Poll: Can someone explain the hate for the Origin program?

[Blackdoom]

The combination of the fact it essentially acts as spyware, the price of the games whilst rather lacking in any interesting games to buy. The fact that it seems to love logging me out every 20 or so minutes when I have it running.

But the biggest problem to me is the Customer Support.
Because holy shit the customer support all I wanted to do was try and work out why Battlefield 3 wouldn't load I have contacted them 10 times explaining it and each time I have had the chat closed on me without any help.

Similar stuff happened with Mass Effect 3 when I couldn't connect to the multiplayer at any point.

The one thing I will give Origin is that it seems to download stuff pretty fast.

 

[Callate]

Because installing Origin is allowing someone with serious issues to keep a gun pointed at your head at all times on their assurance that they'll never use it.

There is virtually no customer benefit to having Origin on your system; in return EA gets to market to you, collect data from you, and shut down your access to every game you thought you bought on the service on a whim because of a perceived infraction against rules and terms of service that they can change at any time without notice. And if EA in any way abuses your trust or fails to live up to even a basic level of service, your recourse is virtually nil.

It's a bad deal that a company with an increasingly terrible reputation has forced on its customers and then claimed that because it was doing it, it was "industry standard". Some people want to claim this view amounts to nothing more than a kneejerk "We love Valve, we hate EA" response, but frankly, that description is incredibly dismissive and facile, and no one should accept it at face value.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Because it is inferior to Steam in game availability even though it acts like it's a viable alternative, because EA leverages its games to force people onto Origin, because Origin will always be subject to EA's business practises, because of shitty customer service, because of many problems and bugs, because of the suspicion around what it does or doesn't do to your computer without your permission (and I'd say these fears are not entirely baseless), because using Origin supports EA, and because EA.

 

[malestrithe]

Because EA is evil. A lot of the haters would tolerate the program if EA was not tied to it.

 

[Bostur]

Any proof of this?

See http://www.origin.com/faq#can-i-opt-out-of-data-collection

Can I opt out of data collection through Origin?
You can opt out of sharing hardware specifications and crash reports at any time. Sharing of system interaction data can be limited and made anonymous, but not completely disabled. All data sharing preferences can be controlled through your Origin Settings.

If you read the whole part it sounds a lot less ominous.

Are any other types of data collected through Origin?

There are two types of information that are always collected through Origin.

The first type is system interaction data essential to the continued operation of Origin. This includes anonymous information about crash occurrences, game launch successes/failures, information about download sessions, and other functional details. MAC and IP addresses are collected as well, but are obfuscated or hashed to protect your anonymity.

The second type of collected data is information that you give to Origin directly. This includes Origin preferences, online feature usage (chat, cloud storage, etc.), purchase information, and account information. This type of data is used only to allow specific services to work. Origin cannot, for example, process a video game purchase without first collecting and verifying your personal information.
For more information about EA?s collection, storage, and use of consumer information, please see EA?s Privacy Policy.

According to this what they collect is:
- Error Reports.
- Data that Origin uses itself for operation.
- Account information.
- IP address.
- MAC address.

The MAC address can sound a little fishy but is probably necessary for the DRM they use. The rest is pretty standard stuff. I know that some people are very protective about their IP address, but many websites will collect those for statistical purposes. It even states that they encrypt the IP address which I suspect a lot of normal websites don't bother doing.

It sounds worse than it is, because they are very specific about it. Software needs to store data in order to run. If you save a game in the cloud, Origin needs to store that. Thats the intended behaviour.

I totally expect EA to be incompetent, and I imagine programming or design errors can happen as was the case with the "Program Files" incident a while ago. But there is nothing in their privacy statement that should be a concern.

 

[Genocidicles]

Before I start I'd just like to say that I hate Steam. If I had my way all games would be on GOG or something similar, rather than having some DRM crap on my computer...But considering how many games force you to install Steam, I put up with having it on my computer... But now EA wants me to have another DRM client on my PC.

As much as I hate EA, I don't hate Origin because it's ran by those assholes.

I hate it because I already have Steam. I don't need its retarded little brother too.

 

[Bestival]

Well thank you all for that I was just curious because I am looking forward to he new sims city game but I was reading there forums about sims and lots of people where saying that if it requires Origin they will not get it etc so I was just curious about you guys opinions.

Didn't some EA higherup recently state that they were only going to be making multiplayer games? In that case, have fun with you deathmatch City Building Sim!

No, nobody ever said that. OK, actually to be fair, clueless people who parroted what bigoted haters fabricated, said that. What the EA higherup actually said was that they were not making any games that were a single player-only experience. And that means that a game might have DLC or an online leaderboard. The Cerberus Network from ME2 is an example of that "online component". Please stop perpetuating this "only multiplayer lololol" nonsense.

Ah okay, cool. Like I said, I was pretty fuzzy on the details, and it did sound like a horrible idea to me in the first place... Then again, its EA we're talking about, so horrible idea doesn't mean impossible idea heh. Cheers for clearing it up. (Dem crazy interwebs, it's like you cant believe anything on here anymore!)

 

[crazyrabbits]

This whole concept behind EA apparently wanting to nickle and dime customers is just paranoia

Wrong. The continuing frequency of cases of day-one DLC from companies like EA, Capcom and others is enough to show that it's not just paranoia, but an absolute trend that is rightly freaking people out.

No, that's not "nickle and diming" as there's not a single bit of Day 1 DLC that has ever been necessary to enjoy a game. It's always been extra side bits.

Again, semantics. It doesn't matter whether it's optional side-content or not - if it's on the disc, it should be accessible in the game and to all players. Period. You can hide behind your "EULA! EULA!" defense all you want, but it has no merit. The rule of first-sale doctrine and existing consumer laws allow people to access the data on their disc for non-commercial means. This is just the game industry (once again) cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The whole day-one DLC issue is so bad that even projects that would otherwise have nothing to do with it (Obsidian's Project: Eternity, for example) had people crying bloody murder when they announced that they would start thinking about expansion ideas during the main game's development.

Really, that's the point you wanted to throw down on? Not EA's war on Gamestop, the snooping Origin software or the validity of complaints about the company?

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

People are slow to change and hating EA is in the vogue right now; rather than sensibly disliking certain products that they have made. Origin started out crappily, someone probably just put brute force code into it rather than saying "scan this area and this area and we will have the hardware data we need" they just put in for it to scan everything, and give them the information they need.

This led to people freaking out, understandably so. But very few people bothered to check in on the fact that the program is pretty much fine now. I read through the entire EULA by hand before I installed it, as well as the origin FAQ. They aren't doing anything super "fishy" that steam isn't doing as well. It's not the greatest system ever, but like many people have mentioned it's 7 years behind steams development process. It basically runs like a lighter version of steam, which is fine with me: I don't need pages for community badges, and a billion community hubs, and a market, and a steam inventory.

Despite the fact that I have origin though, I would still like to see steam crush them. Because I would rather have everything on one client and I'm already invested in Steam. I loathe the day when every company has their own and wants me to download 30 different clients just to run my games.

 

[Continuity]

I don't hate origin, I hate EA, and I don't want to support a publisher I hate buy using their distribution platform.

People are slow to change and hating EA is in the vogue right now; rather than sensibly disliking certain products that they have made.

It not their products I object to, though some of them are certainly objectionable; no, its their policies which show blatant disregard for the consumer and for gaming as an entertainment medium.