By Alec Meer on July 7th, 2011 at 12:03 pm.
We never got a proper answer about what dark force it was which led to a few EA games – most noisily Crysis 2 – suddenly vanishing from Steam last month. Valve have kept entirely mum about their side of the story, but EA claim it was Valve who wielded the axe, due to a mystery transgression of Steam’s terms and conditions. Of course, all this rather neatly coincided with the launch of Origin, EA’s latest attempt at their own PC game download service (now with extra social stuff).
Everyone was to blame, no-one was to blame, we all picked our villains and passive-aggressively shook our e-fists at them, and then it went quiet again. Now, EA has broken cover to offer a little more – while the full explanation isn’t there, we’ve got some pretty strong hints as to just why a bunch of their big games were unceremoniously booted off Steam.
The full thing’s here, but below are what I reckon are the key paragraphs:
“Any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services for the individuals and communities that play our games. These players are connecting to our servers, so we want to provide them with the very best service. This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers.
“When a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services – it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us. At present, this is the case with only one download service. While EA offers its entire portfolio to this site, they have elected to not post many of our games. We hope to find a mutually agreeable solution to this issue soon.”
Sounds like several possible things going on there. Either EA is stating that it wants to patch its own games rather than have Steam do it automatically (something I’ve seen a few games do in the past – Darkspore, I think?) or/and it wants to be able to prompt players that DLC and similar is available unbound from just Steam’s news and pop-ups.
But then there’s a slightly longer and broadly similar comment from EA bigwig David DeMartini, which includes a few extra tells:
“We also enhance the gaming experience with features like friends lists and in-game chat using the Origin application. Most importantly, we always want to be sure we provide this content and service at the highest possible level of quality. To ensure this, any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players. You are connecting to our servers, and we want to establish on ongoing relationship with you, to continue to give you the best possible gaming experience. This works well for our partnership with Gamestop, Amazon and other online retailers.
Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve. At present, there is only one download service that will not allow this relationship. This is not our choice, and unfortunately it is their customer base that is most impacted by this decision. We are working diligently to find a mutually agreeable solution.”
What I’m reading into/wildly guessing from that is that EA wants to bundle Origin within EA games on Steam, perhaps even making it a mandatory install/registration, to then provide patches and DLC and social networky stuff that way instead of having Valve’s app do it – and maybe that didn’t go down altogether well.
DLC especially would cause fraction – if EA could essentially sell extra content outside of Steam, via Origin, even when the original game purchase did (ha) originate from Steam, then they wouldn’t have to give any cut to Valve for that stuff. Of course, there is precedent for this – see any Steam game with Games For Windows Live in it, Fable III being a good example – but perhaps (again entirely speculating) a change in those T&Cs is behind all this.
Just how much Valve takes from any sale has never been made public, though it’s rumoured to be in the region of 25-30%. I’m quite sure EA would rather not give 25% of its DLC revenues to another company – in the same way people are forever trying to find in-app purchase systems for iPhone games that sidestep the App Store so Apple don’t get their pound of flesh. I’m also quite sure a platform like Steam would really rather hang on to that 25%. Of course, I’m speculating entirely based on limited information, so there’s every chance I’m a million miles away from working out what DeMartini and EA are referring to.
Whether it is anything to do with such guesstimation or really is as simple as EA just want to provide patches, news and whatnot themselves… well, should we be bothered? Is either corner worth fighting here, given it hardly seems a particularly noble crusade from either angle? I don’t personally give a monkey-lung about how my game gets patched or otherwise updated, as long it’s efficient and easy – i.e it sorts itself out rather than has me push seventeen different buttons. If, however, I need multiple logins and/or applications to do so then I get a bit grumpy. It’s like the notorious GTA 4 launch all over again. Unfortunately, just how hasslesome a Steam/Origin double-whammy would be is something of an unknown quantity for now, given the games that would house it are currently barred from Steam.
(Also, this sounds eerily similar to other download services such as Direct2Drive refusing to stock the likes of Modern Warfare 2 due to its Steamworks integration. What goes around…)
So is this a war or not? DeMartini claims not: “To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam.” The only known extremely special circumstance to date is Star Wars: The Old Republic, which will be Origin-exclusive at launch.
There’s a rather telling dig at the end of EA’s official explanation, however: “Going forward, EA will continue to work with download partners and continue offering our games for sale on all major download sites.
The good news is: you’ve got plenty of choices.”
Ooh, get them!
All in all, it’s a bit of a sad situation. Generally speaking EA are actually pretty good to the PC, as the big publishers go, so we’d certainly want their stuff readily available on our download platform of choice. I’m not mad about the idea of being denied access to neat games on Steam because someone there might want them all to tow some line that doesn’t actually bear any relevance to my enjoyment of gaming. I’m also not mad about anyone trying to lure me into yet another mandatory software layer that doesn’t actually bear any relevance to my enjoyment of gaming. There must be a middleground.
In what I miserably suspect will ultimately be just one of many arguments about direct access to precious, precious consumers in an increasingly non-physical age of gaming retail, this appears to a problem of too many pies and too many fingers trying to be in all of them. Hopefully someone will back down (or at least compromise) in this matter, but now that the initial voyeuristic thrill has passed, it doesn’t seem either fun or constructive for this couple (or at least one of ‘em) to make their argument quite so public. Can you not sort this out like gentlemen, gentlemen?
Whatever happens, the costumer still gets buggered. I am not amused.
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You are referring to haberdashers I take it. Rambunctious fellows.
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suits you sir!
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I need to warn all the guys and girls who set up stalls at LARP events, there’s up to 1000 people attending some of those games.
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I could care less about the business reasons behind this. I want a system that works. Steam is a great example of a system that works. I’ve been trying to play Bad Company 2 with friends and EA has not provided good community features in-game (not to mention the pain of unlocking Steam-purchased DLC in the game). As far as I’m concerned, their argument for “our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve” goes out the window when their own services are half-baked and established, functional alternatives exist.
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Good Steam patching, or crappy EA patching. I still have nightmares about Battlefield 2 updates.
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I’m not mad about the idea of being denied access to neat games on Steam because someone there might want them all to tow some line that doesn’t actually bear any relevance to my enjoyment of gaming.
It’s ‘toe the line’. As in ‘measure up to an expected standard, comply with expected behaviour’ rather than ‘tow the line’, which I guess has an implication of supporting someone else’s argument? Like carrying water?
In any case I suspect that both usages are becoming acceptable, not least because spell check doesn’t pick it up as an error. I wonder how much linguistic drift results from that.
tangent over, CARRY ON GENTLEMEN
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I’ve recently noticed that “payed” is becoming disturbingly common, which I assume is helped on by the lack of red squiggles since it’s a valid nautical term.
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@dirtyword
Could or couldn’t care less? David Mitchell’s Soapbox
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Welp, looks like I’ll be avoiding using Origin like the cancer it is. Thanks again, EA, for proving you aren’t our friend, but rather our petty, greedy, gaming overlord.
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How on earth do you come to that conclusion from this article?
From it I can only gather this:
1) Steam doesn’t want Origin bundled.
2) Steam takes a very high cut of all game sales
3) Steam don’t want you to sell your own DLC for games on Steam…even if you provide the download service and the payment system yourself.
It seems to me that it’s Steam that is being the greedy corporate overlord here and not EA. Keep in mind that Origin doesn’t look like it will just a sales platform. I think EA are genuinely trying to do a good product for PC players there with community features etc and a pretty easy to use download system which on the first go around is not as intrusive and terrible as GFWL and takes far less effort and memory than Steam.
Of course EA also want to get more money for their products, but Steam are dangerously close to being a monopoly and when you are a monopoly you just become greedy and arrogant, which is what Steam look like here.
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Which makes it different from Steam how, exactly?
I’m seriously surprised that anyone manages to cling to the illusion that there are any “good guys” in this story.
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When you have 300 games tied to an account, you don’t want to bite the hand that holds them, I’d wager.
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I don’t buy any of that since there are games from other publishers that already do that on Steam – basically every GFWL game. I can’t patch BioShock 2 or purchase Minerva’s Den through Steam. Same with the GFWL Codemasters games like DiRT 2 and F1 2010. Patching/DLC is handled through a third-party app.
OTOH, seeing that you can buy keys for the Fable III DLC, maybe Valve have changed their policy. Seems doubtful, though.
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But did GFWL seriously ever look like a contender? And besides….Steam only blew up in the last 2-3 years and GFWL games were on it pretty early on. Maybe Steam realizes that Origin might just be a contender and with huge games like SWTOR and BF3 coming….I don’t blame them for thinking that way. I just wish everyone would just get along.
But really….when it boils down to it…it kinda looks like Steam are being dicks with monopolizing tendencies.
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As far as good guys, Origin as a platform edges out Steam merely because it allows you to play games without running the client app.
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Yeah, both companies are trying to get all the market share, and that’s it. That’s why Valve games (and now games that use Steamworks) makes the installation of Steam obligatory. You want to install the game, run it, buy dlc? Steam!
Of course EA is not better, and at least Valve have right now a more solid product/service. I am that saying that, in the end, both are companies trying to maximize their profits and attract every possible costumer to them.
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It amazes me that some of you are declaring Steam the villain based on only one side of the story. Valve has remained quiet while EA tries to turn it all around into their own PR stunt.
Now, perhaps I’m wrong and EA isn’t fudging the truth at all (like any PR person would be capable of that), and Valve is being very hypocritical by not allowing EA to do what GFWL has done all these years. Or perhaps there’s just more to the story. Perhaps one of those “other services” that EA referred to was something that would be terribly offensive to Steam’s users. Perhaps it’s nothing nearly so severe.
