Origin vs Steam...what do you think?

[masher]

Unless EA has a weekly sale of, "EVERYTHING IS FREE," They'll never get as popular as Steam is and if they can't get as popular as Steam is, well, they can't compete.

Also, I friggin' hate EA servers with a passion. That simple fact alone means I won't even be interested.

 

[Yeager942]

I must admit I am a hypocrite. I personally boycott Gamestop because I detest their monopoly on retail, yet I fully support Steam in all its endeavors. Valve built up a lot of goodwill, and they have my trust. Shocking I know.

 

[Spoonius]

Competition never hurts.

That said, it'll be tough to even compete with Steam, let alone surpass it.

 

[Evilsanta]

Compete against steam? Yeah right, And pigs can fly.

Not going to happen. Just look at the recent summer sale on Steam it was insane on how much they lowerd there prices and how much games I bought. Damn you Steam for taking all my money.

 

[castlewise]

Its tough. Steam sells itself on the community/networking aspects of the service as much as anything else. Friends lists, posts, notifying you of what games your friends bought and what achievements they have earned and what not. I think its part of why people are so crazy about wanting everything on steam, even though buying from origin or one of the other services requires about two more mouse clicks.

For my part I have games that I bought through half a dozen different digital services. However they all get added to steam because I need the steam overlay so that friends can get in touch when I am in wow or whatever. Non-steam games don't have as tight of integration so I do tend to look for games on steam first.

 

[Arafiro]

Origin is still in beta.

It would be unfair to compare an finished product (steam) to an unfinished one.

Heck, I'll compare a finished product to a theoretical one and still have an opinion in this case. There is nothing wrong with Steam at all, and a lot of people absolutely love it - for a multitude of good reasons.
To make things worse for Origin, it sounds like they're intentionally designing it with stupid problems and also there's the fact that EA generally has a history of screwing things up.

It's the same reason I don't think Facebook will die to Google+, minus the very last point.

One reason why I'm not going to take your comment seriously.

What major flaw does steam have?

 

[Mark Flanagan]

EA is just doing what Valve has been doing for years, but hey at least I don't have to fire up Origin every time I want to play a game unlike Steam...

End of the day EA isn't the bad guy here by holding games off of Steam (like BF:3), No Valve games are on Origin either BTW, but is a company that might end Steams monopoly or at the very least add a bit of competition which is always good for us consumers.

And furthermore the very notion that Valve is some goody two-shoes benevolent charity is getting old, they care about making buck just as much as EA (e.g the bloody Hats).

Just my 2p

 

[veloper]

Imagine this scenario: having to keep track of a dozen digital download clients running in the background. One for each publisher you got games from.

My biggest worry is that this thing may catch on and then ofcourse no publisher is going to put games on their competitors' stores.

Steam already has competition: Impulse, D2D, Gamer's Gate, etc. The nice thing about these is that they are all independent from big game publishers, so there is a choice for the consumer, for now. This EA venture won't do consumers any good.

 

[Mogget128723]

Steam will always have my vote, primarily because I love their deals and their service, but in a slightly less major way, because their name and logo can be vaguely associated with Steampunk, and of course, that's all that matters.

 

[Rolfydolfy]

Errrr. I buy games from the store box and all because it's cheaper to do so in Norway?

 

[ghostalker.cepo]

Origin is run by EA, an infamous publisher. SSteam is run by Valve, which seems to be a benevolent company more concerned about making sure gamers get games than getting moneys. Valve has an amazing reputation for a very good reason, and don't need competition. I wouldn't be dissatisfied in the slightest if they expanded with their business ethics. So no, competition won't do any good, because steam is damn well near perfect. Just look at all the free stuff everyone got in the past week and a half.

I think that's a limited viewpoint. Valve is a business first and foremost--but they're a business with a rather different approach, and that's that people who like you are the sort of people who will be loyal to you. They're the sort of people who will trust what you make will be amazing, and will buy oodles of them. They're the sort of people who might not pirate out of respect.

Whereas EA has a terrible tendency to treat their consumers like dirt. People don't trust them, people blame them, but they're also savvy when it comes to marketing and hyping, so they continue to do well.

But there is never a time when more competition between big businesses is a bad thing. Not in a capitalist market. But I disagree that they're ultimate goal is to make good games, and not to make money--they just realize the two go best hand-in-hand.

First off, being a damn dirty hippy, I have a massive problem with capitalism (surprise surprise), mostly due to the fact that in a lot of businesses, more focus is devoted to how to sell a terrible product rather than making a good product worth selling. Competition can produce better products by forcing companies to expand their scope to outdo their competitors, but generally it doesn't happen that way.

