Free Dead Space Launches Origin's "On the House" Program
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Team Fortress 2 and Portal were very marketable IP's and were worth their purchase price at any given time, regardless of both given a free treatment at a later period.JediMB said:
Dead Space is a pretty limited IP with a niche appeal and a very low replay value.
Free games are a great way to get people to your store front, and that's exactly what this is. EA has invested millions into Origin and they banked on their AAA titles forcing people into their market front...and in some cases that has worked but their overall concurrency is the issue. Steam just recently topped six million concurrent users as an average now in 2014, Origin's statistical data is not openly traded with the public. But a cursory search of the internet with your search engine of choice will show that the last time EA decided their concurrent user numbers were worth making a news release about was during Sim City's launch in 2013 where they recorded 1.3 million concurrent users.
The market share average between Steam and Origin is not evenly split at all, while the total users registered between either only varies by about 10 million users (Steam at 60 million and Origin at 50 million), Steam is retaining at least 10% of its registered user base at their peak concurrency...every day. Origin on the other hand barely retains 1% of its registered user base during its daily concurrency and it can be assumed that it may not even be breaking the 1 million user mark in daily concurrency except when a particularly hyped IP is just about to release or has just released. But it can also be assumed that these spikes aren't very large because EA hasn't really bothered to say much about how great their Origin numbers were with the launch of BF4 and of course just recently Titanfall.
Simple facts are is you can't sell people games if you can't get them to your store, and most people that use a digital content delivery service for their PC's aren't generally very prone to having more than one of them running at any given time. Free games are a way to get people to keep the store open on their desktops...and thats pretty much it.
From a personal standpoint...I've been using Steam since its earliest inceptions, its been sitting on my computer since it first came out and has been in my system start up for years now and I don't find it intrusive, problematic, or even annoying, it has a deep content base, and I can find almost anything I want on it at any given time without having to check some other source and buy elsewhere. Origin's problem, to me, is that I have to install a second piece of software to access their games, which isn't in their favor because I'm less likely to impulse buy an EA product...simply cause their products aren't being marketed to me directly without me consciously choosing to install their delivery platform.
If EA was still hand in glove with Steam, they'd likely be selling me a lot more games and most of the EA backed games I have...are games I got on Steam. By and large if its locked behind Origin...it has to be something pretty special for me to bother, and so far ME3 was really the only thing they've done recently that pushed me towards Origin....I won't say thats the average but I will say that if you're depending on exclusives to get people into your store at all, then you're not going to have a very busy store in the long run.
Eh. Hm. No real complaints here. As someone who doesn't have the game, this is actually quite nice of them. *high-fives origin staff*. *sanitizes hand, burns clothes*
1. The guy's been around almost as long as me.Nazulu said:
2. That avatar is automatically applied to all the user's posts when they're banned. It's not their real avatar. I'm amazed you haven't noticed that.
Steam has never had me require to manually patch a game with an official patch to get it to run and then that patch invalidate my key, and then require me to get in line to chat with a tech support rep, get a key from them that required me to have an account on their older online activation system for the game to finally work.lacktheknack said:
Oh did I say work? Yeah I still had to dig in the ini files to make the mouse support vaguely resembling usable, though it still had mouse accelleration.
That was my experience with Mass Effect on Origin.
While some shitty ports have made me need to dig in ini files and such with steam games too, I've never had a problem with patching or invalidated key activations.
I got Spore(75% off on Steam) last week.
That depleted my goodwill towards EA for the year.
Unless there's a game from them I need to live, I'm not touching Origin.
Though I will admit it 's beginning looking quite attractive when you take a look at the shovelware piling up on Steams front yard.
That depleted my goodwill towards EA for the year.
Unless there's a game from them I need to live, I'm not touching Origin.
Though I will admit it 's beginning looking quite attractive when you take a look at the shovelware piling up on Steams front yard.
I don't get what youre saying here...you don't think Dead Space is as good a game so their attempt to give it away for free is some foolish farce? Portal could be considered less replayable than Dead Space depending on who you ask, I'm not even sure I'd call it that Niche, its pretty standard sci fi which is popular and while it does pretend to be a survival horror game its really just a slightly different action game.Pr0 said:
Speak for yourself. I've played through the first Dead Space three times now, and I probably will again at some point in the future.Pr0 said:
OT: People, people... it's just a free game. Honestly, no matter how you look at it, this can't be a negative. It's either positive if you want the game, or neutral if you don't.
