By Alec Meer on June 15th, 2011 at 11:01 am.
“Where were you when the war began, Daddy?”
“Well, little Ignatius H. Meer III, I was at my PC, staring vacantly at Twitter. Probably eating some crisps as I did. I’ll never forget that dark, terrible day. The day that EA decided they could fight Steam.”
“Daddy? Why are you crying, Daddy?”
Crysis 2 has disappeared from Steam, and is now described as being “Origin only.” Origin is, you may recall, EA’s newly-relaunched download store. Uh-oh.
This week’s Alice: Madness Returns, meanwhile, is marked as listed as “ONLY AVAILABLE ON ORIGIN UNTIL JUNE 17TH”. This implies it will turn up on other services after that time, but may simply be referring to the retail release – the game is not listed on Steam at all as yet.
EA appears to be remaining tight-lipped on the matter for now, although matters become confusing in that you can still nab Crysis 2 from other store such as Direct2Drive, while the likes of Dragon Age II and Bulletstorm are still to be found on Valve’s service.
Everyone’s speculating that this may mean EA is determinedly resisting Valve’s infamously successful cornering of the download market, as it attempts (again) to make its own service something of a go-to store. Battlefield 3 will likely be the proof of that particular pudding – it’s EA’s biggest PC game in yonks, but is it so big that only being able to download it from one place won’t hurt it? You can pre-order Battlefield 3 from Origin already, but it’s not to be found anywhere on Steam. Then again, it doesn’t launch until Autumn anyway, so anything could happen in the months to come. Whatever’s happening, olde worlde retail releases appear to be proceeding as planned.
It’s all speculation and rumour for now, of course. We’ve contacted EA to try and work out what’s going on, and have been told a statement should be forthcoming later today. We’ll let you know as soon as we have more.
If this is what everyone’s thinking it is, what happens now? There aren’t many games that could support this kind of exclusivity, but perhaps Battlefield 3 and SWTOR are big enough to get away with it. OR ARE THEY?
Oh, and if you bought Crysis 2 from Steam at an earlier date, fear not – you can still play it.
15/06/2011 at 11:05 Mark says:
If EA make BF3 only available digitally on their store (i.e., not availble retail) then I will not buy it. It will be too expensive.
15/06/2011 at 11:07 Tomm says:
It’s definitely being released retail.
15/06/2011 at 11:18 BadHat says:
It’ll definitely be sold at retail (see the recent weapon pack debacle for confirmation of that :P), but I’m pretty sure EA stated that it would only be sold digitally on Origin. So no Steam, D2D, Impulse etc.
15/06/2011 at 11:26 john_silence says:
Or – the digital exclusivity concerns preorders only, and upon release all EA games will be available on Steam, Gamersgate etc. That’s what the phrasing suggests for Alice at least.
Surely it wouldn’t quite be realistic of them to bid they could yank the entire PC userbase away from Steam for their most important launch of the year? Only part of the hardcore preorderers will accept that.
15/06/2011 at 11:26 President Weasel says:
I find that quite annoying; I had intended to preorder BF3 on Steam. I don’t fancy signing up to a single-publisher Steam clone and hoping the system’s still running in a year, even if the publisher is one of the largest.
15/06/2011 at 11:37 Valvarexart says:
If this game does not “activate” with Origin I shall pre-order it at Gamestop or something. If it does, I shall not purchase it at all.
15/06/2011 at 12:11 PoulWrist says:
In mainland europe the EA store has proper prices, not like Steam’s 30% higher prices.
15/06/2011 at 12:17 MrMud says:
Are those prices adjusted for VAT?
Because with a 25% VAT those steam prices seem slightly less crazy.
15/06/2011 at 12:21 BadHat says:
Correction on my earlier post – BF3 is actually available for pre-order on Direct 2 Drive, at least. Guess I got some bad infos.
@PoulWrist – In New Zealand and the Origin prices are jacked up like certain games on Steam. :(
15/06/2011 at 12:26 Gnoupi says:
@PoulWrist – in France the EA store had prices which were even more than the dollar price. And I’m talking basic figures, without even mentioning the conversion fact. Something like 40 dollars = 50 euros.
Also, we are talking about a publisher who was making it a “paid service” to be able to redownload your games for the next two years when they first introduced their store (this madness hopefully changed since then). So I can understand why people are less than enthusiastic about it.
That said, I can understand why EA want to make their own offer, because Steam is currently in a quite dominant situation. A company like EA has the power to make their own, good offer, to not have to deal with Valve.
And if they do it good, with reasonable prices (and not just the original retail price for the next 3 years), it can’t be a bad thing for gamers.
15/06/2011 at 12:27 cmi says:
@PoulWrist: EA store Germany has the same silly prices as Steam has. So still a no go for me.
17/06/2011 at 20:24 HeavyStorm says:
Same here. Not on steam, no deal.
15/06/2011 at 11:06 Groove says:
Why must they make it harder for me to give them money?
WHYYYYYYYYYY.
15/06/2011 at 11:24 MichaelPalin says:
Because they think they can make you give them more money later on.
15/06/2011 at 11:27 CaspianRoach says:
Valve takes a nice chunk of money from every sale so it’s the matter of getting all the money to themselves for EA instead of sharing it with some non-affiliated company.
15/06/2011 at 11:47 Groove says:
I understand your words, but it’s less EA’s long term economic wellfare that I’m concerned about, and more the ‘installing more unnecassary shit on my PC’ angle.
It obviously generates them +1 money hats, but it inconveniences ME.
15/06/2011 at 12:12 Kadayi says:
@CaspianRoach
The flaw in their thinking is that it’s actually a lot cheaper to buy any of their Origin titles via retail (thus giving the retailer that cut which Steam would of gotten) so there is no real advantage for EA unless they dramatically change their own pricing approach to match retail.
Allce madness returns is £35 on their store, yet http://www.play.com are selling it for £30
Madness indeed.
15/06/2011 at 12:34 Tomm says:
You think that’s bad, BF3 on their UK store is £40 and you don’t get the Physical Warfare Bundle, whereas at Game and Gamestation you do for £30. Mad.
15/06/2011 at 12:51 Andrei Sebastian says:
EA marketing fail
15/06/2011 at 13:05 subedii says:
Crysis 2 was actually cheaper on Steam than it is on Origin. Which is freaking bizarre because BOTH prices would’ve been set by EA.
Now way I’m buying from the EA store at those prices.
The irony is that EA’s removing the game from Steam may force me to do something I haven’t done in ages: Buy a physical copy of the game.
15/06/2011 at 13:17 Tatourmi says:
I don’t think the real problem is here.
What really fucks the service for me is EA itself. You are not forbidden to be a money grinder in our days, but at least try to be productive being that.
Valve proved, in my opinion, that it could make good and original games with a real impact and focus on PC gaming. EA? Not so much. My monies are for steam, and I don’t care about monopolies the least bit as long as they do not create something I am opposed to morally. And this is, for the moment, not the case. (Oh, and this is not even a true monopoly for the moment, so well…)
15/06/2011 at 13:47 mouton says:
@Groove
Everyone quickly forgot that Steam is just as unnecessary in terms of running the games themselves.
15/06/2011 at 14:59 Tyshalle says:
From what I’ve heard, Steam charges less to sell through them than B&M retailers do. So they’re doubly shooting themselves in the foot.
@mouton – Unnecessary? Maybe. But that’s kind of like saying that Facebook is unnecessary for keeping in touch with your friends. It’s completely true, but it glosses over the fact that Steam makes shit a whole lot easier. Not only does it give you one nice area to keep a list of all of your games, including the ones you don’t currently have installed on your computer, but it auto-updates them for you, and let’s you install the games on any computer you might have without having to worry about lugging around CD’s.
Steam has also introduced me to several dozen indie titles that I never would have heard of (or purchased) otherwise, and from what I’ve heard Steam has made it possible for indie developers to actually become well known and make a decent amount of money.
So yes, Steam is definitely unnecessary to playing games. However, it offers a lot of services that make it very convenient to use, which a lot of people like getting the benefits of.
15/06/2011 at 16:38 ResonanceCascade says:
With a couple exceptions, I’d rather just not play most EA games than have to fuss with another gaming client/service.
Why do these companies all think they need a chunk of every single pie? They had a good thing going with Steam, and now they’ve shot themselves in the foot just because they feel the need to compete in every arena. At this point, why doesn’t EA just release a console and make their games exclusive to that, too. AWESOME IDEA DERP.
15/06/2011 at 16:42 Kaira- says:
“Why do these companies all think they need a chunk of every single pie?”
Well, I’d see their reasons as such: if they let Steam become the only DD-service, Valve can happily demand a bigger cut from games sold through Steam, which will undoubetly make publishers not happy.
15/06/2011 at 17:08 ResonanceCascade says:
@ Kaira
Sure, though I think there are better ways to approach that problem. Because there’s a good chance that they’re going to be getting a larger cut of the 0 games I’m going to buy from them if I can’t get them on Steam. Hopefully they don’t start pulling all their games from Steam, but I bet they will.
It constantly amazes me how poorly companies like EA and Microsoft handle the PC platform, even though there are shining examples of companies that do it right and make buckets full of cash. They just don’t get it.
15/06/2011 at 18:50 Kantorai says:
Bloatware clients like Steam or Orgin are unwanted, agreed. But I like games and I want the people who make them to have food on their tables. What to do? I could buy the games in an online store and instead of downloading through their client get the games from the nearest buccaneer’s cove. But, then I have paid the publisher extra for a “service” I’ll never use. Profit for them. :(
15/06/2011 at 11:07 Davee says:
For crying out loud, will I have to install and set up yet another downloading service/social networking program and share my credit card details to it (unless PayPal is an option)? I’ll stick with Steam for now, thank you.
15/06/2011 at 11:25 alice says:
Paypal is an option.
15/06/2011 at 11:36 GoldenPants says:
EA takes paypal? Didn’t expect that.
Not sure why, just doesn’t seem like something they would do.
15/06/2011 at 12:26 crainey92 says:
I’m going to have to agree with this, EA seems like a soulless giant that cares not for customer satisfaction and therefore comes across as a non-Paypal platform.
15/06/2011 at 13:17 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
> I’m going to have to agree with this, EA seems like a soulless giant that cares not for customer satisfaction
Just like PayPal then—they’ll get on together like a house on fire.
