EA Defends Origin From Hardcore Crowd

[Sis]

The difference is that Steam was the first serious digital distribution network. They made plenty of mistakes.

Origin has the benefit of a decade of Steam's mistakes, yet they continue to make *EXACTLY THE SAME ONES*. They're even managing to make the mistakes that Steam managed to not only avoid, but explicitly called out so that other distribution networks would be able to benefit from those experiences.

That's the problem people have with Origin: This is the year 2012, and they've produced a service that isn't even as good as Steam was *when it launched*.

^ You pretty much summed it up.

 

[ScruffyMcBalls]

"and anytime EA does something that is significant in the industry, it generates a certain amount of reaction."
What, like that time when you tanked a sci-fi franchise beloved by millions which had the potential to be one of the best video game series in history? Like that? Yeah, I'm bitter, be the bigger man, you get over it.

 

[Strazdas]

So what their are saying is basically: steam did mistakes at the begining, so we will be doing the same mistakes and noone can blame us because we are too stupid to learn from steam mistakes.
great idea you got there EA, go back to your corner now.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Let me be honest, nobody with half a brain likes digital distribution even a little bit.

Because sweeping generalizations and derogatory attacks are sure sign of intelligence?

 

[Metalrocks]

steam at least works pretty fine, despite some flaws that you cant use it if your not connected to the net.

Actually if you are connected at some point, then hit the go offline button under the 'Steam' drop down menu you can play all of your already installed games with no net connection. Just have to reconnect if you want to download/buy new stuff.

last month my connection was gone for few days and had no way to connect my pc to the net. even when i clicked on offline mode, it still wanted me to be connected to the net just to start it up. surely pissed me off. i dint had this crap few years ago when i had a very unstable connection.

 

[Casper Andersen]

To me Origin is just he gatekeeper for Mass Effect 3, I dont think I have even opened the program in the last two month, since I stopped playing the ME3 multiplayer.

And I think a lot people feel the same way about it, only you know, also with Battlefield.

 

[DTWolfwood]

"People forget that when Steam launched, there was a lot of backlash from the core," he explains.

That is true, but whats your excuse for not learning for their mistakes?

 

[veloper]

Steam had many technical difficulties in the beginning, but that's nothing compared to Origin now.

EA go deliberately go out of their way with Origin to take away customer's games just for modding/fan-patching their games and for using common street languange on their forums, that wouldn't even get you a warning here at the Escapist.

It's the difference between simple failure and malice.

PC gamers are not likely to forget terrible treatment like that any time soon, even if EA change such policies.

 

[Romblen]

I only used Origin for Mass Effect 3. Once I was done with that, It's just been inactive. Outside of a couple games that I don't really care about that much, Origin has zero advantage. Steam has good service, good price, large selection, decent social interaction, and it continues to innovate.

 

[ZephrC]

Look, this completely fails to address my main concern, which is that I don't want to own half a dozen consoles and run half a dozen download services just to play games.

And don't feed me that stupid bullshit about how the competition makes games better. It doesn't. Not any more than having HD-DVD still around would make movies better. That just straight up doesn't make any sense. Having a single, stable platform to make games on would improve the quality of the actual games themselves, which is the only thing I give the slightest shit about.

So until Origin becomes the only download service available, I'm gonna stick with Steam. And hey, on the off chance Origin does somehow do that I will finally have a reason to like EA and their evil.

 

[RvLeshrac]

The difference is that Steam was the first serious digital distribution network. They made plenty of mistakes.

Origin has the benefit of a decade of Steam's mistakes, yet they continue to make *EXACTLY THE SAME ONES*. They're even managing to make the mistakes that Steam managed to not only avoid, but explicitly called out so that other distribution networks would be able to benefit from those experiences.

That's the problem people have with Origin: This is the year 2012, and they've produced a service that isn't even as good as Steam was *when it launched*.

You have very bad memory of when Steam launched my friend.

And you seem to forget that the Steam of Counter-Strike and HL was the Steam Beta, essentially IM and a server-browser, while the HL2 Steam ('Launch') was substantially improved.

 

[Doom972]

Origin seems to function as intended, but it's just not better at anything. Their lack of sales and saying that sales are bad are a the biggest problem I see. They also lack most of the community features Steam has.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

They are lacking in functions but it seems to work fine.

Mostly it annoys me because you can't track achievements from it like with Steam or XBOX live.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Dear EA,

Do you remember in the scene in Rocky where Mickey was yellin' at Rocky for not trying hard enough, and how Rocky countered with saying Apollo was an underdog once too, so just calm down and Rocky will eventually be the champ if he just waits long enough?

No? Good, because that scene never existed because that's never how underdogs become successful. And right now you are so underdog there are paw prints on your forehead.

Being competitive isn't just doing the exact same things the champ did seven years ago. It's forcing the champ to play the game a whole new way.

Sincerely,
A devout Battlefield fan who's really upset about this poorly implemented, half-assed program that's surviving via shear thickheaded executives tagging along throwing money rather than smart business plans and creative strategies.

