By Nathan Grayson on May 3rd, 2012 at 9:00 am.
I held out on using Origin until Mass Effect 3. I was immediately struck by the fact that there were precisely two tabs: “my games” and, of course, “store.” Even more striking, however, was the fact that EA’s little wallet-ruffling engine that could, well, couldn’t. Each time I tried to purchase ME3, I got booted by an incredibly vague error message. Eventually, I let out a quiet scream of resignation, left my house, and went on the prowl for reporters to punch. Then I realized I could just send a few of my own teeth flying, which really didn’t end up helping anything. So yes, my experiences with Origin haven’t exactly yielded sunshine, rainbows, or cheap dental bills. Are you in the same boat, or at least a nearby flotilla? Well then, slight consolation: after letting you languish for ages in life’s ancient-magazine-packed waiting room, EA’s finally calling you to the front desk.
The publisher wrote as much in a recent blog entry. Using the example of another formerly disenfranchised member of Origin’s ranks, Jon Peddie, EA opened the floor to everybody, specifically requesting “ a comment about (1) Your favorite Origin feature and (2) A feature you’d like to see added or improved upon.” Already, one person – upon getting their chance to summon the magical EA genie from its lamp – requested a clock so they can check the time while playing. Clearly, we are off to a rollicking start.
Meanwhile, the publisher plans to hold an Origin-specific live Q&A on May 8. Apparently, it starts at 10 AM in a timezone someplace (presumably) on Earth, but EA, er, failed to specify which one (Update: it’s Pacific). It added, however, that we should “check back soon for more information and instructions on how to RSVP for this special event.”
So that’s nice, I suppose. That said, I’m skeptical as to whether or not it’ll suddenly flip on any lightbulbs in the dingy dungeons of Origin’s development lab, and even if it does, EA’s been known to take a pretty hefty chunk of time with these things. And, having read through Peddie’s account of his in-person meeting with EA management, this bit sticks out: “I learned a lot about the federation of EA, and how the management is trying to integrate the various tribes it has inherited and/or acquired. Just establishing a common lexicon is a major effort, and weaving in other companies’ interfaces, account management, QC, and relationships is almost Sisyphus-like endeavor.” That very much echoes what John heard while investigating EA’s forum ban fiasco, which suggests that Origin’s achingly slow start hasn’t necessarily been a matter of out-and-out neglect.
Regardless, this is a chance to be heard, and those don’t come often when dealing with the deafeningly whirring gears of a monstrous machine like EA. Me, I’m hoping for social features that aren’t so ancient they include a smoke signal option and mod support that’s, well, existent in some form or another. I mean, come on: I can’t rightly get the full Sims 3: Katy Perry’s Sweet Treats experience without those essential basics.
03/05/2012 at 09:06 jellydonut says:
EA: you should add a self-destruct feature, and activate it.
03/05/2012 at 09:06 Phantoon says:
IT’S FUCKING CRAP SHIT GODDAMNIT FUCK A BIKER WALRUS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!
Did I get it right?
03/05/2012 at 10:16 somini says:
Too right mate.
Not even their links work. Every link has the language of the store embeeded, so I can’t open any Origin store link and get redirected to the equivalent page in my language. It juts redirects me to my storefront. That has got to be one of the most moronic systems that I have ever seen.
03/05/2012 at 10:35 Syra says:
Totally agree. It’s rubbish.
Tell me again why they think a service which makes all of their games exclusive to one digital vendor and heavy on DRM increases competition in the market? I’ve not bought a single origin game, as much as I would love to play BF3 mp.
03/05/2012 at 11:51 starclaws says:
Why do they need to ask users for their opinions? Shouldn’t they be able to tell its rubbish? Kali back in 1995 is better than Origin is now. And Kali had to deal with Windows 98/Dos/Etc. What’s EA’s excuse? There’s standards for gaming chat/friends/etc and they still haven’t got around to doing it.
03/05/2012 at 09:08 Jac says:
Origin has become a necessary evil for me. Much like steam.
03/05/2012 at 09:32 Alexander Norris says:
And it’s no more evil than Steam is, just very, very mildly less competent.
03/05/2012 at 09:51 Screamer says:
Here here….. and Origin’s ability to log in offline is the best feature ever. Unlike Steam where you can only go offline once you online, and once it decided you have to go online you fucked…
03/05/2012 at 10:06 f1x says:
Thats not true, I’ve been two weeks without internet (moved to another flat) and had 0 problems regarding steam going offline mode, I was never required to connect, and I’m pretty sure you can hold that situation indefinitely
For Origin, is the same, you have to be online at some point obviously, you know … at least to log in your account and download your games
03/05/2012 at 12:03 mouton says:
I heard it wants to log on after a month. But I am not swearing by this, haven’t done my own research or heard anything reliable.
03/05/2012 at 12:07 f1x says:
I dont know I just wanted to point that there is no need to go online before every offline session
probably yes at some point it asks for a version check or something, I wouldn’t be surprised
03/05/2012 at 12:19 Mr Labbes says:
It might be true that Origin lets you play your games even when you’re offline, but is there a way to use your DLC as well? I couldn’t play ME3 offline because the game would start up, but not “authorize” my DLC, meaning I couldn’t load my saves.
03/05/2012 at 15:22 LintMan says:
@f1x:
That’s not what screamer was talking about. For Steam, to initially switch it into offline mode, you MUST first connect online. So if you discover your internet service is down, you are incapable of connecting to Steam online, but also can’t set Steam to offline and so are totally locked out of every Steam game you own until you can get back on the internet. Derp.
Now, what you are thinking of is that once you actually set it for offline, it remembers that for some unknown/random amount of time. That doesn’t really help with this problem above, though, because people can’t just set it offline and leave it that way “just in case” their internet goes down: When you’re in offline mode, many Steam games actually BLOCK you from playing multiplayer. since you’re “offline”. So you’re not just setting Steam to offline, but many of your games as well. You’re also blocked from even viewing the Steam store through the Steam client.
I don’t care for Origin. but apparently Origin is at least more sensible in that it does not require going online first before you can switch it to offline mode, so if your internet is down, you’re not totally screwed.
03/05/2012 at 15:51 pigchicken says:
Mine never lets me go offline, even when i’ve been on earlier and restart my comp, sometimes it wont pick up wireless and still won’t let me offline it’s BULLSHIT.
03/05/2012 at 18:01 Brun says:
That’s not what screamer was talking about. For Steam, to initially switch it into offline mode, you MUST first connect online. So if you discover your internet service is down, you are incapable of connecting to Steam online, but also can’t set Steam to offline and so are totally locked out of every Steam game you own until you can get back on the internet. Derp.
Uh, pretty sure there’s a button on the login prompt that appears when it can’t connect that says “offline mode.” It’s been a while but I think it’s still there. Does that button not work or something?
03/05/2012 at 18:07 Archonsod says:
“It might be true that Origin lets you play your games even when you’re offline, but is there a way to use your DLC as well? I couldn’t play ME3 offline because the game would start up, but not “authorize” my DLC, meaning I couldn’t load my saves.”
That’s Bioware’s thing rather than Origin. Dragon Age is the same, and that doesn’t use Origin.
03/05/2012 at 18:16 wengart says:
Where I live the internet goes out on a fairly regular basis, and I rarely have problems with Steam. If you lose your connection don’t try to go in offline mode, don’t do anything differently. It will still work.
03/05/2012 at 18:25 Adjudicator says:
Offline mode is very temperamental. There are times when I discover my internet isn’t working and I try to go offline, but it fails. There are other times when it works.
The only time it works reliably is if you set it to offline mode while you are still online. Which goes a long way towards defeating the purpose of it.
