Origin: Exposing the False Dichotomy Between Two Multibillion Dollar Companies

[BloatedGuppy]

You might say that EA is just a terrible money-grubbing company with no interest in their audience, and you would be correct to a certain degree, but there's also a certain part of Valve thinking the same way. What's worse about Valve though, is that everyone loves them, so nobody cares what they do because they're filled with rainbows and unicorns.

Valve has made concentrated efforts at generating goodwill amongst their customers. For the most part, they have been successful. Of course it's a business strategy. So what? It's a smart business strategy, and they are entitled to the reward of a large and loyal fanbase.

EA has made concentrated efforts at gouging and bilking their customers at every turn. Their naked disdain for the people who buy and use their products is palpable. Does that mean their products are bad? No. But all the antipathy you witness directed towards them in the gaming community is well earned.

 

[Zhukov]

I like Valve a lot more than EA, let's make that clear. Yes, EA has pretty atrocious business practices, but they didn't always. No company in HISTORY has ever maintained good business practices forever. EA became how it is because of new people taking over the positions of those who originally ran the company, and over time corruption seeped in through executives getting greedy. This ALWAYS HAPPENS not only in business, but in every organization of society. It might take a very long time sometimes, but it WILL HAPPEN. Do you think the founding fathers would be happy with the US in its current state? Almost certainly not! Corruption is imminent, and it's stupid to act like EA has always been a big bad monster and Valve will always be a pretty pink princess.

Meaningless.

Even making the incredibly generous assumption that you're correct, how exactly is "Valve will turn evil some day" a point in Origin's favour?

Two companies, one nice and one nasty, and we're supposed to treat them the same because you tell us that the nice one will inevitably turn nasty at some undefined point in the future?

"Exposing the False Dichotomy"... phht.

 

[JambalayaBob]

If you actually just go and read their privacy statements you'll find this is more or less untrue.
EA's change amounted to "don't worry, you can trust us!".

They say that they won't ever personally identify you in their new EULA, that should be enough. What harm can a company possibly do with information about your computer if they can't ever know who's it is? If you mean that they could still just not obey their OWN CONTRACT, then fine, sue them! Let's see who wins that battle.

What the EULA specifically states is that they will never share information that personally identifies you to third parties; it does not state they will never store information that personally identifies you.

The real concern is just with the permissiveness of the EULA itself. I really and honestly doubt EA has any interest in storing a list of every movie I've watched on my computer this week or whatever; The issue though, is that they could. They're likely just throwing the clause in there as a catch-all. I'd really wager they plan on just building and storing user information (like home address, etc.) so they have a legal means of storing your credit card information for faster transactions.

Okay, so you're not really overreacting or anything like I kinda suspected, that's good. Yeah, they could do that, but I still don't see anything more wrong with that than what every social networking service does. Skype stores every message you type in, and every file you send across it. Facebook stores every chat message as well, probably to a more permanent degree, and obviously they also store every picture you post to it and everything about yourself you put on your profile. Many corporations probably have more data on you than you fully realize, so just don't worry about it. This is the age of information, which conversely means that this is the age of no privacy.

 

[bootz]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/10/origin-account-bans-threatened-for-playing-on-modded-battlefield-3-beta-servers/
Thats the difference between steam/valve and ea. in steam, You don't lose all your games for using a server in the server browser of a game.

 

[JochemDude]

EA has done nothing but disappoint me time after time.
Valve has done nothing but please me.

That's the state of affairs and knowing EA it will stay that way.

 

[hooksashands]

Sorry JambalayaBob, I don't think Escapists can live with themselves if they admit Valve ever made a single business mistake or bad design choice, or even acknowledge them as anything but heroes who--when not making games--run into burning houses to save adorable puppies.

 

[Syzygy23]

If Origin works nonintrusively, I'll be fine with it. If/when it doesn't, I'll hate it. This is exactly the same treatment Steam gets. Steam is awesome and wonderful when it works, and when one of the features irks me, or I lose internet connection and can't play a game because it wants to "update itself first", or something like that, it's the worst thing in the history of EVER!

Bottom line, I don't give a toss about the company behind the service. The service lives and dies on its own merits. I haven't tried Origin yet, but I'm sure it'll be a gross violation of privacy that I will tolerate because I like games, just like Steam is.

