While at last month’s EA Sports Showcase held in San Francisco, TGR sat down with Valve’s VP of Marketing and Development Doug Lombardi for a great interview. One topic we covered was Valve’s relationship with EA, to which he responded:

“EA has been really great to work with for us and I think that a big part of it is who Valve was when we got together. We went through this big nasty divorce with Vivendi and afterwards, you know Steam existed, Counter Strike existed, Half-Life existed, Team Fortress was on the horizon, etc.. When we met up with EA, we said we’ve learned to do a bunch of stuff ourselves that most developers haven’t been conditioned to take care of, whether it was marketing, funding their own developing etc.. ’We are sort of a unique case and we don’t want the standard publishing deal.’"

“They were super progressive and grown up about it," he gushed, "and said, ’We understand. Let’s figure out a way to contribute and we will figure out what the right business terms are for that contribution.’ And so it was really straight forward to agree upon. It is funny that you read the stories about EA being this evil empire or whatever; our experience has been completely the opposite. We see the folks as being very similar in terms of their mind set as we are and they are very adult, or progressive if you would like, about how they interfaced with us and how they can help and where their value is and their relationship.”

It goes to show that once again, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the news about EA. Bioware came out and said EA have been fantastic and now Valve has jumped to EA’s defense. With such games as Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, Rock Band 2, and Left 4 Dead coming, there are some great games coming out of EA that might turn people’s perspective of them.