03/05/2012 at 18:39 LintMan says:
“Uh, pretty sure there’s a button on the login prompt that appears when it can’t connect that says “offline mode.” It’s been a while but I think it’s still there. Does that button not work or something?”
It hasn’t worked for me the few times I’ve needed it.
03/05/2012 at 18:43 Brun says:
I’ve heard there’s a bug in the way Windows reports connectivity (especially over wireless links, or through routers) that causes Steam to think that there is a connection even when there isn’t. That might be related. I might try it when I get home.
03/05/2012 at 20:13 Amun says:
I’ve heard that you need to disable your ethernet/wireless adapters in order for steam to let you into offline mode in a situation where your internet suddenly fails.
Someone test it!
04/05/2012 at 07:57 jrodman says:
Basically, if steam thinks you’re online — according to its own guesswork — it won’t let you play offline.
I should be able to click offline and just play, no matter the state of my network link.
That they fail at this causes any number of unpleasant scenarios.
03/05/2012 at 10:18 Ninja Foodstuff says:
But it seems like Valve is at least interested in letting people play offline. Portal 2 doesn’t require always-on internet, but several EA games appear to, in spite of having already requiring use of Origin.
03/05/2012 at 10:27 Kent says:
You can actually play Origin games without any problems whatsoever without having to start up origin at all. Unlike Steam which has to be on at all times like some sort of DRM service. Even when it’s supposedly in “Offline Mode” it has to be on. Because Valve doesn’t trust their customers longer than they can throw them.
Origin does this much better.
03/05/2012 at 11:06 Alexander Norris says:
Kent: that’s actually a per-game setting (you can’t do it with BF3, for example), but you’re right – it’s the case for most Origin games, as opposed to the case for a tiny, tiny minority of Steam games that explicitly opt out of Steam-as-DRM.
03/05/2012 at 15:54 Kent says:
I could do it with Mass Effect 1, ME2, and my Sims games. So that means that you wont have to start it up for Singleplayer games at least, which is a perfectly reasonable feature.
I really wish Steam would implement that. It also mean that we wouldn’t have to be worried what would happen if Steam went up in smoke, but perhaps they want us to be worried so we keep their sorry company alive. >.<
03/05/2012 at 17:45 PopeJamal says:
Let’s test this theory out:
I just logged into my laptop with Steam on it. All network devices are disabled and steam is not running yet.
“Start in offline mode?”
I said yes.
Hmmm…
No “Walking Dead”
No “Grimrock”
Apparently, Steam has failed the “Offline” test.
03/05/2012 at 19:06 mwoody says:
Aye, it’s been remarkable how people have defended steam’s offline mode for years without realizing that IT DOESN’T WORK. Every time my connection has died, I’ve been unable to play, because you can’t switch to offline w/o starting the app, and you can’t do that in online mode without a connection.
03/05/2012 at 21:01 Phantoon says:
I got it to work when I turned off the steam cloud syncing.
It also got rid of the annoying bug that kept me from playing TF2 if I didn’t get into the first server I chose.
03/05/2012 at 21:29 Lamb Chop says:
I’ve never had the problem. Is that because my steam is always running, so if I get a hiccup it’s guaranteed to be open already?
As sidenote, I’m not sure why you would ever quit steam — it’d be like quitting your games folder. But then again, I also don’t understand why anyone would ever have anything less than 6 browser tabs open at all times.
04/05/2012 at 07:52 Screamer says:
Yes it seem to be a case where 99% of the people that say Steam’s Offline works, actually never used it….
Blizzard have implemented the same thing in SCII, if my connection is not up when starting the game, I can’t go offline. That or its a bug and their support is too moronic to figure out what I’m telling them after 500 emails , so I gave up
04/05/2012 at 00:54 Synesthesia says:
i’ve had this problem quite a few times, and i can testify its true. Here the connections are pretty shoddy, and once you boot up without an internet connection, offline mode will not work. It needs to be online first to do it. Every time i had internet problems for more than a day (Seems it leaves a temporary cookie or something), ive been locked out of all of my games. All 200 of them. So no, it does not work properly.
Origin is shit, though. They consistently want me to pay in euros, because i´m a spanish speaker, and then i must be from spain.
04/05/2012 at 03:30 Dark Malady says:
yeah. Last year while I was still living at home my mother kinda Forgot to pay the phonebill for long enough to get us cut off, so i’m sitting there downloading stuff and suddenly bam. no internet. I do ll the checks but give up when i realise there is no dial tone on the phone (finding the overdue notice under a pile of junk mail helps too) so it takes around a month or so to get things sorted.
steam … well that was a fun month without steam, All it could do was tell me that it was going to check for an update to steam and then whinge about my lack of connection.
steam purchased games do not like being run without steam or even start without it up.
GFWL while it wouldn’t connect and bugged out a bir, none of the games on it seemed to notice that and could all be run from the .exe in the install.
This was about the same time origin was coming into media focus and i decided to avoid it like the plague becuase as much I love steam’s chat/clock/webbrowser/cheap/unmetered by my ISP games…
Origin doesn’t have those features and while steam can be incredibly useful if untrustworthy… I don’t trust EA, and thier program lacks functionality enough to lure me into accepting the draconian side. the only game exclusive that will make me turn is SimCity and I’m not looking forward to that day.
03/05/2012 at 09:58 Groove says:
In my experience it’s wildly less competent, and while it’s not evil per-se, it doesn’t give even a single shit about it’s customers, which is pretty evil.
My experience being on-system points disapearing, EA support denying they ever existed, me replying with emails FROM EA that proved they existed, then EA closing the support thread because issues could not be resolved.
It’s also worth noting that that gives me around a 50% fault rate with Origin services, and I’ve never reported an actual game/money-loss fault from Steam.
03/05/2012 at 12:05 mouton says:
Steam Support has never had a good reputation either.
03/05/2012 at 17:12 ResonanceCascade says:
That’s very true. The fact that their software is far less problematic in the first place is actually the key here. EA might be better off fixing their broken POS than hiring oodles of new customer service reps.
03/05/2012 at 18:10 Archonsod says:
Steam has been going for several years. When it first came out, you were lucky if it even connected. And they still have issues with patching, bandwidth and similar fundamental things which you really want to be getting right if you’re advertising yourself as an online service.
03/05/2012 at 09:58 Ninja Foodstuff says:
See I find that odd. I would happily opt for a Steam version of a game that’s available DRM-free because the benefits to me outweigh the downsides. On the other hand, I won’t even let EA have my email address.
Also Steam at least treats its mac users with a sort of begrudging respect. Maybe my attitude towards Origin will change if they ever release a Mac/Linux version.
EA as a company seems hell bent in pissing off their users. They seem to treat their iOS customers even worse though (see Rock Band deactivation backpedalling, tetris fiasco), so there’s something to be said for that maybe.
03/05/2012 at 15:53 D3xter says:
I’m not sure how people don’t get the influence of different corporate cultures on a platform like this…
It’s rather simple, Valve want to make games and they get money.
EA want to make money and they make games.
There’s just no way creativity can flow freely in an environment like EAs and they are bound to fuck over their consumers at every turn because it’s their corporate fucking policy…
NO, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.
03/05/2012 at 09:56 PoulWrist says:
Indeed. With perseverance we’ll end up with a steam clone. Just as problematic as steam.
03/05/2012 at 11:44 Khemm says:
I love the comments made by Steam fanboys under that article:
“Honestly I really dislike origin.It is just another application that wants to live in my system tray and for the most part just another thing that needs to be running to play a game.I personally wouldn’t use origin if it wasn’t a requirement. ”
And the same person wrote this one sentence later:
“You just kill origin and put your content back on steam.”
ROTFL. Valve making Steam mandatory = perfectly OK. EA making Origin mandatory = arrrgh kill Origin!
