What's the Beef With Origin?

[Yuno Gasai]

I already have Steam. I shouldn't have to have more than one client clogging up my computer in order to play games.

Of course this applies to Uplay and GFWL and all that other crap too.

This.

I'm also quite unwilling to change something that isn't broken. Steam manages my games just fine, I'm used to the program and have been using it for years - why would I change when it's done nothing to wrong me?

It is a bit of a shame because I was given a free copy of Mass Effect 3 which I am completely unwilling to play because the digital download requires me to install Origin first. That is not going to happen.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

For one thing it's completely overpriced. We're talking about digital games here, it's literally data transferring at the push of a button, there's NO need to charge these kinds of premium prices. The only game I ever played on Origin was BF3 (only because it forced me into it) and I bought it in a retail store for (not kidding here) a 3rd of the online asking price.

There's also the kind of ridiculous privacy invasions it installs onto your computer. Searching for things that are not even related to Origin. Collecting information on you and selling it to pretty much whoever they decide is not something I'm just going to twiddle my thumbs and go along with.

Oh, and they ban you. A lot. Made a fuss on the EA forums? Banned. Installed some single player mod for Mass Effect 3? Banned. Changed the fucking colour scheme for BF3? Banned.
I think they changed this recently but a ban on Origin meant complete lockout for ANY game you might have bought.

What else? Oh yes, how about holding all the highly anticipated games hostage on Origin? Then brag about how many people sign up to your service. 45 million registered users huh? I wonder how many were willingly signing up.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Within a week of getting Origin, I was having issues logging in due to their updates. Had to change my username and password about 6 times until there were no more problems. I only have one game that needs it, ME3, and that's the only game I'll get on it. Also, while Steam is more convenient, I'd rather not have to use it either.

 

[Souplex]

It's DRM and I despise any form of it. I don't have a beef with Origin particularly.

I'm a big girl I can take care of my things so I don't need a corporation breathing down my neck holding my games away from me and only letting me play them how and when they allow me to.

Well the only way around that is retail hard-copies that don't have a lot of online features.

 

[Baldr]

The big thing about Origin is that it isn't steam. People have steam, people like steam, steam works really well these days, has really good customer service, and has amazing sales and deals on games. Origin on the other hand is new, sometimes buggy, with rather poor customer service at times, and has none of the awesome sales that steam does (in fact, EA was openly opposed to sales saying that they "devalued the product.") So part of the reason that people don't like Origin is that they aren't getting steam prices for EA's games anymore.

Another thing is that Origin snoops on your computer and collects your information for EA to use. Now steam does this as well, but steam ASKS whether you're ok with that, and you can decline giving steam detailed information about your computer, something that you can't do with Origin. This is of course coming from one of the least trusted companies in America, so you can see why people have problems with it.

And the last thing is that Origin is basically always on DRM. You have to have Origin on in order to validate your game, even if you just want to play the single player portion of it. Of course Origin isn't as bad as always on DRM, because it just validates your game when you start the game, and doesn't require you to have a perfectly stable internet connection at all times, but that still doesn't ingratiate it to people who don't want to have to have an internet connection to play a single player game.

Steam customer service is still terrible, not because they won't help you(I've gotten refunds and game credits just by asking). It is the fact it takes like 2 weeks to answer a support ticket, that is pretty much unacceptable.

 

[loc978]

I just don't want yet another of these goddamn clients to juggle. It reminds me of the old IM program wars between AIM, Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, et cetera. Until Trillian came out, the whole thing was a pain in the ass. Where's our universal client for Steam, Origin, UPlay, et cetera? Not going to happen, I know.

 

[Thoric485]

EA is a part of the wave of publishers desperately trying to latch on to the digital distribution train. That would be fine if they all did one simple thing - respected their customers' goddamn choice of a distribution platform. (You too, Valve)

If I buy a game from retail, I should be able to run it and patch it without signing up for a digital distribution service. If I buy it from a digital distribution service, I should be able to run it and patch it without signing up for other digital distribution services.

GFWL and Uplay latch on to Steam and retail versions and it's annoying. Steam and Origin also latch on to retail versions, and Valve and EA take it a step further by making their studios' catalogs completely exclusive to their own digital distribution platform.

CD Projekt, even though they have their own platform, get this right for the consumer - if you buy The Witcher 2 from retail it runs out of the box with its own dedicated patching service, not connected to GOG or anything else. If you buy it from Steam or Origin, it will run and patch solely through those services. You can use your retail key to redeem a GOG copy, but it's 100% optional.

If all publishers respected the customer's choice of a platform like that, I'd totally welcome these new competing services and give them a fair shake. But with their current intrusive, arm-wrangling methods I intend to stick with Steam and GOG, simply because I don't want to encourage them.