15/06/2011 at 11:07 Chalky says:
I guess now we’ll see if the best way to fight piracy is to prevent people from easily obtaining your game from the vendor of their choice!
I’m all for competition, but this is so damn abusive I hope Origin crashes and burns. I’m damned if I’m going to have 4 or 5 distribution services running on my system, I’ll make my choice based on quality of service not because there’s a gun held to my head.
15/06/2011 at 11:09 phosgene says:
This.
Steam takes up enough resources as it is. I’d like to not have to close one service and open another every time I want to play a different game.
15/06/2011 at 11:16 Suva says:
Also it might happen that the Origin crashes and burns eventually, rendering the games you bought there inaccessible… As far as this thing goes, I would put my trust on steam, not EA.
15/06/2011 at 11:17 Tomm says:
Steam uses less memory than a lot of my Chrome tabs and Spotify but I don’t think twice about leaving them open while playing games.
15/06/2011 at 11:23 alice says:
FWIW: Current resource usage of both Steam and Origin clients from Windows Task Manager. Windows 7 x64, both minimized.
Origin: ~69,000K RAM, two client processes
Steam: ~19,500K RAm, one client process
This is reverse of what I expected, seeing how I am signed into chat in Steam with multiple people on my friends list, whereas in Origin I have no friends. Then again, Firefox is taking up 500,000+K so these are both negligible.
15/06/2011 at 12:05 alh_p says:
Why is this so abusive by EA? (assuming it does turn out as the hivemind’s wildest nightmares)
Didn’t Valve kick start steam in a similar way? or maybe they diverted traditional retail customers with more positive (debatably) means, e.g. carrots like lower prices, early pre-order and freebees?
How is ti that people seem unconcerned about the megalith that is Steam? Granted it’s convenient to have a lot of one’s games in one place but it does make it a big target and it’s never good for there to be only one real provider in a market -even if that almost seems normal in the industry of google and microsoft.
It is annoying though! If I were fussed about B3 or somesuch I’d put up with Origin as long as long as it’s less annoying than GFWL
15/06/2011 at 12:20 MrMud says:
Its not abusive at all. But it may mean that I wont buy it. I have very little interest in installing another download store. And buying from a brick and mortar store? Thats preposterous.
15/06/2011 at 12:43 Chalky says:
Valve kick started steam by taking Half Life 2 off the shelves of retailers that had previously been able to sell it? Or am I misunderstanding what you are trying to say?
15/06/2011 at 13:16 studenteternal says:
It is only competition if you can get the same game from multiple download vendors, and I am all for that. If EA prevents other DD companies from selling their titles then this is NOT competition and instead is Vendor Lock, which I very strongly disapprove of.
Like many people here, I will not be buying anything from Origin, and if that means no Battlefield 3 for me, so be it.
15/06/2011 at 15:17 Tyshalle says:
I completely agree. EA has a right to do whatever the hell they want with their games. And competition is fine. I don’t think too many people are arguing that competition is the problem here. The core of the issue here seems to be that there are a lot of gamers out there (like me) that only use DD to buy their games, but they don’t want to be forced to have multiple DD programs running on their computer in order to play a game. I haven’t purchased a PC game from a B&M store in years, just because I prefer the convenience of services like Steam. That said, as much as I’m looking forward to BF3, if it’s not available on Steam, EA will not be getting my money. Why? It’s not because I’m against competition. It’s because Steam has earned my business, has been good to me, and hasn’t pulled any sleazy shit like EA seems to routinely do just to make an extra buck. And it’s because I just don’t want to have multiple download programs on my computer, unless I choose to. But I shouldn’t be forced to choose to because EA wants to prevent me from playing their games unless I buy it directly from them.
15/06/2011 at 16:13 Chalky says:
The thing is, if EA provide a better service with Origin than I get with Steam, then I’ll be more than happy to consider moving. That’s how the market works, you improve your product in order to steal market share from competitors, which forces them to improve their product. In the end, the consumer is the winner.
EA intentionally removing games from it’s competitors in order to force people to adopt it’s service without providing any benefits is abusive. It’s fine if EA ship their games with an inbuilt competitor to steamworks, but when it comes to handing over money, I want choice. I don’t want to be pushed around and forced into things by big companies.
15/06/2011 at 17:30 PaulMorel says:
@Chalky: Exactly.
If’ Origin is better than, or even comparable to Steam, then there’s no need for this. They can have their games on every service, and theirs will be competitive in the marketplace. It would be great for PC-gamers to have a service that truly competed with Steam (ignoring the consoles for the moment).
But will it be better than Steam? No. It will be a money-grab, like most EA titles. So this is just a strong-arm tactic to try to get us to use their inferior product.
I might still download Origin if I really want to play a Bioware title … but I doubt I will buy anything else via the system. I certainly won’t buy something from them just because it is cheap, as I do on Steam.
15/06/2011 at 17:48 Juan Carlo says:
I can see Origin becoming like Blizzard (provided that KOTOR MMO takes off), but I can never see them becoming competitive with Valve as a distributor of any other games besides EA games.
Valve, despite having a near monopoly on digital game sales, is also still technically an independent company. Heck, they rely on EA to distribute physical copies of their games for most platforms. So I don’t see any of the other big distributors (activision, etc) jumping on the Origin bandwagon as they really would have no incentive to.
Worst case scenario, every company and its mom starts up their own digitsal distribution system–which would really suck as not only would this mean that there would be no competition, but also it would mean that you’ have to remember 8,000 different passwords just to play your games.
15/06/2011 at 17:50 Duke of Chutney says:
@ chalky
from memory steam was kick started by valve making to compulsory DRM for their games. HL2 needed steam activation to work.
15/06/2011 at 11:08 Darkelp says:
My main issue with this is EA’s idea of a sale is making their games all £15 instead of the £40 they charge normally.
Until they have sale’s that rival the type of sale’s on other download services, I’m not sure they’ll get far.
15/06/2011 at 11:08 Dirtyboy says:
Alice 2 is available to buy now on Games for Windows Marketplace and Direct2drive.
15/06/2011 at 11:10 BooleanBob says:
Well, EA aren’t obliged to offer their games on Steam, after all. Or anywhere else, for that matter, even boxed retail. If they’re making a big play to claw back Valve’s cut from their games, they’re free to do so.
I can’t see it winning them an awful lot of fans, because if nothing else, it’s one more set of account details to keep track of. Not the end of the world by any means, but friction enough to put a lot of people off from the start?
One thing we can definitely expect to see is a lot more of EA holding back certain features or content from their games in order to get people to buy directly from them. ActiBlizz and the other big pubs will wait and see, and follow suit if it seems to work.
15/06/2011 at 11:19 Tomm says:
Considering all the furore around the BF3 map packs, there’s nothing stopping them from only selling the DLC via Origin.
15/06/2011 at 11:23 BooleanBob says:
I’m pretty sure this will be the case, yes. But beyond DLC, they conceivably might be tempted to play hard(er) ball and put out cut-down versions of their game out on lesser-approved distribution channels.
15/06/2011 at 11:29 Tomm says:
Hopefully nothing as bad as the Resi 5 Multiplayer debacle. *shudder*
Edit:Oh it appears they’re already offering different incentives to buy from Origin. The price not being one of them.
http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.battlefield3_EN_LE/
I’ll be getting it retail I think.
15/06/2011 at 11:10 Schaulustiger says:
- EDIT -
I made false statement here, see my response below.
15/06/2011 at 11:15 LionsPhil says:
Can you make local backups, or is that considered too pirate-friendly, or crippled by online activation that they’ll shut down?
15/06/2011 at 11:18 alice says:
There is an option to save the game installer to a folder on your hard drive while installing, which I did. It also did a phone home check when I first started the game post-install so I am not sure if I could re-install without internet/their servers being up but at least there is something.
15/06/2011 at 11:23 BooleanBob says:
Any chance of a link to their TOS online? I tried to find it on the Origin site but could only find what looked like the TOS for their website. At any rate I’d be keen to check out this one-year claim.
15/06/2011 at 11:36 Schaulustiger says:
I’ll have to correct myself here. My German Origin version linked to an older EADM TOS with the one-year-download-limit, but it’s now corrected and the Origin TOS no longer include such a passage.
The official english FAQ state:
“Q: Will my game download ever expire?
A: Digital download rights remain available for at least one year after purchase. Origin typically doesn’t retire games, and we’ve only retired around 10 of the 150 games we sell, and these have generally been because of the expiration of licensing rights. If you come across an issue, simply contact Origin Help and we’ll reconfigure things for you.”
(Source).
The actual Origin EULA can be found here.
Sorry for any confusion, I blame EA Germany.
15/06/2011 at 11:11 The Sombrero Kid says:
I don’t like being bullied, I’m not going to EA’s store, even if that means i can’t play games i’m looking forward to, although the only must have game coming from EA in the near future for me is ME3.
15/06/2011 at 11:11 hodj says:
Sure makes my decision on whether to buy any more EA games on pc pretty easy, I’ll say that about it.
They can try to challenge Steam all they want, but they will fail. EA has already shown they have no clue when it comes to digital downloads in the past, why would anyone use their service, which sells only their games exclusively, over Steam? Only because they are forced to.
15/06/2011 at 11:13 LionsPhil says:
Well, it didn’t hurt Half-Life 2 that Valve used it to force everyone into Steam, even if they bought boxed copies.
That said, I’m not expecting Origin to be less evil or less inept than Steam; I am expecting it to be less featureful on some of the nicities Valve dangle to distract from the DRM. Anyone want to disabuse me of these notions?
15/06/2011 at 11:33 BooleanBob says:
Yes. But I shall do it not with words, but swords, sirrah! En garde!
15/06/2011 at 11:57 LionsPhil says:
Aha! Have at you, you cur!
15/06/2011 at 13:11 Grygus says:
It didn’t hurt Half Life 2 but it did hurt Steam. I will agree that Steam seems pretty popular now, but a lot of people hated it at the time and there is still a sizable number of PC gamers that consider it some sort of evil plot; their objections (when rational) are almost all based on those early days. I’m not sure that following that example is optimal.
