Want to buy Dragon Age 2 on Steam? Hold your horses. It's not there anymore.

There's been no official explanation for the removal, but Eurogamer note that it coincides with the release of the Dragon Age 2: Legacy expansion pack, which is available to buy now from an in-game store.

If you already own a Steam copy of Dragon Age 2, it'll still work fine, it's just been removed from the Steam shop. It's still available to buy from Direct2Drive, GamersGate and EA's own Origin store.

Crysis 2 was also removed from Steam recently. EA later said that it was Valve who made the decision to pull the game, and attributed the decision to a DLC agreement with Direct2Drive.

EA have also been busy promoting Origin. Star Wars: The Old Republic will only be available digitally through EA's store, and current indications suggest that Battlefield 3 will be an Origin exclusive as well. We'll have to wait and see what happens with other big EA releases like Mass Effect 3.

A new blog post from the head of Origin David DeMartini sheds some light on the reasons behind the mysterious disappearance of Crysis 2 from Steam last month. He reiterates that the decision wasn't made by EA and tells Gamasutra that "Crysis was taken down because the DLC was not available through Steam; it was available through ."

"Any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players. You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience," wrote DeMartini on the Origin blog.

"If we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve. At present, there is only one download service that will not allow this relationship. This is not our choice, and unfortunately it is their customer base that is most impacted by this decision. We are working diligently to find a mutually agreeable solution."



In the same post, DeMartini clarified EA's position on distributing to other download services and retail outlets. "We want our products available to as many players as possible, which means we make them available in all the places that gamers go to download games and services. To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam."

Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of those "extremely special circumstances." EA have already announced that Bioware's upcoming MMO will only be available digitally through Origin, though it won't require the Origin client to run. President of EA games Frank Gibeau told GamesIndustry.biz that “in the case of Star Wars we’re trying to build an audience for Origin. And it’s also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing.”

Gibeau also echoed DeMartini's comments on the likelihood of future Origin exclusives, saying "long-term you’ll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for our products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible,” but also said “if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we’re going to do that because we’re growing a platform.”

Alongside the release of a series of advanced DirectX 11 graphical features yesterday, EA also announced that "PC gamers can design their own maps and create their own epic battleground with the Map Editor Pack which can be downloaded at http://mycrysis.com for no cost starting Wednesday."

Crytek have also put out a new video showing some of the new DirectX 11 features in action, just in case you didn't know what Custom Shape Based Bokeh DOF looks like (it's sort of blurry). For the full list of new graphical features added by the update, check out the 1.9 patch notes.

Yesterday we gave an overview of some of the DirectX 11 features we can expect to see in Crysis 2 in the next update. The patch will add advanced "parallax occlusion mapping," and improvements for shadows, water, particles, depth of field and motion blur.

There will also be additional DirectX 11 compatible tessellation and high-res texture packs, which can be downloaded separately to improve world geometry and surface detail throughout the game. The Crysis forums bring word that we can expect all of these updates to hit next week, and a report on Shacknews suggests Monday June 27.

To get an idea of what the new features will look like, check out these side-by-side comparison shots, found by forum member Vivec. You'll find the full 1.9 patch notes below.


Added Contact Shadows
Added DX11 benchmark level
Added DX11 support for Crysis 2 (the following features only work when downloading the optional DX11 package here):
Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
High Quality HDR Motion Blur
Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra
Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field
Parallax Occlusion Mapping
Particles Motion Blur, Shadows and Art Updates
Water Rendering improvements and using Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
Added Realtime Local Reflections
Added support for Higher Res Textures Package
Added various new console variables to whitelist
Fixed bullet penetration, which had been broken by a bug introduced with the DLC 2 patch
Fixed issue in MP where player stats weren't always saved at the end of a game
Fixed issue in MP where player stats would sometimes randomly reset
Fixed issue with MP time played statistic, which would sometimes be too low on leaderboards and in stats
Fixed issue with JAW rocket not firing through window's containing broken glass
Fixed rare issue where a user could not access MP with a valid CD key if they had previously used an invalid CD key
Improved advanced graphics options menu
Improved anti-cheat measurements: fixed exploit which could prevent vote kicking working against a user
Improved multi-GPU support
Improved Tone Mapping
Re-added possibility to enable r_StereoSupportAMD via config file (unsupported)

 

A post on MyCrisis, hastily taken down shortly afterwards, reveals some details about the update, along with a screenshot. Thankfully NeoGaf user BeeDog managed to grab it before the takedown.

UPDATE: Vivec from the forums managed to grab the side by side comparisons before the site went down, take a look inside.

The text of the page reads as follows:

DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade
The DX11 Ultra Upgrade is a free visual improvement add-on introducing DirectX 11 support as well as a wealth of graphical improvements and performance optimisation for both DX11 and DX9 APIs.