 

[rasputin0009]

Things I like about Origin:
- Fast download speeds (miles ahead of steam)
- Great cloud storage updating (When I melt the fuck out of my gaming laptop with BF3, it will sometimes crash. And the cloud storage helps save my progress better than steams cloud storage).

Things I don't like about Origin:
- What the fuck is going on?
- Where do I click?
- What do I click?
- What the fuck is it doing?
- Who do I talk to?
- Can you fix this?
- Why not?
- You don't know?
- Fuck!

 

[rodneyy]

people dont trust EA, i know i dont. they often seem to be only out for themselfs and their bottom line. the whole client to download your games is a trust exersize, valve has built up trust with gamers. it started out a new venture wile it might not always have been smooth over time it built up. EA had to start at the same place valve did (probally even lower with the crap they pull on a regular basis) and then you had the added question why should i trust EA and take a risk when i have steam to go to.

if something does happen and steam/origin goes down i can only see EA doing what will serve itself best.
i see valve doing what would be best for the customer.

 

[Jzcaesar]

Things I like about Origin:
- Fast download speeds (miles ahead of steam)
- Great cloud storage updating (When I melt the fuck out of my gaming laptop with BF3, it will sometimes crash. And the cloud storage helps save my progress better than steams cloud storage).

Things I don't like about Origin:
- What the fuck is going on?
- Where do I click?
- What do I click?
- What the fuck is it doing?
- Who do I talk to?
- Can you fix this?
- Why not?
- You don't know?
- Fuck!

I agree with the 'Things I don't like about Origin' list. I didn't realize how crappy Origin was until last night. Before then, I just launched games like BF3 from their own launcher, and of course, Origin would start, but I didn't really have to deal with it.

Then last night I tried to buy some of the Mass Effect 3 DLC and holy crap, it's like they don't even want my money. I could not for the life of me figure out where the DLC for ME3 was located in the origin store. Maybe I am just stupid, but I gave up after 10 min of searching in origin and googling.

An hour later I was able access the DLC from within ME3, but still, I'm thinking EA should probably update the UI for the Origin store.

 

[MXRom]

Origin was really buggy as everyone was saying

Personal experience time: I tried Origin because games I liked were going exclusively to Origin. Preordered them but because Origin ran like a lemon with a potato in its exhaust, I had to reenter my information multiple times. But for whatever reason, once things went through Origin interpreted that as me making multiple payments, and thus I was charged about 150 bucks for one item. After trying to get it back from both EA and the bank, EA just threw up its arms and said 'sorry your money is gone'.

That really set me off but not enough to sop using it. Not what broke it for me was when I got permabanned from using any multiplayer for any of the games using Origin, and when I asked why and how I can lift it, the EA reply amounted to 'lol idk'.

 

[Murrdox]

CD Projekt, even though they have their own platform, get this right for the consumer - if you buy The Witcher 2 from retail it runs out of the box with its own dedicated patching service, not connected to GOG or anything else. If you buy it from Steam or Origin, it will run and patch solely through those services. You can use your retail key to redeem a GOG copy, but it's 100% optional.

If all publishers respected the customer's choice of a platform like that, I'd totally welcome these new competing services and give them a fair shake. But with their current intrusive, arm-wrangling methods I intend to stick with Steam and GOG, simply because I don't want to encourage them.

Here, here.

Valve does pretty good customer service wise, but CD Projekt has really set the bar high for the exact reasons that Thoric laid out.

CD Projekt doesn't have an issue selling Witcher through it's own system, or its competitors. They could EASILY require you to use GoG to download the game and updates. But they don't. They let you buy retail, GoG, Steam, Impulse, whatever. They show no signs of changing that.

For these reasons, GoG is a welcome icon on my desktop next to Steam. Impulse USED to be welcome there, until Stardock sold it to Gamestop and it became incredibly spammy and sucky.

 

[Jeyal]

I'm okay with Origin.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

Well im currently on origin trying to buy Dragon Age 2 for %50 off. The only problem is that as soon as it wanted me to pay origin crashed. Tried again and the same thing just happened. ITS LIKE THEY DONT WANT ME TO BUY A 2 YEAR OLD GAME FOR %50 OFF.

Cons
-It currently has a somewhat poor layout with constant problems.
-They just recently actually started having some OK sales.
-I was forced into it by buying a retail version of SWTOR and BF3.
-EA games are exclusively on ORIGIN (rumors about some showing up on uplay though......)
-I hate the fact I was forced into a broken distribution sale by a company I already dislike.

Pros
-I like the color orange.