15/06/2011 at 16:05 Fierce says:
You know, I catch wind of these allegations every so often and I find myself completely ignorant every single time. As you say, when rational, what exactly are the arguments that some have against Steam?
From what little I’ve heard, its either been “They are DRM” which as far as I’m concerned, is preferable to third-party DRM schemes which typically don’t have the decency to remove themselves from my OS when I uninstall the game they’re protecting, or it has been “The VAC system can lock you out of your game library!” which, while apparently true, only seems to occur to those who immediately post on the forums “But I was just trying a file my friend gave me! I didn’t know~” or some other tripe excuse for someone who tried to cheat in Counter-strike for their precious K:D ratio and got caught.
Steam in itself, has a well designed and intuitive Store system, a useful and mature Community implementation, handy News items tied directly to the game you’re looking at in your Library, and relatively flawless in-game Overlay (albeit with a crappy browser) that remains more useful and more effective at killing the time in a BFBC2 queue than, say, the GFWL overlay. This before even mentioning the crazy sales they throw, the high quality of their download and patch servers or the fact that their owners are the deserving darlings of the game industry, whose tip jar I don’t mind throwing my spare change into every time I’m at the register.
While I’m sure the early days were horrendous, what exactly is it about current-day Steam that gets people so upset?
15/06/2011 at 18:20 DD says:
@Fierce
I can pretty much agree with everything you said there. I was one of those that absolutely hated steam when it was first implemented and didnt play CS 1.6 for a long time because of it.
As far as im concerned its a completely different program now whose benefits far, far outweigh the negatives. The only real problems i’ve run into are just not having access when my internet goes down or something. Being able to access my game from anywhere with no CD’s needed or patch updates? It’s a dream i’ve had since I was a kid to have that kind of easy access to games.
15/06/2011 at 11:13 Joshua says:
Will people who already bought C2 on steam still be able to play it?
15/06/2011 at 11:31 dux says:
RTFA
15/06/2011 at 11:13 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
As much as I don’t like this move, it’s the best way for EA to ensure that Origin will get a critical mass of customers, in exactly the same way that Valve required Steam for all buyers of Half-Life 2.
It becomes a problem for customers though: with traditional retail, having multiple retail outlets selling the same game gives me the choice of where I want to buy it (based on price, location, time required), while not imposing any burdens on me beyond that.
However with download services that require a client to be running, like Steam (and I think Origin too?), there’s a strong incentive for me to use only one service: I only need to have one client running, and all my games are accessible from that one client. Of course, I prefer games that don’t require me to have a client running (one reason I always buy from GOG over Steam when possible).
It’s interesting that we’ve seen digital music move from mostly user-shifted (CD rips, Napster) to having multiple noninteroperable clients (iTunes, Windows Media Player), and thence to having all digital music sold DRM-free so you can buy from anywhere and play the music anywhere.
I would like to see the same happen with games. We’re seeing EA react directly to Steam’s hegemony, just as the big four labels did to iTunes a few years ago. However, EA is merely creating their own Steam, not as far as I can see anything measurably better.
15/06/2011 at 17:41 PaulMorel says:
Your analogy to music is compelling. It breaks down when we get to the fact that music is now sold DRM-free. That’s why we have multiple services (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon) which can be played from multiple players (iTunes, winamp, …etc).
DRM will never be removed from games for the simple reason that they are software. With music, it’s flat media. It’s not software in itself. But with games, we HAVE to run some software, so it’s less of a drawback to have some of that software check for authenticity.
It would be interesting to see an open source DRM scheme. I’m not sure if it’s even possible.
15/06/2011 at 20:51 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
There are many games that are sold DRM-free. Many, many indie games. A good many from middle-sized developers. Very few AAA games—in fact I know of only one such—are sold DRM-free at launch, but quite a number of them get the DRM patched out within a year or two; Far Cry 2 for example (for retail versions, not Steam versions). And there’s GOG’s entire collection of back-catalogue games as the most notable DRM-free selection in the digital download.
The situation is of course not directly comparable to music, but I am (or maybe just hope I am) seeing similar changes happen. One thing that is the same in both cases is that DRM costs money; is very imperfect at its intended purpose; causes increased support/return costs due to the problems it causes for a small percentage of customers; and—in the case of a DRM-encumbered service like Steam—results in the customers being locked into the service, which gives the service power over the publishers.
Look at how many commenters in this thread and on the related article have said they won’t be buying EA games unless they can get them on Steam. Now, imagine if EA made the offer: you can download all your existing EA purchases (that you bought on Steam, for example) from Origin, without paying extra? That would remove the customer lock-in, at least as far as EA games go.
I don’t honestly expect to see such a thing occur anytime soon—especially not with EA—but it’s an interesting new approach that we’re just seeing the start of in the music arena with the iTunes Match service that Apple recently announced. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a $25/year service that lets you store all your music on Apple’s cloud service—whether it is music you bought on iTunes, or on another music service, or ripped from CD, or pirated—from where you can download it to any Apple device and probably, though I’m not certain, Windows PC running iTunes. (And the music is still DRM-free).
I don’t see EA’s move here doing anything particularly forward-thinking or customer-friendly, but it’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out over the next year.
15/06/2011 at 11:14 Moni says:
I’m fairly sure this is just a big misunderstanding, otherwise it’s a pretty dumb strategy. Why wouldn’t they just mark all the prices on Origin down?
Also, does everyone who bought Crysis 2 on Steam still have access to it?
15/06/2011 at 12:28 Njordsk says:
Yes. You just can’t purchase it anymore.
15/06/2011 at 15:08 jonfitt says:
What about patches? Will they still be put out on Steam.
15/06/2011 at 11:14 Hoaxfish says:
So, is this Origins actually available yet? Because look before you leap seems apparent here.
15/06/2011 at 11:15 Protagoras says:
Thing is, while steam do corner the market and thats bad, the reason none of the other “serious” competitors can hold a candle to it is simply due to steam being good design, while Origin/GFWLM are shit design.
Now, instead of actually making a good fucking product, it seems they’re trying to use exclusivity as buying hook. And that pisses me off – its fucks consumers, simple as that. I’m keen on getting BF3, but I don’t feel like having to pay a lot more (cause its EA store) and having to download a shitty product to actually play the game.
15/06/2011 at 11:50 MD says:
To be fair, Valve did that too — Steam was pretty terrible back in the day, and they tied it to HL2 (even boxed copies).
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I don’t think they deserve a backlash on principle. If it’s annoying to use, I won’t use it and will hope it fails. But I don’t begrudge them the attempt, even if that requires the admittedly consumer-unfriendly step of forced exclusivity. I certaintly don’t take an ‘anything goes if it’s good business’ line, but on the scale of corporate jerkery, this sort of thing is pretty mild.
15/06/2011 at 12:35 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
The difference is that Steam didn’t really have any good examples to steal ideas from. If you’re trying to launch a store that’s less convenient than Steam is now, you’re just not doing it right.
15/06/2011 at 11:15 Daniel Klein says:
I’m all for the dismantling of monopolies, but not if the alternative is a significantly worse shopping experience. EA’s account management has given me nothing but trouble in the past and to say that doesn’t instill me with confidence for their online store is an understatement.
At this point my money’s on Valve.
15/06/2011 at 17:46 PaulMorel says:
Is Xbox Live a monopoly? Should there be multiple download clients for XBox hardware?
Is PSN a monopoly since it is the only choice on PS3?
How is Steam a monopoly, when it competes with digital download services offered by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? Not to mention the fact that there are many Valve competitors in the PC-Game digital download market (GoG, D2D… etc). Steam is the largest service on the PC because it is the best, not because it is the only one.
15/06/2011 at 11:16 Grinterloper says:
Last time I used an EA download service I paid full price for Battlefield 2142 and was locked out of the game 6 months later because I didn’t pay a “renewal charge” I spent 3 months chasing tech support until someone would give me the answer and they wouldn’t refund me for the game I paid for.
What I’m getting at here is, fuck EA and any download service they care to throw at us.
15/06/2011 at 18:32 DD says:
Im with you on this. I got spore from the EA service back when it came out. It had a install limit which later locked me out of the game installing after a few reformats.
Not really a fan of them at all.
15/06/2011 at 11:16 alice says:
I ordered Alice 2 from Origin as it seemed to be the only place online to get the original Alice as DLC with a preorder. When it came time to download it this morning their client gave me a bit of runaround (my password was suddenly invalid, resetting it through the client fixed it) but otherwise seems as innocuous as Steam.
I would have preferred buying on Steam or from retail, but my experience so far has not soured me on Origin entirely.
15/06/2011 at 11:24 JiminyJickers says:
Does it have an offline mode like Steam?
I hate having to use Steam but I have now got used to it. I have it mainly in offline mode, so I hope this has it because I’m sure that they will be brining out Mass Effect 3 tied to this.
15/06/2011 at 11:29 alice says:
Actually, I just closed the Origin client and launched Alice 2 without a hitch, did not restart the client even. So it would seem you only need it for downloads and initial post-install phone home? Going to try unplugging my computer from network next to see if it works.
15/06/2011 at 11:33 Joshua says:
You only have to use it for downloading. I downloaded Bad Company 2 from their service, and then launched BC2 trough steam with Origin fully closed.
Although that is also possible with steam with some steamworks integrated games, the way Origin downloads the installer (CD-like) instead of the entire game (Steam-like), does hint that that is their intention.
15/06/2011 at 11:37 alice says:
Yes, I can also confirm that you can play the game offline with the client closed. So this improves my opinion of the service already.
15/06/2011 at 11:44 JiminyJickers says:
Sweet.
15/06/2011 at 12:48 Kaira- says:
Well, that one makes Origin seem much more preferrable than I thought it would be.
15/06/2011 at 13:20 Optimaximal says:
EA have historically kept EADM separate from Online Services (now getting rolled out under various guises as AutoLog, BattleLog, Black Market (DA2) and Cerberus Network (ME2), with their broken Profile platform in the middle as glue.
You can see why they do it – the download is essentially a re-packaged version of the retail release (same activation methods etc.), whereas integrated services like Steam requires a whole extra layer of work.
15/06/2011 at 11:16 Bilbo says:
Maybe they just don’t want Steam to take a cut?
What’s the harm in that?