This one is pure gold, too:
“I don’t have Origin and I don’t want Origin. I want ALL my games from ONE centralised service, in my case it’s Steam. I don’t want to have multiple clients loading up and having to manage all of them. ”
You want PC to be a console, then? Get the hell off my lawn.
03/05/2012 at 16:16 morgofborg says:
My favorite feature of Origin is exiting. The feature I’d like to see added is to transfer my games from Origin to Steam.
03/05/2012 at 09:09 Milky1985 says:
Change the T and C’s to not allow snooping, would be a good start.
Also fix the update issue, had an update i had to run to update origin (to install syndicate) remove origin from my system rather than update it.
Althought thinking about it that could be a good update as well.
03/05/2012 at 13:31 Kadayi says:
The whole ‘spyware’ talk was and is BS. Origin doesn’t even scan your hard drives, it just scans the windows registry.
03/05/2012 at 13:52 rocketman71 says:
Bullshit. It may not look inside the files (yet), but it certainly looks at folder and file names.
But you already know that, oh white knight number 1 of the publishers.
03/05/2012 at 09:11 Sheng-ji says:
I think this “request for feedback” is nothing more than a statistics grab for the marketing. They are only asking for your favourite feature and something you would like added – this adds up to feedback which will ignore peoples problems with using it including:
Privacy issues
Losing your games at the whim of a forum bully – even if you don’t make the comment yourself!
Peoples unwillingness to run one of these clients for every store they buy from and unwillingness to ditch Steam at this point
Not as good as steam
Exclusives stifling competition
Technical problems and EA’s unwillingness to acknowledge them
etc etc
03/05/2012 at 10:05 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Works for me:
“My favourite feature is the ability not to install it. I would most like to see added the ability to play the games without having to install a shitty wrapper application.”
03/05/2012 at 12:31 Ringwraith says:
I like the feature where it doesn’t let me install a game from the disc I bought which requires me to register the key via Origin anyway.
03/05/2012 at 11:33 skocznymroczny says:
Exclusives stifling competition? You mean like Halflife 2, Portal, Counterstrike and Left4Dead as Steam exclusives? Oh wait.
03/05/2012 at 12:53 Sheng-ji says:
I was talking about Origin… if you really are that BBC we could name every store in every industry that has exclusives or we could stay on topic, talking about Origin.
If Valve or Blizzard ever did ask me for feedback, I would certainly point out the same thing.
04/05/2012 at 20:46 amoliski says:
I see valve games on Origin…
http://store.origin.com/store/ea/en_US/pd/productID.126579600/sac.true
http://store.origin.com/DRHM/store?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=ea&Locale=en_US&ThemeID=718200&productID=81565900
04/05/2012 at 21:00 Llewyn says:
Given that your link doesn’t work (in the UK at least) and that Origin doesn’t have a publisher search, it might be an idea to mention what Valve games you’re talking about.
03/05/2012 at 11:41 Blaaaaaaag says:
Eh, for me you can add: Doesn’t have any exclusives I’m even remotely interested in.
03/05/2012 at 13:34 Kadayi says:
How is Origin stifling competition? Steam practically has a monopoly.
03/05/2012 at 14:09 phuzz says:
Well, they’re stifling competition by doing exactly the same stuff as Steam.
The only difference is that EA are a BIG SCARY MEGACORP*, and Valve are all huggable and lovely.*
*(except when they’re not)
03/05/2012 at 21:04 Phantoon says:
EA is publicly traded, Valve is not.
Gabe N doesn’t respond to shareholders, because he doesn’t have shareholders.
03/05/2012 at 15:43 Sheng-ji says:
By not allowing any other retailers to sell their games as a digital download, EA are creating a fixed economy in the market. That is, you can only legally download their games from them and at the price they want. This wouldn’t be such a big issue if they didn’t release so many games onto the market each year and didn’t hold long term licences preventing the competition from being able to make a competing product without an instant disadvantage i.e FIFA.
Steam, while virtually being a monopoly in terms of sales have very few exclusives – many games for sale on steam are also available on gamersgate et al. If it’s not available elsewhere, it’s because no other retailers wanted to stock their game NOT because steam demanded exclusivity. I can obviously only talk from personal experience, having worked on and seen the contracts of 6 games currently for sale on steam.
So yes, I welcome competition to steam but what I rail against is every publisher selling their games via their own store. In that respect steam does compete in a fair market place and this translates to the sales and low prices of games which steam and all it’s competition offer.
This doesn’t let Valve, Blizzard or whoever Impulse is fronting for these days off the hook in that games published by them only appear on their stores. Microsoft, CD Projekt Red & ArenaNet are as far as I’m aware the only ones who are selling on their own stores and letting others sell and should be commended for that.
If you still don’t get it – imagine if Sony decided to only sell any of it’s products through Sony Stores and then every manufacturer started to follow suit. A healthy economy relies heavily on fair competition – it’s the very principle of capitalism. Every element competing in the marketplace obviously wants to fix the market in their favour and only consumer pressure will prevent this.
03/05/2012 at 17:40 InternetBatman says:
That’s not quite true. Origin games were on every other service but Steam. I’m pretty sure the issue isn’t even Origin, it’s the fact that EA (rightly or wrongly) doesn’t want to part with DLC money.
03/05/2012 at 18:29 Archonsod says:
Origin keys are also available on Impulse and Gamersgate. What’s more, Origin will accept and activate a key from any EA game released since 2009 regardless of where you got it. Biggest benefit of all that however is that without any of the wrapper silliness, you’re free to buy the main game retail, expansion digital and have them work. Unlike Steam which usually requires you have the Steam version of everything.
Call me weird, but I think Steam are the one’s stifling competition with that one.
04/05/2012 at 00:29 dsi1 says:
If Steam was stifling competition and it was the first (and only for at least a year I’d bet) digital distributor how do you explain all the alternate distributors that have popped up?
Oh yeah, Steam doesn’t do shit except be a great platform that some people (COUGH EA) would rather just pretend doesn’t exist then actually use it or actually compete with it. (Go with us or forget about playing is not competition)
03/05/2012 at 09:11 Xzi says:
I think game distribution platforms had better interfaces in the early 90s, that’s what I think. EA can’t even make software that passes for true entertainment half of the time, so why they thought they’d be good at this is beyond me. Shut it down and bring your games back to Steam, and then maybe I’ll consider giving you some of my money again in say, five years. Maybe.
Douchebags.
03/05/2012 at 09:12 TheWhippetLord says:
OT, but “Katy Perry’s Sweet Treets” hits my mind as the filthiest of innuendoes. Possibly I need to get out more.
On Origin: silly logo, get another one please. That one looks like a spiral galaxy drawn in thick crayon by a particularly unartistic toddler. The actual program – not actually had trouble yet.
03/05/2012 at 09:13 Midroc says:
They had years to look at what makes steam such a raging success and they still couldn’t get it right. And they want to make all their games Origin exclusive? EA is the cancer killing gaming.
03/05/2012 at 09:19 Eukatheude says:
“x is the cancer killing y” comments are the cancer that’s killing internet comment sections.
03/05/2012 at 09:23 JackShandy says:
Comments saying that ““x is the cancer killing y” comments are the cancer that’s killing internet comment sections.” are the cancer that’s killing me.
03/05/2012 at 09:49 eks says:
Every second that passes is a second you are closer to death.
03/05/2012 at 11:31 jezcentral says:
Except when you smoke, then it’s more like two. Unless it’s a really good quality ciggy; the kind doctors smoked in the 50s.
03/05/2012 at 10:05 Hoaxfish says:
Luckily we have made great strides in commenting-medicine research, producing a reduction in cases of the “I used to be a X, but then I took a Y to the Z” mental disease.
