PC gamers..how are you enjoying Origin?

[MrSnaztastic]

The only reason I use Origin is because it is the Battlefield 3 loader and patcher, and it can't even do that right half the time. My only hope is that no other publishers decide to go down this road. It would so piss me off if I end up having to get Assassins Creed from some future Uplay Store or GTA from a monetized Rockstar Social Club. Oh god, I'm just giving them ideas...

 

[TakeyB0y2]

I only use it to play The Sims 3. The reason for this is because I bought the retail version of the base game, and found out they had some decent online sales for the expansion packs. Steam did as well, but I found out that Steam doesn't let you combine the downloaded expansion packs with the retail-purchased base game. Origin, however, allowed for this.

I don't use the forums, nor do I have any friends on Origin. I just use it for TS3. I use Steam for everything else. So far Origin hasn't done anything wrong to me, so I guess I can't complain.

 

[Bat Vader]

I have been using Origin to play Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. It has not annoyed me in any way.

 

[Axyun]

Don't use it and don't plan to. Unfortunately for me as a Mass Effect fan, ME3 apparently will require it. I'll just wait an extra year or two when the game starts to appear cheap in other channels. In the meanwhile I'm looking forward to Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 also scheduled to be released around the same time.

 

[Keava]

Origin at least promises 2 years. Steam can do it at any point in time.

Isn't taking away someone's access to every game they bought with the service with hardly any warning doing that "at any point in time"? Although it is for forum bans, it's still another broken promise on EA's part. And I've never seen anyone call out Steam because they woke up and all their games were gone. If you have, could you post a link?

You would be surprised how many people have such issues with Steam, but interwebs Valve-fan police keeps 'em quiet. Actually, You can get people banned on Steam quite easily, just be from US and gift US priced games to friends in EU. Both You and Your friends can be banned xD

Another funny case with Valve is their relation with PayPal. If for whatever reason PayPal issues a chargeback on a purchase from Valve You get banned from Your Steam account until PayPal gives Valve money back. You can't use alternative payment method. You have to now enter a long and quite tiresome back and forth between two companies, neither really willing to help You. Can happen with credit card payments too.

Oh, and unknowingly accepting an illegally obtained item/game through he trading system gets You banned too, even if You personally done nothing illegal. Sure, getting scammed is the victims fault 99% of time, but still...

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Origin at least promises 2 years. Steam can do it at any point in time.

Isn't taking away someone's access to every game they bought with the service with hardly any warning doing that "at any point in time"? Although it is for forum bans, it's still another broken promise on EA's part. And I've never seen anyone call out Steam because they woke up and all their games were gone. If you have, could you post a link?

You would be surprised how many people have such issues with Steam, but interwebs Valve-fan police keeps 'em quiet. Actually, You can get people banned on Steam quite easily, just be from US and gift US priced games to friends in EU. Both You and Your friends can be banned xD

Another funny case with Valve is their relation with PayPal. If for whatever reason PayPal issues a chargeback on a purchase from Valve You get banned from Your Steam account until PayPal gives Valve money back. You can't use alternative payment method. You have to now enter a long and quite tiresome back and forth between two companies, neither really willing to help You. Can happen with credit card payments too.

Oh, and unknowingly accepting an illegally obtained item/game through he trading system gets You banned too, even if You personally done nothing illegal. Sure, getting scammed is the victims fault 99% of time, but still...

"Valve-fan police" can't keep every Internet user with a genuine grudge against Steam down. Again: link or it didn't happen.

 

[BRex21]

This in every way shape and form!
Origin is the software that conspiracy theories are made from!
It actually seeks out all of your chatlogs, Skype, messenger, you name it, and sends them back to EA! It tracks everything you do online and sends it back to EA! It has unfettered access to anything you keep on your PC! and best of all it tries to make this all legal by sticking it right in the EULA.
It is the worst kind of DRM and i will avoid it like the plague. At the moment I think it may be a breach of my employment contract anyway, GO propitiatory work data on my home computer!

I could have responded sooner, but I had to test something...

What the hell are you smoking?
The EULA is very clear on what Origin can collect. Every single program has unfettered access to your PC, but if they do more than what they put in the EULA, they are idiots that will face legal action. Origin doesn't even do all that it says in the EULA.
The most recent version of Origin no longer scans the ProgramData folder, but it does query windows and hardware related registry entries. It's badly optimized and does this repetitiously to the same entries, but that's all it does.

I repeat: Origin queries basic information about windows and hardware registry entries. It does not scan all of your hard drive data, chatlogs, or web usage. It's gathering system information about its users, and that is pretty damn harmless.

This is a very minor invasion of privacy, and unless you don't use things like Facebook or Google you have little reason to complain.