However, we don’t know either way.
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Maybe Valve should fly some of them out to their office and wine and dine them until they’ll come back and tell us not to worry about it.
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Or perhaps there’s just more to the story. Perhaps one of those “other services” that EA referred to was something that would be terribly offensive to Steam’s users. Perhaps it’s nothing nearly so severe.
When has EA ever been offensive to users? Oh, wait…
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Anyone who tries to claim that Valve is more evil than EA, well, that person’s opinion simply isn’t even worth giving credibility too.
Its pretty simple. Steam has been a loyal, valuable system for pc gamers since 2004. They have regular, extremely deep discounts on every title available on their service. EA has been screwing us for a decade, they rarely discount their titles deeply. Valve regularly updates their games with free content. They turn their games free to play because they’re successful, ala TF2, not because they fail, ala all EA’s MMOs, Battleforge, etc.
Not much else needs be said here: Valve is there for their customers, EA is there to fuck their customers. There is literally no debate possible about this fact. It is as indisputable as the Sun.
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I’ll be avoiding Origin due to the memories it dredges up over how a foul gaming overlord (EA, in this case) bought out and utterly cannibalised one of my all time favourite PC games developers. They brandish that name there like a badge of twisted corporate pride, almost saying “Hey, remember what we did?”, and yeah, I remember EA. I certainly remember.
If they’d named it something else then I would have considered it, but Origin? That’s just pouring salt into the wound.
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“2) Steam takes a very high cut of all game sales”
No, the article says pretty much the opposite. The publisher getting 70-75% of the price is a fantastic deal when compared to physical-media retail, where their share is inverted at best. Tihe article contained speculation that it was because valve possibly were requiring DLC for steam-bought games to also be bought on steam.
Personally, since I’m not touching EA’s download service with a barge-pole, I think giving up the lion’s share of the game purchase price (because I’ll buy the game retail) in exchange for possibly getting a couple more quid out of people who buy DLC, if they buy DLC, is a bit silly.
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“3) Steam don’t want you to sell your own DLC for games on Steam…even if you provide the download service and the payment system yourself.”
There are plenty of games already available via Steam that already do this though. All the Bioware DLC for Mass Effect & Dragon age you buy and download directly from Bioware and all the DLC for GFWL. None of those things utilize Steams distribution platform.
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>Steam has been a loyal, valuable system for pc gamers since 2004. They have regular, extremely deep discounts on every title available on their service.
Hate to be the one to break this to you, paco, but retailers don’t set discounts out of sugary kindness to their customers. They do it to tap in to the large, fresh market of juicy consumers who don’t value it at the original tangy price point.
I’ve made myself thirsty, anyone for orange juice?
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Hate to break it to ya bagga, but its irrelevant.
What is relevant is that Valve has produced significantly cheaper products, consistently high value customer service, and high quality games, which it has offered at exceedingly reasonable prices and EA has given us one shit sandwich after another. No matter how you cut it, there’s zero reason to use Origin over Steam. That’s the point, not your fallacious strawmanning of my position.
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I’ve got to agree with Wulf here, I was sour on this thing the instant they decided to name it ‘Origin’. It’s in extremely poor taste. Origin Systems was making incredible games right up until they were acquired by EA, it’s sad to think how much richer my gaming life would be if they hadn’t been turned into a mill for shitty Ultima Online expansions.
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Firstly, declaration of interests: I have something in the region of 150+ games on Steam. Not because Steam is hugely better than the alternatives (although its pretty good), but because they were the first one I used and it is now entirely about convenience.
Yes, I’ll pay a few quid more if I can have something on Steam rather than a different download platform or via retail. I’d compare it to physical products – I want all my games on one shelf, I can’t be bothered to walk into the other room to get my games that sit on the other shelf.
Secondly, my point: I think Valve need to take the (admittedly) bold, game-changing step of running steam as not-for-profit.
I’ll give you a moment to think about that. But now, before mocking me, please read my justification:
It sounds far fetched I know but: 25%…really? 25% of every sale made on steam? I’m pretty sure Valve games are pretty self-sufficient in terms of generating enough cash to fund the next game, so unless they have a Duck Tales-esque money pit, this is money that is pure profit and not really needed.
Unlike EA, they’re a private company and so they’re not responsible to a giant group of shareholders who would never ever ever ever allow a company to ‘throw money away’ like that.
Obviously running the Steam infrastructure is far from free, but one suspects that they would generate enough money to run it on perhaps 4 or 5% of sale price. In theory, that saving could be passed on to gamers, which perhaps may encourage others to participate in what is a pretty expensive form of entertainment, thereby driving up overall revenues (this is my carrot so the money grabbing bastards like EA don’t just keep that extra for themselves).
But to relate it back to this post: If Steam was effectively a neutral platform then other companies wouldn’t feel the need to constantly make their own platforms as they wouldn’t be ‘giving money to the competition’.
While that would be bad news for other digital distribution platforms (and for people that hate steam) it would make Steam the go to place for digital distribution thereby hugely increasing the user base, this in turn would mean that every publisher etc would want to be represented on Steam for fear that it would majorly harm their sales potential not to be.
This would give Valve an unprecedented degree of power over those companies (admittedly this would be very worrying if abused) but it would also allow them to enforce such sensible policies as worldwide release dates and globally consistent pricing. They could act as the ultimate consumer advocate.
Ideally the industry would gradually shift away from the publisher led method it operates on now but instead developers would sell direct through steam and basically earn all the money they make in sales (rather than giving significant portions to 3rd parties). This could then be put toward making their next game. Obviously this would make you only as good as your last game, but with no giant publisher breathing down your neck maybe you’d put the required effort in.
Publishers would then become supporters of start ups and AAA games; Start ups because they have no capital to make their first game – but this would be inherently low risk as you wouldn’t throw around huge amounts of cash at this stage; AAA games because they require huge marketing budgets.
Obviously running Steam as not for profit would be one of the ultimate acts of altruism but honestly, if anyone is capable of it, I’d suggest Valve come pretty close to the top of that list.
And a man can dream. A man can dream…
If not, I demand a go in the valve money pit.
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oh btw. just saying.. whos paying the 30% platform fee from steam? the customers are.
At present retail distributors are still limiting digital sale prices, but they are dropping in the future. More competition = more competition for prices. breaking the Steam -almost-monopoly- is just a good thing. Even though everyone loves steam, they are taking way much more money than they’d deserve for a digital distribution.
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I am not saying they probably don’t get their cut for it, but just because there isn’t a physical product, it doesn’t mean it’s free. There’s a lot of infrastructure involved, so I couldn’t even estimate how much it takes a month to keep it running. However Valve offers Steamworks completely free, which include the voice-chat, VAC, auto-updating, in game DLC and Steamcloud.
Oh, and one thing I do know, on EA games, usually the developers see about 15-30% of the revenue, awesome isn’t it?
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Surely any GFWL game with DLC would have the same problem as the DLC is purchased via the in game store.
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They seem to have sorted that with Fable III for example though – you get a redeem code off Steam to put into the GFWL store. So presumably Microsoft/Lionhead are happy to let Valve take their cut there (possibly because the game automatically directs you to the GFWL marketplace if you follow the “buy DLC” links from there ….).
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Well I’ve made my choice and it certainly isn’t origin. For the sake of neatness and keeping my purchases as straightforward as possible without having to remember a ridiculous ammount of log-in details I’m sticking with steam. I simply can’t belive anybody would do otherwise.
Steam, I’ll hold your coat.
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my guess it is the patches more than the DLC.
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“I simply can’t belive anybody would do otherwise.”
You ‘simply can’t believe’ that some folks would prefer to purchase the best product at the best price rather than enslave themselves to the vagaries of any given distribution platform? Really?
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Agreed, Rii. While the majority of my digital purchases are through Steam, I buy games from whomever has good sales and an interface that is not utterly baffling (ie., I haven’t purchased anything through GFWL, because I hate that they don’t have prices available on their website; although I’m okay with good games, like Batman, that include it).
I’ve got accounts and games with GOG, Direct 2 Drive, Gamersgate, and EADM (which I suppose means Origin now, haven’t checked it out).
D2D stand particularly out, as sometimes they have pretty spectacular sales — their five dollar, five year anniversary sale two years ago meant I got around a dozen high-quality AAA games for the cost of a single new game. They have pretty good pre-order discounts, too. And better yet, D2D has no login required. Other than the website, of course, but so does RPS for that matter. I can launch any D2D game from a shortcut on my desktop, which is what I do for Steam games as well, and is the game-organizing method I’ve used since Windows 95 was released.
So, no login to launch D2D, GOG, Gamersgate, or EADM games, “save login info” button checked in Steam, cookies saved for the D2D, GOG, Gamersgate, Steam, etc. websites saved in my browser means … well, no having to “remember a ridiculous ammount of log-in details”. And I having a broader outlook on game services means I get more sales and save more money.
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You make your choices about whats important to you. For me personally I could be bothered installing additional games platforms beyond steam, but then I am quite happy to wait for pretty much any game to be discounted before buying it.
The thing in that post that has me laughing though is the patches comment, I don’t know about anyone else but I hate patches, steam manages them for me perfectly and I love it for that. I don’t regard having to go to your website, download a program, run it on my PC and sit around while it runs as “building a relationship” with you, it’s an annoying, error prone, waste of my time. At present I have 225 games on steam, when I change my PC I install one application and they are all ready again, every single one of them that is installed is patched up to date and working. If it even took me 5 minutes per game, once a month to do that manually thats almost 20 hours a month I would need to spend keeping things up to date. That is not valuable relationship building, its a waste of my life.