03/05/2012 at 09:15 Achire says:
This is an excellent time to ask for feedback on Origin. It just so happens that starting today, a fair amount of people have been locked out of both the multiplayer and singleplayer portions of Mass Effect 3 due to problems with Origin. You simply receive a notification that should buy an Online Pass. An Online Pass which is officially not supposed to even exist on the PC. If you try to purchase it, the game simply notes that you need an Online Pass to access the online features, such as purchasing said Online Pass. Brilliant.
03/05/2012 at 10:46 Sarissofoi says:
WoW.
Sooo good.
03/05/2012 at 13:13 RakeShark says:
To be fair, as one who has this issue now, this is more a problem with EA/Bioware than it is a problem with Origin.
03/05/2012 at 16:03 Chmilz says:
Eh? They’re all the same fucking thing.
03/05/2012 at 09:17 faelnor says:
I don’t have any new features for Origin, I don’t even know what features it has today, I just remember vaguely when it was EADM.
Anyway, I’m hoping for something simple: releasing their games using at least one platform or method which does not require Origin. I have decided never to install Origin on my machines and it is possible –though highly improbable– that, in a distant future, EA publishes a few games I’m interested in.
03/05/2012 at 09:19 Was Neurotic says:
I would ask them not to IP-check my machine and display the shop stuff in a foreign language. Maybe alert them to a little thing known as ‘Living in a country not natively your own’.
03/05/2012 at 09:21 callmecheez says:
They need to sort out their cloud storage feature. To cut a long-winded version short, it ended up losing my Fifa 12 profile because I put my foolish trust in it.
In it’s defense – it always ‘maxes out’ my connection when downloading stuff – unlike Steam, which at the best of times manages about 2mb/sec and worst of time (launch day) – doesn’t work at all.
03/05/2012 at 09:48 Bungle says:
Steam maxes out my connect at 3.6 MB/s. I doubt all their content servers are that fast, but they are in LA.
03/05/2012 at 10:12 Phinor says:
Download speeds vary so much between regions. Steam has never been able to max out my connection (I’m based in Finland and as it happens the Finnish Steam server is actually among the worst for us Finns, Ukraine and Sweden are usually much better choices). Actually Steam has barely achieved 50% of my connection capacity, around 5MB/s. More often than not I’m getting something between 100kB/s and 1MB/s. Meanwhile Origin pretty much always hovers in the 10-11MB/s range with worst results in the 7-8MB/s range. That also happens to be the only good thing I can say about Origin. It’s usually not bad, but also does nothing special. I have my friends list already in Steam and I have no plans to make another list for another software. I could do without Origin if it wasn’t required by couple of games I like to play.
03/05/2012 at 10:06 Dr I am a Doctor says:
I download from Steam at 2MB/s. My contract states my max download speed should be 1MB.
Magic
03/05/2012 at 09:21 omo says:
“Apparently, it starts at 10 AM in a timezone someplace (presumably) on Earth, but EA, er, failed to specify which one.”
Another nice example of EA’s strong ability to see things from the user’s perspective.
03/05/2012 at 09:21 MattM says:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I don’t think they really want to know.
03/05/2012 at 09:22 Meat Circus says:
I don’t like it. No sir, I don’t like it.
03/05/2012 at 10:51 Grundig says:
I picture you as a horse stroking his chin
03/05/2012 at 09:22 Kemuel says:
I’ve used Origin for Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 and I’ve never found anything overtly annoying or quantifiably ‘bad’ about it.. it’s just unremarkable compared to Steam’s decade or so of polish, and hasn’t yet done anything to earn a place in my life.
When stuff goes on sale on Steam it gets talked about on Facebook and Skype among the 30 or so real life friends I’ve got on my list. If I spot someone I know playing something I suggested to them I’ll drop them a message to ask how it’s going, if it’s MP I’ll see if they want to hook up for a game. If I play in a really good TF2 server a few times I’ll join the Steam group and go along to events. If it was a friend’s birthday one week and something on their wishlist comes on sale the next, I might pick it up for them.
I could keep listing stuff on and on, and for me it’ll always come back to people and prices. Steam makes buying games, playing games and socialising around games so convenient that until Origin becomes as widely used and as good value for money it just isn’t going to be able to compete.
03/05/2012 at 11:50 Max.I.Candy says:
same here, got it for SWTOR,ME3,BF3 and a few others and ive not had one problem so far.
03/05/2012 at 09:24 Was Neurotic says:
Also, who is this John Peddie, and how does he get the magic carpet treatment from EA? It’s an interesting article there.
03/05/2012 at 09:24 Stevostin says:
I am annoyed because on one side, competition is a night thing. On the other, in a software context… it ends up being a pain. It’s like Windows : no matter what you have against it, the situation with one (1) ultre dominant OS is hugely more confortable for everyone that computer world spread into 2-3 credible OS solutions for all purpose computing.
Same goes with Steam. As long as it’s about the shop, I try to buy on the publisher’s website rather than on Steam each time it’s available (and I am not buying at a steam sale). But the gaming platform ? Let… it… be… clear : I wont play any (null)(zero)(nada) game that requires me Origin to run. I want to make perfectly clear to EA that they’ve spend money developping something that, making the world a worst place for customer, give them less sale in return so that they see some light and give up on that crap. Or that, at least, we don’t see an explosion of “me too” gaming platform.
03/05/2012 at 09:43 Toberoth says:
Two less sales.
03/05/2012 at 09:43 Toberoth says:
Wait, I thought you were making a stand by saying “one less sale” so I just me-tooed the shit out of it. Then I realised that you hadn’t said that at all. It’s too early.
03/05/2012 at 09:46 Bungle says:
You responded to an extremely submissive and misinformed person. I’ve never met a person who is thankful for Microsoft’s monopoly. Yikes.
03/05/2012 at 09:56 Toberoth says:
I wasn’t necessarily responding to that bit of the argument.
03/05/2012 at 10:10 Hoaxfish says:
There are some good things to say about monopolies, even Microsoft’s…if anything they can effectively enforce some standards (not always good standards, but at least some form of base-line). Unfortunately they’re far from being benevolent dictators.
03/05/2012 at 12:19 lijenstina says:
I did on Ars Technica comments. Their reasoning goes like this – free (unregulated) markets are always good – Free market competition sometimes leads to a monopoly – ergo monopolies are good because unregulated markets can’t do wrong. It’s some kind of neoliberalism brain disease.
03/05/2012 at 16:35 Malibu Stacey says:
The current global financial crisis would seem to disagree with that just a tad -> http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9718000/9718062.stm
03/05/2012 at 17:32 lijenstina says:
That’s their reasoning not mine. :) I find that in every ideologically blinded zealot higher brain functions get trounced by a torrent of emotions and irrationality bordering tribalism.
Neoliberalism for them isn’t a severely flawed approximation of reality with a healthy dose of political ideology thrown into the mix – it’s a dogma.
Putting the flawed ideology aside, their major problem – the faulty reasoning behind it is much more dangerous, because every idea and society movement needs to be criticised and reviewed for it’s results. Some people are just incapable of it.
03/05/2012 at 09:25 jkz says:
Sorting out the dodgy clauses in the T&Cs would go a long way
03/05/2012 at 09:26 gunny1993 says:
Its not terrible but its let down by your company being a bunch of money hogging archaic bastards.
03/05/2012 at 09:29 MuscleHorse says:
It’s just really quite badly put together. The one game I’ve bought directly through Origin is Mass Effect 3. To add the From Ashes DLC I eventually found that I had to right click on my ME3 icon and click on Game Info. Of course! The recently free for everyone Resurgence multiplayer DLC had to be added the same way, not as a regular update as you’d expect. I get error messages every time I start the game up, telling me that it hasn’t been installed correctly – of course, it boots up just fine after this notification.