Spoiler

Origin still tries to gain access to my phone when I plug it into my buddies laptop, as it would any external hard drive to see if there is anything good for it to check out. Oh and i checked the process monitor, it did check his application data, it can do what it wants because it is in fact quite vague about what it can collect.
Lets take this line from EA's latest EULA:
"No information such as pictures, documents or other personal data unrelated to the Application?s performance on your system is accessed or collected."
It would be very easy to say running skype in the background affects the applications performance, this is a known fact to anyone with even the basic understanding of computers, and that would be all the have to prove. Of course if they did this they would be in serious legal trouble, as it violates privacy laws. People could file a CLASS ACTION SUIT... Oh wait, you forfeit your right to that in the EULA don't you... well you can always go to arbitration and try to prove financial damages from there illicit actions. Except that would be damn near impossible.
The sheer fact that the Origin EULA violates both privacy and fair trade laws in a number of countries is enough to get me to stay away from it. Oh and i don't use facebook for privacy reasons, im just going to pretend you didn't say google.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

I haven't used it and hopefully will never have to, even though Battlefield 3 looks like a lot of fun. Honestly, it isn't the greatest thing that Valve has a monopoly at the moment, but if competition means having to manage 8 different passwords and run 8 different programs just to be able to access all your games, then screw competition.

I doubt there's really any other way to compete. A lot of people already have several games on one service, and the only way to get them to use another is by having exclusive games. Since every service will have games we can't get anywhere else, every publisher will eventually have their own crappy program eating our CPU.

I don't want that.

Amen to that.

If I can help it, I'll keep my personal copy of ME3 separated from Origin since, to be honest, people like Steam for it's great sales and library of all their games. I think.

 

[RangerDruid]

I don't have an opinion on how enjoyable Origin is because I'm avoiding it like the fucking plaque. Sorry EA, but thats just one less ME3 collector's edition pre-order to worry about.

 

[Vault101]

I got a question..is there any "offline" version availible? or do oyu have to be connected every time you boot it up?

 

[luckshot]

i really dont want anything to do with it but...TOR...and ME3, but have not had to actually deal with it yet and am not looking forward to it

 

[Techno Squidgy]

soo.....Origin

good?

bad?

terrible?

I havnt had the pleasure of using EA's "wonderful" new service, so Im curious to know how you guys are finding it? is it as bad as i seems? is it "ok"?

tell me your experiences

As much as I enjoy using Steam.
Read as: I don't notice it at all.

It's not the anti-christ. EA may be but Origin is just a program that sits on my computer waiting for me to start it so I can play Battlefield.

This, it's really not that bad. BF3's browser-launcher thing is actually growing on me. Origin's nothing special but it's not BAD in any way, people are just moaning because it's an EA service.

Battlelog does bug me. I can't help but blame it for every crash, even though it's probably not it's fault.

 

[silverbullet1989]

never see it.. login to battlelog, click quick match, see the "battlefield 3 is launching..." window and bam! in a game... so yeah, haters gonna hate

 

[IKSA]

Hey it works....yeah....I took it only because exclusives...f**k you EA

 

[Anjel]

I am not using it. I love many EA games but was quite happy getting them on Steam until the doodie hit the fan. I wanted to play Battlefield 3, but not enough for me to agree to Origins EULA which my friends in the tech department at work call "a trojan" (lol). I really want to play Mass Effect 3, but again, if it isn't on Steam I wont be buying it.

 

[Cronq]

I'm finding that I am playing BF3 less than I thought I would due to the entire Origin/Battlelog system. It's just a cumbersome piece of crap, and I refuse to get in the habit of auto launching Origin on my machine. The browser is unreliable, and the launching of games is slow. It's honestly a 5 minute ordeal just to get into a game.

Every recent move by EA seems to be pro-publisher and anti-gamer. I'm done with EA games. I'm more than willing and able to buy Mass Effect 3, but I'm unwilling to deal with EA's bullshit. If pirates offer a better product, they'll get my business.

 

[veloper]

Origin at least promises 2 years. Steam can do it at any point in time.

Isn't taking away someone's access to every game they bought with the service with hardly any warning doing that "at any point in time"? Although it is for forum bans, it's still another broken promise on EA's part. And I've never seen anyone call out Steam because they woke up and all their games were gone. If you have, could you post a link?

You would be surprised how many people have such issues with Steam, but interwebs Valve-fan police keeps 'em quiet. Actually, You can get people banned on Steam quite easily, just be from US and gift US priced games to friends in EU. Both You and Your friends can be banned xD

Another funny case with Valve is their relation with PayPal. If for whatever reason PayPal issues a chargeback on a purchase from Valve You get banned from Your Steam account until PayPal gives Valve money back. You can't use alternative payment method. You have to now enter a long and quite tiresome back and forth between two companies, neither really willing to help You. Can happen with credit card payments too.

Oh, and unknowingly accepting an illegally obtained item/game through he trading system gets You banned too, even if You personally done nothing illegal. Sure, getting scammed is the victims fault 99% of time, but still...

"Valve-fan police" can't keep every Internet user with a genuine grudge against Steam down. Again: link or it didn't happen.

There was one case in recent memory, but that one involved tax evasion and many angry people just hadn't figured out was really going on. Still it caused a bit of stir a while back.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fk90z/steam_support_bans_my_account_for_gifting/

You can get banned if you "gift" european "friends" games in exchange for money (through paypal or otherwise).
Companies delivering to European customers need to pay VAT to european countries, which is a kind of tax (varying around 20%), which the company in turn charges the customer over the tiller.
Valve pays the VAT, but some smart individuals found out that you can set up your own american shop within Steam, undercut valve's euro pricing and avoid taxes (and potentially still make a small profit). That is until you get found out.