Exactly. EA can't get away with saying Origin is as good as Steam was a decade ago as it is not 2003 anymore, and they are competing with present day Steam, which is miles ahead. If they want to beat Steam they have to at least match Steam in terms of quality service at first and then find a way to surpass it.

 

[Emiscary]

"You're incorrect in the belief that you don't like or need our digital distribution service."

That about sum up EA's statement? Honest to God I fully expect them to try mass hypnotism at some point in the near future.

 

[Hungry Donner]

Dear EA,

Do you remember in the scene in Rocky where Mickey was yellin' at Rocky for not trying hard enough, and how Rocky countered with saying Apollo was an underdog once too, so just calm down and Rocky will eventually be the champ if he just waits long enough?

No? Good, because that scene never existed because that's never how underdogs become successful. And right now you are so underdog there are paw prints on your forehead.

Being competitive isn't just doing the exact same things the champ did seven years ago. It's forcing the champ to play the game a whole new way.

Sincerely,
A devout Battlefield fan who's really upset about this poorly implemented, half-assed program that's surviving via shear thickheaded executives tagging along throwing money rather than smart business plans and creative strategies.

Exactly. EA can't get away with saying Origin is as good as Steam was a decade ago as it is not 2003 anymore, and they are competing with present day Steam, which is miles ahead. If they want to beat Steam they have to at least match Steam in terms of quality service at first and then find a way to surpass it.

My thoughts exactly.

I don't disagree with DeMartini as I avoided Steam for years. But it feels like they didn't study Steam at all before rolling our Origin. I'm sure that's incorrect, but that just makes it worse since they must have made these mistakes despite closely examining Steam. There's so much about Origin's release that could have been proactive rather than reactive.

 

[Thoric485]

The problem is they think of themselves as Steam 2.0, when in reality they're GFWL 2.0.

 

[I.Muir]

Yadda yadda yadda yadda

Here is the big difference
Valve - steam is loved, respected and produces games of a quality greater than 8 / 10 every bloody time
Floats on it's own and is the go to place for indie games
Pricing is still expensive and by that I mean average but will drop and then goes on sale

EA - Origin is the most hated bureaucratic mess of a company to exist in the gaming world whose games are often mediocre at best and include every bad new trend but somehow worse, often more than one at the same time
In order to market Origin, games are to be forcibly withheld from steam
Pricing will always remain at it's highest for as long as possible

This situation won't change anytime soon either

 

[Zefar]

Steam had many technical difficulties in the beginning, but that's nothing compared to Origin now.

EA go deliberately go out of their way with Origin to take away customer's games just for modding/fan-patching their games and for using common street languange on their forums, that wouldn't even get you a warning here at the Escapist.

It's the difference between simple failure and malice.

PC gamers are not likely to forget terrible treatment like that any time soon, even if EA change such policies.

The conspiracy in this post is sky rocketing. They ain't banning people from their games but it certainly wouldn't hurt. Trolls deserve every punishment they get.

As for "Street language"? You mean like this.

Black guy: Yo nigga, get me some KFC and a melon! I'm hungry!

Because street language ain't always all that welcome on forums. Since you're most likely calling people whore, gay, ****** and asshole just to name a few. Forums got rules to follow. Simple ones at that too. Trolls just fails at these things.

You also have to say some pretty bad things or troll pretty hard on the forum to get banned. But people who don't visit the site often believe everything they hear from haters so not like you're gonna believe someone who's been on the forum.


Also what Technical problems does Origin have now that Steam don't have?

Steam can still stop working for people. Crashing every now and then. Make games Unavailable for an undisclosed time. Or randomly put your account in lock down when buying stuff on their store.

The only real problem I've found with Origin is that it doesn't like Sleep mode. It will bug up after that but all you need to do is restart the program. Which doesn't take long.
Origin is also faster than Steam is at the moment for me. The store, Community all take far to long to load up. On Origin? Goes pretty fast.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

If I didn't need Origin for Mass Effect and Battlefield 3 then I probably wouldn't have it, as others have said, there's just no real reason to use Origin over Steam.

That said, I will say this for Origin: It's a lot more stable than Steam is. Steam runs like crap, it's a great program, I love it and I love Valve, but seriously, it's unstable as fuck. You inexplicably get disconnected quite often, you get errors sometimes just going from the store page to the community page, I got an error message 5 times in a row just trying to add a video to my profile once, hell, lately Steam has had problems signing me in automatically. I've lost track of the number of times I've had an error when it's tried to sign me in automatically when I turn on my PC and I have to end up signing in manually.

Origin on the other hand, is perfectly stable, I've never had any errors while using it, never been disconnected from it for no reason, and for some reason I actually get faster download speeds on it than I do on Steam. Origin is pretty much devoid of anything Steam has, apart from a store and a profile page (that you can't even do anything with) making it shit compared to Steam, but at least it's shit that runs well.