Origin, why?

[Flunk]

EA makes a lot of games, if they only make them available over their own service you'll have to use it or not play. This is basically how Valve forced us all to use Steam for Half-Life 2. It's no more or less evil than Steam, although it is a rip-off so I suppose there is a reason to favour the former but to me it's really just the same thing with different owners.

 

[Stall]

Steam is hardly the only digital distribution company. There's D2D, GOG, and several others that I can't think of right now. Origin is EA wanting to get a slice of the DD pie.

 

[Korolev]

You do realize that Valve "courts" fans for money, right? Valve is a business - they are not actually nice to you because they have an emotional attachment to fans. They are nice to you because it is a good business practice. Valve don't put fans before money - they cultivate fans to earn money. It's a smart move, but if you think it's done out of the goodness of their heart, you don't know how businesses work.

Other than that, I agree that Origin will always be an inferior service to steam, given that no activision game will ever appear on it. Steam, being neutral to Activision and EA, will have all the games.

Unless Origin offers EA games at a discount, there's no reason to buy it off origin.

Having said that, why are people offended that EA wants to get into digital distribution? Are you against competition? What moral law are EA transgressing here? Oooh, they want to make money!? EA's a business - it's natural for them to want to make money.

I agree with many people that Origin is a... undercooked service (that's about as polite a term as I can use) that doesn't match up to Steam. But many people here are actively against EVEN THE IDEA of a competitor to Steam. Why? Competition is GOOD. You WANT competition, even if it's lousy competition.

In terms of Morality, both EA and Valve want money. And the end of the day, both exist to make money (that's why people start businesses). The only difference between EA and Valve is the fact that Valve are incomparably SMARTER than EA when it comes to using fan love to earn money. Valve realize that a bit of sacrifice and fan service now, will reap rewards later. Valve realize that by giving lots of free stuff away, fans will come back to steam and become "attached" (I can't believe I'm using that word, but it's true) to a.... digital store.

EA, also wants money, but it's stupid. It's trying to use its brand name alone to launch its digital distribution service. But consumers are a savvy bunch. If you don't give us a reason to go to Origin, then we won't. Unless Origin offers superior discounts, multiplayer services, rare offers or exclusive games, then there's no real incentive to even use Origin.

But please don't try to dress up Valve as the shining white knight of gaming while EA is the evil dungeon goblin of gaming - BOTH companies are goblins. But Valve's the smart Goblin who bribes the hero to leave his dungeon alone, while EA is the stupid Goblin who tries to menace the hero with his club. Wait, that's a TERRIBLE comparison!

Okay, Valve and EA are both, um, car sales people - but Valve is the car salesman who puts a little air-freshener in the car and gives you window tinting for free in order to entice more customers, while EA is the "It's this price and I will not go lower, and no, you don't get a free car freshener" type of car salesperson who doesn't know how to make customers happy.

Okay, I suck at analogies, but you get my point - Neither are actually good to customers out of the pureness of their heart. Valve's niceness is a business tactic. A great business tactic, but a tactic nonetheless. Gabe Newell and co are not your friend. They won't go to your birthday party. They don't even know who you are and they don't care to know who you are. But they know you matter. They know impressions count. They are savvy and smart enough to know that if they can trick their customers into thinking there's an actual, genuine relationship between them, customers will spend more.

EA are also heartless, but they're kinda of stupid. They're big, so they think that they don't have to cozy up to customers because their games are good enough to command the prices they charge. This is a valid business tactic, but it doesn't entice fans of steam to go over to origin. EA's business strategy makes it money, but it could make more money if it followed Valve's strategy.

What I'm saying is this: There is nothing morally wrong with EA wanting to start a digital distribution service. Origin might be a bad service, but it's not "evil". EA makes/publishes games out of its own pocket - it wants to make as much money back from it as possible. That's natural.

Also, Valve aren't even the best company when it comes to prices. D2D is also a great service, which has given me many legitimate games for far cheaper than Valve were offering.

 

[Ziggy the wolf]

honestly, Origin is something i haven't heard of and when i saw it was run by EA i probably would of said fuck it and went on my way trying to making the freaking steam gaurd work right. i don't like EA, all the experiences i have had with the company have been mediocore at best. the only game i ever liked was ME1...thats it. since EA isn't publishing Skyrim or F.3.A.R. i couldn't give a fuck less what the madden company is doing because my yearly franchise cash grab is made by THQ the smackdown VS Raw Series. so yea EA can go to hell and to the OP all i can say is this, i know where you are coming from and you are fully valid on your hatred but if steam as strong as it is, so the fuck what EA pulls their titles and takes their ball to their own yard. you know what happens to the kid who does that, he has his ball but no one to play with him.

