It has survived for many years. Steam sales are a huge draw, I doubt EA will ever sell games for less than the max they can charge. And to be honest, the only reason I played Borderlands 1 and 2 was because I got them for about $2 each on sale. Sure gearbox games can be fun, but the last game The Pre-sequel was just OK and didn't get good until the ClapTrap DLC. And That I got on steam sale too. Steam has a lot of Goodwill and EA has zero because EA always acts in scummy ways, like locking down content to their store when they weren't involved at all in the development. It is an old business model, there was a time when a company had market share in USA and not in Europe, so they flooded the EU by selling at a loss, their competitor bought up all their stock and resold it in the USA cheaper than the USA company, and they won the war because they had so much cheap product to under sell the USA company. Long term EA will have to sell games super cheap, or they'll miss out and that isn't in their SOP.