Valve are a company who make good products that are worth selling, and will hopefully compete by out-doing EA, as Saibh said, because they know that making good products goes hand in hand with making money. They practice good business and evolve to understand their consumers. Even if they do take their time with games.

Secondly, savvy marketing? With fake protesters, yourmomhatesthis, sin to win etc, EA seem to be going with the idea that bad publicity is better than no publicity, rather than actually trying to get good publicity. They also seem to have little idea of the demographic they're selling to, either that or are acutely aware that teenagers are (for the most part) susceptible to the quality of the adverts they put out. I'm leaning towards the latter, but even if yourmomhatesthis got a bunch of gullible teens to buy their terrible excuse of a game, their parents no doubt saw the ad too and are the people those teens would go to in order to buy it, being an M-rated game. Cue a storm of controversy. If they keep going like that something bad will happen to their bottom line, it's only a matter of time.

EA practice bad business by doing these things, telling their consumers what they want rather than listening to them, rushing things that aren't ready just so they have a product out and then marketing it, badly and incredibly controversially, when it doesn't sell well. Or pulling their upcoming games from a company (Valve in case of confusion) that used them, and indeed praised them, to publish the non-steam editions of their games.

BWHA HA HA.. HA HA HA!

I'm sorry *Straightens up*

I think its quite obvious that no real competition will appear.

The Sims. Think about it, it's their biggest casual game franchise that has already extorted huge amounts of money from people with the endless expansion packs. Now imagine Origin only DLC for it. A whole new untapped market who have no idea about Steam. That scares me.

is this a good or bad thing? does steam have a monopoly that needs some competition..are EA just being dicks?

I cant say much since I (would you belive it?) but my PC games retail

now I dont know if this is the case or not but I fully expected with Alice:madness returns to have to use "Origin" or whatever it, just like when a game usues steam (esentailly asll its doing is taking a whole chunk out of the download)

but no...aparently not..dont know if this will be the case with any other EA games...

To answer the question, I don't think Steam needs competition, they're doing well on their own, but it would probably do them good. EA are being dicks on the other hand, plain and simple. I think Origin will survive, mostly due to untapped markets that EA trick into their clutches, the Steam crowd will stick with Steam out of loyalty or community or because Valve practice good business and the Steam crowd know what EA are like, Valve will have a serious competitor to make them better, and hopefully EA will keep shooting themselves in the foot and the BioWare staff will leave en-masse and form a new company and make games of their usual quality.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Origin is still in beta.

It would be unfair to compare an finished product (steam) to an unfinished one.

Being in beta wouldn't dictate the prices, which seem pretty shitty.

Prices aren't competing with Steam...and neither are competing with Amazon.

True enough but then again, if you had money smarts you'd go for the physical copies for the majority of the time.

The sales are a nice treat and I don't have only Steam for that.

Yep. Outside of the sales, steam is overpriced. £35 for the Witcher 2...really? £10 or more cheaper elsewhere.

But, I don't care about owning game boxes, it's clutter that I don't want or need. If Amazon weren't offering things cheaper(very often games that graft themselves onto steam from the disc anyway)I would buy everything from Steam, make game boxes and disc swapping a thing of the past.

I wouldn't miss it.

 

[jowo96]

Origin has some considerable weight behind it seeing as it's EA's software but I was happy with steam, all my games are on steam and all my friends are on steam. While it's not really a whole lot more effort and as a whole any company having a monopoly is not good, I still would have prefered it if EA stuck with Steam. I really don't want to have a different digital distribution software for every company, that would be annoying.

 

[jpoon]

I say they should go for it, give Valve as much competition as possible, force Valve to drop prices. It's only going to be good for the people buying games and I'm fine with it, even though I will still buy my games as a hard copy.

 

[Vault101]

Origin is run by EA, an infamous publisher. SSteam is run by Valve, which seems to be a benevolent company more concerned about making sure gamers get games than getting moneys. Valve has an amazing reputation for a very good reason, and don't need competition. I wouldn't be dissatisfied in the slightest if they expanded with their business ethics. So no, competition won't do any good, because steam is damn well near perfect. Just look at all the free stuff everyone got in the past week and a half.

I think that's a limited viewpoint. Valve is a business first and foremost--but they're a business with a rather different approach, and that's that people who like you are the sort of people who will be loyal to you. They're the sort of people who will trust what you make will be amazing, and will buy oodles of them. They're the sort of people who might not pirate out of respect.