If you have the means to distribute a game yourself and not pay Steam a levy for using their service, it makes good sense to – even if they reach fewer customers as a result, the per-sale charge on Steam is like 30% or something crazy
15/06/2011 at 11:26 Dirtyboy says:
Steam’s 30-40% take is pretty close to what Apple and Amazon charge for digital content sales.
15/06/2011 at 13:00 skinlo says:
30% is very low compared to selling it on retail.
15/06/2011 at 15:29 Bilbo says:
I’m not disputing either of those points, but all the same, EA are in a position to not pay a levy on their sales, so why shouldn’t they take advantage of that position?
15/06/2011 at 11:16 Raiyan 1.0 says:
I sense a great disturbance within the Force. The old world order may be in peril.
Anyway, if Steam starts dying, we all know what will happen. Valve will release HL3 which will be Steam exclusive, and everyone will come scampering back.
Okay, is this what we have to do to get HL3 released? Then I say, “GO ORIGIN, GO!”
15/06/2011 at 11:22 LionsPhil says:
One more realistic modern-day shooter is not going to challenge the lumbering hat-decorated multiplayer behemoth on Steam’s side, let alone all the other Steam games, like indie projects and 75% off sales.
15/06/2011 at 11:17 Rasputinator says:
I’m all for another competitor to the world of digital distribution/Steam, just, EA is really not the right company to launch another competitor.
15/06/2011 at 11:19 bansama says:
You can still buy Crysis 2 on GamersGate (along with Battlefield 3 pre-order, Alice, etc.), Direct2Drive and Impulse. So the claims of it being an Origin exclusive simply are not true.
Now the question is, instead of coming up conspiracy theories as to why this has happened, has anyone actually taken the time to ask EA what’s going on?
15/06/2011 at 11:23 jon_hill987 says:
Reading the article, yes, RPS have. EA have not responded yet though.
15/06/2011 at 11:20 itsallcrap says:
*Browsing Steam for new game to buy*
*Loads up RPS to see what’s been any good recently*
Crysis 2 has disappeared from Steam, and is now described as being “Origin only.”
‘Oh right’
*Goes back to browsing Steam*
15/06/2011 at 12:34 Tei says:
FUN FACTS: If you do this more than two times a day, people faces start to melt and turn into something that look like DLC’s for a trains game.
15/06/2011 at 11:21 DSR says:
For me, ORIGIN(EA Download Manager) > STEAM as a platform to buy games.
And there are numerous reasons for that:
1 – Pricing. Regional pricing in EA Store.
Games are MUCH cheaper where I live, and EA sells them for prices like my retail shops. Steam still sells them for 60$.
2 – Reliability.
“Steam servers are currently too busy to handle your request.”
I’ve bought DarkSpore, Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm at launch in EA Store, and I’ve yet to experience ANY downtime. Remember what happens to Steam each time big title hits it? I do.
3 – Speed.
For some weird reason, for me and my friends Steam rarely downloads anything faster than 1-2 megaBYTES per second. Usually its 500-900 KB/s.
Origin, on the other hand, is as fast as it could be. Usually around 5-9 megabytes per second(I’ve got 100mbit connection)
Sometimes it does matter. It ruined our yesterday “gather and play” session because Steam decided to waste 4 hours downloading a game which should be done in 30 minutes.
4 – It just does its job.
You don’t even need to launch it when you want to play a game. Launch Origin, buy and download game and forget about Origin. Games just work. Without any useless icons in tray like Steam.
But, there are also several downsides:
1 – UI.
Its not bad, but certainly not as good and polished as EA could’ve made it if they wanted.
2 – Social.
I don’t usually care about it(My friends are friends on Skype with me), but still. EA added some last minute friend list into Origin, but its downright awful, I cant even choose an unique nickname there. Only “game account name” from games like Battlefield.
The biggest flaw of Origin: No 3rd party games(I think).
No Indies, nothing.
If they fix that(Add non EA games), Steam is in for a HUGE surprise.
My two cents.
15/06/2011 at 11:26 jon_hill987 says:
On down sides I notice you can’t have your own avatar either, just a selection of crappy images from their games.
15/06/2011 at 11:27 JiminyJickers says:
Not having to have it running is definitely a plus for me. But I just hope they don’t force you to use it when you buy the disc version, like Steam does.
15/06/2011 at 11:47 DSR says:
@ JiminyJickers
I’ve purchased Origin(When it was EADM) version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Once when I was out of internet, I’ve installed retail BFBC2 and used my Origin CD key with it.
It worked!
So, if you want, you can completely avoid using it.
Though, I’m not sure if it will stay that was when BF3 is released, but right now, you only need to run Origin when you actively download new games.
You can even install them without it running(There are option for downloaded installers in a separate folder if you wish it to keep them).
I’ve bought DragonAge: Origins there(Pun not intended) and there is an installer left on my HDD. I can launch it and reinstall my DA when I want without launching Origin.
I think its a great piece of software already, but still could use some polishing.
15/06/2011 at 11:51 JiminyJickers says:
@DSR
Sweet, thanks for letting me know. Sounds like it is pretty good.
15/06/2011 at 11:56 theleif says:
I gotta agree with DSR here. I don’t understand the dislike for the EA/Origin downloader. Only thing i miss is a way to patch the games from it.
Otherwise it’s just fine.
15/06/2011 at 11:56 Theory says:
It might be performing well now, but just wait until Battlefield 3 is released. When demand first peaks it will fail, like every other unproven network has.
15/06/2011 at 12:11 Leelad says:
You clearly work for EA. All of you.
PC gaming is all about the indies now. There are a few gems that pop through now and then but on the whole i’m looking for something different. Something I haven’t seen before. EA cannot offer this because they don’t take risks, they don’t put faith in indies, I doubt Indies will appear on their store.
EA don’t help developers they buy them eat them and shit them out. (RIP westwood, maxis, bullfrog…oh you take your pick..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Electronic_Arts )
15/06/2011 at 12:27 SaVi says:
One of my worries is, that EA says “In about 1 or 2 years, don’t excpect us to keep letting you download your games. You can still buy them again though”. I mean, serously? In the good BF 2142 times, I got myself the DLC pack for 10 €. After a few months, it vanished.
Some other commenter here said he lost his entiere BF 2142 Game.
Now I got myself 2 Sims 3 Addons from there, but copied the installers on my NAS.
If they really wan’t to compete with Steam, they should make sure that the customers don’t need to be afraid that they can’t access their purchases anymore after some time.
15/06/2011 at 12:29 Kadayi says:
@DSR
1 – Pricing. Regional pricing in EA Store.
Games are MUCH cheaper where I live, and EA sells them for prices like my retail shops. Steam still sells them for 60$.
You know that the publishers set their own pricing on Steam, Not Valve. Valve just take a %.
Also the EA Store prices here in the UK are more expensive than UK retail prices.
15/06/2011 at 13:13 skalpadda says:
Funny, I routinely get 9-11MB/s out of Steam, the only times I see it falling are during peak hours when something big has just been released or once when it inexplicably set my region to another country. The prices on the EA store in Sweden are also a bit higher although of course that’s partly because I pay in Euros on Steam and Swedish crowns from the EA store which happens to benefit me a lot at the moment.
Being able to launch your games without running the client is a good thing but I wonder if they can maintain that if they want to sell games from other publishers. There’s the main thing though; how many publishers will want to sell their games through EA? Do they even plan to bring other publishers along or is this just a store for EA games?
15/06/2011 at 13:14 Tatourmi says:
Leelad: You are making a big, big mistake. Remember Shank? The whole EA partners program? They are quite focused on indies.
15/06/2011 at 17:39 cqdemal says:
@Kadayi
That’s for the UK. I live in Thailand and I can pre-order big upcoming titles likes Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3 and stuff like that through Origin for roughly $27 each, which is the exact same price as new EA releases in retail stores here. The only downside of this regional pricing system is that DLCs (not expansions) retain their global prices, which are the same as US prices in almost all cases – e.g. I bought Mass Effect 2 for $27 but had to pay $31 on top of that to get all the big DLCs.
Other publishers with local distributors here also do this. Ubisoft, for example. Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Splinter Cell: Conviction all launched at $23. Just Cause 2 was $17.
15/06/2011 at 11:24 Lukasz says:
just checked origin, a polish version of that site. prices are from 20% to 50% lower than on steam.
Might be good for eastern europeans…
15/06/2011 at 11:40 Bhazor says:
True dat.
The sales aren’t as good but the starting prices definitely seem to be better on Origin.
15/06/2011 at 14:41 Kadayi says:
All publishers set their own prices on Steam.
15/06/2011 at 14:47 Lukasz says:
That’s irrelevant mate. the only thing which matters is what is the better deal. price is major factor in that.
15/06/2011 at 14:55 Kadayi says:
1) I’m not your mate
2) I’m clarifying a point. Valve don’t set third party pricing.
If it’s cheaper to buy say Assasins Creed brotherhood via retail Vs Steam, that’s all down to Ubi keeping the price high. Nothing to do with Valve.
Sure go where the cheapest deal is, but the issue for people here is the fracturing of online gaming communities over myriad digital platforms.
15/06/2011 at 15:02 Lukasz says:
lol.
again: who sets the prices is irrelevant.
steam is 20-50% more expensive for me than origin. who sets the prices, who is to be blamed that is not an issue here and i really don’t know why are you bringing this up.
fact is that origin is much better monetary deal than steam at the moment (when it comes to ea games of course) for me.
15/06/2011 at 11:24 Brutal Deluxe says:
Challenge everything.
15/06/2011 at 12:54 Dreamhacker says:
You forgot the disconnection sound: “BZZT”
15/06/2011 at 11:24 Carra says:
The fun thing about steam is having all my games in one place. Origin would only give me some EA games (and too expensive looking at their site, just like steam).
But of course they want their own platform. If 20-30% of every sold games earnings go to Valve that’s 20-30% that EA isn’t getting.
15/06/2011 at 11:25 Bankei says:
I seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot to go up against 2 giants with their Battlefield franchise.
On one side, you have Activision that wants nothing more than to see Battlefield 3 crash and burn and on the other side, you have Steam that controls the digital distribution world. I don’t understand why, in this particular scenario, EA wants to go up against 2 giants. Considering that the idea here is to make sure you maximize your game’s audience…
On the bright side, if they are focusing so hard on digital distribution of PC games, I think this is simple proof that PC gaming isn’t dead, its growing!