Worst case scenario: You don't want to bother with Origin or don't want the game, so you are utterly unaffected by this.
What exactly is the problem?
Um... yay!Cerebrawl said:
...What do you expect me to do with this information? Origin went poorly for you, it's been nothing but sunshine and lollipops and rainbows on my end, while Steam's support is so bad that I had to wait until I bought new computer parts and reinstalled the OS a year after buying Arkham Asylum before I could even play it.
I don't know if it's been said prior to this post, but if not, I have this to add:
I got Dead Space on Origin when it was offered alongside Dead Space 3, Mirror's Edge and some others as a Humble Bundle. It plays fine, but the mouse controls can make aiming awkward, and I couldn't play the basketball minigame for beans.
And if they ever offer it again, Dead Space 3 was absolute garbage in the 3 hours I could stomach it. The only joy I had in that time was learning that Isaac now swears and grumbles under his breath when stomping. Would not recommend, even for free.
But mainly the basketball minigame thing.
I got Dead Space on Origin when it was offered alongside Dead Space 3, Mirror's Edge and some others as a Humble Bundle. It plays fine, but the mouse controls can make aiming awkward, and I couldn't play the basketball minigame for beans.
And if they ever offer it again, Dead Space 3 was absolute garbage in the 3 hours I could stomach it. The only joy I had in that time was learning that Isaac now swears and grumbles under his breath when stomping. Would not recommend, even for free.
But mainly the basketball minigame thing.
Well that sounds like the problem was on your end. I couldn't play Fallout: New Vegas until I replaced my RAM, the old one had a few corrupted sectors. Similarly sounds like you had a hardware issue, or just plain didn't meet specs.lacktheknack said:
Heck my old computer couldn't run Bastion because it required 500mb VRAM and I only had 320MB on my GeForce 8800GTS and some newer games required me to have a newer OS than windows XP. That's not steam's fault.
That doesn't change the fact that I submitted a ticket and it took them over a week to collectively shrug their shoulders and say "good luck" without even a suggestion.Cerebrawl said:
And I once tried to get DLC deleted off my account, since I didn't want it and couldn't turn it off. It took them three weeks. That is Steam's fault. Ergo, I like Origin better.
So you have only problems that were your own fault fromlacktheknack said:That doesn't change the fact that I submitted a ticket and it took them over a week to collectively shrug their shoulders and say "good luck" without even a suggestion.Cerebrawl said:
And I once tried to get DLC deleted off my account, since I didn't want it and couldn't turn it off. It took them three weeks. That is Steam's fault. Ergo, I like Origin better.
A. not having the system/a broken system to run a game and then wanting the equivalent of gamestop, since valve didn't make the game, to fix something that was YOUR FAULT.
B. They didn't immediately remove content from your account that YOU BOUGHT AND/OR CHOSE TO DOWNLOAD since even free DLC you pick off the store page, and thus it is some how steams fault you don't have any sense of personal responsibility?
Even your reasons of supporting Origin lack any real information. My favorite being that Origin has better functionality than steam and then didn't say WHY. You offer no arguments that aren't a collection of reasons you can't be trusted to have a credit card since you obviously have a history of not thinking through your actions.
Your sole counter that was based on reality was that Origin doesn't sell peoples information anymore and that Steam still collects our system specs. Ok, but Origin collects our system specs too, and Steam never sold our information. This brings up the same point that I brought up during the Xbone debacle, just because a company decides to reverse a violently anti-consumer practice because of consumer outrage, doesn't mean that they get a clear record, because they didn't decide what they were doing was wrong.
All they did was realize that they wouldn't get away with it, they still thought that doing something that victimizes the consumer was a good idea. We're not gonna let Charles Manson out of jail just because he hasn't ritualistically murdered someone recently, because we know what he's done in the past and are aware that he would do it again in the future if we allowed him to. EA does anti-consumer bullshit every month, sometimes immediately after promising that they want to stop being a horrible company.
OT: Free games are good, but this is a really dumb free game to give out as a starting point for this program that may or may not continue after this one game. I'm not saying deadspace is a bad game, I in fact really like it as opposed to that soulless abomination that was DS3 where me and my cousin played through it just to see how bad it was and only made it to the end because we wanted to see just how bad it could go(spoiler: its really fucking bad).
This game is old, seriously. While I'm not saying they should give out new releases, that would be stupid when their library consists of only their games and is thus tiny, they picked a game that was not only in the humble bundle, but even if you missed that, it was about 2 bucks on any number of steam sales and other gaming store fronts many, many times. While making a game free that everyone owns makes money sense, it doesn't make publicity sense.