Now maybe I could have gotten the games a little cheaper if I had shopped around, the steam calculater values my account at just under $3000 right now, I suspect I certainly averaged a 50% discount on anything I bought so lets even say I spent $2000 over the 5 years I am using steam, thats $400 a year. Now how much would I save if I had bought those games elsewhere? I suspect it would be hard to go above 10% of that since pretty much everything I buy is already heavily discounted when I buy it. So for about $40 a year, I get my games available on all my PCs, I never need to patch a game, all my games are transferred to a new PC automatically for me, every game I have bought in that time is still installable, still works on any PC I get and I haven’t lost it. Prior to steam most games I have bought are lost, broken or unsupported, not to mention that I got free mac versions of about 20% of those games.
Now I can imagine someone who doesn’t think all that stuff is worth the premium you pay for it, but for myself the idea of going back to doing all that crap by hand is just repulsive.
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Please EA ditch the whole origin thing before it goes too far, I do not want a publisher specific download platform, and I especially don’t want a publisher specific patching and friends platform.
It didn’t work for gfwl and it won’t work for you, because a) you will do it badly and b) nobody wants it.
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Origin is a drop-in replacement for EAs download manager.
You never have to start it up beyond downloading and installing the game.
It is nothing like GFWL, what don’t you guys understand?
Do you even try the services before critisizing?
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Nope, it’s a simple case of I don’t want it…
That and my expectations based on past results, i.e. the ea download manager…
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What about the download manager? It downloads the game and then goes away. What is so evil about it?
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Its not Steam – only Steam is good, so EADM/Origin, logically, must be evil.
Seriously, people get really religious and irrational about the whole thing. Congratulations to Valve marketing.
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How does it keep your games up-to-date with patches and such if it just goes away after you download the game? I am confused…
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Yes, because long term that’s what EA wants – just a small app once in a while. They have no interest whatsoever in bringing up BIG MENUS FULL OF GAMES YOU SHOULD BUY THAT MAYBE YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT, WOT, RIGHT? Purely altruistic on their part, I’m sure. They already mention wanting you to set up a separate friends list – because that’s what I need, another place I need to put in all my friends so I can reach them.
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EADM(now Origin) is even more of a piece of bloatware than it could be, it could just be dumped and EA could just use Steam and I could just have less shit on my computer, but EA doesn’t give a single fuck about me, or you for that matter.
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@mouton
“Seriously, people get really religious and irrational about the whole thing. Congratulations to Valve marketing.”
You’ve stumbled on an interesting point here – people definitely get religious and irrational in their love of Steam, but marketing is clearly not the answer. I’ve never seen Steam “advertised” or “marketed” anywhere. Portal 2 ads were everywhere, buses and billboards, etc. But you know where all that massive unthinking love for Steam came from?
…
Using Steam.
Seriously.
There were no “marketing” campaigns that talked people into it. They love it because they actually love it.
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Running Red Faction Guerilla was a pain. You needed to be signed into GfWL in order to save your game. NOBODY liked that. Then there’s the Ubi DRM, we all know how that fared. It sounds as though EA are wanting to do something equally annoying.
It’s shit like this that stops me buying a PC copy and waiting for a nice cheap second hand console version. Sure, consoles may be walled gardens, but at least they don’t make it a pain for the consumer when you just want to play a game.
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I don’t really get the hatred towards GfWL. Sure you need to be signed in, but you can simply create an offline local account, unless you want to play online, which requires user credentials with any game nowadays. I haven’t really found it bothersome, yet.
….Yet.
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Just wait till you want to use your savegames after reinstalling your system. You can’t. GFWL is an abomination and needs to die.
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@alseT
That’s just not true. If you copy your save data over manually you can use your saves on any computer. This goes for most any game ever.
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My favorite thing about GfWL was how it never added anything of use or value to my experience, always popped up obtrusively when I started a game with it, and when I did want to play an online game with it, it would demand an update that it could never download itself (instead offering a useless error message), thus forcing me to go download a new version manually.
Plus all the fun of having to have an account I rarely used and couldn’t always remember the details of, instead having to navigate an annoying and clunky interface to regain passwords/make new accounts.
Although I could get over the above problems, what really aggravates me about it is the complete uselessness of it. I can’t think of one way it has actually done anything good for me. Even the multiplayer services it offered were functional, but not particularly smooth or nice.
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@ArtVandelay
Nope. Happened to me with both Batman and RFG. I used an offline account both times and I couldn’t see the saves at all.
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@Art: You’re incorrect. GfWL includes the functionality of encrypting your savegame files, which means they cannot be migrated. I don’t think all GfWL titles do this, but Batman: Arkham Asylum does. I experienced this firsthand, as I lost my entire Batman savegame directory when migrating to a new computer; GfWL would not allow old saves to be used because they were tied to the old installation of GfWL.
Compare that to Steam, which not only allows saves to be migrated but actually enables your entire Steam games directory to be seamlessly moved without any registry futzing.
This is only one of the many problems with GfWL, of course.
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GFWL offline accounts work fine, right up to the point where you try to use a game that demands you have an online account. Then suddenly you’re having to migrate over to it, and everything’s a mess.
I think Bulletstorm was the one that required it for me, even though I’ve never played anything except the single player campaign.
It’s also really “fun”, when I’m trying to test out mods and such for Red Faction Guerrilla (and therefore restarting a lot), to have to wait several seconds (sometimes as many as 30) for it to finally log me in to GFWL so I can actually load my savegames.
Thanks for nothing, GFWL.
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Heh. I spent a month or so with RF:G totally unplayable as I spent time trying to get it to actually reach the main menu after starting. Finally, the only way I got it to work was xliveless. That’s right, the only way I could play the game was the digital equivalent of excising a tumor with a scalpel.
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RDG: GFWL on FlatOut was a complete disaster. While you could create an account in-game, that was apparantly not good enough to play multiplayer. And then, after the hassle of quitting the game and making a GFWL account, that was not good enough either. Apparantly you need an XBox Live account as well? WTF?
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@alseT says: Just wait till you want to use your savegames after reinstalling your system. You can’t.
Actually, you can! Backup this folder (for Windows 7)
c: – Users – %username% – AppData – Local – Microsoft – XLive
I can’t use backslash here because of tags :(
And put it in the same directory after reinstalling your system. Then use the same offline/online login and password. Of course, in addition you need to backup savegame folders for each game.
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Next, Activision will want their own download service too.
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You can already buy Starcraft 2 that way from them. I’m sure they have a proper DD in the works. It makes sense, as what publisher wants to give an unnecessary slice of their pie away?
We can only hope that someone manages to invent a skin that can sit on top od all these services, almalgamating the friends lists, achievements, etc, and we can pick our store of choice like the way web browsers allow us to choose which search box we have in our Navigation Toolbar.
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That’s actually a really good idea, having an aggregator that incorporates all big services. Even nicer would be for GfWL to GTFO since it’s pretty much useless and who knows when it will be able to match Steam. Origin might be at Steam level in 2 years, but with this monetary trend all big players will want their own download service.
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Yes very good idea. I nominate you, jezcentral, to make this happen. And…. Go!
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It’s already known that activision will start using Battle.net to sell their games in the next couple of years.
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There are certain aggregators out there in some sense (they’re not entirely aggregators, but they can be convinced to behave as such). The trouble is I’ve never found one that’s (a) full-featured, (b) not a system hog and (c) actually stable.
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Yup, the idea of an application that unifies all the DD services is floating for a while now. Hopefully someone competent will make it one day.
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I still want to know where Space Marine went. And why Brink vanished for so long and came back without an explanation.
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Isn’t that due to UK retail refusing to stock Steamworks games or something?
Both those games have always been available on Steam outside of the UK.
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Brink was available in retail shops on launch in the UK, just not on steam, which after the reviews put me off buying it until last week when it was on sale in GAME for about £13. I was able to install it through steam fine even though at that point it wasnt listed in the store.
Oh and EA downloader was the biggest pile of S*** i’ve had to encounter, worse than GFWL imho, and i’ve had plenty of problems with GFWL so I have no interest in Origin at the moment.
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Many games require GFWL even if you buy the Steam version. Some of those games have DLC for sale which you can by through either GFWL or Steam. My guess is that the GFWL client bundled with games doesn’t include the GFWL Marketplace, so it doesn’t fall astray of Steam’s terms of service, whereas from the sound of it Origin will include a store.
Sounds very similar to D2D’s boycott of CoD:MW2 due to Steamworks being bundled with the Steam store. Although Steam has nothing in the world to fear from Origin, they’ve got to flex their muscles to avoid a new precedent being made. Or so I speculate.
Blah, acronyms aplenty.
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Making TOR Origin exclusive seems like a smart move. I haven’t bothered installing Origin so far, not out of anger towards EA or loyalty towards Steam, but simply because of convenience. But if TOR requires Origin, I’m bound to get it. And who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Or maybe not.
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Well, its the same move Valve made with their games, but still lots of Steam aficionados scream bloody murder.
Origin is okay, it is nothing special, it works. Installs and goes away, no problems.
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@mouton – Sounds good, that’s just what I look for in my digital download platforms. If it has good offers, I will probably buy some games on it.
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“In what I miserably suspect will ultimately be just one of many arguments about direct access to precious, precious consumers in an increasingly non-physical age of gaming retail, this appears to a problem of too many pies and too many fingers trying to be in all of them”
The awkward thing is I’ve been able to buy Steam titles via Gamersgate and Direct2Drive for just over a year now. I can’t buy a non-Steam title on Steam though, so it looks to me like it’s less a case of too many fingers in the pie and more the case of a certain platform spitting out it’s dummy.
