Mass Effect 3 Gives Steam a Miss at Launch

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Guess who's buying it for xbox 360?

*Points at self*

And to think I was going to buy both mass effect 1 and 2 on steam to lead up for the perfect PC playthrough.

Back to the old box.

 

[aashell13]

by "restrictive terms of service" I assume you're referring to the fact that valve won't let you deactivate somebody's game because they said bad things about you on the internet...

 

[WickedFire]

I have nothing against EA or Bioware, many of their games are personnal favourties, but i'd rather cut off my own arm than be forced to use Origin. I've tried it, and it is just so slow. When something for Steam downloads in seconds, and you have to wait a few hours for the Origin download, that is time that at the moment I do not have to waste.

EA needs to just admit that Steam is better, and we can all get back to a fast, working, unified platform for ur PC gaming. But they would never do that, because it's all about the shareholders. They aren't as horrific as Activision, but christ are they trying.

 

[Awexsome]

Y'know EA. You don't have to BS your way through damage control for this. "Wanting to have Origin have a competitive advantage over the massively biggest competitor" is an equally valid reasoning.

You guys are just doing the same thing Valve does and even the biggest criticism for the "spyware" install has been fixed months ago which people willfully ignore. Don't listen to the haters.

Game quality will matter more.

 

[MisterShine]

i heard that the restrictions they talk about is buying DLC from within the game to avoid paying to Valve a little percentage, but im not sure thats the case, so can someone please confirm this? i remember reading it somewhere, but cant really remember where

From what I hear through the grape vine, Valve changed their DLC policy so any DLC going forward had to be offered on Steam, and they increase how much of a cut they got when the DLC was sold through them. As some people noticed, Crysis 2 and DA2 were both on Steam and then removed, not coincidentally the same day their first packs of DLC were released (or I think a week before, in the case of Crysis 2)

And from what I understand now the disagreement is more over the percentage EA has to give up and not the fact they can't sell it themselves, and since EA is the only one bitching about this we can safely assume they're being their usual greedy selves.

But Origin is constant authorisation connection. So Single/Multi Player is constant connection, I think? Which is fine for all of us that have superfast broadband that never cuts out - which, at last count, was maybe 5% of us?

So if you don't need a constant connection for single player but you do need Origin does that mean Origin pretty much acts as the game launcher like the uplay "front-end" for ac: revelations?

Now does that mean I can run the game without starting Origin after the first time? If so, who cares if I have Origin? I'd never need to run it again.

To answer you three at once:

While I obviously can't tell you if ME3 will be different, I own 3 games on Origin (Dead Space 2, Alice 2 and Bulletstorm), and for each one Origin doesn't have to be running in the background at all when the game starts, let alone be connected to the internet. Origin only needs to run to install the game, after that you can leave it off if you please.

However you can't uninstall it, otherwise the games won't run. Which is strange, considering when I boot up the game EXEs no other programs start, but it knows that Origin isn't there. I suppose Origin makes the game exe itself check to see if Origin is still installed..

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

And from what I know from their whole spat a while ago, it was because Steam requires DLC for Steam games to be sold on Steam. Meaning EA wouldn't be able to sell us DLC through their websites using their stupid-ass "Bioware points".

That seems to be one of their biggest sticking points, which is ridiculous when you consider how miserable of an experience it is for their customers. They're trying to force us to use an almost unusable system just because it's theirs instead of something that actually works. Dicking around with getting the BioWare Social Network to even stay logged in and then just trying to figure out which DLC existed and at what price for DA:O and ME2 was horrible. Downloading and installing the free stuff was such a chore that I never bothered with any of the stuff that cost any money, and it turned me off from any future games that might use that service. Now that they're telling me that ME3 is off Steam (which handles things like that gracefully) because of that bullshit, I'm not playing it if they pay me after that experience.

 

[Richardplex]

yeah... since this is EA we're talking about, all i'm hearing is "waaah! valve won't let us spy on our customers!"

I'm glad you came to remind us all that, even if that is not mentioned here. I'll watch your latest comments to see you no doubt discuss butterflies on the next SOPA news piece.

no need! i'll do it right here! we recently planted lemon trees right? and there these huge bastard butterflies that only lay their eggs in lemon trees! and we'd never seen them before, and nobody anywhere near has has lemon trees. where the hell did they come from?! do they just float around in orbit waiting to cross over a lemon tree?

Oooh, double points for adding context!

what's really annoying though is they lay their eggs INSIDE the leaves somehow, so we don't know where the eggs are until the day morning after they've hatched and eat their way out along with several more leaves.

The LEAVES you say? Those must be some pretty darn thin eggs. At least they leave those lemons alone though!

 

[glenbruton]

I don't care about the delivery platform. I just want to know if they Dragon Age 2'd it !

 

[JamesCG]

This is going to complicate my plans to buy the entire series on PC, and play through it there, isn't it? I want to buy ME1 and 2 off of steam, but would that cause trouble with activating ME2 DLC, because, iirc, the DLC itself isn't on steam? Or maybe it is. I don't know.