EDIT: Also, Jambalaya, you're reaching. It's not that people don't think Valve and Google can do any wrong, it's that we put up with their shortcomings because experience has shown that the benefits outweigh the foul-ups. Personally, I think there are good reasons to trust Google as well, mostly this: they already have all the information in the world. They probably know more about us than we do ourselves. Here's the thing, though: we aren't that interesting. The information about us is more useful to them as a huge glob of data from which clever, wide-reaching ideas can be drawn or honed.

Basically, the cure for paranoia is basically realizing how uninteresting you are. Nobody cares about your secrets. You could go write a blog about your secrets, and nobody would read them. Nobody cares about what YOUR system specs are. Valve and EA both care that "hey, our users seem to run systems that are on average THIS powerful. If we make this game to specs that suit that, we can sell more stuff because more people can use it".

THANK you. I never thought I'd meet someone who was humble AND had common sense. Sometimes it feels nice to know you've been proved wrong...

 

[JambalayaBob]

Meaningless.

Even making the incredibly generous assumption that you're correct, how exactly is "Valve will turn evil some day" a point in Origin's favour?

Two companies, one nice and one nasty, and we're supposed to treat them the same because you tell us that the nice one will inevitably turn nasty at some undefined point in the future?

The point I'm trying to make is that even if Origin ended up actually being objectively better than Steam, most people would still hate Origin. If Valve does something, everyone cheers, if EA does the same thing, everyone boos. People dismiss Origin without even looking at it on the sole basis of "It's EA, there's no way it'll be anything but terrible!" EA does make quite a few good games; even many titles in the EA Sports franchise aren't totally blatant money grabbers, they actually have improvements. Being unwilling to use Origin at all on the sole basis of "It's EA!" is basically the same as saying that your fine with Valve eventually having a total monopoly on the digital distribution market. I wonder what people will think when another company throws its hat into the ring as a direct contender to Steam, one that people don't immediately dismiss as pure evil.

 

[JambalayaBob]

If Origin works nonintrusively, I'll be fine with it. If/when it doesn't, I'll hate it. This is exactly the same treatment Steam gets. Steam is awesome and wonderful when it works, and when one of the features irks me, or I lose internet connection and can't play a game because it wants to "update itself first", or something like that, it's the worst thing in the history of EVER!

Bottom line, I don't give a toss about the company behind the service. The service lives and dies on its own merits. I haven't tried Origin yet, but I'm sure it'll be a gross violation of privacy that I will tolerate because I like games, just like Steam is.

EDIT: Also, Jambalaya, you're reaching. It's not that people don't think Valve and Google can do any wrong, it's that we put up with their shortcomings because experience has shown that the benefits outweigh the foul-ups. Personally, I think there are good reasons to trust Google as well, mostly this: they already have all the information in the world. They probably know more about us than we do ourselves. Here's the thing, though: we aren't that interesting. The information about us is more useful to them as a huge glob of data from which clever, wide-reaching ideas can be drawn or honed.

Basically, the cure for paranoia is basically realizing how uninteresting you are. Nobody cares about your secrets. You could go write a blog about your secrets, and nobody would read them. Nobody cares about what YOUR system specs are. Valve and EA both care that "hey, our users seem to run systems that are on average THIS powerful. If we make this game to specs that suit that, we can sell more stuff because more people can use it".

I pretty much agree with you, but I still think that a ton of people have this idea that Valve is just so magical and awesome. Kind of like how a whole different demographic thinks that Apple is perfect and amazing. You have helped humble me a bit here though, I was getting kind of overzealous I guess. I wish I could believe that more people had the same idea of Valve that you do, but I just don't see it.

 

[Zhukov]

If Valve does something, everyone cheers, if EA does the same thing, everyone boos.

Surely it has occurred to you that there is a reason for this.

Like, ohhhh, say, maybe because people are judging the companies by their past actions and present attitudes.

Just, y'know... throwing that out there.

 

[Febel]

It's not bad, but it makes you blind to the possible future. Valve has the opportunity to eventually become as bad as EA is now, that's the point I'm making. I highly doubt that Valve will maintain its current persona and business practices forever. As I said in my original post, EA was a huge innovator for many years, but look where it is now.

Yeah, that's great. valve also has the opportunity to release episode 3. Or the opportunity to cause a tidal wave by having Gabe Newell jump off the roof of their offices into a swimming pool (tack on another month to development time, boys). The point is that having the chance to do something and actually having done it are two very different things. "Let's support Origin because Valve might, at some unforeseen point in the future, become dickheads" is simply not a good enough reason my friend.
Valve, and by extension Steam, both have their shortcomings. Everyone knows this. But they level those shortcomings out with good games and generally fair operating procedure. You have a point, they may be an evil but they are, by very, very far the lesser of two evils.

