They won't go back to Steam. They CAN'T actually. When they first left Steam, it was because EA broke their contract with Steam about one of their games. I think it was Dead Space 2 but I'm not sure. Regardless, don't get your hopes up here. EA will go bankrupt before they go back to Steam, and everyone knows that's not going to happen.
The biggest reason they won't do it though? Garden Warfare is a console focused game. They released it on all platforms but the focus was on console. Probably geared more towards Xbox because of the whole EA Access thing, but regardless the main focus was the console.
I don't know, I begin to wonder what sort of reaction such an excuse would have with EA's shareholders. They are, after all, legally obligated to make as big of a return as possible. Leaving possible tens of thousand to hundreds of thousand of sales on the table because of such petty reasons (I bet they could reconciliate with Valve if they wished, if that story is true.) seems like exactly the kind of thing a publicly traded company SHOULDN'T be doing, no?
The biggest problem is that they're EA. I'm sure the shareholders decided that they could make a larger profit by creating Origin, and...they're right. If EA were a smaller company this wouldn't be an issue at all. But EA is a huge company and they have some of the largest titles in gaming. Sims, Battlefield, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. They can afford to do this and still make a huge profit. I mean when it comes down to it, opinions don't really matter. I highly doubt EA will open up to Steam especially since the profits gained from GW2 will drastically increase once they add micro transactions into the game.
Basically, just don't get your hopes up.
Except my argument hinges on getting more profit after their revenue stream from the game already dries up. It's literally turning down free money in favor of... well, nothing, really.
