Dear Origin, You Stink

[ben-]

I havent used origin myself, but my cousin has battlefield 3 with it, what a PITA to watch him have to join games from the internet then the program opens for him to play. He complains a lot about lag and the interface not working with him. He has a really modern PC (he has $$ i have brains). At the time of this writing he has pretty much stopped with the BF3 due to origin itself. (he is a big fan and user of steam)

/shrug

 

[Animyr]

EA was probably counting on getting congress to pass a law that will outlaw steam.

"Steam is infringing on EA profits by using illegal business tactics like sales that hurt legitimate companies that sell ten-year-old games for 20 bucks and expect people to buy them. Also, steam is actually run by Russain hackers who are attacking American jobs."

Seriously, EA is blundering through this. No wonder they made ME3 origin exclusive; it's the only trick they've got.

 

[Frostbite3789]

I wonder; why is this posted now, in late January, while the whole Origin spiel went on almost three months ago.

It's sort of, y'know, not really relevant. We all complained about it long before, the EULA was changed (really, an article from August 2011?) making it only a bit more harsh than Steam, feature-wise it's a bit pointless but other than that it doesn't do much at all and hardly affects your actual gaming experience.

I've felt this way about Shamus' last few articles. He's always a few months late on these sorts of things. I understand he's a busy dude, but if you can't get your rant out there in a timely manner, it really shouldn't be front page material. Especially if you're referencing outdated material that's now straight up wrong.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Seriously, EA is blundering through this. No wonder they made ME3 origin exclusive; it's the only trick they've got.

Which is different than what Steam does with Valve games how? Please, try to explain.

It's how they even got people to use Steam in the first place. Because it was required to play their completely offline, single player game, Half Life 2.

 

[DTWolfwood]

From the trailers and videos I've seen of ME3, I am not impressed. Sorry, the whole thing seems to be too human focus for my liking.

Since it was announced that it's origin required, the decision to not bother with ME3 became abundantly clear and easy.

I will no longer support any game that require Origin. (Still holding strong against UBISOFT's always online garbage too.)

 

[DTWolfwood]

Seriously, EA is blundering through this. No wonder they made ME3 origin exclusive; it's the only trick they've got.

Which is different than what Steam does with Valve games how? Please, try to explain.

It's how they even got people to use Steam in the first place. Because it was required to play their completely offline, single player game, Half Life 2.

they offered all of their previous valve games in 3 simple packages to get your Steam library going. Its too long for me to remember the exact specifics, but valve offered something like the Gold, Silver and Bronze packages. for something like $60 it included, HL, HL2 and episode1 , Richochet, Team Fortress1, Day of Defeat and DOD Source, Counter-Strike and CS Source, that single player CS (blue something). if i miss something i forgot. So yes they are doing the same thing as EA, except they seem to be giving the customers more options to start with and use steam. Where as EA just seems to want to strong arm ppl into using Origin.

Also the ORANGE BOX. HL2, HL2 ep2, TF2, and Portal for $60... yeah where is EA's multigame bundle for $60?

is EA going to give BF3 away for free so ppl would want to use Origin? You know like how Valve gave TF2 away for free after about a year of its release.

 

[karloss01]

after the bullshit i went through with EA's DRM and GFWL from microsoft, i make sure the only service i need for a game is Steam. otherwise its a console purchase. and so far thats worked out fine for me.

 

[jovack22]

Steam needs competition?
Perhaps to keep them on their toes, but at the moment, they are awesome.
I've bought so many triple A titles for $5 it's ridiculous, not to mention the other awesome deals.
I think steam is doing a great job.

 

[Animyr]

Which is different than what Steam does with Valve games how? Please, try to explain.

Steam has more tricks. Come for their exclusive games, stay for the other stuff. From what I can tell, Origin has no "other stuff" that Steam doesn't do better.

 

[Irridium]

A very good read.

Thing that gets me though is everyone is going apeshit over games requireing Origin, but at the same time, many games require Steam. Now I dont like either service much, I dont work with funds over the internet, currently, much, and I hate having memory used for a background service that only stands to suck up ram for me.

When I go out and pick up a hard copy of Shogun 2, I dont want to be forced to install ANYTHING besides Shogun 2, regardless of what service it is.

Now dont get me wrong, I respect Steam much more than Origin, and I completely agree the ladder is a shit service, but it seems hypocritical to me that the arguement has been made on this forum many times that Origin is overstepping its bounds by forcing itself to be used with EA games. This seems to me to be one of the few cases where it's either all wrong, or none of it is.

Well, for me, it's because Valve has a track record of improving their service, and generally being (relatively) consumer friendly.

EA has a track record of completely abandoning their products and services after a few months, and generally treating their customers with contempt, at best.

