The moves! They are becoming clearer. As many of you speculated, it seems that the retail version of Battlefield 3 will indeed require Origin to be installed on your computer in order to play it. Oh Twitter, how did we find out brief snippets of information (or organise anarchic uprisings against the grim hegemony of shoe shops) before you existed?

This admission by EA probably goes some way to explaining why the game won’t appear on Steam, because it would basically entail two Steam-like systems being folded around the game, and they would inevitably fight like giant sperm whales versus kraken in the magnetic depths of your hard-drive. Such a conflict would undoubtedly causing electronic terribleness to occur, and no-one wants that. That’s my understanding of the technical situation, at least. I suspect there are also overriding commercial reasons pulling the levers behind the scenes. This is the game could spread Origin about in the game-o-sphere, just as Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2 propagated Steam.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I am betting that you do.