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Origin wants "fair and open marketplace"

Third parties can sell DLC how they like.

EA has recommitted to having third party games on Origin and, in a dig at rival service Steam, talked about how to treat other publishers.

EA games Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 were booted off Steam for attempting to sell extra content directly through the game.

"We really do believe in a fair and open marketplace," David DeMartini, EA's senior vice president of global online, told GameSpot.

"We strongly believe that customers should be able to buy a product wherever they want to buy the product. If they want to buy the paid DLC from some place other than where they bought the original product, they should be able to do that as well. And if they want to buy micro-transaction content from somewhere else, they should be able to do that."

"If we are so fortunate to sell someone's great IP at a full-price sale and they're smart enough to put a store in their game," he added, "and make paid DLC easy for the customer, that was pretty smart thinking on their part and we have no issue with that."

DeMartini said Origin - the rebadged, renamed, revamped EA Store - has a userbase of 4.2 million, and has done one million transactions since its June launch. He "would not be surprised" if another 100 per cent growth was added on top of that over the course of the year.

EA has some aggressive Origin deals coming to help reach that target: the open beta of Battlefield 3 on PC requires that Origin be downloaded; Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a downloadable Origin exclusive; and there will be Origin-exclusive bonuses for Mass Effect 3 on PC.