Could also be a case of gamers going "yeah, we're not falling for this shit again". I mean, we already need one service running to play games. Or two, if you're unfortunate enough to buy a game with GFWL. At this point there's just too many damn "services" out and another one, from EA of all people, isn't exactly a welcome sight. EA definitely has the potential to make it great, but they're track record suggests that isn't likely.

 

[Thoric485]

It's a perverse joke on EA's part to use the Origin name to distribute swill like DA2 and SW:TOR, on top of all the other disguisting crap they're pulling.

 

[Kroxile]

No, all of EA's problems are caused by used games and piracy...

duh

 

[Frostbite3789]

they offered all of their previous valve games in 3 simple packages to get your Steam library going. Its too long for me to remember the exact specifics, but valve offered something like the Gold, Silver and Bronze packages. for something like $60 it included, HL, HL2 and episode1 , Richochet, Team Fortress1, Day of Defeat and DOD Source, Counter-Strike and CS Source, that single player CS (blue something). if i miss something i forgot. So yes they are doing the same thing as EA, except they seem to be giving the customers more options to start with and use steam. Where as EA just seems to want to strong arm ppl into using Origin.

Also the ORANGE BOX. HL2, HL2 ep2, TF2, and Portal for $60... yeah where is EA's multigame bundle for $60?

is EA going to give BF3 away for free so ppl would want to use Origin? You know like how Valve gave TF2 away for free after about a year of its release.

Lets do this point by point shall we?

They offered none of those packages upon Steam's startup. Especially considering half the games you named weren't out when Steam originally came out (HL2 and episode 1, episode 1 didn't come out until 3 years after Steam's launch, HL2 a year later. Day of Defeat a year later. DoD Source just came out last year...)

The Orange Box was released in 2007. Four years after Steam's launch.

TF2 went F2P in 2011 if I recall. Late 2010 maybe. So either three or four years after TF2 came out and 7 or 8 after Steam launched.

But you're expecting EA to give away one of it's biggest releases of the year a few months after launch? I don't think you'd make it in the business world, guy. I really don't think you can compare TF2 and BF3 in terms of budget and all that. Not everyone can have Valve's lax release deadlines.

Anyways, back to the original point, Steam did none of this when it came out. When it came out and even now, it's just DRM. And this coming from someone who greatly enjoys Steam sales and Valve games. They're great, but people who want to damn Origin for the same crap Steam does are ridiculous to me.

"Derp I have to use Origin it to play EA games!" So? I have to use Steam for games that aren't even made by Valve these days.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Which is different than what Steam does with Valve games how? Please, try to explain.

Steam has more tricks. Come for their exclusive games, stay for the other stuff. From what I can tell, Origin has no "other stuff" that Steam doesn't do better.

I could look at it just like people are looking at Origin. Be forced into it because I want to play PC games. Dawn of War 2's xpacks. Dead Island. Saints Row the Third. Skyrim. Space Marine. And there are others.

Those aren't even Valve games but I'm forced to register them on Steam. Or else I don't get to play them.

 

[Frostbite3789]

This article is so smart. You can't come into a Steam world forcing people to use something that is way worse and expect them to grab onto it. Then again, maybe EA is just testing stuff out for now and will get it together later, like Nintendo with the 3DS price.

You can't come in and get users exactly how Steam did it when it launched! That's not fair!

Boy, I really enjoyed HL2's release day when I couldn't play my single player only game because Steam's servers went down. Just, so good. But gamers don't remember as far as back as '04 I guess.

Should consoles stop having exclusives too? Sony is only letting the Uncharted series be in the PS3? THEY'RE NEVER SEEING ANOTHER DOLLAR FROM ME!

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I got Human Revolution on steam for 13 bucks. AAA title, amazing game, in my mind. If I wanted something like this on any other digital download, or even in store, I'd have to wait another year, maybe 2.
I got Garry's mod for 7.50 bucks. I've choaked 170 hours out of it, and I'm still not board of it. As far as I'm concerned, Origin doesn't even have games as intelligently simple as garry's mod. Why would I even bother to download it when steam has EVERYTHING I need?

 

[CoffeeScamp]

I didn't like it when Valve forced Steam for Half Life 2, but over time I've grown to like and accept Steam. I have most of my games there, can mod freely as it's easy to just reinstall, as well as a friends list which makes multiplayer easy, and while I don't often buy new games (Amazon is often cheaper) the sales keep me coming back to the store.

I can understand EA insisting on Origin for their games, but.. that privacy policy is nasty, the games are expensive even on older titles, and the client isn't really up to scratch. Seriously, with their resources, and the example of Steam, they should have got the thing nailed down before forcing people to use it.

While I have to use it to play some of the EA titles, I don't really want another client (and then another and another when the next publishers start thinking they can make money by having their own too).