Besides that, they picked a game that gives poor credit to their deal by picking a game with no notable DLC or bonuses. Seriously, look at the list, its all 1-3 dollar weapon power ups. No content, nothing that actually improves on the game. Just examples of pay to win DLC and a few skins(2 of which are console exclusives).
As a flagship title for their new promotional campaign to get people to forget their latest string of transgressions, this is just bad, though I will admit it could be worse..... they could have made it populous.
That's a lot of words for a complete failure to understand on your part.snekadid said:
To completely kneecap you, my problem with Steam isn't the problems I had (my sense of personal responsibility is far more encompassing than pretty much everyone else here, thankyouverymuch), it's the weeks-long response time. How very telling that immediately had to resort to personal attacks.
Meanwhile, my contact with EA's customer support over a problem with The Sims 3 was responded to within two hours. If I had a similar problem as I did with Arkham Asylum on origin today, I could have immediately returned it for a refund after the quick customer support told me they didn't know how to fix it. Similarly, they could have removed the DLC in hours rather than weeks.
I've said many times before that Origin and Steam are essentially equal in terms of function (I even wrote a <link=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.825489-So-I-got-Origin-from-EA-A-Review-Image-Heavy>review on it) and I just didn't re-iterate, so sorry for that.
However, I didn't say a single word on data collection, so I have no idea where you got that from. Your rant was irrelevant.
Don't be antagonistic and insulting because I had issues with tech support, dude. You only look desperate and contrarian.
I'd echo the tech support thing, actually. Steam's support is downright abysmal, and Origin's is pretty good. My annecdotes - I bought a regular edition of a game during the sale, then realised I should have bought the collectors edition. Submitted a ticket, basically saying "hey guys, can I give you some more money please?" - they replied three days after the sale ended telling me that as a gesture of good will they could refund the game I bought and then allow me to repurchase the CE for double the price, would I like to do that now? Uh, no, thank you Steam.lacktheknack said:
Whereas when I had difficulty getting hold of Mass Effect 1 DLC (seriously, it's frickin impossible to buy it direct from Bioware now), an Origin tech support person IMed me within an hour or two and not only gave me the one I asked for, but gave me a key for the other one for free too. Genuinely pretty cool of them.
At the end of the day, obviously I'm more a Steam user, because it's where the games are, but there really isn't anything beyond that you can say Steam does better.
Again, you need reading comprehension, you went to STEAM to get tech support for A GAME THEY DIDN'T MAKE.lacktheknack said:
Its funny how you keep trying to insinuate that I'm wrong because I'm hostile, when you have done nothing but make posts that range from hostile to passive aggressive all through the thread.
O dear, you wrote a review, I guess I should google search everyone that makes unsupported claims on a forum. You didn't post it in the thread so it was irrelevant to your point because you didn't make it here. I called you out on the points you made in the thread.
You wanna know something that makes Origin worse than Steam? Clicking on games from your library page takes you to their massive DLC pages, not options, not a forum. Just gallons of steaming, stinking DLC. Games without DLC don't get anything except a blank page if I remember.
It's funny how you ignored the entire post except that I called you on your nonexistent argument that only contains blatant name calling, veiled insults and baseless fanboi-ism, o and you screwing up and then expecting people to fix what you did immediately. Present something, ANYTHING, to support your argument or go away, you keep making insulting posts at people and are providing nothing factual or relevant.
You know, this is a good idea coming from EA. Maybe to celebrate nót winning the Golden Poo, maybe to try and pull in some actual new users to their system. Dead Space was not a bad game if memory serves and may actually pull some new players in. Kudos for actually making a promotion campaign that will actually benefit the players.
I mean, I'm not going for it but it gives them sóme good will on the big karma meter of life.
First thing that popped in my head however was that EA, about a year ago, claimed that Steam's many many sales were cheapening and even hurting intellectual properties. I know this is still EA but a little consistency is nice.
I mean, I'm not going for it but it gives them sóme good will on the big karma meter of life.
First thing that popped in my head however was that EA, about a year ago, claimed that Steam's many many sales were cheapening and even hurting intellectual properties. I know this is still EA but a little consistency is nice.
k.snekadid said:
Origin is better because it has a guaranteed refund period.
Origin is better because the customer support is significantly better.
Origin is essentially identical to Steam in every other way, from purchase method to library arrangement to ease of use.
Your move.