15/06/2011 at 11:29 Bhazor says:
Worked with Half Life 2.
15/06/2011 at 11:34 MichaelPalin says:
I remember when Ubisoft released UPlay and tried to force everyone using it by releasing various of their top selling franchises right when the service started (Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell). Did it go well? No. Now look at Modern Warfare 2 and how did they screw PC users. Did it go well? Actually, I don’t know, but it wasn’t a disaster either, was it? The thing is that big publishers will keep trying to gain more and more control over us with their big titles. In fact, you can see a trend here, they hype a future release as much as they can and then, close to release, they start speaking about the unpopular features. Remember Spore?
Anyway, time to learn a lesson I guess. And I’m sure Battlefield 3 will still surprise us in the following months.
15/06/2011 at 12:30 FD says:
@Bhazor
The big difference is in terms of other market conditions. When HL2 came out DD was still pretty new and there weren’t a lot of other competitors in the space, it let Valve iron out the kinks in Steam with very few competitors. Origin doesn’t have that luxury, it has to compete with Steam out of the gate and while EA has the properties to leverage into market share for Origin and could easily be successful it isn’t directly comparable to Valve and HL2.
15/06/2011 at 12:48 Bhazor says:
But look at it the other way.
Steam was almost an entirely untested market, launched with frankly outrageous levels of DRM (this was in the old CD key only era) and with an infamously broken platform at launch. It still sold like mad due to being a uber hyped and critically acclaimed man shoot. The may have been few competitors but that also meant there was no market when they arrived. Which is the bigger risk, launching into a crowded market or trying to build a new market from scratch?
15/06/2011 at 11:25 MiniMatt says:
It’s a curious one as competition is not necessarily a bad thing. But competition would be “hey devs, come to us, we charge a smaller cut than Steam” or “look we’ve got better features than Steam”.
This sort of approach isn’t competition, it’s akin to Heinz saying “baked beans are now an Asda exclusive item”. To which several people’s response might be “yeah but Sainsburys is closer to me, more convenient, and their trolleys have less wobbly wheels – so I’ll kinda make do with HP Beans instead thanks”.
15/06/2011 at 12:53 cliffski says:
that may be phase 2. In phase 1, you launch, and get things working reliably. No point in inviting 100 other devs when you still have bugs and reliabiltiy issues.
I cannot imagine anyone in a financial and market position to beat or equal steam, not planning to do so.
If I had the money, I’d be trying :D
15/06/2011 at 13:08 Koozer says:
I would do anything for Heinz spaghetti. Anything.
15/06/2011 at 11:26 Bweahns says:
Hehe, like anyone with a PC wants to play Crysis 2.
As for Battlefield 3, the latest real in game advantage shenanigans are making me rethink purchasing it. I think I’ll be more than happy enough playing Red Orchestra 2 for a few years.
15/06/2011 at 11:26 MichaelPalin says:
News like this is the kind of thing that make me not be sure whether I like EA on Good Old Games or not. Especially since they have such a suspicious EULA on the games they are releasing there.
15/06/2011 at 12:23 Chauvigny says:
Just curious here, what part of EULA are you refering to?
15/06/2011 at 11:27 TheApologist says:
A publisher that wishes to sell less of the product it is publishing is not a very good publisher.
15/06/2011 at 11:27 DevilSShadoW says:
I recently bought BFBC2 from origin. And after the initial install and whatnot, guess what? I don’t need to have origin started in order to play my game. It doesn’t load any additional process or keep anything running in the background. The game just launches nice and clean. Whereas steam wants you to keep it running at all times eve if you play in offline mode. Not saying steam is bad, just that origin is apparently doing something right.
15/06/2011 at 11:29 Dirtyboy says:
I think the article needs to point out that EA is still the official boxed copy retail seller of all Valve games and they are all currently for sale on Origin. Ironically, Darkspore is Steam’s mid-week sale.
15/06/2011 at 11:48 The Hammer says:
Yeah, this is an important aspect to this.
Which makes me wonder if Valve will continue to use EA for publishing, heh. It seems iffy, that EA get royalties for Valve’s boxed sales, while at the same time they’re withdrawing their games from Steam, so that Valve doesn’t get royalties for digital sales.
15/06/2011 at 17:18 ResonanceCascade says:
Naw, I don’t think Valve cares THAT much about it. I’m sure they’d really like to have EA titles on Steam, but they have a good relationship with EA as their retail publisher, and I don’t see why this would affect that.
But Valve is one of those weird and endearing companies who are more worried about their long-term strategy (in this case, community building and making their product as available as possible) than immediate bottom line.
15/06/2011 at 17:49 Dobleclick says:
THAT’S the first thing I thought when reading the article… A good business partnership is mutual. EA withdrawing titles from Steam?
No idea how long Valve is bound by contract to EA for their hard copies, but it is nonsense to think this move has no effect on Valve’s future strategy.
15/06/2011 at 18:57 ResonanceCascade says:
It’s not nonsense. As long as EA’s retail publishing for Valve continues to be good, it’s not going to change. I’d bet money on it.
Valve isn’t going to shoot themselves in the foot just because EA chose to. They have nothing to gain, and EA isn’t going to stop this service over one developer — even a very big one. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve is totally fine with people downloading Valve games over EA’s service.
It’s highly counter-intuitive, but just watch. I promise you it shall be so.
15/06/2011 at 11:29 Angel Dust says:
While I’m a bit miffed about this I guess it’s not wholly unreasonable. I mean, it’s not like you can buy Valve games through any other digital distribution channel. I probably won’t be using this Origin store though, since the prices are higher than Steams for my region.
15/06/2011 at 17:59 theleif says:
This.
I don’t get why we all get so upset when EA does with one game what Valve has done all along with all their titles. Sure, I would vote for Valve in a good-will contest, and I wouldn’t mind if EA didn’t do this, but it’s hardly the end of the world.
And, unfortunately, until Origin only sells EA games, it will have little impact on the pricing on the online market.
15/06/2011 at 11:32 kikito says:
mEAh
15/06/2011 at 11:32 Instant says:
Anyone else read “enema” in the origin URL?
http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/home/
15/06/2011 at 11:36 Bhazor says:
To me it sounds more like “Old McDonalds Has a Farm”.
Old McDonalds has dyslexia
Ee Ay Ee Em Ee Ay
15/06/2011 at 11:35 Rii says:
Did anyone seriously not see this coming from the moment Origin was announced?
15/06/2011 at 11:43 Tomm says:
I think most suspected it, but until it happens you can’t really write an article on it or complain about it.
15/06/2011 at 11:40 Stevostin says:
The Wrong Way To Do It.
You want to counter Steam hegemony ? Fine, that’s a damn good idea.
But countering it by negating the availability of it’s services to users (centralisation of game catalog, steam cloud, social network) ?
Damn bad idea.
There’s only one way to do it, and that’s how Steam gained its hegemony BTW : provide useful services. An EA shops selling EA products could offer improved support features, free extra content with smooth integration, and on the long run deep integration between the games and the online distribution service.
You have to make people choose EA store, not try to force them. You can’t force PC users to anything, considering the piracy. They’ll broke your arm. Speak to their educated nature ( yes, they have one ;-)
15/06/2011 at 11:55 MD says:
I think you’re whitewashing Steam’s history a bit. My initial experience with Steam was of being forced to use it in order to play HL2, and finding it an immense pain in the arse. Individuals’ experiences vary, of course, but I was far from alone, and they certainly didn’t lure me in by creating a service I wanted to use for its own sake.
I think a fairer summary of Valve’s path to digital-distribution dominance would be:
make flawed client -> tie it to one of the most anticipated and critically-hyped games ever -> eventually give those people reasons to stick around.
15/06/2011 at 12:02 Icarus says:
Yeah, I’ll go with this. The early versions of Steam that you had to install for HL2 and Counter-Strike were really not as shiny and good as it is currently, and there was very little reason to use it beyond a download/game manager. The storefront, discounts and social stuff came in later, but they’re the reasons I stick around now.
15/06/2011 at 12:08 LionsPhil says:
And the unfortunate thing for EA is that Battlefield 3 is not Half-Life 2. Even as spineless a crowd as PC gamers are still going to think twice about if they want to play another modern-day multiplayer shooter badly enough to deal with another digital download account.
So Origin has to be at least as good as Steam is now, when it can finally offset the obnoxious DRM with friends and screenshot management and overlays and voice chat and ridiculous sales.
15/06/2011 at 12:09 alh_p says:
I’d echo the comments on early steam and valve introduction of it.
Re EA and the use of carrots vs sticks in sheparding bleating customers around, remember that this is EA. Good gestures do not come easily to a playground bully and EA has often seemed to prefer brute force to any other strategy.
15/06/2011 at 12:14 The Hammer says:
It’s worth noting, though, that Steam was amongst the first of its kind. It’s gone through massive revolutions since its 2003/2004 creation, when it only included Valve games. I think one of the first third-party games was, uh, Ragdoll Kung-Fu, way back in 2005.
Releasing a client like Steam was in its formulative days would not be acceptable at all. Technology and design have rapidly moved on since then, but it’s hardly fair to say Valve had a rockier start – of course they did.
15/06/2011 at 11:40 pingualot says:
This is very strange considering EA publishes all Valve games on PC and console for retail. SO they must have a closer relationship than most yet EA still does this. I bet EA won’t be publishing ep3 if this continues.
15/06/2011 at 11:41 Teddy Leach says:
Oh bloody hell.
15/06/2011 at 11:51 mod the world says:
My first reaction: Yeah, even more competition for fucking Valve that charges me 50€ for Portal 2. Great. But then… then i looked at the €-prices at the EA-store…
15/06/2011 at 11:53 CMaster says:
Wait, when did the relatively unobstrusive EA Store/EA Download Manager become “Origin”? I apparently missed all of this.
15/06/2011 at 11:55 Napalm Sushi says:
How ironic: I was thinking of picking up Crysis 2 eventually, and now I’m not.