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uh, whut?
A staggeringly high proportion of the games sold on steam don’t have steamworks
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The point being I can go to Gamersgate, D2D et al and buy a game that only works via Steam, and here we have Steam refusing to do the same from their own store. Sounds a bit petty to me.
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There wasn’t any mention of Steamworks there. You can’t buy games on Steam that work without Steam, whereas you can buy games on some other download services that you can then choose to register with Steam instead.
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It’s mostly:
1) Valve’s own games.
2) The F2P games that have been fully integrated with Steam.
3) A handful of other smaller publishers who really like Valve and would rather partner with them for the Steamworks features because they like those features.
Which includes a lot of the most prominent games on Steam, but only a small number of the total. Not all games on Steam even have achievements, and some of those that do only use Steamworks for the Cheevos. Steamworks is basically 100% optional for devs.
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Which has zero relevance.
The principal here is that the other major download stores are happy to sell games which require the use of a competitor’s service. Steam apparently isn’t. The fact those games utilise Steamworks and have to use Steam is irrelevant – the same applies to Origin (which I note said other digital stores are also happy to sell).
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I’m not sure I follow.
- There are games sold via Steam
- There are steamworks games that make sue of additional features and are fully integrated with Steam regardless of where you buy them.
Either of those doesn’t prevent the game being sold outside of Steam Steam, that’s a developer / publisher choice. About the only real games I can think of that are sold as DD exclusive to Steam as standard are Valve games.
I won’t find Half-Life 2 on Gamersgate. Will I find Sins of a Solar Empire on there? Or anywhere other than in physical stores, and the Impulse store?
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Here’s the problem, I don’t want a “relationship” with EA, we’re not going to get married and have kids, what I actually want to do is play their games with the least amount of intrusion possible.
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Nonsense! I want a social network with its own login that tweets me and everyone I know every time I successfully crouch down or pass a QTE for every game, and mini game I play and to inform me of new products every two seconds.
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Then again, Origin would seem to be just a download manager, not a client akin to Steam. Which is a good thing, if you ask me.
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It is merely a rebranded EADM at the moment, however I don’t see any reason for EA to not change that into a tied in Steam-esque DRM client. They already added the Origin overlay with a social networking aspect. Sooner or later they will realise people aren’t talking to each other through Origin because it isn’t mandatory, which is when it will become a requirement.
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People talking to each other is probably not a main concern, it only costs them money. Linking in to your twitter/facebook and other ways of attracting new customers on the other hand …
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Agreed. It’s not just game publishers either – I’m quite tired of every company in the world trying to be my friend and offer me ‘rewards’ and nonsense. Here’s a crazy deal, guys: You give me stuff, I give you money, and then we both fuck off and leave each other alone.
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Damn you EA, why isn’t the original American McGee’s Alice on Steam/GOG yet (is it even still available on Origin)? : [
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I don’t get this. All the DLC for Bioware/EA games are bought directly from Bioware (or at least can be) so, Shirley, this can’t be about circumventing DLC sales revenues etc: it’s already happening.
My guess is that this is more about some kind of embedded chat/matchmaking/social whatsit platform like the steam overlay or the cross-game chat in battle.net. I Just hope it gets sorted. I really really really don’t want another separate launch platform running in the background and competing for resources.
Plus one unified source is *neat* and this appeals to my inner nutjob.
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Well, I think the DRM-exclusivity thing is probably a bigger thing than that. Steam still sells Mass Effect and Dragon Age because they would be mad not to take Mass Effect and Dragon Age’s money, but you can bet they’re not happy about not also getting a cut of the DLC. (And it at least gets a cut of DA:O’s DLC when it sells the Ultimate Edition.)
For something like Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, I think Steam’s more confident about throwing its weight around.
Of course, EA can just say “list Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 on our terms or you can’t have Mass Effect 3″, but that would be a terrible PR move when they’re trying to build goodwill for their own platform.
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I think what EA wants is to raise a lot of noise around their platform to advertise it, which would be a very basic move. After that, obviously, they want Steam’s market share.
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The problem with digital distribution is that it’s unfriendly to competition by its own nature. If I have $3000 worth of games on Steam then I’m going to be extremely reluctant to use another platform, simply because I already have Steam open to play most of my games and managing multiple programs (especially if we’re talking about three or more) just to launch a game is a major hassle.
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Why? Steam is thus far the only one that requires you have it running when you want to play a game that uses it. In fact, since Steam shortcuts automatically launch Steam, it’s pretty easy to just use the shortcuts, like I would for any other game.
And it’s still a damn sight quicker than having to dig the actual disk out, like we did in the olden days.
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Never mind digging the actual disk out, launching S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl (with Stalker Complete 2009) from Steam is way quicker than using the retail copy. I have both as I bought the retail one a long time ago & then got it on Steam when it was on sale with Call of Pripyat for about £2.50 for both last Christmas. Even with the disc already in the drive my Steam copy launches & I can load my save before the disc has even spun up for reading.
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Isn’t the patch excuse utter nonsense? If an indie game on steam (AI War) can offer lots of optional beta patches, using it’s own updater then why can’t other games do this?
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To stop the fragmentation of your user experience, EA has decided to fragment your user experience
David DeMartini, EA.
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And all i wanted was frags.
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Quite.
Also, to hell with games that patch outside of Steam. You just stopped yourself patching automatically whenever Steam is running, concurrently with others. (Especially since Steam default-pauses all other patching if you launch that game to “play”, read, sit at its patch screen. I’m looking at you, Champions Online.)
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To be fair though Steam aren’t exactly prompt when it comes to patching. I’ve had a fair few games where a patch has been released and taken between three and four weeks to finally arrive in Steam. So I can see why you’d want to bypass that, particularly if the multiplayer was the primary component.
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“for providing patches, updates, additional content”
The man is at the top of the company because he knows how to make you feel he’s providing three thing that are actually the one same thing that is already there on Steam. Or at least he doesn’t blink when he tries.
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Honestly, he could just qualify it with a “…also, it means we keep all the profits” and we’d probably be ok with that. Not like it, by any means, but if that’s how you have to get your TOR, Battlefield or Mass Effect 3 fix, then we’ll probably deal.
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He also wants a direct line to you so he can notify you of exciting new opportunities.
Which is to say, EA want tendrils into you deep enough to pump you for marketing information and spam you with the results.
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Some of the comments on this page lead me to believe that some people here haven’t even tried origin but still think that they are in a good position to say how bad it is.
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I have to use it because of Crysis 2 and thank God I don’t have to run it with the game. It’s not horrible, still, I don’t want tons of additional software so I can play my games. One is enough. Of course, there’s money to be made from direct downloads and services so it won’t stop EA.
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Did they add Origin requirement to Crysis 2 later on? Because I got the game in a retail box when it came out and I didn’t have to touch any EA login or system (Origin wasn’t even announced then). There was that really annoying GameSpy login / CryTek login for multiplayer, but I think that’s more CryTek’s doing than EA’s.
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Fair play to EA here. They’re well within their rights to do this, and it could work out better for the consumer this way. Valve have Steam as their exclusive digital retailer… you can’t get Valve games from any other places, like D2D or Gamersgate. Valve games are exclusive to Steam only… they are tied in to Steam. Now, I remember when HL2 and Steam first appeared. It was a nightmare… downloading patches on dial up as soon as I start it up. Not being able to play my game, because it’s started patching. Shitty offline mode locking me out of games I had paid for. It was all pretty horrible in the end… but after they forced it upon us, locked us all into it, got us using it and then started improving it, it hasn’t worked out too bad. Steam is pretty painless to use now… far from perfect, and still objectionable to some people. But not too bad.
Maybe the same will happen to Origin. I see a little criticism here… that it’s like UBI DRM or GFWL or a turd in your cornflakes… It’s a download manager. It’s not like Steam, where you run your games through it. You don’t need Origin running while you play the game… just for downloading installing, and (I would reckon) for patching as well. It’s like the GoG downloader. But with Facebook and Twitter buttons. Probably.
What gets me though, is the timing… or rather, the time it has taken. Steam isn’t new. It’s been around for at least 7 years. And it hasn’t suddenly started to explode and take off… it’s been quite popular, and talked about, for many years. So, why did EA wait so long before coming up with their own Digital Download and Social system, or promoting it heavily (if they had one already), getting people signed up to it, with a few exclusive games? Maybe if they’d done that about 5 years ago, we’d have had some competition, they’d have had their fight, and both Steam and Origin would be better systems now.
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Yeah, as much as I like Steam and dislike the idea of being forced into another service this is a clearly an anti-competitive move on Valve/Steam’s part. This is the sort of thing the internet is usually up in arms about when it’s less well liked companies doing it, but I guess that just shows (unsurprisingly) that many people aren’t as objective as they often claim.
Lets put it this way: If Valve are worried that Origin might be competition for the DD market then they should ensure they stay ahead by providing the best services and prices. And since they are doing that already by a large margin this uncompetitive behavior is unwarranted.
But at the end of the day Steam is far from perfect (they’re customer service is somewhat lacking for instance), so even if you plan to stay with Steam some competition to keep them on the ball can only be a good thing in the long-run.
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Unaco you seem to have missed the whole parts of his quotes where he basically says “Origin will offer the same services as Steam”. Just because all it does right now is act as a downloader doesn’t mean EA aren’t ready to basically clone Steam.
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As a consumer I have a lot of sympathy with EA here because I don’t like the way Steam walls off games and makes the Steam DLC incompatible with non-Steam base games and non-Steam DLC incompatible with Steam base games. Seems like a nasty little anti-competition trap to me. Just last night for instance I was feeling a little peeved because I couldn’t get The Sims: World Adventures in the Steam sale because my copy of The Sims 3 is in Origin. I want to see cross-compatible DLC and it seems like Valve are against that and EA are for it. I can see the business reasons on either side but it seems like my self-interest is currently aligned with EA rather than Valve.