Really, what I want to know can be summarized in two things; One) If I buy ME1 and 2 off of steam, and play through them on steam, will the save file still be able to be imported into ME3 even if I buy it off of origin?

Two) Is the DLC for ME2 on steam/Will it be difficult to install if it isn't on steam? Also; does pinnacle station come with ME1 PC or is it a different thing? I can't recall.

Thanks for any replies to my questions, because if everything goes smoothly I'll have no trouble with buying off of origin.

 

[MisterShine]

One) If I buy ME1 and 2 off of steam, and play through them on steam, will the save file still be able to be imported into ME3 even if I buy it off of origin?

99.9% yes.

ME1 to ME2 just asked where your save files were and did the rest itself, no reason ME3 won't do the same thing. Neither Origin nor Steam encrypt their save files. Hell, you can even use other peoples save files [http://masseffectsaves.com/].

Two) Is the DLC for ME2 on steam/Will it be difficult to install if it isn't on steam? Also; does pinnacle station come with ME1 PC or is it a different thing? I can't recall.

The ME 2 dlc is NOT available through Steam, you have to buy it off of the ME2 site while signed into your Bioware/EA account, you can then download it off of there, and point it to your ME2 install folder in the Steam program folder (I'm pretty sure the DLC installer automatically finds it but not 100% on that) to install it into the game. When you next start up ME2 it will ask you to sign into your Bio/EA account, it will then authorize your DLC. After that you don't need to sign in again for the DLC.

As for ME1 dlc, there are two, Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station. BDtS is built into the Steam version (and most others), but you have to buy Pinnacle Station separate. However, PS is pretty shit, so I wouldn't recommend bothering in the first place.

Hope that helps.

 

[Beryl77]

Is this really how you want to get to move more people from Steam to Origin EA?
Origin may not be bad but there is no reason for me to go from Steam to Origin. It doesn't do anything better than Steam. They need to add some features which would make me think, that it's worth it to switch to Origin. Just having some games not on Steam won't achieve that. That's the wrong way of thinking in my opinion. Sure, Steam wasn't really good at the beginning either but that was seven or eight years ago. You were able to learn from Steam, while Valve pretty much pioneered back then.
Combined with you having a bad reputation in the gaming world, I don't see how it's benefitting for EA to pull off games from a place with 40million active accounts.

 

[Hungry Donner]

by "restrictive terms of service" I assume you're referring to the fact that valve won't let you deactivate somebody's game because they said bad things about you on the internet...

Ha!

And they don't even have the decency to say they won't change this, despite earlier comments suggesting otherwise.

 

[Alade]

I think I've figured out EA's business plan on this, and if it is what I'm thinking, it's pure genius.

Remove games from steam, force people to buy them on other services/consoles, where they earn more money on DLC. But, you say, they lose custommers that wanted to buy it on steam? No problem, once they are done reaping all the money on the DLC, they release all the games at once on steam (the issue was miraculously solved), and everyone who didn't buy it till then, buys it.

EA wins either way if they do this. Your "boycott" is over the second they put those games back on steam, and they haven't lost a single sale. Basically the perfect time to put crysis 2, BF3 and ME3 on steam is after ME3 GOTY is released. The only hole I can find in this business plan is the fact that BF3 will lose sales due to the multiplayer appeal being lowered.

I may be giving EA too much credit, but this seems like what a smart businessman would do.

 

[Miltrivd]

I'm not installing spyware. I'm sure this is gonna sell millions anyway, but I refuse to play puppet for EA. If Origin is required to play the game, then that's a game I'm not buying. After playing the dumbed down/easy as hell ME2 I was left with a bad taste. EA just makes it easier to avoid them. Even if I need a one-time activation I seriously doubt that you can uninstall Origin and still play. Being a conscious gamer is not THAT hard, lots of great games with less crappy service behind them.

 

[praetor_alpha]

Shame, I was planning to get it on Steam. Guess I'll pass ME3 up.

 

[Braedan]

Well, EA lost a sale of BF3 with this kind of shit, and they're going to lose a sale of this too. Thanks EA, Mass effect's story was starting to suck anyways.

 

[Lawlhat]

I wouldn't really mind if EA wasn't still attempting to use the DLC thing as a thinly veiled bullshit attempt to get people that don't want to use Origin to install it.

Yes I understand that Steam did the same thing with Half-Life 2, and that Steam wasn't great back then, but you didn't see Valve going "Well, retail stores don't let us interact directly with our customers..."

 

[lacktheknack]

"A strange game indeed... the only winning move is not to play."

And I won't be. I haven't played ME2 either, so I'm going to decide that the series ended at the end of ME1, which was a perfectly serviceable ending.

 

[James Raynor]

I'm buying it on consoles due to this. Also, I hope their PC sales bomb fucking miserably and then they decide to change it because of that, and then no one still buys it just to spite them. That would make my day.

They'll just blame pirates for poor sales and say that PC gaming is dead before they'll change their minds. We should all know how this works by now.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

EA: "And don't worry. We've made sure that you only need to authorize the game once in order to access the single-player features of this game. ... We weren't able to convince BioWare to make the game constant Co-Op Multiplayer.