Sometimes, monopolies just happen because, in Highlander style, there can be only one. The desire of people to keep all their games in one place and not have multiple download, cloud and social clients running shows why that’s the case here. It also doesn’t help that these other companies now trying to muscle in on the download market are essentially shutting the gate years after the horse has bolted. Whether the current situation is ultimately going to bite us in the ass remains to be seen, but regardless, the only way to seriously challenge Steam right now without screwing over the consumer is to wait for it to fall.
15/06/2011 at 16:37 Tenorek says:
That’s how I feel as well. I have been waiting to get enough disposable income to comfortably buy myself Crysis 2 as a treat, but now, without being able to have it on Steam, it interests me far far less.
15/06/2011 at 11:57 GoldenPants says:
It does appear to have been a reasonably successful PR move at the very least for Origins. Just in the comments here you can hear people trying it, myself included, and finding out it doesn’t seem so bad.
15/06/2011 at 12:03 MD says:
EA publishes The Sims, right? I’ve always wanted to try The Sims 2 or 3, but they’re obscenely expensive in Australia, online and off (as far as I know, although it’s been a long time since I went into a meatspace game shop). If they have an awesome sale on their digital store, I will install it and make an account and buy The Sims. Then, if the client is not too obnoxious, maybe I’ll keep it installed and end up blowing lots of money on some of their other games. If they just sell everything at their usual ridiculous prices, no dice. Your move, EA!
15/06/2011 at 12:15 PoulWrist says:
What’s with the ridiculous prices? Here in Denmark the EA store has always been, and still is, cheaper than steam.
15/06/2011 at 12:27 MD says:
I’m not sure whether this holds for all of their games, but for me the EA store’s regular price on The Sims 3 is the same as Steam’s.
It turns out they are having a sale, but I wouldn’t call it an awesome sale. The Sims 3 is reduced from $80 to $40 (that’s probably in AUD, so $85/$43 USD), and the Sims 2 Double Deluxe is $30, which I think is permanent rather than a sale price. Or I could get The Sims Medieval Special Edition for $90! Hooray! :-[
15/06/2011 at 12:04 Hunam says:
To be fair Crysis 2 is horrible anyway so EA are welcome to it.
15/06/2011 at 12:08 amorpheous says:
GOOD MOVE, EA. MAKING FEWER SALES BY CUTTING A HUGE PORTION OF THE MARKET OUT MAKES PERFECT BUSINESS SENSE! :-)
“Oh, and if you bought Crysis 2 from Steam at an earlier date, fear not – you can still play it.”
Can still play it, but does that mean you can still download it off Steam if you uninstall it?
I personally bought it on D2D and registered it on EADM (what is now known as Origin) when I found out I couldn’t register it on Steam. Also, it wasn’t worth the pre-order. :’(
15/06/2011 at 12:13 PoulWrist says:
How is it cutting a huge part of the market out? People need to get over their steam love and realise that their fanboyism is creating a monopoly, that has given those who sell through it the ability to push extreme prices. 30% more than retail in Denmark, where we have 25% VAT… how does that make sense? EA store has always had lower prices than steam, so fine by me.
15/06/2011 at 15:00 Optimaximal says:
Convenience != Fanboyism. People buy from Steam because it’s easily the class-leading service.
I also buy through GOG.com, not just because of their niche content, but because they can offer an enhanced service via the additional material.
Too me, every other service is just an inconvenience or a download portal, not the ‘service’ that they aspire to/claim (which is just a roundabout way of tying you into a service agreement that prevents resale and absolves them of all liability for little return other than continued access to what you’ve paid for).
15/06/2011 at 16:58 Theory says:
“Can still play it, but does that mean you can still download it off Steam if you uninstall it?”
Yes.
15/06/2011 at 12:09 metalangel says:
The more control they try and grab, the less likely I am to continue with gaming as a hobby. Really. It’s bad enough having to register with them to play on Xbox Live, then enter the long online pass code, then endure the unskippable advertisement for another of their products… I’m already unkeen on EA and BF3 because of these practices, this is yet another tick against ever doing business with them again.
15/06/2011 at 12:13 Velvetmeds says:
It’s not gonna cut sales, people who want the game will buy the game. And screw Steam, i’m sick of that overrated piece of garbage swallowing all the market
15/06/2011 at 12:14 MiniMatt says:
More importantly – what kind of crisps? My guess, cheese & onion pringles.
15/06/2011 at 12:16 Njordsk says:
IF battlefield 3 is origin exclusive, I’ll buy retail.
HEAR ME EA? No way I’m cautioning that kind of greedy move.
15/06/2011 at 12:20 Mordsung says:
Guys, competition is good. I have Steam, Impulse and EA Downloader running in the background of my piece of shit PC and there’s no noticeable effect on my games.
15/06/2011 at 15:04 Optimaximal says:
For me, it’s not about the overhead – my two gaming platforms are decent enough, with enough RAM, for the affect to be negligible.
It’s more about the service & security offered. Valve have made big strides to secure my paid-for content with Steam Guard. Who’s to say EA/Ubisoft/A.N.Other service won’t be the next target of LulSecz and all of a sudden my account details are aired on 4chan?
Whilst the only way to stay safe on the internet these days is to not use it, the next best thing is to reduce your surface of attack.
15/06/2011 at 12:30 crainey92 says:
Surely if they wanted to make more money and cut away at Steams dominance of the market they would just release it on both their platform and Steam since they can always offer a better price than Steam and still make more money, given that Steam takes a cut(I heard it was a small amount compared to Retail, a figure as low as 10%?).
A publisher as large as EA could do this with all their titles and people would eventually come to them instead of Steam since they’ll be offering better prices.
15/06/2011 at 12:36 Holybasil says:
I’m not joining ANOTHER distribution platform.
15/06/2011 at 12:39 FD says:
If Origin stays as a downloader and not an always on client then I don’t have a huge problem with this. Having to shuffle clients each with their own social features however is quite annoying.
I’m also curious to know if Crysis 2 still being on D2D is a mistake or what.
15/06/2011 at 12:40 RDG says:
The Steam love is strong in this one. I don’t agree with this sort of business practices, but as long as Origin allows you to activate retail copies of games and doesn’t actually require the client to run I’m not complaining. My Steam list has gathered 356 games since I joined the platform in May 2004, compared to the staggering amount of games I have in my Origin account (3, of which ME2 I got for free), it should be obvious which has my preference. Yet still, the fact that Steam is on average factor 2 to 2,5 more expensive than retail over in mainland Europe does make my perseverance to stick exclusively to Steam an expensive one.
Before I get out of line:
“Bah EA. I will never buy anything that has your logo on it anymore. Bah.” – That good enough?
15/06/2011 at 12:43 Blackseraph says:
I don’t see what is the point in this. Only thing they succeed in doing with this is losing customers. Is it really worth that just for not paying any % for valve for sold games? I really don’t think so.
15/06/2011 at 12:44 andrewdoull says:
Methinks you’ve read about an EA versus Steam console war somewhere else, Mr Meer…
15/06/2011 at 12:45 Tei says:
My problem with games that don’t have a release on Steam, is that I never know wen are released. I read the “new sales” in Steam like if where a blog or a magazine. There are years that I don’t buy games from Blizzard for this reason. Maybe make and release good games, but I have not seen his games… Out of view, out of mind.
Wen you release your games in a platform that I don’t use, I don’t even know if you are releasing a game. Is about the easiest way for a company to losing my money.
If tomorrow Blizzard make a offert of Starcraft 2 for 30€, I have no way to know about it, since it will not show in Steam.
15/06/2011 at 14:30 phosgene says:
… What?
You don’t read this website that you’re currently posting on?
15/06/2011 at 12:45 Quine says:
It’s like EA are actively courting attention from the Lulz mob at this stage.
It’s on!
15/06/2011 at 15:34 Popish Frenzy says:
waait just a minute.. Oh good lord!
15/06/2011 at 12:46 rebb says:
Hm, so this means they don’t have to pay Valve a certain percentage for a sale, which means the games on origin will be cheaper than on Steam.
Right ?
Right ??
15/06/2011 at 12:46 Horza says:
Thought Origin was a completely new online marketplace. Turns out they’ve just changed the logo for EA store.
Not impressed.
15/06/2011 at 12:47 shoptroll says:
I’m honestly surprised this didn’t happen sooner.
That said, it’s a bit of a “screw you” at Valve. EA was one of the earliest publishers to back the service and I thought Valve has a fairly healthy relationship with EA as their retail distributor. Business will be business, but I can’t imagine this won’t strain things a little between the two companies.
Biggest question though: was the game pulled on Impulse and other services as well?
EDIT: Quick look on Impulse shows both Alice Madness Returns and Crysis 2 alive and well on their service. Et tu Riccitello?
15/06/2011 at 14:14 Alegis says:
EA was rather late to hop on board the Steam train, it’s been only 2 years since they publish on Steam.
Very coincidentally right after Steam enforced regional pricing.
15/06/2011 at 12:48 rocketman71 says:
Look, although I don’t like many things in Steam, Valve has managed to sugarcoat those enough that I’ll jump through their hoops. EA?. Not in their fucking life: a game only released in Origin is a game I’ll never buy.
Also, please stop pissing over Origin’s name. You bastards.
15/06/2011 at 12:50 rocketman71 says:
Oh, and that also goes for Ubi, Acti and practically all the rest. Not giving those bastards a single digit of my CC, ever.
The only other platform I’ll buy games right now from, apart from Steam, is GOG. Impulse was there, too, but they lost me with the sale to Gamestop.
15/06/2011 at 12:49 Howser says:
Oh dear oh dear. This is another fail move. I have brought countless EA products over steam, for the most part they release good games. Unfortunately that’s where the blessings end. Unlike valve they’ve got fat share holders to feed, and ultimately that’s all they care about. Regardless of how the good origins is or how cheap the products are I will not be installing origins or buying any EA titles until they allow me to choose the fender I purchase my games on. I’m all for alternatives to steam; competition is always a good thing, but this is a aggressive move that really shows how greedy EA is for dominance. I for one will be voting with my wallet. Nice one EA.
15/06/2011 at 12:52 Keilnoth says:
I love Steam and will just not buy a game that’s not available on Steam or in retail stores. I am tired of that stupid marketing stuff. Ok, Steam take some money to EA but they offer a service that’s really comfortable for end user. They will loose a lot by doing that and they will certainly not aquire any sympathy.