The interface is clunky and unintuitive and as Mr Grayson has already encountered, it took a few attempts for them to actually accept my money. This is just the program itself, not even mentioning EA’s repugnant business practices. I don’t see myself buying another game from Origin unless I absolutely have no choice.
03/05/2012 at 09:57 Toberoth says:
You always have a choice.
03/05/2012 at 10:24 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Choose life!
03/05/2012 at 09:30 iARDAs says:
Origin is a great system. I have yet to find a problem with it. I believe people bashing Origin are bashing it for 2 reasons.
1-) For the sake of bashing
2-) The hate against EA
Origin is a very solid system. So stop hating it because of the above 2 reasons.
03/05/2012 at 09:34 MasterDex says:
While I’m sure you’re right that there are people out there who hate Origin for those reasons, I’m willing to put money on it that the majority of gamers hate it because they don’t see the need for it, like myself.
03/05/2012 at 11:10 Alexander Norris says:
There’s no need for Steam either, but in a fair amount of cases people will gloss over that and complain that Origin is terrible when in actual fact Origin does nothing bad that isn’t already done by Steam.
Basically, the hypocrisy is what gets to me.
03/05/2012 at 11:20 gunny1993 says:
Steam isn’t perfect but it is rather more refined than origin and doesn’t demand that you give information on your system. Origin is a step in the right direction for ea (new pricing models are still needed) but steam works so well because of the massive sales they have and the convenience that the service provides.
03/05/2012 at 12:46 Lemming says:
It’s not hypocrisy Alex, Valve earned gamers trust along the way and have proven time and time again that given the keys to the kingdom, they can be trusted with it. EA have shat on gamers repeatedly at one point or another for years, so naturally basic survival instinct tells us that whatever they plan with Origin is not going to have our interests at heart.
It’s like, would you lend your best friend your car or that junkie down the road who’s bummed money off you for years and ‘promises he’ll bring it straight back’?
03/05/2012 at 14:28 aliksy says:
I didn’t use steam for years because I thought it was stupid and unnecessary. Then they put a game I wanted on sale for $2. The download and install worked perfectly. Then more sales. And the steam overlay. And game trading. And contests. And free stuff.
So Valve has earned trust and respect. EA has pulled bullshit. The ‘friend or junkie’ metaphor is apt.
03/05/2012 at 18:35 wengart says:
Steam adds value to my games. Origin does not.
04/05/2012 at 09:32 jrodman says:
Steam feels like a faustian bargain.
Origin feels like selling my soul for a toaster.
03/05/2012 at 09:35 Achire says:
I am completely unable to play Mass Effect 3 at the moment because of Origin. Do you find that a fair reason to dislike this DRM service? Most people with the Collector’s Edition or From Ashes DLC can’t play ME3 at all currently.
03/05/2012 at 09:42 JackShandy says:
Is that a common problem? I keep crashing after a cutscene in From Ashes, but I thought it might just be me.
03/05/2012 at 13:27 Orazio Zorzotto says:
If your bug is the bug I think your bug is then that’s a very common problem that I myself experienced when I first played the game. I could have sworn it had been fixed in the games first patch, but if that’s not working for some reason than there’s a fairly easy way of getting around it by quick saving as soon as the cutscene ends or something.
03/05/2012 at 09:53 barrytheferret says:
The reason I don’t like Origin or rather the reason I don’t want Origin is the fact that I already have Steam, Impulse, and GFWL installed on my PC in order to play games. I really don’t want another one of these digital distribution networks to have to login to.
03/05/2012 at 11:09 Milky1985 says:
So the fact that i hate EA means i don’t have a valid point to hate on origin even tho when i updated it to install a game it half uninstalled itself (no origin.exe, but other files there) and iI had to reinstall?
(Yes i know, i hate EA practices currently but get there games. I don’t not buy the games (cause then we get called dirty pirates, and the good games don’t get sequals greenlit) but i don’t like giving htem £50 a game, so i get them once they drop to a tenner, they get some money, but not as much as there shareholders like (cause they like to see big first day sales) so i get my game, and they get slightly hurt in the pocket and shareholder trust. win win)
03/05/2012 at 11:18 MattM says:
#2 seems like a good reason to not want to use origin. I have had several bad experiences with EA and their post release support. It makes me not want to use something that requires long term support from EA.
03/05/2012 at 09:32 MasterDex says:
I’ll tell ya what I think of it, EA. It’s an unnecessary program that does nothing but take up space, memory and processing power on my PC. Unlike Steam, I have no reason or desire to use it. It’s something forced on my for the sake of a single game (BF3).
03/05/2012 at 09:36 MD says:
Thing is, this comment exactly describes Steam circa 2004, with the ‘single game’ being Half-Life 2. That ended up working pretty well for Valve from a financial perspective, so I can see why EA would have a go at pushing through these early stages.
03/05/2012 at 09:45 Mungrul says:
So you’re saying we should give Origin another 8 years?
03/05/2012 at 09:53 MD says:
Not really suggesting any particular conclusion. Just pointing out the similarity.
03/05/2012 at 11:24 gunny1993 says:
The problem is that its taken EA 8 years for their moronic executives to even slightly change their business practices. (this is exactly like the music industry before iTunes and other digital services)
03/05/2012 at 12:49 Lemming says:
But it’s only similar in the broadest terms. Steam 2004 was pioneering software, Origin had a perfect model to copy if it so desired (ie Steam 2011), but released this shit with ‘give us 18 months to get it right’. That’s….that’s pretty appalling.
03/05/2012 at 10:26 Ninja Foodstuff says:
This is true, and it’s also the reason I left PC gaming back then and became a console gamer for 6 years. Then Microsoft realised they weren’t monetizing me enough and I came back, and found that in the interim, Steam had evolved into a rather wonderful service.
03/05/2012 at 16:33 subedii says:
Well you never know, Windows 8 might allow MS to get back track in that respect.
03/05/2012 at 09:33 freeMan697203 says:
or they could just make everyone happy and release ME3 on Steam.. after all that’s where I bought the first 2
03/05/2012 at 09:34 sleepisthebrotherofdeath says:
Do we know EA’s plan for what will happen when at some-point-in-the-future they decide to shut down all the Origin servers? Will my purchases still work then?
(Not that, you know, EA has a reputation for shutting down servers or anything like that….)
03/05/2012 at 09:37 Joe Duck says:
Feedback? Sure!
Three simple things, Powerpoint style.
Feel free to copy/paste into your next presentation to your new Nexus Uberlords:
1.- Exclusivity is not a feature, it is a restriction.
2.- It is difficult to get a good gaming community going. Fragmenting our groups with a new online store is bad for gamers.
3.- Origin offers absolutely nothing new or better than its competitors. Nothing, niente, nada.
03/05/2012 at 11:06 MontyTexas says:
you make a fine corporate PowerPoint sir
03/05/2012 at 16:59 kaffis says:
Your powerpoint has sold me. How may I contact you about speaking at a presentation for EA Executives? I will provide the conference room breaching equipment, and a time for you to show up, exfiltration I leave up to you.
04/05/2012 at 09:21 Joe Duck says:
Now, that would be a seriously awesome mission to play in Monaco.
03/05/2012 at 09:40 Mungrul says:
Even though I’ve never purchased an Origin game, it would appear that EA have taken the liberty of creating me an Origin account without my permission. I’m really not happy about this, but it did allow me to add my comment, which amounted to “When you forced Origin on us, I stopped buying EA titles on all platforms”.
03/05/2012 at 11:55 jezcentral says:
Your Origin account is your EA account. You must have had one of the latter, and it became your Origin account.
03/05/2012 at 17:12 kaffis says:
This. EA decided that it was okay to convert some random account I had previously made with one of its developers in the past to an Origin account, without my input or permission. However, I refuse to log into it, because to do so, I’d have to agree to the TOS.
