EA Botches Origin Coupon Giveaway

[Saucycarpdog]

Did anyone else that works in retail shudder at the c word?

*twitches* Don't speak of which we must not talk about.

OT: EA did the right thing in giving away so many games for free. How generous of them .

 

[DugMachine]

God damn I wish I had gotten in on this action. I totally understand why EA would pull the coupons though. Pretty funny and GOD DAMMIT I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED THIS OPPORTUNITY

 

[redisforever]

Couldn't care less, personally... even if I'd been given a code, I'm not sure I'dve used it. Apart from Origin exclusives that I can have no other way (and therefore have already purchased), there's nothing I'd purposefully use Origin for anyways.

Same, the code was in the escapist forums this weekend and i do have an origin account because i used to play BF3, but after seeing the titles it wasn't worth my time to redownload and log in even to get a bunch of free EA games.

Eh, I had an account to play BF3, needed one to play on PS3 even, but I grabbed Battlefield 2, as I knew it was a good game. Origin isn't too bad, but Steam still wins. I don't even need Origin to play BF2. I may just uninstall it.

 

[Mr Thin]

Did anyone else check out that reddit thread? It's full of people quite happily and openly admitting to exploiting this. They're all congratulating each other. Some of them even have the nerve to complain that it doesn't work outside the US & Canada.

It doesn't matter which company this happened to, those people should be ashamed of themselves. It may not be theft from a technical standpoint, but it certainly is from an ethical one.

Every single person who took advantage of this accident has just retroactively justified all the bullshit EA has put them through in the past. How can you possibly expect a company to treat you with respect when you do this to them? Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[theultimateend]

I didn't know it was a survey code .

I thought it was one of those giveaways.

Weird, I unknowingly jacked a game from them. I guess the good news is I have only minimal interest in playing it and would have never purchased it.

But still, weird.

Captcha: Friend Zone - If getting money from me is like getting sex, I'd say this is accurate for EA.

Every single person who took advantage of this accident has just retroactively justified all the bullshit EA has put them through in the past.

No it hasn't, but the rest of your post was interesting.

I highly doubt EA has lost any appreciable amount of money, I would bet by the end of this they have higher sales. The vast majority of places I found news about this had people thanking them and saying Origin was neato banditto.

It wasn't till they closed it up and it turned out to be an accidental offer rather than a genuine gesture of goodwill that people got testy.

And frankly Reddit is a bad place to go for unbiased commentary, any particular thread is a MASSIVE minority and that minority votes comments that only fit their message for that individual thread. There is no such thing as a hivemind there on the grand scale, but on the individual post level its basically the case. The vote system needs reworking there (namely making it invisible).

I'm surprised EA didn't just ban everyone that exploited the coupon and instead opted to let it be.

I would hope they only banned folks over 1 game . I legitimately had no idea it was a mistake, I thought it was a single game giveaway. I've gotten plenty of games for free from steam over the years so it didn't seem strange.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I'm going to put on my tin foil hat for just a moment and point out that this massive influx of new Origin users coincides nicely with the start of the financial quarter.

 

[Metalrocks]

well, thats something you dont hear from ?A all the time. i must be dreaming.
at least they tried to be seen as someone good but still failed at it. keep going ?A. one day you will manage it and maybe, just maybe, you will get my money again.

 

[weirdee]

overall, this probably got them more users than any other thing they've done with origin, so good for them?

 

[Starke]

I'm surprised EA didn't just ban everyone that exploited the coupon and instead opted to let it be.

The short version is, it would have killed the service, completely. Put it another way, a lot of people, even people who are fairly tech savvy didn't know that the coupon code wasn't supposed to be in the wild. If everyone who'd gotten it had been hacking their site, that's one thing, but that's not what happened here. The code looked like a random legitimate promotional.

Compare the headline we did get to: Mass Origin Account Bans due to Botched Coupon. And compare their current minor shitstorm to the one they'd have if people actually lost legitimate games. "You paid us 40 bucks for ME3 on PC? Fuck you. We're taking that back now, no you can't have your money back." And of course the rage of people who were told "hey, here's a coupon for 20 bucks off any EA game in the store," only to be told the next day that that legitimate code had just cost them their Origin account?

Yeah, the service would not survive that. It would have earned a permanent reputation on the internet as a scam, and that would have been the end of it.

 

[super_mumbles]

It may just be me, but it seems like EA did this in an attempt to jumpstart Origins active user count.

...I'll get my tin-foil hat.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

The biggest hurdle is getting people to try something new, after all.

EA. Running Digital Distribution. I'm still sternly opposed to Origin. Not ever downloaded it. Not ever bought a game that required it. Not ever pirated such a game to avoid Origin. No, if it requires Origin, it just doesn't exist to me. Strict boycott, and I've not given in. EA has a looong way to go before I'll ever trust them, or think about using Origin.

Good for you!

I'm doing something similar but for me it's more "nothing is worth having it installed on my PC" than anything. Mass Effect 3 was the one thing that would have swayed my better judgement but then EA's over-promotion of DLC (especially the day one Prothean) killed my desire. Of course the whole ending debarkle made my decision all the more sweeter.

Ea did do a good thing by not pulling out the banhammer like they usually do but leaving the survey was stupid.

 

[plainlake]

Credit to EA. For once. Did someone finally tell them that good public relations matter?

 

[Tel_Windzan]

I'm sure someone had already said something on this, but I can't help but wonder, couldn't EA have made those codes one-use only? Like if you are planning out a system like this to possibly get a bunch of gamers a decent reward, wouldn't placing a limit to how many times that code be used be one of the first things to do when you come up with the system? All it would involve is a Boolean variable on the server they have! As soon as someone used the code, it should have turned it to false so that any future codes can't be used again!

I guess I can't be too angry about it as EA has proposed there own fix to the problem. I just think they could have avoided it all together.

 

[bafrali]

Won't somebody think of our intellectusl properties. hehehe

It is the internet. You WILL be ridiculed sooner or later

 

[antipunt]

It was very quickly discovered that the code EA handed out was not a single-use code but could in fact be used over and over again to download as many games as the holder wanted. Even worse, or better depending on your perspective, the coupon codes could be used by anyone, not just the intended recipient, to download as many games as their bandwidth would allow.

Ok wait wait wait..hold up.

Is anyone else just completely utterly dumbfounded by how stupid this is? Some people seem to be siding with EA because they were 'nice' but honestly this was just irresponsible. I feel for the people who took the survey but got jipped because of their stupidity.

 

[BernardoOne]

They deserved it. That was a noob mistake. Its not very hard to do a single use coupon. So yap, I congratulate everyone who got dozens of games with this. I would have done the same if I has in America/Canada.

 

[Rex Fallout]

Guess they just didn't get enough war assets.

You sir. Deserve all of the internets for today.

 

[Baldr]

EA has a list of who they gave the survey to and can easily look up to see if the code has been used on the account already or not. EA should honor those codes for 1 free game, regardless of the screw up with the other codes.

Ironically, if EA is doing what they should be they won't have that list, because legal surveys are usually required to be anonymous.

There no law requiring surveys to be anonymous. Still they selected a select group of people. I know researches do it quite often for key demographics. They may not know which survey went to a particular person, so it is still anonymous, but they can tell if they sent them a survey, but they won't know if they completed it. The odds of a complaint from someone who was sent the survey but never took it is pretty low.