Ruymen Test Game 2," which seems to be testing some kind of integration between Steam and Origin.
If this "Ruymen Test Game" is at all related to Valve employee Jason Ruyman, there's a chance that he's involved in getting the Origin launcher working with Steam, meaning that any new EA games would still open in Origin – much in the same way that Ubisoft games on steam open in Uplay.
This on its own doesn't mean much, but there have been a few other bits of information that hint at something larger behind the scenes.
One notable tidbit is that, during the time this mysterious test game was pointed towards an Origin launcher, SteamDB shows that a single person played the EA game The Saboteur on Steam. Since The Saboteur has never actually been released on Steam, it seems that somebody behind the scenes has been testing it.
There are a few more details that point to EA's possible return to the Steam marketplace. Dragon Age 2, a game that hasn't been available to purchase on Steam for years, was updated two days ago. In addition, the 2016 game Mirror's Edge Catalyst was spotted in a screenshot of an upcoming UI update for Steam.
While none of this is iron-clad proof of anything, it certainly points to the possibility that EA will no longer keep its games Origin-exclusive.
Source: TheNerdMag