Whereas EA has a terrible tendency to treat their consumers like dirt. People don't trust them, people blame them, but they're also savvy when it comes to marketing and hyping, so they continue to do well.

But there is never a time when more competition between big businesses is a bad thing. Not in a capitalist market. But I disagree that they're ultimate goal is to make good games, and not to make money--they just realize the two go best hand-in-hand.

First off, being a damn dirty hippy, I have a massive problem with capitalism (surprise surprise), mostly due to the fact that in a lot of businesses, more focus is devoted to how to sell a terrible product rather than making a good product worth selling. Competition can produce better products by forcing companies to expand their scope to outdo their competitors, but generally it doesn't happen that way.

Valve are a company who make good products that are worth selling, and will hopefully compete by out-doing EA, as Saibh said, because they know that making good products goes hand in hand with making money. They practice good business and evolve to understand their consumers. Even if they do take their time with games.

Secondly, savvy marketing? With fake protesters, yourmomhatesthis, sin to win etc, EA seem to be going with the idea that bad publicity is better than no publicity, rather than actually trying to get good publicity. They also seem to have little idea of the demographic they're selling to, either that or are acutely aware that teenagers are (for the most part) susceptible to the quality of the adverts they put out. I'm leaning towards the latter, but even if yourmomhatesthis got a bunch of gullible teens to buy their terrible excuse of a game, their parents no doubt saw the ad too and are the people those teens would go to in order to buy it, being an M-rated game. Cue a storm of controversy. If they keep going like that something bad will happen to their bottom line, it's only a matter of time.

EA practice bad business by doing these things, telling their consumers what they want rather than listening to them, rushing things that aren't ready just so they have a product out and then marketing it, badly and incredibly controversially, when it doesn't sell well. Or pulling their upcoming games from a company (Valve in case of confusion) that used them, and indeed praised them, to publish the non-steam editions of their games.

BWHA HA HA.. HA HA HA!

I'm sorry *Straightens up*

I think its quite obvious that no real competition will appear.

The Sims. Think about it, it's their biggest casual game franchise that has already extorted huge amounts of money from people with the endless expansion packs. Now imagine Origin only DLC for it. A whole new untapped market who have no idea about Steam. That scares me.

is this a good or bad thing? does steam have a monopoly that needs some competition..are EA just being dicks?

I cant say much since I (would you belive it?) but my PC games retail

now I dont know if this is the case or not but I fully expected with Alice:madness returns to have to use "Origin" or whatever it, just like when a game usues steam (esentailly asll its doing is taking a whole chunk out of the download)

but no...aparently not..dont know if this will be the case with any other EA games...

To answer the question, I don't think Steam needs competition, they're doing well on their own, but it would probably do them good. EA are being dicks on the other hand, plain and simple. I think Origin will survive, mostly due to untapped markets that EA trick into their clutches, the Steam crowd will stick with Steam out of loyalty or community or because Valve practice good business and the Steam crowd know what EA are like, Valve will have a serious competitor to make them better, and hopefully EA will keep shooting themselves in the foot and the BioWare staff will leave en-masse and form a new company and make games of their usual quality.

Bioware? break up?

aghhh dont talk like that :/

I dont know if this will have much of an impact on the retail sector...is origin officially out yet?

 

[Coldie]

Yep. Outside of the sales, steam is overpriced. £35 for the Witcher 2...really? £10 or more cheaper elsewhere.

But, I don't care about owning game boxes, it's clutter that I don't want or need. If Amazon weren't offering things cheaper(very often games that graft themselves onto steam from the disc anyway)I would buy everything from Steam, make game boxes and disc swapping a thing of the past.

I wouldn't miss it.

That's up to the publisher and local retailers, really. The Witcher 2 has been $20 on Steam for quite a while now (and down to $13.39 during the summer sale), but much older EA games like ME2 and DA2 are still full price.

Anyhow, any price difference between offline and online retailers is just "convenience tax" and I really don't mind paying it, so long as all games stay in one place. Steam is that place for me.

 

[Chibz]

Both services are pretty much evil, and the best thing for gamers would be MAD.

 

[A-D.]

If it becomes mandatory to any Game i own or may buy in the future, then no. Im not going to even buy the game. I havent bought any Valve Title for the exact same reason that it requires me to have Steam, it doesnt offer me to have Steam, IT DEMANDS IT.

So if Mass Effect 3 requires me to install Origin, then thats the game i wont be getting. I prefer having a Choice instead of being forced to use a Service i may not even use beyond the one Game that requires it.