Those industries I don’t understand. They make everything possible to take their customers away from their products. It’s the same story with DRM, music and apps markets and so on. And then they cry their mummy because they loose money, they accuse the pirates but they pirate their own businesses.
Bah…
15/06/2011 at 12:54 cliffski says:
“I love Steam and will just not buy a game that’s not available on Steam or in retail stores.”
And if valve decide they don’t like a certain game, and don’t stock it, you will thus never buy it, even if it’s a game you’d really like?
So you take the same approach with all things you buy?
15/06/2011 at 13:21 skinlo says:
Yup.
I have the ability to do without or I will go retail or I will obtain it by other methods.
Inb4 I’m the cancer thats killing pc gaming.
Edit- Saying that, if Origin became the new Steam, and it was the best service, I would switch to that. I just don’t want two clients to have to run to play my games.
15/06/2011 at 13:42 Keilnoth says:
It’s not like you buy something and stock it on a shelf. It’s numeric data and I want all my data centralized at one place plus I do not want 2, 3 or 4 different software installed on my computer to run my games.
And Steam is not only about buying games, it’s a social networking tool you add friends into, you collect points, you have reviews, chat, groups, etc… Aren’t you in the RPS group on Steam ?
Btw, if a game is not on Steam and not in retail store then it’s probably not worth any money. Steam sell pretty much every games in the world.
15/06/2011 at 13:01 xcession says:
What all these competing products fail to appreciate is that they’re providing a product to make our lives easier, not their sales better. Steam works. It has its niggles, but it works. In this case the product in question is meant to aggregate a person’s gaming experience so moving to another product would dis-aggregate (un-aggregate?) the games and destroy the experience for BOTH products.
I’m sure EA are pissed that Valve have this massive market share, but it doesn’t really do them any favours to create an underdog in a market where the majority of the consumers AREN’T LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE . It may seem like awesomely important market competition in their shareholder’s eyes, but they product isn’t created for their shareholders.
15/06/2011 at 13:03 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I’ve never been a fan of game company-owned stores like Steam.. but thinking about it, more may be better. Some healthy competition may do us all a world of good.
At least I’m not such a fan of Steam or Valve that I consider it better than Origin without perusing the actual features and content of it. Even though I use Steam now.
15/06/2011 at 14:50 Kadayi says:
It has a friends list
15/06/2011 at 13:06 terry says:
This is silly, but not a big surprise given EA’s favouritism to its own service in the past. IIRC the Sims 3 only recently appeared on Steam, priced absurdly highly with a token x% off deal for the first week or something. Even with the discount it was over what you’d pay on the EA store (as then it was). What I fear is this is the thin end of the wedge and EA will start haranguing people to use Origin like GFWL, first by locking DLC to their service, and then setting up the sort of half-assed “social” features/leaderboards/EA spacebux or what-have-you that Uplay does.
15/06/2011 at 13:08 Acosta says:
In the future there is only WAR, WAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Stupid move, That’s not way of competing, this just pisses off consumers. I hope it explodes in their faces.
15/06/2011 at 13:08 deabreu says:
oh, great. now I won’t be able to keep my complete Mass Effect series tidy in one corner of my virtual shelf.
to the torrrents, I suppose, better than having EA overcharging for their games – in brazil, retail games are R$100 average, though steam the US$50 makes it around R$80, with this regional pricing thing now I’d be paying 20% more for a less trustworthy service.
at least they seem to discount older games, a concept that one’s still got to teach to retailers down here. anyway, I still like better steam, and hate the feeling that.
maybe I’ll torrent it on release and buy once the price drops to something I’d pay on steam on the release date.
15/06/2011 at 13:11 Crescend says:
Well that’s lost sales from me, I’m not buying games from anywhere other than Steam simply for the convenience of it.
15/06/2011 at 13:11 mlstrum says:
Ah come on, Steam is doing (almost) everything right… EA’s known to make tons of mistakes in their previous attemps on the digital download front (download manager everybody?). I bought BF2 on their online distribution service a while ago thinking it would behave as Steam: limited time to download unless I pay more… to be allowed to download just a while longer. App was problematic, always in tray while not giving me any advantages. And requires to be always opened to play. Not even talking about the crappy support the Complete Edition was for installing all expansions and registering everything.
I promised myself never to buy online from them again. And since they are so close to their money and so far from their user base, I doubt they’ll offer a solution that can rival Steam.
This hurts but I’m not willing to encourage EA with BF3 with this move.
Same will be if they go the same way with ME3.
Now I have to fight with the impulsion of acquiring it by other “shadier” means and send cash directly to DiCE to support them.
Marketing is choking gaming.
15/06/2011 at 13:13 Urael says:
Origin: We
buildsell worlds.15/06/2011 at 13:28 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
*Laughs*
*Cries*
15/06/2011 at 13:15 Atic Atac says:
Why is everyone assuming that this is EA trying to stake their claim and not Steam closing off EA games from Steam? Couldn’t this be something similar to when other DD sites closed of Steamworks games from their sites?
15/06/2011 at 13:23 Shwa86 says:
That’s not really logical given Steam’s expansionist mentality (which for the first time in human history has been a positive thing).
You could easily argue their aim is to try make all PC gaming run through Steam. That’s why you can add non-Steam games. Its about centralisation and cutting out one of the largest publishers in the world doesn’t quite fit their business model.
The D2D Steam Works thing is different. They really are a direct competitor. The EA store is just a tiny thorn in Steam’s paw.
15/06/2011 at 17:16 meatshit says:
To add to Shwa86′s point, I have bought several steamworks games off of D2D because of their 20% off coupons. Despite giving Valve no money (steamworks is free to the developer), I have been able to use Steam to download the games, get patches and store my saves in the steam cloud. Valve is more than willing to sacrifice profits to increase the popularity of Steam..
It’s possible this is Valve’s fault, in the the sense that anything is possible, but it would be majorly out of character for them. On the other hand, this fits EA’s MO perfectly.
15/06/2011 at 13:19 Shwa86 says:
…Alice Madness Returns and Crysis 2 are still available via Amazon’s far cheaper game download service. They seem to forget Amazon.
15/06/2011 at 13:43 Anach says:
I simply wont be buying anything If it is only available on Origin. I have no desire to download a massive installer package, install it, then store the installer somewhere, then if I need download it again at a later date, I have to pay for the privilege . I’d rather pirate it first.
I also have no desire to use a different download service for every publisher. I use Steam because its what I want to use. My choice, and IMO, a far superior service. I am really surprised when a game company doesn’t list stuff on Steam, it is as though they don’t wish to sell games.
If BF3 and others aren’t available on Steam, I’ll either wait until it is, or not buy it. That simple.
15/06/2011 at 13:48 PopeJamal says:
This is still only the beginning, another salvo in the long “Digital Distribution War” to come:
-Today, we have EA, leaving Steam for ORIGINS or whatever they call their service.
-UBISoft still has their Uplay website/portal thing, or whatever, but they started this kind of behavior early.
-Blizzard/Activision will be opening BattleNet to Third Party Devs in the not too distant future So the major players will probably be:
-EA (Battlefield)
-Acti-Blizzard (WoW, Starcraft, Call of Duty)
-Steam (Indies and everybody else)
I know alot of people are saying “Yeah, Steam is evil too!”, but honestly, buying all your titles on Steam is really no different/worse than choosing a console and buying your titles exclusively for that machine. It’s just a new concept on the PC.
It would seem that “Platform Independence” is diminishing even on the PC now. Of course, any Mac or Linux gamer has been aware of this for years.
15/06/2011 at 14:04 Tei says:
I bet publishers will be the first to whine about the fragmentation of the market, once really manage to fragment it enough to be a problem.
15/06/2011 at 13:48 vash47 says:
Really dumb idea. They should have just started with BF3, it’s not like Crysis 2 is a very good game.
Anyways, I welcome any competitor to Steam.
15/06/2011 at 14:16 aircool says:
You know, I wish Origin does become a competitor to steam. However, almost 20 years of experience with EA doesn’t leave me much hope.
As an aside, I wonder how EA are going to combat cheating and hax in BF3.
15/06/2011 at 14:38 studenteternal says:
Arghh I am getting tired of this. Yes competition with steam is good, but if you have to buy EA games through Origin then it is not competition. To compete they both have to offer the same goods. This is just a vendor lock deserves nothing but scorn and derision. If they want to compete against Steam, Impulse, D2D, GamersGate, GOG and Steam then I welcome them, but not by making their games exclusive to their store.
15/06/2011 at 13:49 RakeShark says:
I suppose I’m more sad that they’re using the name “Origin” for something other than producing great games.
Kinda like if Sony made a Stanley Kubrick series of 3D televisions.
15/06/2011 at 13:53 sigma83 says:
Why has nobody said what needed to be said yet?
Alec, if you name your kid Ignatius H. I will have to perform corrective surgery on your brain.
15/06/2011 at 13:56 povu says:
The only way they could get RPS folk onto Origin is if they were to put System Shock 2 on there. :P
15/06/2011 at 14:07 deadstoned says:
How dare they Rabble Rabble Rabble Rabble Rabble!
I’ve uncovered their plans: http://i.imgur.com/IVfa2.jpg
If this “Loyalty program”, prices and achievements are any good I’ll give Origin a go. Otherwise I wont buy anything from EA unless its on Steam.
15/06/2011 at 14:17 Atic Atac says:
I don’t know about you guys but Steam kinda swung my opinion about them after they denied Gemini Rue to be sold on their site due to low resolution. All competition is a good thing and lets hope EA do this right.
15/06/2011 at 15:21 Acosta says:
Yeah, I’m sure Gemini Rue will be among the first games you can but through Origin.
Hell, even the name of the service it´s the rotten corpse of a beloved company. The only reason they are calling it that is to avoid losing their rights over it.
15/06/2011 at 14:18 Joe Duck says:
What I find interesting is that for some reason, EA have really gone aggressive this year. With BF3 and SWOR they seem to be trying to take on Activision’s products AND Valve’s distribution at the same time. Seems like a daunting task to me and I cannot get why the hurry. I do not think it is money, as they are going to spend 200 million dollars in marketing… for BF3 alone!
For SWOR, I can only imagine how much it will be.