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How can anyone have “a lot of sympathy” for EA is beyond me.
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Maybe reading his comment would help you puzzle that riddle out, mate.
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Does anyone have Guild Wars on steam ?
I have the original game (before it came on steam) and it does self update and there’s an in-game DLC shop…
Also Mass Effect games have DLC purchased on the Bioware website (Bioware is part of EA BTW)…
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Except, Mr EA, it really does look like your decision to start being difficult and knowingly force their hand.
The fact is, Steam is already solidly entrenched, and it is worth pointing out that this advantage was not necessarily gained from being the first, but from being the best. Steam works very well and is as close to hassle free as PC gaming gets.
Surely it can’t be that cost effective to try and entirely replicate the infrastructure. I am tempted to say that Valve should work out special rates with EA and other big publishers to appease them, but then I fear the indie will suffer for that, and the indie have done so very well out of Steam so far.
I have no answers. I only know that at the end of the day, it’s us missing out in these petty games.
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…and another username and password to remember, which will no doubt get hacked and result in notPayPal asking me for personal details.
MS should have got a grip on digital distribution before Steam became everyone’s choice (whether we wanted it or not, it’s now the easiest place to see what friends are playing, and join in).
Can we be arsed with yet another social/gaming/DLC/whatever they’re called services? Does anyone actually use GFWL to organise games? Does anyone actually update GFWL except when a new game DEMANDS it?
As for EA, there previous attempt at digital distribution was a toilet. You couldn’t even get Sim City 4 (which was available to buy from a retails website for a fiver inc next day delivery).
However, EA has comitted a terrible crime that I cannot forgive… Where was the SSX series for the PC eh? EH?
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From a purely selfish perspective, I wish all games were available on Steam.
I already have a personal investment in the service, I find it functional and aesthetically pleasing. I don’t want to have more than one DD service running on my PC, I want that one to be Steam.
That said, I completely understand and respect that other publishers really like the look of the pie that Valve are eating and want a piece for themselves. They’re all businesses and would be stupid to ignore what Valve are doing and not trying to muscle in. It’s just not beneficial to me, and that pisses me off.
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Concerning the DLC: I think it’s more of an exclusivity thing than anything else. Valve doesn’t mind if you can buy DLC anywere else, as long as it is also available on Steam. Bad Company 2: Vietnam, for instance, is just a key that unlocks DLC, and as such can be bought on other sites as well. I bought mine through a ridiculously cheap EA sale.
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I don’t care where I buy games. I buy from Steam, D2D and Gamersgate. If I have to buy from Origin, I’ll do that. For me the only two factors that matter are product and price. I could care less about any loyalty to Valve, Steam or EA.
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Well, all in all they Steam just doesn’t want to implement something special for some games NOT BEING AUTOMATICALLY UPDATED which probably can lead to tedious tech troubleshooting (with such thing as “verify app intergrity”) and weakens the overall service to steam users by splitting social network. Which makes sense – basically, Origin features doesn’t provide anything more than Steam and allow every EA user to be on a network with less friend. If you think about it it’s obvious that the social networking tool is best in the thing that most gamers have in common. Windows or Steam are good contender (depending where you want your limits), EA OTOH certainly isn’t. A social network of people playing EA Games ? Seriously ?
OTOH this is a typical windows situation : lack of competition is bad for end user, but lack of standardisation also is. So while we can bitch about Steam lacking competitors and holding us bu the nuts, it’s also true nobody’s very enclined to have to run several competitor at once.
UNLESS
Someone come up with a sort of Trillian of gaming. One social network to rule them all ?
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CANT WAIT TO USE THE ORIGIN FRIENDS SYSTEM INSIDE THE STEAM FRIENDS SYSTEM
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Sounds like someone wants an Xbox.
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When I read the paragraphs, I thought they were refferring to the steam patches having to be validated first et all. With ARMA, a lot of players had problems because retail players had already updated their games whilst others were waiting for the steam update to arrive. Imagine this happening with Battlefield 3.
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There’s an easy solution for that: don’t ship your games broken.
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Exactly, shoddy publishers like Valve that are still releasing patches for TF2 years after release should be punished…
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So, will every publisher begin to get their own download service now? That’d be balls.
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Steam has a ton of flaws and is just as “evil” as the rest of the digital distribution platforms. They take big cuts, have DRM and the service lacks important features like selecting which drive you want to install the game to. The download speeds are limited and the service crashes under heavy load.
However, I’m already using Steam and I have a ~200 game library there. I have bought some retail games again from Steam if I couldn’t activate them there, just so I can trash the disks and forget about manual patching etc.
If some publisher doesn’t launch the game in Steam, I’m not going to move to their service. I’m just going to be slightly mad for them trying to “force” players to their own platform (just like Steamworks games do) and keep playing the games that are available on Steam, after all, they got a pretty huge selection, including tons of indie titles.
If a DD service can compete with Steam’s game catalog, features and download speeds, I might consider to start using it. That means I want one login for every single game in the service. I want constant 5+mb/s download speeds, I want moderated forums for each title and I want to be able to have a new game in my library within 10 seconds from the decision to buy it. Unless that happens, I’ll stay with Steam and ignore anything that’s not available there.
It’s not that Steam would be the best thing ever, but I just don’t want to split my games to multiple services unless there’s an extremely valid reason for it.
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It is all so ambigious! I just bought The Sims 3 pack on steam on a 72% reduction. Why would EA offer such a deal if they plan to pull it all away? I have 70 games on steam, so i’m not switching partners, but if i want more sims expansions, are EA just going to let those sales fly? I think not! FEAR does the work of reason and fear will prevail once those sales starts to drop.
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Also, why do people think 20 to 30% is a bit cut? As far as I know, non-digital stores take 70%-ish. That’s a major difference.
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that cut goes to your competitor.
steam should be disconnected from valve. a publisher and developer owning biggest shop is not a good thing.
thankfully valve is not ax crazy so so far it turned out alright.
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In my opinion, the comparison with GFWL is a bad one. All the GWFL games (afaik) are also console games. During the development process I suspect that sperating GFWL from the PC version of the game would be pretty much impossible. I don’t mind GFWL but yes, it was a pain to start with, now it’s no longer an issue.
I want all my games via Steam. And I think we will definitely see BF3 and (in time) TOR on Steam. It’s in EAs best interest to diversify the way the games are distributed. In Bad Company 2, there is a friends feature and seperate log in to EA, yet no one complains at that, I think that Origin is just taking this concept and moving it off into it’s own app. Which is a better way, you’ll still get the Steam overlay.
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I doubt that it’s actually that hard considering how many games programmed in XNA wind up using steam as their overlay.
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That picture is racially abusive! That black man is about to be beat on by his white oppressor/slave master, How dare you post such blasphemy Lord Alec! I shall sue your ass and your balls.!
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Actually that white boy is about to get his ass handed to him.
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Steam are coming off as the greedy corporate bigwig here in my view.
But in reading this, I can’t see a perfect end-user solution unless EA fold completely. That being said though, it seems to me, that either side will be stubborn, and not budge an inch on this, so both have made their beds, and are going through with this.
But why wouldn’t they? EA have already made much of the groundwork needed, and while yes, it’s ANOTHER download service we’re going to have to deal with, it’s kind of on the level of Facebook vs Google Plus [Facebook akin to Steam here]. Who here DOES NOT/WILL NOT play an EA game?
In honesty, I wouldn’t mind dealing with Origin, provided it’s a nice, simple interface
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Didn’t I buy DLC for ME2 not through steam but through bioware site?
Anyhow
Origin seems better for one simple reason: it does not require client to play your games.
actually
gamersgate
d2d
are also better in that regards.
the ONLY benefit steam has over those services is that it is huge and everyone uses it. all that nifty features like friends, screenshot folders, list of games… all of that was available to us years before HL2 was released.
I love steam, its sales and since i learned how to use it, how easy it is now… i do remember the greenhell of installation when HL2 was released. yet i don’t like how big it is. a single shop having such a massive market share is not a good thing even if it is valve.
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We also enhance the gaming experience
and this is where I stopped reading. Which is too bad, since I’m pretty sure the article is very interesting, but there’s something about this phrase (and similar ones) that makes it physically impossible for me to continue reading. My brain just shuts itself down and refuses to process any information that might be connected to it.
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Know EXACTLY what you’re saying…
The game IS the gaming experience – to ‘enhance’ it you make the game bigger and better.
Friend lists, lobbies, in-game overlays are peripheral tat (or worse – they’re just to keep tabs on you) – they aren’t “enhancing” anything for the player (tho their benefits to the publisher are undeniable).
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You can’t “bundle” Origin inside Steam – that’s a crazy idea – ditto allowing games to install their own overlays inside Steam’s overlay – it would become utterly unmanageable.
It’s dead simple – things like Friend Lists and other ‘in game overlay’ content should be provided according to the PLAYER – that is the CUSTOMER’s – wishes – based on where they buy their games.
If I want my friends on Steam when I’m playing a game – I’ll buy and play it in Steam.
If I wanted same from Origin then by all means give me that…
Let the customer decide here – stop trying to manhandle people for your own greasy and suspicious ends eh? We’re paying for a game – not buying into your cult-creation mania.
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Ideally, what I would like to see come out of this is that Steam backs off of its policy that Steam needs to run all the time.
Then, you run Steam when you need games updated. Then you can close it. When you run a Steam game, you get a Steam overlay with your Steam friends list.
