Looks like that one of EA's biggest upcoming games, Battlefield 3, is not currently planned to be offered for sale on Steam. EA recently posted a list of digital retailers that will be selling Battlefield 3 all over the world. One major player that isn't on the list yet is Steam. At the moment, the US download retailers on the list include EA's recently launched Origin service along with many others including Direct2Drive, Impulse, and GamersGate along with the web sites of retailers like GameStop, Amazon and Best Buy.

So far EA has not confirmed why Steam is not listed as a retailer for the game. There's no doubt that Steam is bigger than Direct2Drive, GamersGate, GameStop's Impulse combined - without a doubt a huge chunk of Battlefield 3 digital sales would come from Steam. If EA is saying no to the kind of sales Steam can provide, it's pretty obvious that the conflict and disagreements (presumably due to the newly launched EA Orgin, which is similar to Steam) between EA and Valve run deep. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon, as in the end, both EA, Steam, and gamers stand to lose something.