Which is ironic — I can’t express my dissatisfaction to EA, because the thing I’m dissatisfied most with is the thing they require me to do in order to submit any feedback to them — use an account. Thank you, for at least being one voice to speak for the rest of us on that account.
They lost me as a customer, as I will never purchase anything that requires the use of Origin since that action. It’s proven them untrustworthy with my data. The Terms of Service they released cemented that stance, and their recent activity with regards to shifting their business model to emphasize DLC and Origin-exclusivity at the expense of their customers’ user experience and preferences has set my decision in stone.
If they want to garner my business in the future for games that, I will admit, I would be happy to purchase from them (Mass Effect 3, SimCity, etc.), they should look to remedying these three things. Fix the Terms of Service to offer better protection, privacy, and peace of mind to the users they’ve managed to ensnare into their Origin service already, and stop requiring Origin accounts and EA-store exclusivity to allow me to make my purchases in good conscience (the only way I’ll make them). Over time, displaying good behavior and a customer-centric philosophy may earn them forgiveness and trust.
Information is an important thing in this day and age. EA knows this, it’s one of the reasons they’re eager to build social features into Origin (even if they apparently are lousy at it). It’s the reason Facebook (another company I despise) is worth billions. And if you know this, then you should know that *I* value my information, even down to a username, email address, and password. None of which would I like to entrust EA with, because they haven’t earned it.
Finally, the point has been well made in this comment thread that I, as a customer, do not view balkanization of online distribution services as a positive feature for me. Especially now, when every user account I own and keep current is a potential liability because it’s identity information of some variety sitting in a database waiting to be hacked. This means diligent password management, which means the more accounts I have to manage, the more hassle it is for me. I don’t *want* twenty accounts for online games. I didn’t want it before because I didn’t want to have to remember whose store I bought what game from when it comes time to re-download it. I don’t want it now because I don’t want my exposure to hackers to be multiplied by twenty times.
Thus, exclusivity is not a good thing, it’s a way to ensure you don’t sell games to me. If you want to put Origin out as a competitor, I welcome you to do it — but you need to *compete*, not simply wall yourself off. Compete with Steam, GOG.com, D2D, etc. on price, service, and value-add, not on content. Because doing those things benefit the customer, rather than hinder him, and benefitting the customer is the way to win his loyalty someday, rather than his resentment at either walling him off from buying your products and services, or making him bitterly resent you for having trapped him into being your customer.
03/05/2012 at 09:43 Bungle says:
I don’t associate with corporate thugs. I will never install Origin on any of my PCs. I didn’t even flinch when BF3 was released, and PC FPS games have always been my favorite.
03/05/2012 at 09:49 MeestaNob says:
Put your games on Steam and make the DLC easy to use and we’ll consider your products. Origin is not only rubbish but needlessly splinters the PC gaming audience.
For bonus points remove the need for an EA pass/BioWare/AutoLog account for EVERY game you make. I don’t need you emailing me offers, I’ll buy your games if I want them, THANK YOU.
DO SOMETHING TO PROVE THAT YOU AREN’T JERKS. STILL. AGAIN.
03/05/2012 at 09:51 Khab says:
I wouldn’t know what Origin is like, I’ve not been able to create an account (granted, I only tried three or four times with three different e-mail addresses).
03/05/2012 at 09:52 StranaMente says:
As a lawyer and as a consumer I say FIX THE GODDAM EULA.
I won’t touch Origin until they’re compliant with the law. How hard is that?
1) Privacy issues (no, it’s not the same as steam, and their terms ARE AGAINST the law);
2) Ownership (of licenses, yes, not software) and banning.
From a consumer-only point of view:
3) no region restrictions on anything (sales, launch date of games, games);
There’s maybe something else, but haven’t used it I can’t comment.
EDIT: I’m all in favour of competition, but EA is doing it all wrong and damages the customers.
03/05/2012 at 20:44 gory says:
This, I haven’t used Origin because of its’ EULA, and I am not planing to do so until they change it.
Can’t say anything else about it as a service, other than competition usually working in the consumers’ favour!
03/05/2012 at 09:55 Bostec says:
It appeared one day when my gf was playing on the PC, I wasn’t suprised they patched it in with The Sims 3.
Anyway she had Orangin on autolog and while I was installing Battlefield 3, it almost binded itself to my GFs account. My quick thinking saved the day and I had to scrap the install. Took me 20 mins to find a way not to autolog in.
03/05/2012 at 09:56 kzrkp says:
Feedback: Go away. The world was better without you. You do nothing well.
03/05/2012 at 09:59 Iain_1986 says:
It comment sections like these that make me want to come back to RPS less and less.
03/05/2012 at 11:53 mondomau says:
perhaps you could be a bit more specific and a bit less snotty? This is a relatively restrained response compared to a lot of similar threads on other sites re: Origin.
03/05/2012 at 09:59 Roshin says:
I would kinda like to see the store part work. I haven’t actually been able to buy anything from Origin. My two games there, BF3 and ME3, I bought from GamersGate and then registered the codes with Origin.
I have a handful (4) of other games there, that were bought elsewhere and have now magically popped up on my Origin account. One of them (Sims 3) flat out refuses to work. Support wont even reply back and the Support forum is equally useless. EA Support is one area that could be *massively* improved.
So, I probably wont buy anything from Origin, because I simply don’t trust it to work. I also sort of regret buying BF3 and ME3, because I hardly play them anymore. The irony is that I would play more, if they were on Steam. I know I can add the shortcuts to Steam and I have, but I just can’t be arsed to start up Origin in order to play them. I’ve noticed that I also tend to avoid games that use GFWL, for the same reasons, and I’ve stopped playing Blizzard games altogether.
Origin is the answer to a question I never asked. I simply don’t want it.
03/05/2012 at 10:54 ankh says:
Have you tried the “live chat with a support person” thing? Both times I needed EA support I used that and everything was resolved in minutes.
03/05/2012 at 17:45 Bobby Oxygen says:
Were you asking to be banned?
03/05/2012 at 11:14 neolith says:
“Origin is the answer to a question I never asked.”
This. Exactly this.
Origin has no upside to me whatsoever. I already have to use Steam for a lot of games and while it has some positive points I am not particulary fond of of it. I kind of tolerate it.
EA’s ‘service’ however doesn’t seem to come with any benefits though. For me it is just another service I don’t want where I would have to make another account I don’t want to play a certain game. And that’s just not going to happen. I wanted to play BF3 and didn’t buy it because of Origin. I also though about getting ME3 and didn’t because of Origin.
I bought other games instead. If EA wants to fix their stuff, they better make their client optional.
Until then I’ll stick to GoG (because they do it right) and Steam (because I already have an account there).
03/05/2012 at 10:00 TheApologist says:
Origin contributes nothing having fewer features than Steam, and none of the DRM-free value of GoG. Indeed, it appears only to have served to reduce my choice of digital platform for buying games I might want.
EA Downloader / Origin has now had several years to contribute something. It has failed. Get rid of it would be my advice as at this point it only makes me less likely to buy EA games.
03/05/2012 at 10:02 Text_Fish says:
TBH it’s rude that they’re even asking at this stage. If you release a pile of shit and then dopilly ask your paying customers how to fix it you’re standing on the wrong side of the checkout.
03/05/2012 at 10:06 gingerpembers says:
Yeah, you would kind of expect EA to have a research department that, I don’t know, did some research and figured this stuff out for themselves?
Reminds me of last night’s The Apprentice in a way
03/05/2012 at 10:04 gingerpembers says:
Thought I would contribute, logged in, saw Battlefield 3 was £40, laughed, and logged off.
03/05/2012 at 12:02 Max.I.Candy says:
what the hell do you expect?
CoD is still full price on steam, do you laugh and log off when you see that too?
also, bf3 has been on sale on origin.
