EA's Origin expands with 11 new third-party publisher partners

Electronic Arts has been busy getting third parties on board its Origin digital distribution platform. The company announced on Tuesday the addition of 11 independent game publishers that are bringing games to the Origin service, as EA essentially expands its digital business by enlisting competitors. EA said Trion Worlds is now on Origin, with the MMORPG Rift now available for download. Other publishers that are coming to Origin in the coming months include Robot Entertainment, CD Projekt Red, Freebird Games, Recoil Games, Autumn Games, 1C Company, inXile entertainment, Paradox Interactive, Core Learning Ltd. and N3V Games. Outside of Rift, EA did not confirm exactly which titles are coming from the new publisher partners. But we can take educated guesses for a couple of them -- CD Projekt Red's only released games are in The Witcher RPG series, and Robot Entertainment's tower defense game Orcs Must Die also seems a likely candidate. Prior to the announcement of today's partnership, EA had made Origin deals with major publishers Warner Bros. Interactive, THQ and Capcom. EA said in October last year that Origin has over 5 million registered users. The publisher launched the service on the foundation of its large back catalog of games, and drove growth by releasing key first-party games like Battlefield 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic exclusively for Origin. Valve Software's Steam is still the top PC game digital distribution platform, hosting first-party and third-party games for a registered user base of 40 million as of the end of 2011, according to Valve.