EA Gets Ready to Throw Down With Steam - UPDATED

[RobfromtheGulag]

The 'Free ME2 w/ DA2' tactic got me to download their online dispenser because I'd ditched my old game disc in frustration, but odds of me dealing with another dds are unlikely. As long as EA keeps it's drm out of the Mirror's Edge extremely annoying sector, I'll likely just buy hard copies.

 

[Deathfish15]

EA started to become great in 2008 through the end of 2010....but now they're going ass backwards.

First, they start to increase the PC games to $60 instead of $50. No, there's no price inflation otherwise consoles would update as well. Consoles were/are $10 more than PC games because they have to play licensing fees to the console company and there is no licensing fee for the PC because of how open it is. No, they did it on pure greed.


Then, they decided to pull this crap hating on Steam as a digital distribution and say they still support their "retailers", when just within this past year they were complaining up a storm that "used game sales hurt video game companies." SO....they support companies like Gamestop, which sells their games used for huge profit and dismisses Valve, which uses pre-order discounts, free games, and TF2 bonuses to promote digital sales of other developer's games.

What the *BEEP*?!

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Does this mean that I won't be able to get Battlefield 3 on Steam? If so, that is unfortunate. I tried to pre-order it from EA originally via their digital service(Only because I had a discount coupon for their site). Although the fine print stated that after 1 year, I could never download it again.
Nuts to that! Steam please!

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I'm usually against the constant EA hate, but I sincerely hope this fails within the next few months. Sadly, I really doubt it will considering that EA seems to own damn near the entire AAA game industry at this point. For the first time, I actually want to do the whole internet boycott thing, but even more sadly, I'm once again sure it will fail given the number of enormously popular titles that EA is going to force people to buy through Origin.

Yes Steam had a monopoly, but monopolies are dangerous, not inherently bad. Thus far, Steam has mostly been a pretty good monopoly at least for consumers (at least for me and other games I know).

The whole beauty of Steam is that it provides a central hub, keeping all of your games tied together and all of your friends in one place across games. A competing service that does exactly the same thing and forces you to use it to play certain games completely defeats the purpose of the thing. You end up having to deal with two programs that do almost exactly the same thing.

And then there's the fact that "Origin" (Really, that's the best name EA could come up with? It sounds like a bad name for a generic business front in some crime movie.) is just worse that Steam. It's clearly less-developed, the interface is visually appealing, but lacks utilitarian polish, and it just doesn't seem to function as well. I suppose it could get better with time, but I'm not holding much hope.

Hell, you can't even set a custom name. Whatever you choose, and your choices are limited by the already massively-consumed EA account namespace, you're stuck with it.

And why on earth does every PC application developer have such a goddamn problem with windows now? Windowing was a great development for the PC and shoving everything back into attached panes (speaking specifically of the Origin friend list) is not a step forward.

 

[Nouw]

I wonder how the elitists will think of 'the last good gaming thing alive' being challenged. Moving beyond that, I'm not so sure if it's a smart idea. I hope they can co-exist

 

[Matterer]

The way I see it, this idea succeeding is a worst case sinerio.

We will have 2 programs using the background of our computer, so twice the usage there. Potentially we could have multiple conversations between different friends on different services.
If we play a steam game, we couldnt talk to our friends while they play origions games and vice versa.
Twice the risk for personal data loss, like weve been seeing recently.
The gaming world would get more beffudled for outsiders.
EA would get more money, and so then everything will be OK 8D

Seriously though, this is the first thing I have ever felt a need to boycot D:

 

[Alade]

Usually I'd be skeptical but EA has a lot of funds at their disposal, they might be able to pull this off. But, if they do want to win, they're gonna have to use very dirty moves on Valve while still satisfying their customers (and third part supporters) however they can.

 

[Krantos]

Unlike a lot of people, I actually see this as a probable success. Not because EA is better than Valve or anything, but because D2D is the new retail for PC games. I fully expect PC games to disappear from store shelves in the next 10 years, with all sales being done via Download.

This has the bonus perk that most new releases can be pre-loaded, so you don't even have to go to the store on release day.

 

[Irridium]

From The Origin Help section [http://help.origin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2085/kw/activation%20limit]

QUESTION
I've received an error message on Origin, what does the error mean?
ANSWER
You may receive one of the following error messages if you have reached the maximum amount of times your game can be downloaded through Origin:
For security reasons, you are allowed # concurrently active licenses. This limit has been reached. Please wait until one of the other licenses auto-expires, then try again.
License response error: '78008,Max machine lifetime entitlement met:#
Error: 10000:78008
Every time the download button is clicked, a download count will be added to your lifetime total. If you have installed your game via Origin on more than three computers within a ten day period, you will need to wait until the first installation expires.
Note: Re-installing your operating system, or interrupting a current download, will count as a new computer installation.
If you have reached your download limit, click Contact Us and include your account name, the title of the file or game you are downloading, and a brief description of the issue.

So if you stop a game while it's downloading, you've used up one activation if you do this 3 times with in ten days of each other you have to wait at least ten days to finish downloading your games.

That's nuts if you ask me. I've stopped downloading huge games many times on steam because I wanted to stream a movie or download a patch for WoW or what ever.

And already Origin is inferior to Steam.

One reason I accept Steam is because I can download my stuff whenever I want, however my times I want, no matter what(well, maybe not when Steam's having one if its "fuck you" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/7827-Stolen-Pixels-211-This-is-Not-Funny] moments).

