Notch Calls Origin "a Good Thing"

[chadachada123]

Origin is not competition. EA is now making many games EXCLUSIVE to Origin, cornering the market for those AAA games. It can't be competitive if users have no choice other than "do I want to play this game or not."

It's not a good thing at all, and I'm glad that Notch recognizes how badly EA is running things currently.. I'm also disgusted by the warping of the facts by The Escapist.

 

[Bostur]

Competition is a good thing, but Origin doesn't seem to be big on competition. EAs own titles are Origin exclusives and if successful could easily be used to lock-in consumers on that platform, in effect preventing competition.

Funny, I thought you was talking about Steam there for a second.

I never liked Steam from the second it was released because of this, it also prevented me from playing Steam games because I was on a 56k connection in the early-mid 2000s.

In fact, I prefer Origin right now.

Valve does the same thing. But Valve doesn't have the product line-up to be successful in a vendor lock in attempt, and therefore they won't even consider trying. Portal and Half-Life are pretty small compared to EA's catalogue.

 

[Xanadu84]

Do we need competition? Maybe...retail is still a pretty sizeable competition though, so Steam is no where near a monopoly. What we don't need is malware dressed as a steam clone with less features that only survives by holding good games hostage. Put battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 on steam, and ill consider checking out origin, because that is acting out of long term sustainability for the PC. In the mean time, ill keep useing Steam, try something like Gamers Gate when DD becomes the standard, and treat Origin like it has leprosy.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yes, competition is a good thing and at least origin is putting up a fight. That said, when did Notch become any kind of an expert on digital distribution. Does making one popular indie game suddenly make you a demigod who's opinion on everything matters or is he just a celebrity who's every statement we need to quote?

 

[DeadlyYellow]

We really need to get off of this. By "this", i mean every word Notch says. His word doesn't mean much compared to anyone else. As for Origin itself, i have my own opinion that matters to me. That's all i need.

But he has so much in common with EA: He's either praised for his published work or considered a shameless and lazy money-grubber.

 

[Freechoice]

I think it's a bit dangerous to only have one digital distribution platform like Steam," he said. "I love Valve, but out of principle, I find the idea of one platform a bit scary.

Yeah, but in this circumstance, practice trumps theory because Valve is NOT a bunch of greedy dickheads that mistreat their customers.

 

[Thoric485]

I agree, competition is always a good thing for the customer.

But God help us if Origin ever becomes top dog.

 

[Griffolion]

Notch has a point. Sadly, EA made Origin awful right out of the stable. A rather invasive EULA, identical prices to physical releases (also paying no heed to prices of similar titles found on Steam), and a "Free Games" section which are just demo's of full games? No wonder it receives so much hate. Origin itself isn't bad, it's only a piece of software at the end of the day, it's EA that makes it bad with it's awful policies.

I think it was the Escapist themselves who, a couple of months ago, said that Origin's biggest downfall comes from the fact that EA isn't acting as if they are the underdog in this fight (which they are compared to Valve). Really, they need to be undercutting prices and providing a great service at every stage to even stand a chance of getting people on their platform.

 

[Otaku World Order]

So what he's saying is "It's good that EA is bringing competition to digital distribution, but it would be better if they weren't tripping over their feet and acting like wankers by trying to cram it down our throats."

At least, that's what I got out of it.

 

[Phishfood]

Oh I wholly agree, competition for steam is a good thing. Valve need to be kept on their toes so they don't get overconfident and start ripping us all off. I think Valve has a lower chance than most of becoming that demon, but its always possible.

However, origin is still a steaming pile of shit that doesn't work right and has yet to offer such good deals as steam.

I'm going to propose an idea I have said before - divorce the client from the storefront. With ebooks you can buy epubs from ANY store - waterstones, kobo, amazon and they all download to one client - adobe digital editions. If we could work out the same deal with digital distribution of games we would be laughing. Everyone and anyone can have their own online store, us users only have to download the distribution client of our choice. Win win right?

 

[RedDeadFred]

I see where he's coming from here. Monopolies are discouraged in every other business and that is essentially what Valve has with digital distribution of gaming.

 

[ZephrC]

Man, I love Notch, he's probably the coolest person on the face of the Earth right now, but he's wrong about this.

And not because EA sucks, either. (Although it does. Never hurts to point that out.)

Would movies be better if some of them were HDDVD exclusive? Would they have been better in the 80's if Beta had kept up with VHS? Would hair metal have been more awesome if some of the albums had been 8-track exclusives? Do .MP3, .ACC, .OGG, .WMA, and .FLAC contribute to the quality of modern music?

Platform competition contributes absolutely NOTHING to end product quality. I'm glad lots of people want to find ways to deliver video games to me, but one of them needs to win. This constant unending mess of Wiis and XBoxs and Playstations and PCs and Iphones and Vitas and 3DSs and Steams and Origins and hundreds of other stupid bullshit things that aren't as successful needs to fucking end. It is doing nothing but hurting the video game industry.

It. Is. Bad.

 

[RedDeadFred]

i hate origin because if i want to have ea titles on my pc i need to have them on a secondary piece of software that i dont like using, its actually stopping me from buying their games> Because i judge if its worth the hastle.

Honestly, if double clicking a different icon on your desktop to play a different selection of games bothers you enough to not buy those games, you probably weren't that interested in the games to begin with.

I'm assuming that's all there is to it. I am primarily a console gamer so I really don't know the extent to how bad Origin's interface is. People are making it sound like they have to go through physical pain every time they boot it up.

 

[Darknacht]

Why does this site act like there is no one else doing digital distribution?
Have so few people here heard of sites like GamersGate(essentially client free Steam with more games, lower prices, more sales, and credit back for reviewing games) or GoG(DRM free classic games for under $10) or any of the dozens of other sites?
Steam has lots of competition but they are not run by publishers/developers who will force you to use only their services so gamer lite sites seem to be unaware of them.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

"move away from titles that make people use it and show people why they should use it."

This is the key problem with a lot of things EA does, they are all stick, no carrot. Look at The Sims, or any of their sports games. The Sims 3 is unbelievably bug ridden, but rather than fix problems they release stuff packs for about £10 each, expansions for almost as much as a full game. And the sports games are just as bad.

 

[Michael826]

So, either a metric fuckton of you didn't read the article, or you're just pants-down retarded.

He never said he liked Origin, he said he liked the idea of Origin. Competition is a necessity, regardless of it's quality. He even goes on to site several clients that he prefers to Origin, yet the latter seems to be the thing everyone is retaining.

Also, the title is misleading, but this is journalism, remember? It seems to escape people so often on this site -_-

Derp.

 

[TheMatsjo]

Notch's logic is flawed; if the SAME games would be available on both platforms, then you'd have some competition going. But if you can buy games only on Steam OR only on Origin (etc) they're just different marketplaces altogether. Sure, players will buy from either one or the other, but that's because of the titles, not because of the service.

Cheers.

 

[cikame]

Valve comes from a developer background, their foray into selling other peoples video games was unexplored territory.

EA however, has been practising and learning how to make money through sometimes neferious means for a long time now, this shows as their first step into the same market as Steam sees them force the program onto people and remove said games from the competing service.

I can buy Colgate toothpaste from competing supermarkets, but i can't get crysis 2 on steam...

 

[Paularius]

Well Notch is famous for trolling.

 

[JayDig]

I decided to suck it up and get Mass Effect 3. Unfortunately my email is tied to a three year old EA account that switched to Origin. I've now waited about an hour for an automated password retrieval email that doesn't seem to be coming.. Sigh.

I'm sure I went through plenty of bullshit because of Steam, but at least that's in the past.