Then there's the stories of banning, and preventing people even getting at their singleplayer stuff.. for me, this absolutely kills my trust in EA.


My boyfriend had a completely different problem with Origin and EA, and their customer service..

He bought DLC through the LIVE marketplace for an older game he owned (one of the Need for Speeds), and then found he couldn't use it.. it turned out that the game was on one EA Master ID, while his gamertag was tied to another.

The reason he had two accounts was because he'd made an account when he bought the game, and then somewhere afterwards, EA took over that company and turned it into an EA master ID account. In the meantime, he'd made an EA master account and tied his LIVE details to that, being the account he was using for the newer games.

When he first contacted customer support, they told him they couldn't merge the accounts. They couldn't remove his gamertags. They could transfer everything from the old account to the new one, but needed "proof of ownership". Mailing them from the tied email address, and listing the games wasn't apparently proof enough, and they refused to do anything, and closed the ticket.

He emailed back on a new ticket hoping for a different staffmember who might know more.. got the same customer support person, but this time he just moved everything from the 'old' account straight away.. so the story ended well, but the whole time this was going on we were wondering if they'd just continue to refuse to fix it, delete the wrong account, or ban him for being awkward!

 

[Arppis]

Well, I agree on having a rival for Steam. Rivaly always brings best results for us customers.

 

[Dandark]

Dear Shamus,

I think an image is worth a thousand words.

Spoiler

PS, I will give a cookie to the first one who knows what anime this is from.

They could even turn Origin into their own little "used shop" for digital games. Does a gamer have a game they don't want anymore? Let them trade it in for half the current price. Give them credit to spend on Origin. Now they have a reason to keep shopping with you, and if they don't like a game, they can trade it back for more credit. Now they have a sense of security. I'd be more likely to buy a game if I knew I could get something back if I didn't like it/finished it a bit too quickly.

Reward continued spending with digital coupons. If someone, say, buys Dead Space 1, give them a coupon that halves the price of Dead Space 2 (or vice-versa). Do this with all franchises, give them coupons for other games in the franchice. Do they have each game in a particular series? Let them swap the coupon(s) with some others so they can use that to help pay for more games.

...That. Would. Be. AWESOME.

I could really go for that! I mean, I actually picked up 2 games on steam that I really regret buying (Civ 5 and Section 8, respectively), and I wish I could do something with them...

But of course, EA is a public company and if they don't give their shareholders their daily...umm..."friendly stroke" with hundred dollar bills, the shareholders will put their foot down and fire high ranking people. And of course, most of the shareholders have no freakin clue how to run a business properly, since they only care about profit growth. Ergo, EA is not likely to do anything that smart.

You have no idea how happy I am that Valve isn't a public company. Shareholders. Ruin. EVERYTHING.

That would be Gundam 00.
OT: I see there are plenty of people who defend origin by saying Steam was or still is just as bad. Tell me how that excuses origin? At least with Steam it already has my trust and has a much bigger game library for me to choose from with regular sales.

What does Origin have to make me choose it over Steam. Origin is not the worst system ever, but it's also not very good. I personally like Steam and hold them in high regard. I already have a bad opinion of Origin because of the controversy surrounding it about privacy polices.
They fixed all that im sure but that doesn't really give me much confidence in it. It's also made by EA who I already have a dislike for.
Even if I didn't already dislike EA I would of heard bad things about them since they have such a bad reputation. So I ask again what reason is there for me to stop using Steam, a popular and generally trusted program that I already use rather than Origin, a new program several updates behind steam that has already suffered from contraversy and is being put out by EA who have a dubious reputation.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I suggested a spin on the above, too.

If EA had a system where you mailed in old EA games and they gave you Origin credit for them, it both removes old games from the preowned market, which they want, and guarantees new Origin customers, which they also want, without looking like they're just out to look as evil as possible.

Find out what Gamestop give for a 360 copy of Mass Effect 2, and BEAT that offer for all formats, including PC. Remember that, as with piracy, you're only losing 'potential' profit, but actually reducing the used game market and locking customers into coming back to you because they now have credit with your online store.

As for Steam being a bit shoddy when it started, if I went to the bank for a loan to start my own pizza delivery company, they'd sure as hell want to know I could do it BETTER than my local 'Pizza Hut' and better from day 1. There's no introductory period in business. Get it right or GTFO, especially when someone's shown you how it works.

As for -

Well, I agree on having a rival for Steam. Rivaly always brings best results for us customers.

EDIT: just reported my first ever piece of spam, top of the page, why do they bother? Does anyone believe you can earn $$$ in your free time anymore, putting aside the lucrative world of prostitution?
I entirely agree, but Origin sure as hell isn't it, and I fear it's not likely to change very much.