Now that’s a really strange thing to hear: one of the most popular and anticipated games of the year, Battlefield 3, won’t be available for purchase on the most popular digital download service, Steam. Just as it happened with previous EA games that have been withdrawn from Steam since the beginning of the year (Crysis 2, Dragon Age 2 etc), Electronic Arts have blamed Steam for their “restrictive terms” when it comes to DLC.

Steam and Valve are really made to look like the bad characters here, with Electornic Arts stating: “We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3.”

Of course, the exact problems have not been made public by any of the two companies (Valve hasn’t commented anything yet), so it is highly possible that one of the biggest games of this year, Battlefield 3, won’t be released on Steam. How will this influence sales – it remains to be seen.