I've never understood the dislike for Origin

[Paragon Fury]

I mean, I get people were wary of it being from EA...but after all these years, I don't see why it has stuck around.

It started the whole "Super nice demos and refunds" trends among the big distribution platforms. It gives monthly free game time and demos for games, and now just gives out games for free frequently. It's chat interface is just as good as it's competitor's, and the UI, market and layout is just fine and works just as well as Steam's.

It doesn't cause any performance issues, and as far as download service goes I've actually found Origin to be the superior service, often downloading a game of equal size 2x-3x faster than Steam will.

The only things Steam has is the larger library (because it has been around longer and doesn't exclusively serve one company) and things like Voice Chat/Streaming...which as EA has pointed out make little sense for them to include in Origin because by far and wide PC users prefer to use outside sources for those things.

But mention Origin and people still look and act like you just shat on their desk.

 

[MHR]

It's from EA. Isn't that enough?

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The service has improved a great deal since it launched, but when it did launch, it was a shittier, less functional version of Steam that had a monopoly on EA-published games. The mere hassle of having to manage two digital distribution clients with two accounts is enough to annoy me. I went through the exact same experience buying Overwatch on Battle.net, because I'd forgotten my Blizzard password from disuse and had to navigate their incredibly tedious password reset process. ("You got your password wrong! Put in this captcha code - oops! You put in the wrong captcha code! We've locked your account for the next hour, hacker.")

The fact is that it's most convenient to use only one such client, and forcing people to use a different one just pissed them off. It's kind of like...I don't know, back in the day when people bought these things physically, it'd be like a video game publisher decided they were opening their own storefront and if you wanted to buy their games, you had to go to their new store across town and not the one that was closer to you and which you were familiar with.

I mean, it's not exactly digital syphyllis, but no-one asked for it, no-one wanted it, and no-one likes being made to use it.

 

[Tayh]

I mean, it's not exactly digital syphyllis, but no-one asked for it, no-one wanted it, and no-one likes being made to use it.

Could say the same for steam, except that's widely loved because of... Reasons.

As for the hate on Origin, I think most of it stems from not being steam/valve, which is like the biggest DRM offense you can commit in the game publishing sphere.

 

[mavkiel]

From what I recall it mostly stemmed from their eula. Which allowed them to basically snoop on your computer. *shrugs* It was a long time ago, I just recall it being some Orwellian style crap. Now, it is just annoying because it's just another service I need that has a far smaller catalog of games, and doesn't offer nice sales.

 

[Worgen]

Because EA has a pretty bad rep. Personally I don't trust them at all with digital content.

 

[FalloutJack]

It was never as good, it's kind of intrusive, its network borks, and sales? Hah.

 

[Zhukov]

a) It's EA and plenty of people do not like EA.

b) There was a controversy around its launch because a paragraph in its EULA basically said "you agree to let us scan your entire computer".

c) It's a bit annoying having to use multiple digital storefronts.

Personally I've come to accept it. They amended their creepy EULA and improved the service a lot. They've also taken a leaf out of Steam's book with sales.

I only have... *checks*... five games on it though.

 

[Saelune]

I don't like Origin cause I want my PC games to be in one place, and I think it was just EA being a baby. Plus Mass Effect 3 isn't on Steam, but 1 and 2 is.

I didn't even want to use GoG until they pulled me in by having old Elder Scroll games, but to CD Projekt's credit, they don't keep their games off Steam, nor keep their sales to just them.

 

[Saulkar]

I do not use it because I have not purchased an E.A. game in 5 years.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Could say the same for steam, except that's widely loved because of... Reasons.

It was the first digital distribution client to really gain traction, it's run by Valve, who are highly-respected developers, and it earned an early reputation for summer sales with huge discounts.

By comparison, Origin is run by EA, who everyone hates [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/09/why-ea-won-the-worst-company-in-america-award/], it came late to the party with a poor showing and improved over time mostly by becoming more like Steam, and...gives away games for free sometimes? Okay, that last part's a positive. I will concede this.

Anyway. One of the reasons I prefer Steam is because it provides modding support, which is a huge deal for a Total War fan. It's incredibly easy to mod a game through the Steam workshop; you literally click a button. As far as I'm aware, Origin doesn't provide any modding support.

The ultimate reason, as stated elsewhere in the thread, is just convenience. It's easier to only use one digital distribution service and it's frustrating to have to use several, as is increasingly becoming the case.

 

[hermes]

It's from EA. Isn't that enough?

That is about as much as there is to understand about the Origin hate.

It is made by EA --> EA is "eeeevil" --> Everybody hates EA --> Origin is evil and everybody hates it.

Just your average reductio ad hominem.

Nevermind their service is actually pretty decent, their client is fairly light and stable, has decent sales on a regular basis, had a return policy long before others even conceded to include one (many still don't), does not force weird Frankenstein launchers to go through Steam to launch games and is, in general, better than some of the competition and far better than the main competing service on their first years, which people seem to forget because reasons.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Honestly, it's not that bad as DRM digital services go, at least in its current state. That said, I refuse to support EA financially for their various other crooked business practices. I just downloaded Origin for the free games (I do have to give EA credit for that) and that's it.

 

[meiam]

Well personally I freaking hate steam UI, it's absolutely awful and it always feel like it's 10 year old even right after they update it. But I hate having to have multiple of these running on my computer and having to remember fifty bajillion password and username and it's one more things with my password that will eventually get hacked and I will have to make a new password that I will eventually forget. pita

If it was up to me, your video game library would be completely separated from any one distribution service and it would seamless to transfer it from one to the other, the various service would still get a cut depending on which one I buy from. That would force them to actually make there platform as good as possible, cause now steam as complete monopoly and it really shows.

 

[Tayh]

Anyway. One of the reasons I prefer Steam is because it provides modding support, which is a huge deal for a Total War fan. It's incredibly easy to mod a game through the Steam workshop; you literally click a button. As far as I'm aware, Origin doesn't provide any modding support.

Not using steam, that's actually one of my biggest beefs with steam at the moment.
Not only do valve want monopoly on games, now they're trying to encroach on modding territory as well.
At least nexusmods.com still exists and provides free, unrestricted mods, but let's see how long that continues if valve keeps gating mods behind their drm-wall.

 

[circularlogic88]

Eh, I stopped supporting EA years ago just as Origins was coming out. Like others have stated, it had a creepy EULA that gave them Carte Blanche to look through your computer and files that didn't pertain to running the games and keylogging and it was all just really unpleasant sounding. That being said, I try to avoid using Steam when I can and download the stand alone game directly from the developers whenever I'm able to. I hate having to to through a 3rd party authenticator to access my games.

From what I've heard about the service now, Origins is more on par with Steam and miles above Ubisoft's crappy client.

Most of the hate nowadays is because of EA's reputation for being EA and past shitty business practices and title launches like SimCity, lazy annualized sequels with their monopolized sports licenses, implementing fee to pay mechanics into games, and the compulsive need to cut up features and sell them back piecemeal in DLC, though every company does that nowadays.

 

[Lykosia_v1legacy]

What I don't understand is why so many PC gamers still worship Valve and Steam. PC has always been an open platform, but it seems that many would like to give up this and give all control over to Valve. I want Origin, GOG, Uplay and all the other DD stores to succeed so that Valve won't get full monopoly and control of PC gaming. That would be the death of PC gaming truly.

 

[Zaltys]

For the longest time, I was completely unable to access the site. Because it defaulted to a language that I can't read, and there was no way to change it. They seem to have fixed that now, but regardless, I don't buy anything from EA.