 

[HellbirdIV]

My problem is quite simple: It's just not nearly as good as Steam and forcing people to use it rather than the far superior and convenient alternative just reeks of corporate interest imposing itself on my fun.

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I had Spore, and was able to play.

And I didn't. And I won't. Why?

BECAUSE IT TOOK ME A GOD DAMN WEEK TO ORDER A GAME BY DIGITAL DOWNLOAD. STANDARD BUSINESS POST TAKES LESS TIME AND COSTS LESS THAN TWO HOURS OF CALLS TO PREMIUM RATE NUMBERS FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.

I'll be damned if I'm going to let me playing Spore give any indication to EA's metrics that I enjoy using their services. I don't. It was one long headache, made longer by under-trained and badly motivated staff, circuitous customer journeys for no reason, over-zealous and poorly-designed registration procedures and inept programmers failing to automate the process correctly in the first place.

Yeah, I bought SPORE Galactic Edition off of Amazon maybe a few months to a year after the game came out. Out of the box, brand new, factory sealed.. the registration code didn't work. I tried to look up the issue, and I think there was something about this being an issue with the Galactic Edition. Something about codes from the standard version getting reused, I think.

Anyways, after several emails and quite a few days of waiting, I was told I had to offer up a variety of things to prove my copy was legitimate. Only after all that, and more days of waiting, did I finally get a working code. However, unlike you, I wasn't going to waste the time and money because of the crappy service. I enjoyed SPORE quite a bit and I really wanna play it again. I just don't think I'm going to be able to get another working code, though.

Which is depressing, let me tell you. I may actually give up and just torrent the damn thing to get a cracked copy. And that's REALLY letting your customers down, EA.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

My issue is the fact the first statement is completely false, you can't download your games everywhere

You can....Has it not worked for you or something? At one point me and my friend shared a Steam account so he wouldn't have to pay for Half-Life 2. More recently I've downloaded the same game to multiple computers.

and even if you have them downloaded you can't play them anytime. Which is the most important aspect of games, being able to play them.

Yes and this point is worth discussing. Both Origin and Steam have offline modes apparently (at least when SimCity isn't concerned) that require a verification IIRC, and still Steam is more accepted whilst Origin is not.

As for me, I would prefer that I only have to use one Gaming Client, so I avoid anything that requires me to use Origin (and I don't buy games with the EA label, so it goes hand in hand). But I can't effectively judge Origin. I don't want to use it, but I can't say if it's bad.

And then there's Blizzard's Diablo III always-online requirement which has no exceptions. I'm still curious about Starcraft 2 though, it only requires to log-in once.

 

[Aariana]

I don't really have any problems with Origin (of course, my games don't have an online component, and I only have 3 on origin XD). I mean, yeah, it kinda sucks that I can't just play all my games through Steam, but I can deal with it. My only little quibble with it is that either Origin or Desura (or both, perhaps) cause some weird spikes in my GPU usage. It happens even when they're minimized to the tray, and it goes away immediately after I close the programs, so I have no clue what the deal is.

 

[hermes]

The most simple explanation is because it is not Steam. Its a parallel service that does pretty much the same as Steam but works only for EA games.

That meant 2 things: 1) That people had to have another service installed just for EA games (because, unlike Steam, its not open for use by other developers/publishers); and 2) That EA games would not be released on steam.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The big thing about Origin is that it isn't steam. People have steam, people like steam, steam works really well these days, has really good customer service, and has amazing sales and deals on games. Origin on the other hand is new, sometimes buggy, with rather poor customer service at times, and has none of the awesome sales that steam does (in fact, EA was openly opposed to sales saying that they "devalued the product.") So part of the reason that people don't like Origin is that they aren't getting steam prices for EA's games anymore.

Another thing is that Origin snoops on your computer and collects your information for EA to use. Now steam does this as well, but steam ASKS whether you're ok with that, and you can decline giving steam detailed information about your computer, something that you can't do with Origin. This is of course coming from one of the least trusted companies in America, so you can see why people have problems with it.

And the last thing is that Origin is basically always on DRM. You have to have Origin on in order to validate your game, even if you just want to play the single player portion of it. Of course Origin isn't as bad as always on DRM, because it just validates your game when you start the game, and doesn't require you to have a perfectly stable internet connection at all times, but that still doesn't ingratiate it to people who don't want to have to have an internet connection to play a single player game.

Steam customer service is still terrible, not because they won't help you(I've gotten refunds and game credits just by asking). It is the fact it takes like 2 weeks to answer a support ticket, that is pretty much unacceptable.

I keep hearing things like that, but I've never had them take longer than 2 days to get back to me whenever I had any problems.