When using the new 'Ultra' spec, DX9 platforms will benefit from realtime local reflections and contact shadows. The owners of DX11 platforms , in addition, will be able to enjoy hardware tessellation (requires the installation of the "Tessellation Package"), parallax occlusion mapping and several improvements for shadows, water, particles, depth of field and motion blur.

DX11 Tessellation Pack (optional download)
This free pack containing pre-tessellated geometries is necessary in order to be able to enjoy hardware tessellation on DirectX 11 graphics cards. A compatible DX 11 graphics card is required.

High Res Textures (optional download)
This high resolution textures package provides higher textures resolution for a wide variety of assets. It supports both DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 versions of Crysis 2. A 64 bit operating system and graphics card with at least 1GB of memory are required.

Crysis 2 is already an impressive looking game, so the promise of "parallax occlusion mapping" is just icing on the cake.



Update - Side by side comparisons grabbed by Vivec

Yesterday we mentioned that Crysis 2 had been removed from the Steam store, and wondered if it marked the start of a concerted attempt by EA to drive people towards its new digital download service, Origin. Now EA have released a statement to say that the game was removed because of a change in the Steam terms of service, and its disappearance had nothing to do with them.

EA told Giantbomb "It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service. This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.

"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam.

"Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more."

The nature of the change in terms that prompted Crytek to remove Crysis 2 from Steam is unclear, as is the identity of the other download service. We've contacted EA and Valve for comment. People who have bought Crysis 2 over Steam can still boot up Crysis 2 and play as normal.

Initially, news of Crysis 2's removal suggested that EA might be moving towards releasing their future games exclusively through Origin. EA have already announced that The digital edition of The Old Republic will only be available to buy through Origin, and the service is currently listing Alice: Madness Returns as an origin exclusive until tomorrow. President of EA Games Frank Gibeau has been dropping hints about EA's future direction, who says "if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we’re going to do that because we’re growing a platform.”

Crysis 2 has vanished from the Steam store, apparently pulled by EA so that they can sell the game exclusively through their new digital store, Origin.

Kotaku note that the game's disappearance on Steam coincides with a note on the EA site declaring that Crysis 2 is available "only through Origin." In reality it's still possible to buy the game through a number of other sites, including Direct2Drive, Amazon and Impulse. It's unclear whether EA will have Crysis 2 removed from those sites, too, or whether they're intentionally targeting Steam as their main competitor.

EA have already said that Star Wars: The Old Republic will only be available digitally through Origin, but the latest move raises the question of whether future EA games like Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 will only be available through EA's download service.

Thanks to Paine on our forums for the heads up.

You have answers, we have questions! Wait. Strike that. Reverse it. This week's podcast has the brave brigade of Josh, Chris, Dan, Evan, and Lucas spelunking into the caves of reader/listener questions and answering some of the more pressing queries. We also get to hear Dan's favorite Frozen Synapse strategies, listen to Chris' Crysis 2 crisis, and get a special cameo by an individual shrouded in secrecy. One hint: his name rhymes with Dandy Hauman.

PC Gamer US Podcast 275: Queue and Eh

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Maximum music. That's what the ten winners of the Crysis 2 soundtrack giveaway will be receiving shortly. If you missed out on the initial post, might we recommend that you "Like" us on Facebook? You never know when we'll give something away on a whim, especially if it involves forcing the intern to draw a laughably-bad music sheet for a sight gag. Read on to see if you won, and what Nano the winners want to see in the Crysis universe.

Congrats to the following 10 winners! The winners will be contacted shortly—soon they'll be jamming to some soundtrack goodness while they wistfully dream of their Nano inventions becoming a reality. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Josh Collison: Nanopig, maximum bacon.
Samuel Hyde: Nanofacepalm. Invisible, extra strong, and extra fast. Perfect for parties with idiots.
Sean Lincoln: Nano banana. Shortened to Nanonana
Dan Lee: Nanoburger. That cloak will prevent it from being stolen by my asshole roommate.
JJ Hernandez: Nano-Toothpaste, Maximum Freshness.
Corbin S.B.: Nano-PEZ dispenser, because nothing says wasting the military defense budget than a device that gives out candy and can also cloak.
Austin K. Ballard: Nano-segway. Raaammming speeeeeed!
Alexander Florian Steciuch: Nano pogo stick. There I said it.
Harris Goode: Nano tube socks.
Nicholas Reid: Nano glowsticks for maximum brightness

EA announce that the first Crysis 2 map pack is out now. For the price of 800MS points ($9.99 in real money) bumslide your way across four new maps, including Park Avenue, Transit, Shipyard and Compound. Retaliation doesn't seem to be available to buy on the Games Windows Marketplace, Steam or the EA store just yet. Hopefully it'll turn up soon. You'll find four new screenshots and the Retaliation trailer below.