 

[Furioso]

I love how nearly your entire argument is based on what Valve MIGHT do, well there is a chance I might end up committing a crime someday, but I am not in jail, so lets save the criticism for when they actually do something bad

People dismiss Origin without even looking at it on the sole basis of "It's EA, there's no way it'll be anything but terrible!" EA does make quite a few good games; even many titles in the EA Sports franchise aren't totally blatant money grabbers, they actually have improvements. Being unwilling to use Origin at all on the sole basis of "It's EA!"

No, we dismiss it for the hordes of reasons people have already listed, such as them spying on us, we have good reason to hate Origin, ignoring those reasons and passing it off as we hate EA therefor everything they do is crap is an ignorant assumption on your part

 

[JediMB]

I don't fear the Origin, and I think the people at EA are too smart to abuse the customers adopting the platform.

Do I prefer Steam, though? Sure.

That's why Origin is inactive 99.9999% of the time, and only gets some on-time when I want to download a game... which doesn't happen often. Meanwhile, Steam gets hours of use almost every day.

 

[JambalayaBob]

If Valve does something, everyone cheers, if EA does the same thing, everyone boos.

Surely it has occurred to you that there is a reason for this.

Like, ohhhh, say, maybe because people are judging the companies by their past actions and present attitudes.

Just, y'know... throwing that out there.

Yeah, but it reveals a willful ignorance of gamers when you know that even if EA had an organized Puppy Rescue Squad running on an international level, people would still probably dislike them.

 

[Hyper-space]

day 1 DLC...

Portal 2.

Was it 80 dollars worth of hats or whatever? can't remember.

 

[RicoGrey]

The difference is, EA is publicly traded. Valve isn't. Meaning that the entire focus of EA always has to be to make money and nothing else - they cannot do anything that they can't explain to their shareholders as something that will maximise profits.

Valve, on the other hand, can pretty much do what they like - if they want to sacrifice a little bit of profit in exchange for delivering a better experience to their customers, they can go ahead and do so without having to answer to anybody.

I agree with what you are saying, and I want to add, Valve sees the big picture. They realize that if you spend a little extra money, give away some free DLC, provide support to modders, and support community members, you will get more repeat business.

Before I really got into steam, I purchased my favorite game from EA's online store, and installed it via EA's Download manager. The game btw is BF:2142. I played the game for a full year, loved every minute, and then removed it from my system, cause after a full year it was time to move onto something else. A year after this(a little over 2 years when I bought the game) I tried to reinstall it using EA's download manager, only I could not.

See, I never owned the game, I had only rented it for 2 years, and those 2 years were up. Shame on me for not reading the fine print, shame on me for not doing my research, but HEY I learned from my experience.

I learned to read the fine print, and I also learned to not do business with EA.

I hope EA enjoyed that 29.99 they got from me, because they have not received another cent. I probably will buy another EA game, if I like it enough, but they would have made several hundred dollars off me since then, if my experience had been more positive.

 

[ultimateownage]

Hey look, Valve's a popular company! Let's be all edgy and shit and make them sound evil so people will pay attention to me!

This is what you are doing. Let's just hope Souplex doesn't see this.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Yeah, but it reveals a willful ignorance of gamers when you know that even if EA had an organized Puppy Rescue Squad running on an international level, people would still probably dislike them.

I bet the KKK rescue puppies as well. It doesn't mean that their overall image isn't a bunch of mindless racist thugs.

When EA/Ricitello can come out with an announcement that doesn't treat gamers like cattle, it will do far more than any amount of puppy saving.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

day 1 DLC...

Portal 2.

Was it 80 dollars worth of hats or whatever? can't remember.

Added extras that were cosmetic touches? Which then they backed down from?

Yeah. How much is Portal now, compared to Battlefield or Command and Conquer?

How many free updates has Team Fortress had so far? I know it's over 120...

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Portal 2.

Was it 80 dollars worth of hats or whatever? can't remember.

I think they reversed that decision.

No, the guys selling you $80 worth of hats are EA. They're in the "Hats n' Stuff" expansion pack for Sims 3. It also includes 2 end tables, a new haircut, and a fancy tie. It can be yours for only 8500 Sims points!