Amazon sells digital copies of games without any kind of DRM? Are you absolutely sure about this? Sure there's no other limitations, such as being unable to sell to international customers? (amazon themselves have refused a few purchases from me just because of my address). However, if it's a completely DRM free system, then yes we should move to that. However, I need to look more into it.

You have any articles relating to this action from Steam/EA? I'd like to read about it.

You can buy digital Origin-enabled games on Amazon? That's news to me. Besides if you could, you still need an Origin account anyway to use it.

Steam is better than origin but the two are fundamentally the same thing. There is no reason to rage about one while protecting the other. Am sick of the undying love of valve and everyhting they touch and the exact opposite with EA.

For the record when steam launched it was absolute rage inducing trash that made me angry to even own a PC, but it got much better over time as I am sure will Origin.

I have the same feeling about the 1st part. Sure I have parts I hate about EA, but over Origin is an ok service for me. Doesn't do anything steam doesn't do, and has a SH!T load of features needed, but it has has the basic functionalitly.

Yeh, basically they're about once ever 2-3weeks, and usually follow one series such as a battlefield, Fifa, and a recent deadspace one. Some times there will be a all round sale with alot of titles, from strategy, to sports, to shooters, which happens about once every 3-4 months. Problem is these sales never seem to have discounts over 50%, worse seems to be the lack of titles during these sales, espcially when comparing to steam's summer sales.

You can buy some games without DRM on Amazon, those where the publisher doesn't add any themselves.  I bought The Witcher 2 without DRM from Amazon, for example.  Several other digital distribution services, like GoG, are the same.  Steam, on the other, basically IS DRM for all games sold from there.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-15-ea-valve-took-crysis-2-off-steam-article    EA wants to sell DLC from inside the game, Steam won't allow it.  Look on Amazon, games like Crysis 3 are sold via download.

Yes, you'd still need Origin, but how is that different from where you have to have Steam to play Portal 2?

That's true. In fact, I didn't touch Steam until I was forced to (the last NEW game I ever bought from EB forced Steam registration, and it said that the game had already been registered so I couldnt play it. So much for EB's return policy). I still don't even use Steam too much nowadays, I'm still kind of annoyed at having to have it on my PC. Now I have to add Origin too? With it's original troubles that Steam had? Bargain!

Waitwait....the article only mentions valve taking Crysis 2 off. You said they took all EA's stuff off. Where's the rest of it?

Personally, I'm getting fed up with having to install apps from every different provider to play their games. As I mentioned in another post, I was also pissed off with Steam when it first came. Why can't there be some kind of common interface app embedded into Windows? (Windows 8 market might be on the right track, but seriouskly, Microsoft should have done this back in the days when Steam was just getting started).

The answer to your question is, I don't intend to buy Portal 2. I haven't bought one Valve game, but when I run into the same problems, I'll let you know...

Steam Got where it did because of half life 2, I didn't want that at all with HL2, then it was successful because of bargains.

I like Origin, it's actually good for steam to have competition, and they have sales. It's a worse than steam for sure. They let you use old game keys and activate them too. I lost my Crysis 2 CD and it let me activate it, I activated my Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 1, Dead Space 2, CD as well.

They both have some of the same annoying problems... They both don't let you uninstall useless DLC. 

I've never really had anything crash because of origin. If you look at footprint, I'm not sure if this is always the case. My origin Footprint is 72,000kb vs steams 108,000kb

I'd rather have box copies with no DRM, unfortunately I know thats not going to happen.

it's basically the 1984 of gaming, it's mandatory that you should have Origin on at all time whenever you play their games. You will also have to consent whenever it wants to collect data from your computer, despite disclaiming that they are not spying on your computer, not only those they are also quick to whip out the ban hammer, no wonder people would prefer to play their games on consoles. The userbase which they amount is just pretence, they don't even have 20% percent of the purchasing power of steam, nor the matching number of concurrent users.

Just google it, there have been tons of articles about it.

"The mysterious disappearance of Dragon Age 2 from Steam this week, just before the launch of the game's latest DLC, is yet another thorn in the side of EA's relationship with Valve's Steam digital distribution game service. As many had assumed, the game wasn't removed due to the recent (re)launch of EA's own digital distribution service, Origin, but in fact because DA2's latest DLC doesn't play nice with the Steam Terms of Service.

 As the DLC -- named "Legacy" -- is delivered via an in-game store, rather than via Steam's own client, the game was removed. "Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content," EA senior VP of global online David DeMartini noted in a statement. He also pointed out that the game is currently available on a variety of other "major download services," from GameStop to Direct2Drive, and that he hopes "to work out an agreement to keep our games on Steam." It's not clear why EA refused to deliver the DLC via Steam's client, but it appears the company won't be changing its stance just yet."   http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/28/dragon-age-2-abducted-from-steam-ea-points-finger-at-restricti/

It's pretty cut and dried.  EA's older games are still on Steam.  Dragon Age: Origins and Crysis 1, for example.  The new games let you buy DLC from inside the game, however, directly from EA, and Valve doesn't like that at all, so they took off the games that use that method.  They want you to buy the DLC from Steam.