03/05/2012 at 10:08 destroy.all.monsters says:
Is kill it with fire an option?
No one wants it. No one wants GFWL either. If Steam weren’t ridiculously cheap (and relatively painless) no one would want it either.
Competing with Steam != having your own online service – it just makes you one more company people avoid or pirate (because the only people that can play your game reasonably are using a cracked version).
03/05/2012 at 10:18 Hoaxfish says:
Unfortunately for EA, I’m in the group of people who have simply chosen to boycott EA… so I can’t really comment on Origin (since I have not installed it).
In terms of Origin itself (if it was somehow not by EA), I’ve avoided it because of all those early issues with them apparently rooting through your whole computer, a EULA which seems to support that action as intentional, stories of account-wide bans for minor offences (and major ones obviously). None of the “Exclusives” interest me that much. Steam and GOG offer me what I want, as well as the obvious “direct from dev” purchases.
Tales of EA simply killing their own servers do not encourage me to engage them on this level either.
03/05/2012 at 10:27 Keneb says:
Outstanding timing for them to do this on the day that a large chunk of PC ME3 players can’t play MP OR SP because Origin isn’t passing their registered content information to the game.
03/05/2012 at 10:39 netizensmith says:
I have 2 games bought through Origin:
1. Burnout Paradise. This game needs me to turn off the Origin overlay otherwise all I get is a black screen.
2. Dragon Age Origins ultimate Edition. This game believed that I didn’t have permission to play any of the DLC.
100% failure record. Good going.
03/05/2012 at 10:51 ghling says:
I like Origin because it finally is a good method stopping me from accidentally buying and playing an EA game. There would be at least one game I would have purchased but didn’t because it requires origin. Finally bury Origin and I’d buy it right away.
03/05/2012 at 11:05 shaydeeadi says:
I grabbed BF2 off of there a couple of months ago, and 2142 off of there about a month ago when they were £5 each. No complaints, they gave me keys for the games that they didn’t even request just in case, creating new accounts (since I lost my old logins and emails) was a doddle with no authorisation at all. To add to that I have uninstalled Origin now since they don’t even require the client to be open to launch the games, download rates were completely rapid too at about 4.5mbytes/s which is as fast as my line goes really.
No complaints here with the service on Origin, and Steam has been a lumbering waste recently with links that won’t work when you click them so I have to relaunch it twice to get to the store page I want to look at. I’m sure they’ll patch that next week though. I will say I bought the Crysis pack in Game when they were firesale-ing last month and the keys were invalid, EA customer support was so unhelpful I just gave up and grabbed a crack. Which has put me off disk-based game purchases a bit.
03/05/2012 at 11:28 Was Neurotic says:
When I upgraded from the EADLM to Origin the very first time, it somehow changed my BF2: Euroforces expansion into a fully functional BF:BC2. Which was nice.
03/05/2012 at 11:30 Jimbo says:
I think it’s far too expensive, just like Steam. It’s baffling to me that I can still buy a retail copy through a middle-man and have it hand-delivered to my door for less than I can buy a digital copy direct from the publisher.
03/05/2012 at 11:42 Mordsung says:
Origin: It works.
Not as good as Steam or anything, but it works.
03/05/2012 at 14:02 Kadayi says:
^This.
Personally I’m all about the games. Sure the system isn’t perfect yes, but it’s functional. I don’t have any particular gripes with it. Like all things it will get better over time. Do find the ‘boycott’ people frankly hilarious tbh. The only thing they are doing is denying themselves at the end of the day. Still their choice.
03/05/2012 at 17:53 Bobby Oxygen says:
We’re denying ourselves a few games.
You’re denying yourself dignity by bending over for corporate wankers like EA.
03/05/2012 at 11:54 Nim says:
Well I couldn’t even download the Mass Effect 3 demo on it so… not very good.
03/05/2012 at 11:55 greenbananas says:
Like telling me you have to install a CCTV camera in my living room so I can watch TV, and then asking me how I like it.
How about no?
03/05/2012 at 11:57 jezcentral says:
I find Origin inoffensive. I wish it would do more, like log my playing time, track my achievements, etc, basic Steam stuff, but it hasn’t caused me any problems, either.
03/05/2012 at 12:08 Advanced Assault Hippo says:
Adding myself to the list of people who don’t really think Origin is terrible at all – many of the complaints against it often seem frivolous to me (or bad luck in some cases, similar to all those who have bad luck with Steam glitches sometimes). It generally works as it should for most people.
Hopefully over the next couple of years they’ll carry on ironing things out and it’ll get better and better.
03/05/2012 at 12:11 Iskariot says:
I have had no need for Origin yet and I did not try it out.
I have not even took so much as a peek at the Origin website.
Because of the moneygrabbing DLC disaster Mass Effect 2 turned out to be I have refrained form buying ME3.
Mass Effect is my favorite Scifi franchise in gaming, so that says it all for me.
It is not so much Origin itself that makes me avoid it, as well as EA’s general way of doing things.
I don’t trust you EA. And I think you should take a good look at yourself and the way you for example handle DLC.
03/05/2012 at 12:12 Bluerps says:
I have no real complaints about Origin, but no praise either. I used it for ME3 and haven’t started it since I finished that. I simply see no reason why I should do so.
I have a huge library of games on Steam and I can get more whenever I want, in a very convenient way. Why should I use another software that provides the same service, without doing anything better?
03/05/2012 at 12:15 Derppy says:
Origin isn’t terrible, but I don’t want to fragment my 250+ game library unless there’s a really good reason for it.
Exclusives aren’t a good reason. I’m aware Valve does the same with their games being tied to Steam and not being available elsewhere, but I don’t care since I’m already using Steam. EA trying to pull me in by buying game studios and putting sequels exclusively on their platform is simply making me really mad.
For me to like Origin, EA needs to offer better service than Steam. There’s room for improvement and if Origin lacked all the issues I have with Steam, I’d start buying from there. I’d have a reason to fragment my library.
Steam becomes unresponsive under heavy traffic and often crashes. The download speeds aren’t consistent and constantly swapping the download region to find some bandwidth is a PITA. Simply having better servers than Steam would be a big advantage for Origin.
Playing Steam games offline is a joke, it works one time out of hundred. If Origin offered simple shortcuts to game executable which worked no matter if you have internet connection or not, it would be a big bonus.
Steam has quite a lot of power over PC game market and while it doesn’t really abuse it, it doesn’t use it for good either. They could enforce stuff like fair game pricing across the regions and currencies, but they don’t. If it was a requirement for all Origin games, it would again be a big bonus for Origin.
In short, make a better service than Steam and I might like it. If you try to force me to a worse service, I’m going to hate you, do my best to stay away from you stupid DD platform, avoid buying games you have laid your hands on and try to get my friends to do the same.
Also, the fact EA wants to kill modding and LAN-gaming communities, enforces intrusive DRM, turns games into simplified platforms for DLC etc. doesn’t really encourage me to support them in any way.
04/05/2012 at 01:46 spaceisfun says:
Well I guess its time for you to switch to Origin, it already has:
1. Faster, more reliable download servers than Steam.
2. An offline mode that actually works.
3. Non exclusivity for games. The only service their games cannot be bought on is Steam, while they all require Origin, they aren’t exclusive to Origin.
03/05/2012 at 12:28 Inglourious Badger says:
It was a necessary evil for BF3 and now I’ve grown to accept it as much as Steam. In some ways it’s better, but on the social side it is a stripped down service compared to Steam. Why they need to ask for public opinion when they could just analyse the competition I’m not sure, oh wait, I remember, it’s because it makes you sound like you’re doing stuff without actually having to do anything.