But apart from those times, there's no limit to how much I can download, or when I can download. I'm in control.

Good god EA, I really shouldn't be surprised at this, but just... god dammit. There is no reason for this. Steam doesn't need to do this, and has a great way of stopping it. Its called not letting one account be signed in from different locations at the same time. This makes sure only the owner can play.

Once again, EA shows how little it trusts its customers. And they expect us to trust them and let this program on our PC's?

Fuck you EA.

 

['Record Stops.']

Going against Steam is like fighting a lion.


Someone will do it, but will get ripped to shreads...

Depends on what you bring into the fight.

Valve and Steam are carrying in no short order, Tengen Topper Gurren Lagann, the BFG-9000, and several hundred tons of WIN-BOMBS.

EA has a tiny pistol with no ammo, a t-shirt with the words," Ful O' Fail" and a bladeless knife. Meaning just a wooden handle.

Oh, and Valve also has a portal gun.

So yes, EA IS boned.

 

[MazeMinion]

Origin is going to bomb.

Many Steam users (and PC gamers) do not want to download a mediocre version of Steam just to play EA games.

 

[Avaloner]

I'm amused by all those people claiming that the Monopoly is bad, first off yes, usual a monopoly will turn out to be bad, raising prices for everything and providing less for more money.

But honestly how long is Steam already the dominating force in the digital distribution market?
I myself only use it since a year or something, but the sales, the service and the wide range of market, as well as the fact that they include indie titles makes it so great.

Even if Steam will ever be just grow fat and lazy and ask for ridiculous prices, than I'm sure they will loose the fan support and people will just go back to retail and Stores from the developers(Ea Store..heh, but I'm not seeing this happening, steam has proven to be a reliable service, with great deals, great prices and a stable platform.

So yes I hope this ship sinks, I don't want all the developers having their own Stores and programs and should this ever end badly, we still have game Shops or Amazon for retail games.

 

[Antari]

Thanks EA but I already have Steam, if you want to make some money put it on there. And atleast I can trust Valve to be somewhat honest about the way they do things.

Awesome, does what I was going to rant on, also, where did you get your avatar?

Had to make it myself as avatars didn't really exist back when the company was alive. Its the Intellivision Running man. A very early version of Mario depending on how you look at it. All the people on the Intellivision looked like that.

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

EA can suck my balls, I'm buying a boxed copy of The Old Republic.
I've spent quite a bit of money on Valve's Steam service, and I am NOT going to sign up for another download service for ONE game. I'll just stick my .exe shortcut in my steam library and pretend there's only one download service out there.

 

[thefire]

I really hope it dies before battlefield 3 comes out, I want that on steam.

 

[notimeforlulz]

It's probably got a lot to do with steam being a soaked game market. There are a large number of games on steam that come up next to EA's titles and are better than EA's titles. EA simply doesn't want to compete with it's competitors at the digital distribution level. What this move of theirs will do is cause the other major publishes to create their own steam clients that allow them to exclusively release their titles there. Segmented the digital distribution platform so that the games and brands from different publishers aren't so easily comparable. If EA could own the retailers, and only let their own games be stocked, they would. This is simply a step in that direction. This strategy however depends upon there being a large install base for their store. And with their line up this year, it's a really good time to try it.

That being said. I will not be buying battlefield 3 if it isn't available on steam. And I love me some battlefield.

 

[Dys]

Everyone seems to think this is going to fail....I don't see how or why.

Steam may be the biggest service, but it's horribly flawed and generally way overpriced, it has apparently has restrictive limits on what developers can release (hence crysis being pulled). Assuming EA aren't flat out retarded, there service will succeed, at least as a medium for their own titles...If battlefield 3/the old republic/the sims/any of EAs other massive franchises are origin locked a lot of people will get origin.

 

[Dys]

Everyone seems to think this is going to fail....I don't see how or why.

Steam may be the biggest service, but it's horribly flawed and generally way overpriced, it has apparently has restrictive limits on what developers can release (hence crysis being pulled). Assuming EA aren't flat out retarded, there service will succeed, at least as a medium for their own titles...If battlefield 3/the old republic/the sims/any of EAs other massive franchises are origin locked a lot of people will get origin.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service - many of which are not imposed by other online game services."

Way to bury the lead.

The is the problem specific to EA or is Steam the new evil empire we get to shake our tiny internet fists about?

Quick does someone have a copy of the "business terms"?

 

[drosalion]

On the SWTOR forums a dev posted about Origin/TOR, saying that you will NOT need Origin installed to run, play, update TOR. You will only need Origin if you want to purchase the game online as it is the sole online distributer for TOR. I would have thought the mmo would have been the 1 game that WOULD require you to have Origin to update etc, so if you dont need it to play TOR, then i cant see you needing it to play ME3, BF3, etc.

Here's the quote for those interested explaining it a little bit more:

------------------------

"No, you won't.

While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you?ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic.

Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals.

However, you won?t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you?ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that.

To answer another question - boxed versions of the game will include the client on DVD(s)."

------------------------

And another semi-related post:


"The Origin desktop application does not need to be launched to play The Old Republic.

However, if you want to purchase and download the game digitally, you'll need to do that via Origin. As you can see if you visit Origin today, purchasing a title there doesn't require you to download the Origin desktop application. You might also notice if you look hard enough that Origin ships physical products (ie boxes) as well as digital ones.

(Yes, you'll still be able to purchase SWTOR at a local retailer.)"