Then, open up chat between the main services that have friends lists already. Steam, GFWL, Origin, whatever. Open up the chat APIs, and then allow linking of usernames through OpenID or something. Now you can talk to friends cross service.
If you then need an overlay on a game that isn’t Steamworks or Origin, run Evolve or XFire or something (which now would link into the above mentioned unified chat). Or check a box somewhere that tells the Steam overlay to fire up over a non-steam game like it does now.
Looking back at this, my thoughts are “Yeah, right.” But seriously, I wish they would do something for the consumers for a change.
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Basically what you’re asking for is a checkbox on the Interface tab of the Steam settings dialog which says “Run Steam automatically when my computer starts” which you can toggle off so it doesn’t automatically launch when you log in to your Windows profile?
Err wait doesn’t that already exist? Oh yeah it does & has since 2004.
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If Origin allows me to pick the installation directory for games I want to install, I may be seriously tempted.
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EADM has always allowed that – I’ve not installed anything since it had “ORIGIN” painted over it’s title area but I don’t see why they’d stop it???
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I don’t want a relationship with EA. EA is ugly and abusive.
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Valve is wrong on this one and hope they change their policy.
Just like other online retailers sell games with steamworks they should sell games with other services. If I want the game the fact that isn’t on Steam doesn’t stop me from buying it.
It’s sad to read that people do so, this is the sort of thing that leads to monopoly’s.
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Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve>
I have used Origin and frankly, especially in comparison to Steam, it does not give me the experience I deserve. Unless this is what EA thinks I deserve, in which case I bid them good day.
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I think hating EA is just a reflex now, for me anyway. Naming the platform “Origin” when they were the bastards who murdered Ultima is just an extra kick in the balls. EA can go fuck themselves.
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That was my reaction as well. I mean, really, what unforgivable dicks they are.
They buy one of my favourite developers, gut them, ruin them completely, destroy the Utlima brand, turn it into a web game, and then use the Origin brand for a download service. Fuck you, EA. This is just taking the wound they caused and pouring a metric fuck-tonne of salt into it. Oh, and probably cackling and moustache-twirling in the process, just because.
If they’d named it something else then I might have considered it, but the Lords of Ultima insult is still fresh in my mind as an instance of them taking a once glorious IP and whoring it, whoring it for whatever small amount of worth it has left. And now they’re doing that with the name of the developer, too.
Anyone who takes any amount of pride as an older PC gamer, and someone who played the Origin titles, should feel at least a little bit indignant about this. It forces every recollection I have of EA doing this to great PC developers to the surface, and they’ve done it to so many. I mean, what’s next EA… ? Are you going to disband Mythic so that you can create a social networking service called such? I really wouldn’t put it past EA.
And therein lies my problem with this service. It just feels so completely cold, heartless, soulless, and entirely unempathic, and if I’m going to put this service to use, I’ll just be used in the same cold way they used the Origin IP. At least Valve puts on a friendly face, they’re nice like that, and they show some amount of respect for people. This, on the other hand, is horrible.
I want no part of it.
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I see a lot of hate about big corps, some blaming one, other the others.
I never enjoyed GFWL and am always glad when a company removes them from their game. It just adds layers and layers of account, security, friend systems and other uselesness so we get drawn towards one system through another.
I don’t mind those who like GFWL more, neither do I mind those joining Origin over Steam.
But I’m a Steam guy, I want to use Steamworks with my Steam friends. I don’t want to be bothered with other systems INSIDE the one I’m currently using.
Also for the sake of arguments; EA is stockholder based while Valve is privately owned. EA has legal responsabilities towards their stockholders and are required by law to increase profitability. Valve on the other hand can do whatever Gabe thinks good. That would be a bad thing if he were egoïstical and megalomaniac… but the way I see and feel it; no services offer the games, the support, the community and the prices for my PC gaming needs like Steam does. If that doesn’t talk about commitment to their users I don’t know what is.
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I’m sticking with steam on this one. I haven’t liked the previous EA download services. I also hate how EA handles its DLC, especially with Bioware games, they were pretty awkward. That is, of course, if were deemed lucky enough to be even given the option to buy DLC for our late console ports.
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I am with Steam on this.
EA, no doubts, will close any server that don’t produce a profit. And patch servers don’t produce this profit. But it produce profit for Steam. I know wen I install a game on Steam that I will get all the patches, but I don’t trust EA to do the same. EA may even discontinue games that hare older than 5 years. And I know Steam will not do that.
Do I want to depend on a EA server, 10 years down the road?
June 23, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
SimSocial on Facebook
Previously Shut Down Online Service
Arena Football™ for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Arena Football™: Road to Glory for PlayStation 2
Armies of Exigo™ for PC
Army of Two™ for PlayStation 3 (Asia only)
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat™ for Xbox
Burnout™ Revenge for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Burnout™ Dominator for PlayStation Portable
Burnout™ 3: Takedown ™ for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Def Jam® for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
EA SPORTS™ Fantasy Football 09 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
EA SPORTS™ FIFA Manager 10 for PC
EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 2 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 3 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox
Facebreaker™ for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
FIFA Soccer 2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
FIFA 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
FIFA 07 for PC, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360
FIFA 08 for PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC
FIFA 09 for PC, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
FIFA 09 Ultimate Team for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
FIFA Street 3 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
The Godfather™ The Game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent™ for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ for PC
The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ II for PC and Xbox 360
The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ II, The Rise of the Witch-king™ for PC and Xbox 360
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
MVP Baseball™ 2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
MVP™ 07 NCAA® Baseball for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Madden NFL 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Madden NFL 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Madden NFL 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Madden NFL 08 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360
Madden NFL 09 for PlayStation Portable (all regions), PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Xbox
Madden 10 for PlayStation Portable (all regions), PlayStation 2 and Wii
Marvel Nemesis™: Rise of the Imperfects™ for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Medal of Honor Pacific Assault™ for PC
Medal of Honor™ Rising Sun for PlayStation 2
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ for PC
NASCAR® 05: Chase for the Cup™ for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NASCAR® 06: Total Team Control for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NASCAR® 07 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox and Xbox 360
NASCAR® 08 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NASCAR® 09 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (Europe Only)
NBA LIVE 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NBA LIVE 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NBA LIVE 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NBA LIVE 08 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation PortableandWii
NBA LIVE 09 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
NBA Street (2007) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NBA Street V3 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® Basketball 08 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NCAA® Basketball 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NCAA® Football 05 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
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NCAA® Football 08 forPlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
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NCAA® Football 10 for PlayStation 2
NCAA® March Madness 06 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® March Madness™ 2005 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® March Madness® 07 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360
Need for Speed™ Carbon for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted for PlayStation Portable and Xbox
Need for Speed™ ProStreet for PC and PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed™ Underground for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed™ Underground 2 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NFL Head Coach 09 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NFL STREET 2: Unleashed for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NFL STREET 3 for PlayStation 2
NFL Tour for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NHL® 2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NHL® 06 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NHL® 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NHL® 08 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and PC
NHL® 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
The Simpsons™ Game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
The Sims Carnival
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 08 for PC, PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 09 for PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
TimeSplitters 3: Future Perfect™ for Xbox and PlayStation 2
Total Club Manager 06 for PlayStation 2
UEFA Champions League™ 2004-2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
UEFA Champions League™ 2006-2007 for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable
UEFA Champions League™ 07 for PC and Xbox 360
UEFA EURO 2008™ for PC PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
2006 FIFA World Cup™ for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
2010 FIFA World Cup™ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (only Hospitality upload functionality retired)
2010 FIFA World Cup™ for PlayStation Portable and Wii
2010 FIFA World Cup™ Demo for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
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Are EA’s PR employees comment-bombing this blog as well? Awesome.
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It’s probably worth noting that Bioshock 2 has DLC which can only be accessed, bought and downloaded through GFWL, there is no steam version at all of said DLC.
So yeah, I’d not jump to the conclusion that EA are lying, but there seems to be a lot of spin going on.
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Lets just work through this with a simple bit of logic.
Due to a change of terms some EA games have been removed. No one else’s. This means that EA is planing to do something that is not already done in games with GFWL or who sell DLC out side of steam or patch the game.
What that is has to the crux of this whole debate and picking a “side” at this point is stupid. The simple facts are EA are clearly looking to challenge steam in a way other DD services currently don’t so that implies that they are going to use a lot of the same practices as steam. If that’s the cases it’s not amazing to think that some of there plans conflict with something in steams terms as valve is, shockingly, a company trying to make money and it’s not surprising both sides are going to be doing things that are mutually exclusive.
Valve has been a very very aggressive player in the DD market but they’ve almost always looked to do things that benefit both them and there users. Like steamworks being a free system to use, it provides devs with a huge number of working tools that they would have other wise had to make or buy for free… valve didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts but because it would get every one who buys a game that uses it using steam. It’s simply a win win for every one. That we might see the claws coming out to deal with EA then wouldn’t be shocking.
That said I have to feel that this has a lot more to do with EA than it does with valve. Valve keeping quite is not a surprise, they are a privet company and do not have to worry about public image effect stock. Yet EA statements on the matter are a little… nebulas… they say that valve is trying to stop them doing something but they don’t say what and cover it by talking about stuff that other services other steam games use do as well. This seems like wonderful bit of PR as it implies valve are being the bad guys by stopping EA doing what other are doing because of Origin. Implying that valve are afraid and acting underhand to stop EA. When at it’s base it maybe that it’s a perfectly reasonable things for both EA to want to do and for Valve to not want happening with in steam.
