Ausgamersreports today that EA have announced a 90 day free distribution program for any crowd-funded developers who have a ready-to-publish game. This means that developers who are not working for major corporations will have a free distribution period on Origin. It will be interesting to see the indie games that'll be cropping up on the Origin system soon.

This is certainly an interesting, albeit unexpected move from EA. I'm not quite sure what's prompted this, whether it be a legitimate desire to help out indie developers, or an ulterior motive to try and shift developers, and ultimately part of the user base away from Steam. The cynic in me points me towards the latter, but i'd like to see part of the agreement that needs to be signed with this. I hope that going forward, the dev's think about the greater ramifications of going with Origin, in which the agreement is likely to contain rules concerning distribution post the 3 month period (Either on Origin or a shift to steam), as opposed to just seeing the free distribution.

Either way, I'm anxious to see how this pans out, and I'm personally looking forward to 'Wasteland 2', which seems to have prompted this in part.

Ausgamers Article