For what it’s worth:
Like:
1. The store isn’t crammed down your throat every time you log in to play a game
2. Download speeds are quick and consistent
3. There’s actually been some good discount sales on EA games.
Dislike:
1. Games still requiring further login stuff even when launched from Origin (Swtor and anything with GFWL)
2. Difficulty in finding friends (and in Origin!)
3. The inability to have, say, a different name on BF3 rather than my Origin tag. It stamps your details over EA games you play through it, but won’t recognise games you owned previously but registered with EA for DLC and stuff like that.
03/05/2012 at 13:50 rocketman71 says:
No. It wasn’t.
03/05/2012 at 13:56 Shooop says:
How was it at all necessary?
BF3 has dedicated servers only licensed by EA, so there’s no way to play on them with a pirated copy. In-game friends lists worked before in Bad Company 2. So did in-game server browsers. The only thing Origin added was Facebook Gaming Edition.
Nothing about Origin was necessary. If it worked properly and didn’t give itself a free pass to scan entire computers then it’d be as tolerable as Steam. But like Steam, it’d never be necessary.
03/05/2012 at 14:22 Sparkasaurusmex says:
I think that’s not the point.
It was a necessary evil for users if they wanted to play BF3. Maybe not necessary in the design of BF3, but for gamers it was a necessary install.
03/05/2012 at 17:49 Brun says:
To be fair, SWTOR doesn’t even require Origin to run. You can buy it and download it there, but I never run it from Origin, nor do I have Origin running when I do run it.
03/05/2012 at 12:40 Suits says:
The best feature is how using the forum could potentially lock you out of all the games you bought. Needless to say Origin doesn’t provide any service, so what’s the point of it even existing?
03/05/2012 at 12:59 Itanic says:
Was late coming to SWTOR till a friend told me you didnt need origin after uninstalling it several months previously and promising myself never ever to reinstall it…
A post has appeared on swtor website basically saying certain accounts will be banned if it turns out you bought your CD key from a dodgy website and mentions origin as being the best place to buy your CD key.. More like we arn’t selling any copies of swtor through origin.. wonder why?
If they ever make me signin to play SWTOR through origin then i will cancel my sub!
03/05/2012 at 13:49 rocketman71 says:
What a POS website. It took me like 8 tries to be able to post something.
Probably it’s been done by the same people that programmed Origin. If we can call that “programming”, that is.
03/05/2012 at 13:50 Shooop says:
Another day, another PR move by EA without the intent to fix anything.
03/05/2012 at 13:54 TuesdayExpress says:
What do I think about Origin? I have no idea; I’ve managed to avoid it so far.
Steam I’ll deal with, as it’s relatively unobtrusive and hasn’t given me a serious problem since it was new and shiny. Another game client? Ugh. I’d rather just avoid it.
03/05/2012 at 14:12 codename_bloodfist says:
Answer: I won’t use it even if held at gunpoint. Hope that was helpful, EA.
03/05/2012 at 14:20 Sparkasaurusmex says:
If origin has to run in the background it should only run when needed. That means when I exit my game I want Origin to shut down. Of course I can do this manually, but I feel the software would be improved if it automatically exited when I shut down my game. I guess as an option, because some people might want to launch a different game from Origin.
03/05/2012 at 15:09 CorruptBadger says:
Its steam without the perks. People don’t mind using steam as DRM because of all the perks, trailers, automatic updates, sales, availability (i.e. they stock almost all newly released games. indie or not) and accessibility. Both are DRM, but all origin is, is EA telling valve they want all the money and not letting them get a cut, and have consequently probably lost sales and money, it is a dumb corporate scheme and i hope it backfires
03/05/2012 at 15:37 kud13 says:
I’ve purchased Dragon Age: orignins Ultimate edition on EA’s own Xmass RPG sale roght about the time Origin was first coming into being. THus atempting to download y purchased game, I saw EA’s dowload Manager transform into Origin.
I used it to download DA. it went pretty smoothly. THough I also had the DLC issue, which required quite a bit of back+forth with EA’s tech support to resolve (but resolve it we did. They were fairly polite and competent about it).
of course, I haven’t used it since, and the last time I tried to log onto Origin, it kinda refused to load. I’m not really complaining, since it’s not running in the background, or anything, but I would like to buy Mirror’s Edge eventually and I wanted to check out EA’s own price for it.
also, I absolutely despise EA for not doing an ultimate edition of ME2, which would include all DLC.
03/05/2012 at 16:11 Norramp says:
I just want more games on GOG.com. Let’s get back to the way things were meant to be.
03/05/2012 at 16:59 Ultra-Humanite says:
I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life when I tell you that EA really does not want to hear what I think of Origin.
03/05/2012 at 17:01 S Jay says:
I will never use it. I see no reason to have a specific store to buy a game from a single publisher. I already use Steam and I don’t want a new Steam. Just add those damn EA titles to Steam, you damn people.
03/05/2012 at 17:14 sephiroth says:
well i think thats going well
most of the comments I have read are something allong the lines of look at steam see the difference, fix it. i couldn’t agree more.
even this asking for comments is done half assed.
tiny char limit on the comments I took 2 posts to just list the obvious flaws like insane pricing, lack of a clock anywhere, the technical issues I’ve had with the 1 game in their service I own, the chat being a pile a wank that makes me and my mates just open steam.
03/05/2012 at 17:23 MythArcana says:
No, they really don’t want to know what I think of Origin…or any other commercial distribution company attempting to achieve a monopoly in 5 years. I can install my own games and patches and have since I learned how to turn on the computer.
03/05/2012 at 17:23 Aufero says:
Origin has no positive features I can think of – it’s a dodgy bit of system clutter they’ve forced me to use in order to buy their products. It works correctly about one time in four, in my experience, and the legalese attached to it is worryingly threatening and intrusive.
Its only present function is as an active deterrent to buying EA products.
03/05/2012 at 17:23 InternetBatman says:
I don’t want proprietary services for all game companies. Especially one as large as EA.
Also, EA does not manage its products for sustainability. Dragon Age 2, Darkspore, etc. are proof enough of that.
03/05/2012 at 17:30 Bobtree says:
EA Origin is STILL a beta, even while mandatory for their major releases. The store popups, like all popups, suck badly. The “keep installers” option does nothing for in-place installs (like BF3). It’s the N’th replacement of the crap EA downloader (that used to completely fail at uninstalling, I haven’t tried removing Origin). The nonsense idea that EVERY game needs to be tied into such a system and “social”ized and so forth is just garbage. EA can’t really be that stupid can they?
03/05/2012 at 18:34 RegisteredUser says:
1. My favorite Origin feature is that crackers managed to remove/circumvent it from/in the relevant games and
2. A feature I would like to see improved upon is EA and their way of handling things going away for good.
“As usual we recommend firewalling the executables, not using Origin, and avoiding EA.”
This might be their(the crackers’) words, but f*cking seconded!
(No, I did not pirate ME3, or any Origin title for that matter. I find the whole series ghastly and the whole EA/Origin monster so horrible I boycott the games completely)
04/05/2012 at 02:27 ffordesoon says:
I have used both services, as well as Desura.
My advice to Origin is, don’t be fucking terrible at everything.
My advice to Steam is, fix Offline Mode.
My advice to indie devs is, if you want me to buy your game off your website, and it’s on Steam, give me a Steam key for it so I don’t have to dig through my mountain of email to play your game. Same for Desura. In fact, give me both. I paid you all the money, so I should own it on everything.
EDIT: Oh, and EA? Let me uninstall BF3 like a human.
04/05/2012 at 16:23 bill says:
1 – I like that Origin allows me to buy Mirror’s Edge and Mass Effect 1 for about $80 dollars. Thanks for that.
2 – I think offering us about 20 highly priced games is too confusing. Maybe you should increase the price to $100 and reduce it to five games so people don’t get confused.