EA is adding eleven new publishers to Origin, including big names like CD Projekt and Trion Worlds, in an attempt to amp up their competition with Steam. Given that their main strategy so far has been to bully customers into adopting their service, this may be a step in the right direction.
Maybe they read Rock, Paper Shotgun's excellent editorial, "Dear Origin, You Stink." Maybe they've realized that they need to stop banning players for inane forum offenses, harvesting user data like a soccer mom in Farmville harvests corn, and generally treating users like shit. Then again, maybe they're still just hoping that the dangling carrot of the Origin-exclusive Mass Effect 3 will attract enough new users.
The other publishers are Freebird Games, Recoil Games, Autumn Games, 1C Company, inXile Entertainment, Paradox Interactive, Robot Entertainment, Core Learning Ltd., and N3V Games. What can EA do to win over more Steam users? Is expanding their content offerings enough? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.
