It's even blunter than that Valve wanted the right to have "lowest sale price" on the DLC and be allowed to set the DLC prices (theres been a number of NDA leaks by former staffers at both EA and Valve) So in other words EA wouldn't have been allowed to set their own DLC prices and couldn't offer the DLC cheaper themselves...

There's a rumour they also tried to bully EA into a 50-50 split on DLC sales price...
There was a post on steam for people to sign if they pirated BF3 'cause it wasn't on steam it was on page 40 after 20 minutes and deleted shortly before it reached page 100...

Any links to this stuff?

I never heard of that either =/
I'm not saying it's not possible but whoever on Valve that thought they could bully EA into anything should have been fired when EA stopped selling games on Steam. It just doesn't make any sense Valve would try to do something so stupid.

Idgaf.

It's mostly to be found in the comment sections of sites and/or journo's posting some inside information about it in their articles...

The undertone is Valve tried to play the "we're the biggest digital distributor out there you don't have anything that can rival us" so EA released Origin and said they'd sell DLC through their own store at their own price followed by Valve pulling games as they gained DLC...

::edit:: You'll also notice the only games they don't stock on steam are the ones that use origin DRM

So no actual information then, just random comments from supposed ex-valve/origin employees.

I have no doubt that the new DLC policy didn't sit well with EA, as they have been building themselves around the DLC model more and more with each game. What I do doubt is that that policy is the reason for 'Origin', especially with how it came out at around exactly the same time. Stuff like that isn't usually done on the fly.

They also had a whole plan of using the popularity of BF3 and Star Wars TOR to promote Origin as a store.

I think the problems between EA and Valve are just as much over DLC as they are over Origin though. I highly doubt Valve is interested in helping their competitor's store set up by selling games that have to be installed through that store. (Ironic as it may seem coming from Valve but it also makes perfect sense that they're not going to be interested in helping another retailer do the same.)

Look at Battlefield 3 for instance. It has no ingame store, and it's DLC are sold separately in digital stores. Yet it's not on Steam either. This isn't an issue of DLC anymore. It's that Origin is pushing through their own digital retailing platform, and Steam doesn't want to aid them in doing so (most likely). The fact that they said in the Origin FAQ that most new games from EA will require Origin to be installed isn't helping either no doubt. They've basically decided to go with their own service. At this point all we can hope is that either one dies out or they push each other into delivering a better service, or I guess ideally, allow each other to sell the others games and DLC regardless of their own DRM schemes.

theres a website that I'm blanking on through the screen door or something it's a whistleblower site for ex employee's theres been posts on there

Its funny. Cause i saw the PC version sitting on a certain site for days on end (people installing and waiting for the crack)- uncracked as of yet way before the console version got leaked out lol.Wasnt game to say anything earlier tho hahaha.

Having said that looks like a crack has been released....

most of the PC torrents were peoples origin preload folder ME3 console version leaked over 2 weeks ago

Interesting. Looks like official 'scene' released copy out today...

yeah went up a few hours after the game unlocked I'm guessing the files were actually decently encrypted

Yes, I've noticed RELOADED has already released the full game (20 minutes ago) on (according to Wikipedia) the same day it was released in North America already cracked. That is insanely fast.

So then, what the hell is the point of DRM?
Bah. I'm preaching to the choir here, we all know how useless it is.

Keep the DRM suppliers employed? :P. Thats kinda silly for someone to add that to Wiki....

It worked fairly well there was no early leak and people had to wait till the Asian release date to create the crack basically it stopped an early leak which usually lowers first day sales.

Given that Valve effectively kicked EA off Steam, don't you think your loyalty is misplaced?