In other words EA has been working very hard to spin this from the get go with out actually providing details. So I’m going to wait until either valve speaks or we get those detials before deciding who if any one is the in wrong.
Summed up I feel that it’s a case of EA doing something that makes sense for them and Valve doing something that makes sense for them and while valve would be happy to leave it at that EA is trying to make a splash and so they’ve started to put spin on it.
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“What I’m reading into/wildly guessing from that is that EA wants to bundle Origin within EA games on Steam, perhaps even making it a mandatory install/registration, to then provide patches and DLC and social networky stuff that way instead of having Valve’s app do it – and maybe that didn’t go down altogether well.”
You can get GFWL games on steam, which does exatly that so thats not the reason, the bit that makes me wonder is this
“Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve.”
So since GFWL works already on steam, and stuff like autolog and steam will provide them with some info about players what excatly are they trying to get from us? What info isn’t available to them that they want?
basically this to me sounds like one of two things
1. They have backed away from steam and are trying to blame someone else so the customers arn’t annoyed at them.
2. They are trying to get some stupidly detailed personal information that valve have turned around and gone “no you don’t need that and never will”. This I am guessing fromt he “not allowed to contact the customer” because other thigns already let you do that so some info has to be shared.
Basically EA are bigging a deeper hole by trying to dig out of it.
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I look forward to the day when I can have 5 or 6 overlays running on top of my active game:
Shift+Tab = Steam
Home key = GFWL
Shift+Home = Origin
Shift+Tab+Backspace = Developer’s content overlay
Shift+Tab+Backspace+Spacebar = Third Party developer that was hired to design multiplayer’s overlay
Shift+Tab+Backspace+Spacebar+Tilde = Walmart’s Price Rollback overlay (retail version)
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I find the obsessive compulsiveness of the PC gaming community pretty laughable. Seriously….I have 350 games on Steam myself. However I don’t have to have everything on Steam and I don’t have the mentality of not buying something if it isn’t on Steam. That is just crazy being so dependent on a platform that has only been really good for 3 years or so.
Case in point. There’s a fantastic game out there called Gemini Rue. They tried to get into Steam but were denied due to their game being “low resolution”. As a consequence they lose customers because the Steam fanboys who are potential customers for the product just ignore it. Well done Steam…and well done you obsessive compulsive idiots becoming dependent on a platform.
Don’t get me wrong …I love Valve…I love Steam as well. But that doesn’t mean I have to have everything there. I see no one complaining over Starcraft II and Wow not being there?
In any case I hope that this will just get patched up and they will live together in harmony. Neither company is thinking about the actual users by bickering like this.
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I think it’s also fallacious to mix up “I don’t want to use Origin.” with “I will remain solely with Steam.”
Just sayin’. You know? Just sayin’.
Personally I buy from D2D, Gamer’s Gate, Steam, GoG.com, direct from the developer (when I can), and retail. LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was D2D only, so I gladly picked it up from there.
I just disagree with how they’ve whored the Origin IP on a personal level. I want nothing to do with that.
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That was fun.
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That was fun.
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Uh, oops.
(Looks like the spambot was virtually eating my posts, that time. They didn’t show up until after about ten refreshes of the page.)
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The other services part is clearly the key. I bet they just want to do popup ads like steam does, and steam doesn’t want to be bombarded with popup ads. That was probably the sticking point.
Also, there’s no way major publishers won’t start their own DD service. They don’t have to run them well to get players to buy their games, they only have to make the games exclusive and prevent it from crashing too often. They get more profits in return.
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What do you mean by pop up ads?
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Publisher specific distribution/community systems are bad mkay!
Origin will never be a serious competition to Steam. All it will be is a thorn in every gamers’ side for having to go through more hoops and having split communities.
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All this social gaming crap. I want my games to focus on gaming and i do my socializing with other software. All these featurebloated services archive is beeing ignored because of redundancy. And bind resources.
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Btw, the Origin is not that bad at all, I bought Shift 2 some time ago for 10 bucks and game even received free DLC. (!) And you don’t have to run the program in background.
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I really would need to hear Valve’s side of this before I could make a judgement. I have no strong feeling either way but I’m more inclined to think EA is pulling PR here. Valve has a proven history of treating their consumers well AND caring about gaming (indie titles everywhere). EA….not as much. That said, I know both are big corporations fighting over my moneys so who knows.
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Steam should never have been this one overgrown maggot of a gameshub that it is. It’s too much of a monopoly for my tastes.
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I guess you live in a different space-time continuum to the rest of us where GoG, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, Impulse et al don’t exist & you can’t buy games via retail channels any more either.
Sucks to be you. I for one welcome your new VALVe overlords.
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Honestly I don’t give a damn which platform is bundled with the game. I have a gamersgate, impulse and direct2drive account as well as Steam. When I see a game/sale I like, I create an account and make a purchase. If EA thinks their platform fits well with their game, then whatever. In any case for full price purchases (new games), I buy from retail. I like the box and the manual, despite publishers’ best efforts to skimp on it. It’s physical. Tangible. And actually a lot cheaper retail where I’m from (new games are approximately 25 USD converted)
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Did no one at RPS read this?
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35703/EAs_DeMartini_Its_Never_Been_About_Facing_Off_With_Steam.php
David DeMartini, who now heads EA’s Origin platform, sought to clarify the publisher’s position in a new blog post today, and he tells Gamasutra: “On how we operate with all of our partners, both retail and digital distributors… we will make our content available to everybody. Of course they have a choice as to whether or not they carry that content.”
The “800 pound gorilla in the room,” he tells us, is Valve and its Steam service. When Crysis 2 — which originally sported a misleading “only on Origin” tag on EA’s new storefront — was recently removed from Steam, many presumed it was because of discord between EA and Valve over their respective online platforms.
“Obviously when a big publisher comes up with their own application and launches a site where you can buy games directly, people immediately jump to the conclusion that means they’re going to exclude everyone else,” DeMartini says.
But that’s not what’s going on here, he insists. “Crysis was taken down because the DLC was not available through Steam; it was available through [Direct2Drive]. That would, I guess, be a situation where two partners didn’t see eye to eye, and by their choice, they were going to take that product down because they were insisting that the DLC be available through Steam.”
Seems to be a different story. As many here have pointed out, Steam allows games with GFWL and Bioware store selling the DLC. It is that there would be no way for Crysis 2 customers to get the DLC if they owned it on Steam that appears to make the difference.
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I’m not a huge fan of Steam although I do purchase tons of games from them through their cheap sales (although almost every game I buy new comes from other services), and I certainly don’t support EA’s apparent stance in this situation, however one line in the article stood out to me:
as long it’s efficient and easy
That was in regards to patching. The problem there is Steam patching IS NOT EFFICIENT. Sure, it works great for games who are only present on Steam since that is the only way to get patches. However, any game which releases patches for retail copies or through other (except Impulse and some D2D games) distribution methods there is a delay in getting that patch on Steam. And you can’t use a non-Steam patch on a Steam game due to Steam’s DRM. In most cases, the time difference isn’t all that noticable, a day or two max or maybe a weekend. In some games that time can be a week or more and in a few it never actually happens and the game on steam in a unpatched state.
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As previously stated, there is no good side in this conflict. And while there may be winners in the end, they won’t be the consumers.
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I Origin has a ‘Do not under any circumstances start updating my game’ then I’m sold.
And before anyone says ‘But Steam has that’ first go and try it….. it does not work/is buggerd. That option is simply there to mock us poor internet cap people with a 2GB cap per month, which upon Steam decides to force us to download a 2.5GB DOW2 patch :/
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These can’t be the only reasons, lots of games do this….Two that I have are Star Trek Online (though I haven’t played it in a year) and Test Drive Unlimited 2. Both have dedicated launchers that update the game themselves before you play, so patches come directly from the publisher. Both have DLC purchases available from third parties.
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I propose an interface, some sort of API for games/download services. That way, consumers would be completely independent of company-created download software, and could e.g. use an own or open-source program – one to download them all. Of course this would be the best choice for consumers, and of course this is entirely utopical, because the companies want to make money; more money than they could with an open service.
As it stands though, I have more trust in Valve than I have in EA.
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I just won’t buy it if it’s not on steam. Hopefully they will figure out this is a lost sale and play by the same rules as everyone else. Sure, these rules are set by Valve for their own benefit, but they seem to benefit me as well.
Largely I trust Valve & Steam, because they’ve done nothing but good things for me since 2004 and seem to continually give me more than I feel I’ve payed for in the form of support and free content for their products for a ridiculous length of time.
EA on the other hand was Activision levels of evil back in the day, before sort of turning around a bit. They still aren’t among my favorite publishers. It sounds to me like they are just going back to their evil old ways.
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I replied with this up above, but I think it may deserve its own comment:
Ideally, what I would like to see come out of this is that Steam backs off of its policy that Steam needs to run all the time.
Then, you run Steam when you need games updated. Then you can close it. When you run a Steam game, you get a Steam overlay with your Steam friends list.
Then, open up chat between the main services that have friends lists already. Steam, GFWL, Origin, whatever. Open up the chat APIs, and then allow linking of usernames through OpenID or something. Now you can talk to friends cross service.
If you then need an overlay on a game that isn’t Steamworks or Origin, run Evolve or XFire or something (which now would link into the above mentioned unified chat). Or check a box somewhere that tells the Steam overlay to fire up over a non-steam game like it does now.
Looking back at this, my thoughts are “Yeah, right.” But seriously, I wish they would do something for the consumers for a change. Thoughts, guys?
Edit: See also: Wang Tang’s comment at the end of the previous page.
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Yeah, I’d like to see this. I think that if they opened up Steamworks so it could be extended with other plug-in services (for audio, chat, whatever), it would be a much better platform for publishers/developers and consumers.