The explanation that comes to mind first is that maybe sales of Madden and Fifa are declining as fast as Rock Band and they have suddenly realised that the rest of their lineup is second in sales in most genre’s lists. In MMO’s I do not even know if EA has anything relevant. In FPS, they are far from the first. And as those two seem to be the big cash cows of the last years, they may be worried.
Now, all this is pretty obvious. The really, really interesting part is that EA seems to have decided to spend a truck full of money in getting back market share and customer loyalty… in the PC market!
Of all places, instead of trying to sell more console auto aim FPS or finally make an MMO for the console, they have decided to fight for the PC money.
Why?
I have no idea.
Maybe PC gaming money is much more than what we think or maybe they think that it is going to get much bigger in the future. They could also be thinking that the PC market can still be convinced to move away from Steam and WOW, specially if you pour money into the products and sell this “PC saviour” image they are trying to adopt.
As I said, I have no idea.
15/06/2011 at 14:27 cairbre says:
Hmm I was planning on buying BF3 on steam looks like it will be retail for me now. If only I could remember where the game shop was
15/06/2011 at 16:33 skinlo says:
Amazon or Play.com is on the internet, no need for a shop.
15/06/2011 at 14:28 Groove says:
I didn’t forget anything. Steam was far, far better than having to change disk when you wanted to change game, as are other DD services. Then with it’s monopoly it’s also replaced my MSN windows.
The problem with origin is the same as my problem with Impulse, it’s another hungry program to run, or another barrier in the way of loading a game if you keep it unloaded. It’s worth noting that Steam would be the same problem if I was invested in another program.
Essentially I’m happy to run one of them since they give you new releases/sales and chat as well as games, but I don’t gain anything from needing to run two.
Also, GoG should run the internet.
15/06/2011 at 14:33 Jac says:
If people want all their games in one place I don’t see the issue with creating a folder and sticking shortcuts to all your games there.
I wouldn’t care if a game was a steam exclusive so similarly I don’t care if something is an origin exclusive or whatever the store is. If you want a game buy it.
15/06/2011 at 14:35 KillahMate says:
Oh crap. I had Crysis 2 on my wishlist. And now I’m not going to buy it EA you stupid…
15/06/2011 at 15:28 JohnnyMaverik says:
Same here :(
15/06/2011 at 14:47 Boozebeard says:
I love having all my games in one easy to access place, this is why I use steam, even if it’s more expensive then going else where. I have even bought games I already have hard copies of on steam and I know a lot of other people have. I have no intention of splitting my catalogue across 2 services. I even begrudge using GoG even though I very much applaud the principle of the service.
15/06/2011 at 15:15 JohnnyMaverik says:
Fk EA. This is all.
15/06/2011 at 15:18 Ovno says:
Oh they can bugger off they really can….
Last time I bought a (non-indie) game from anywhere other than steam, I wished I hadn’t within 5 mins of buying it.
First you have to download it (omit for retail), then you have to install it, then you have to download the 15 week 1 patches, then you have to install them, then and only then are you actually allowed to play it, until of course they release another patch.
Really as much as I want BF3 I’m not going through all of that for it and even if EA manage to produce a system that does all of that for you, it’l just be another gfwl and I refuse to use it, after all I can still play BF:BC2 if I must have my battlefield fix.
So all in all, cheers EA you’ve managed to seriously dampen my excitement about this game, good plan…
15/06/2011 at 15:35 Alaric says:
Steam and Origin are the same DRM crap. As to vendor locking, umm, what online services other than Steam can I buy Valve games from? Yea, exactly. And the brick and mortar copies of their games require Steam anyway.
So EA is no more evil than Valve. It’s just that Valve had been there first. And make no mistake, one day Steam WILL disappear, and all your games will be lost. If you think Steam is forever, allow me to point at you and laugh. And if you think that Steam will disable the DRM on all of its games and allow you to download them before it dies – I point much pointier and laugh much harder.
Yes, someone once said that they will do that. So? It’s not legally binding, and it costs a lot of money to provide a service like that, so when Valve goes under (like all companies eventually do) they might not even have the money to do this for you. So unless there is an escrow account set up somewhere for this specific purpose… and unless I see this in legally binding writing… you are delusional if you think this is what’s gonna happen.
15/06/2011 at 16:29 Kaira- says:
At least with Origin, you don’t need it to run your games. Or so it seems if I’ve understood correctly, which alone is miles better than Steam.
15/06/2011 at 16:44 Alaric says:
I recall Dragon Age 2 forcing players to login with an EA account in order to play. How is that different from having to login to a service? I’m more concerned about that than about having a tiny program run on my PC. Although the latter is also thoroughly annoying.
15/06/2011 at 16:47 Kaira- says:
@Alaric
I thought connection to EA was required if you wanted to play the DLC? Though I may be wrong, I haven’t played DA2.
15/06/2011 at 16:50 Newblade says:
Steam will disappear. Microsoft will disappear. Nothing lasts forever. What’s your point?
15/06/2011 at 16:55 Acosta says:
What point? I see none.
15/06/2011 at 17:25 Alaric says:
The point is that if you want to own what you paid for, Steam, Origin, et cetera are a) not the best solution, and b) identical. Origin will probably croak before Steam does, but it’s not anymore evil or messed up than Steam is.
15/06/2011 at 15:47 Torgen says:
When I read “EA competing with Steam” the very first thing I thought was:
“and will they shut down access to your games in two years with no warning, like they routinely shut down the servers for their multiplayer games, rendering their multiplayer useless?”
Based on past behavior, I simply cannot trust EA in this matter.
15/06/2011 at 18:37 Blain says:
I agree. EA leverages it’s control of multiplayer servers to force players to buy newer, sometimes inferior versions, and will kill unpopular games even if there is no new version. Now they’ll be able to similarly abuse single player games? No thank you.
15/06/2011 at 16:01 SquareWheel says:
You know where it will be available? The pirate bay.
15/06/2011 at 16:49 Turin Turambar says:
Do you know what games are also available in the Pirate Bay? Valve games.
15/06/2011 at 17:52 SquareWheel says:
Any game, essentially. Because as has been shown, DRM doesn’t do anything.
17/06/2011 at 20:29 HeavyStorm says:
So, once we lose access to our paid for copy of the game, all we have to do is go to Pirate Bay (or isohunt, as I prefer) and download it. Until then, multiplayer service will already be dead anyway.
If game companies weren’t that evil, all old games would have their source code released as open source. This should be some kind of rule.
15/06/2011 at 16:57 PopeJamal says:
People balked when Nintendo said they would allow the third parties to handle their online connectivity. Now we know why:
They’ve (third parties) been planning to splinter themselves off and go for the “captive audience” dollars by creating their own portal/platform/distribution sites. Nintendo is just being smart enough to stay out of their way.
15/06/2011 at 17:06 Squishpoke says:
Alec Meer, I fucking laughed for twelve seconds straight at that blurb in the beginning.
Thank you.
15/06/2011 at 17:18 gwathdring says:
I honestly don’t understand what’s worse about this than games by valve activating only on Steam. I like Steam. Most of my game collection is on steam, followed by retail and a couple from other online stores. But EA is just trying to get a piece of the download pie, without having to give a cut to another company to sell their games through Steam or Gamersgate or whatnot. I don’t like a lot of the decisions EA makes as a company, but you are no less supporting them by buying Battlefield 3 in the first place than by buying it through their digital store.
The exception to all this involves a question; does Origins work like steam, in that it syncs certain files to the cloud and requires Steam running to play the game and so forth? Because EA has a history of cutting support for old games to encourage new purchases, so I would be more cautious if Origins works more like Steam than Direct2Drive.
15/06/2011 at 17:27 hap says:
Firstly, to those saying this adds competition to the market place you are wrong. Competition implies choice – when there is only one place to purchase a product then there is no competition.
EA is going about this the wrong way. Instead of increasing their ‘evil corporation’ status by bullying and pissing off their customers they need to push for an open-standards protocol for direct download gaming services. One app that can list/install/run games from various accounts (Steam, Origin, D2D, G4W, etc) would be very appreciated. Similar to how some software “merges” several instant messaging programs into one.
Only then will we see some true competition.
15/06/2011 at 17:54 Gabbo says:
I’m all for not using Steam for every game I own, so this doesn’t bother me all that much.
I’ve yet to try ‘Origin’ though, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see if it’s as bad as I imagine it is.
15/06/2011 at 17:59 Phil says:
Apologies if this has already been answered, but does Origin allow unlimited downloads of your games? I bought Battlefield 2142 from EA’s previous digital download store (which did not allow re-downloads after a certain – short – period), but can no longer play it as I didn’t back up the download file (yes, my fault) and lost it when my hard drive died. I haven’t bought anything online from them since, and if Origin has the same restrictions I won’t be using it either.
15/06/2011 at 18:00 beefchief says:
I think Valve are a bit guilty on this whole issue for not selling their games on other services like D2D.
15/06/2011 at 18:00 kud13 says:
The Day EA finally decides to give me the Dragon Age DLC I paid for when I bought the Ultimate Edition, I might say somehtign good about their download service.
until then, fuck EA. they don’t even have proper support for one of their best-selling titles.
15/06/2011 at 19:15 propjoe says:
It’ll be back. But I’m not buying it until it is. For me, this isn’t just a matter of signing up for yet another service. I like Valve, and I don’t mind giving them money. I don’t like EA as much as I like Valve.
15/06/2011 at 19:22 Wowza says:
Well, here’s one reason not to use Origin.
http://support.ea.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2085/~/origin-lifetime-download-limit-error-message
15/06/2011 at 20:32 Stellar Duck says:
I just read that it was in fact Valve that pulled the game, not EA.
It’s on IGN, but hey, why not: http://pc.ign.com/articles/117/1176517p1.html
Make of it what you will.
15/06/2011 at 23:07 Undermind_Mike says:
They can’t use “Origin”!
I’m old enough that Origin means
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/wp-content/gallery/cache/976__306x400_originsystemsinclogos.png
15/06/2011 at 23:39 Jake says:
I hope Alice comes to Steam, I want to buy it in a sale eventually.
16/06/2011 at 20:28 daf says:
Considering Origin atm seems to lose all settings and saved login when updating itself something it did twice this week for me I think EA might be acting a bit cocky to think it’s ready to take on steam…