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This doesn’t really tell us anything, except that the lady does protest a great deal, suggesting this and that, but still not actually saying what this is really about. Which is interesting and it makes you wonder. Also, EA staff are appearantly under law to use the words “service” and “relationship” at every opportunity now, and I thought that was amusing.
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EA seem to be making a big fuss about how they want to offer services to their customers… but hey look, a straw poll:
Does anyone actually want to use an EA social gubbins? More than they’d like to use Steam?
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The strangest thing about all this is, Gabe loves EA, or he did. He previously said he would quite have liked EA to approach them for a takeover.
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My book of romantic comedy tropes says that the second act must introduce a laregely arbitrary conflict (typically arising from an unfortunate misunderstanding) that threatens the foundation of the whole relationship. Valve booting EA out of the house when it said something offensive is probably it.
The good news is that this will all be resolved when EA shows up at the dock as Gabe’s boat is leaving, and dashes along a pier shouting at the crew to stop, before being crash-tackled by the police just as Gabe looks down from the deck and smiles despite himself.
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“we all picked our villains”
Whose villain wasn’t EA? I mean, they’ve been less evil lately (or so I hear, as one who never buys FIFA or Madden or whatever it is EA produces), but everyone holds up Valve as a saint.
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“If, however, I need multiple logins and/or applications to do so then I get a bit grumpy…I’m also not mad about anyone trying to lure me into yet another mandatory software layer that doesn’t actually bear any relevance to my enjoyment of gaming.”
Let them have their extra layer, for all I care. Dealing with Ubisoft and GFWL through Steam (for AC2 and Batman, respectively) hasn’t been half bad, and I’m interested in seeing where they go with it.
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People who try to sell me things I want to buy are evil, even if they do provide excellent service. People who try to sell their own merchandise rather than paying someone else to sell it for them are just plain wrong. People who attempt to get a slice of someone else’s delicious cake by offering to deal with all that rubbish salesy stuff are well boring. Communist, capitalist bastards.
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I’m sure they consider their own reasons valid, just as I consider my reasons to just stick with Steam and skipping C2 and SW:TOR valid (what with C2 being pretty middling, and SW:TOR shaping up to be passed by GW2 in all important respects).
Still, some serious competition will maybe result in even juicier Steam sales. Just not sure Origin is up to the challenge.
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I find it disturbing how these EA people come out with words that twist and deflect the truth to make them look like victims. The way they put their statement together, it sounded like they were politicians, lawyers or professional liars.
Do you know what I think really happened? EA sells their games on all digital distribution outlets. None of them will have automatic updates. EA will ask you to register the codes of those games on Origin to download an Origin enabled version which has software updates and exclusive DLC. There will now be two versions of a game on your PC. The dead on arrival Steam copy and the Origin copy which has all the features and updates.
Excuse Valve for not wanting to sell us trojan horse on Steam. Excuse them for not wanting to sell us an unsupported version of a game. They must have forgotten that Steam is more than just a download application. EA has a lot of experience with those.
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I stopped reading when I noticed these two things:
“I find it disturbing how these EA people come out with words that twist and deflect the truth to make them look like victims.”
“Do you know what I think really happened?”
You accuse other half of lying because you THINK that something else happened. Good going there.
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EA wants to stop giving one of their competitors a 30% cut of their sales, can anyone reasonably blame them? You’re going to see more and more of this sort of thing from the big publishers, Steam is a material threat to all of them. Ultimately, a little diversification in the market is a good thing anyway, this business of people pretending Steam is the only digital distribution outlet is just dangerous for the industry as a whole.
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Just sounds like EA don’t want Valve raking in tons of cash that they could potentially be raking in themselves so they make a contender to Steam to sell their own games and then find some way of breaking the contract, but making it look like Valve’s fault, so they can get out of whatever contract they signed up to sell Crysis 2 on Steam early and thus raise awareness of their own ‘Origin’ system by making Crysis 2 a big thing on Origin that you can’t get on Steam and also try and rake in even more cash from the sales.
It also fits in with EA wanting to open physical EA stores, they have one or two planned in the US at airports to sell EA Sports games. I guess they want to handle all aspects of the game selling process including the physical/digital stores.
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I think it’s frustrating that a steam addon doesn’t work with my retail version and vice versa.
This deal won’t get this fixed :(
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My understanding is that Valve want patches for games on Steam in advance, to make certain they don’t clash with the Steam UI or cause any issues to Steam users. Sounds to me like EA abused this section of the terms of service in order to get the games booted from Steam, forcing users to go elsewhere for the games, and using the ensuing shitstorm as a handly little marketting tool for Origin.
A rather underhanded way of boosting Origins market share straight out of the gate.
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in absolutely no relation to this story: $10 says the brotha whoops whitie’s ass!
another $10 says that immediately following that the other four white dudes in the ring jump him ….
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Hmmm…. I don’t foresee this ending nicely for some reason. I just hope BF3 is available on Steam even if its not the limited edition. I figured Origin would just sell the limited edition and also provide beta access if you pre-order through that service while Steam would just get the regular version on release day….
Hopefully they will compromise and come to an agreement, especially one that doesn’t make me run something else alongside Steam…
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Just installed Origin; it just works, I’m downloading Alice atm. And so it seems I can close it when I finish..don’t get why so much bitching around this.
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steam addiction is an ugly thing.
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Steam don’t work, Origin don’t work, but work better then Steam do. Steam force me to install Steam, to then force me to have it running basically 24/7. Origin force me to install it, but I do NOT need to keep it running, for now at least. But both of these fail horrible. If you want Steam, it should be nothing but a chat service, not something that is forced upon you to play your game, and forced you to keep the game running. Both Valve, EA, and Microsoft, should look at Blizzard, GamersGate, GoG, D2D, or whatnot. They don’t force you to install anything extra, and it works so very very good. I got 240 games on Steam, but I still hate it like the pest, also I live in Europe, so Steam basically rips me off with their prices compared to, let’s say GamersGate, even Origin is cheaper then Steam. And by quite a bit. GamersGate is normally about 20% cheaper then Steam on any game, Origin/EA/EADM are about 15% on average.
If any company here is the bad wolf, it’s Valve,
Since they are
a) The most expensive,
b) Worst service as they force most things I don’t want, like a running app, and installing it
c) Even forcing me to be Online in some of my games, which means if I’m out of internet a day, I’m screwed. Offline Mode is horrible, as it doesn’t always work.
The only guys who’s doing it right, are they guys that give you a clean internet page, where you download, then install your games, and you then got nothing on your computer, except if it’s a steamworks game, which you can’t really blame them for. Steam is supporting a horrible trend, which is, Ok guys, to run the games from these 7 publishers, you’ll only need 7 different crap ware on your computer, Like Steam, Origin, Activision Download manager, and so on. It’s time for Steam to rethink they way they do it, and give us a page where we can download the games instead, same for EA and everyone else who make a store.
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I live in Australia, and Origin prices most games at $90AUD. Compared to Steam, where the same games are around $50USD. With the strength of the Australian dollar against the US, that winds up being even cheaper on Steam than it would normally be for Australians.
Also; Steam prices are dictated by the Publishers/Developers.
Blizzard has DRM. It’s called Battle.net.
Also; I purchased Starcraft 2 from Battle.net. It cost me $80AUD. The same price as in retail stores here. Isn’t the point of digital distribution that it cuts out some of the middle men, and thus makes the game cheaper for the consumer. I bought Starcraft 2 directly from Blizzard. They recieved 100% of the money from that sale. There’s no reason for the game to be priced as high as a retail version, seeing as there was no distributor, or retail outlet involved in the sale.
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It’d be hilarious if all this was caused because VALVe changed their TOS so they require any future games sold via Steam to not implement any extra DRM like GFWL, UbiDRM etc. That’d be crazy right? There wouldn’t be a shit storm from a publisher who were about to create their own Steam clone who may want to force certain flagship titles to require use of it such Steam clone to play said flagship titles even when purchased via Steam would there?
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“3) Steam don’t want you to sell your own DLC for games on Steam…even if you provide the download service and the payment system yourself.”
I keep seeing this in the story and in the comments, but both Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 had in-game “click here to buy DLC” links whether you bought the game on Steam or not.
I got both games from Steam and bought the DLC through Bioware’s miserable shitty website in both cases, so this has already been going on for a year? two years?
Steam pulled the games over the Origin required install, why waste time speculating whether DLC shit had anything to do with it when EA has been selling direct through the games this whole time?
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I have been a Steam member since Half Life when everyone complained about having to log in to play the game. I got use to it and you know what, IT JUST WORKS!! After I was unceremoniously updated to Crysis 2 V1.9, my video looks no better, game loads take longer, AND I CANT PLAY MY PREVIOUSLY SAVED GAMES! So what now? I start all over, after finishing 80% of the game? So I try Origin, I have yet to make it work and the techs at EA cant figure it out either, no connection to servers…..C’Mon EA, figure out how to patch your games correctly before you start nipping at the big dogs heels with no teeth.This will be the undoing of downloaded games, no support, no recourse, too bad , we lose.Give me a plastic case shrink wrapped install, at least I know I can go back to it and it runs.
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“All in all, it’s a bit of a sad situation. Generally speaking EA are actually pretty good to the PC”
That made me laugh, good one sir! EA? Pretty good to the PC? Considering we get crappy console ports and now with this new Origin, we have to pay extra for certain up-coming releases (Cough Star Wars Cough).
EA is one company is despise for their lack of effort and money-grabbing tactics. Still, I do enjoy peoples views on how EA is “good”.
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