 

[Darknacht]

So you think that Steam should be the only DD company in the world?

Wow.

Wait all other DD companies suddenly went out of business?
Checks gog, D2D, impulse, gamersgate, gamestreamer, amazon, gametap and the hundreds of other direct download companies.
Nope they are still all there.

 

[archvile93]

So you think that Steam should be the only DD company in the world?

Wow.

Well to be honest I'd prefer that to having eighteen of these different things installed on my computer so I can play all the games I buy from various publishers. I can just imagine my computer screaming in agony as it tries to run them all, and me frustrated as I search through them all trying to remember which games are in which services. Eventually my computer decides it can't take it any more and kills itself.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Origins is EA's new Download service, the one they yanked Crysis 2 from Steam over.

Actually it was Valve that yanked crysis 2 over it with their new requirements for games to be hosted.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/16/crysis-2-steam-removal-not-an-ea-decision/

 

[NotYetForsaken]

So... This is like the console wars... brought to the PC... Yay?

Some how I think a Monopoly by Valve would be better, being that they have all these sales and community stuff and what not.

OT: Origin and Steam, are essentially Consoles, a set (object) that plays a set (game version) and some of these will be exclusive. Competition created console fanboys, and PC Gaming Elitists. What would happen with Origin?

Now on a subjective opinion, I like Steam better because I don't like EA. Their quality control is horribly shoddy. To this day, and many weeks of customer and technical support, they could not manage to fix Spore for my computer. I would also like to point to Tiberium 4, the failure of an RTS that EA made, not only does it look like crap, the online aspect is also completely borked. You literally need a high level friend to power level your ass before you can do anything.

Origin will rise or fall base on the merits of the game makers that feed the DD system, that is Bioware and whomever else works for that monstrosity. If they can get their shit together to cover for EA, maybe, maybe it will be a good thing for the industry.

If not, I hope it dives completely and doesn't sit there like a cancer we have to put up with.

 

[Cobra091]

i just thought i would put my opinion into all of this:
i think that for the time being PC gamers only want Steam because it is a very good program (which it would have to be to be in the position it is in) and Origin will only darken EA's image as a game maker because of the method that EA is using to bring customers in; which is that you need an origin account to buy and play the games, also the prices in origin are WAY too high (i went on the origin site the other day and the prices were disturbingly higher than that of Steam) and to get customers EA is not only making Origin the only way of buying their games but also if an Origin account is not used for more than a year EA said that account will be deleted with the games purchased using that account are deleted with the account. Also if EA wanted to make a Digital Distribution service, they chose the wrong time to do it because the majority or pc gamers are happy with steam being the only big DD service available to them. Also personally I think that if EA wanted to make a DD service they should be more friendly towards Steam when going about instead of creating unnecessary competition for themselves.

however the fact of the matter is that EA has made the decision to do this with money at the forefront of their minds and pc gamers are not going to be rid of Origin any time soon and i think we should just accept the fact that EA are probably not going to trash change their policy any time in the near future but we should still only buy only those games that really really want from origin.

Also i agree i think that Origin won't be all bad, it will provide Valve to improve Steam (personally i think steam needs a new makover on the looks of it). origin could be good if EA is smart about it.

 

[Cobra091]

http://www.origin.com/au/about
check this out, this gives everything you need to know about origin

 

[LordRoyal]

The only reason I like Origin is because it will give Valve competition.

Not a particularly worthy opponent mind you, just another Direct 2 drive just with a client that publishes it's own games and will never have a library to rival Steam's.

 

[octafish]

EA won't get much through me from Origin. They charge more for games though DD than I can buy them at retail. The opposite is true for Steam (although to be fair a bunch of older EA titles on Steam still have over-inflated prices). I might buy some DLC if it worth it. If they sell DLC through the games like they did with ME2 and Dragon Age I can't see myself using it at all to buy stuff.

 

[Watchmacallit]

Sorry OP,but please just leave. Now.

If EA wants to succeed they have to match Steam games when it comes to digital distribution so they will.

And stop talking about Valve like they're the rebirth of Jesus Henry Christ. They want money too and when they have a sale they are still making money, they just realise you're better off having 1000 people buying $9 game than 5 buying a $100 game.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Battlefield 3 won't have modding tools while Source is free to mod with. That is my argument.

 

[Superior Mind]

I think its perfectly fine for EA to want to compete against Valve's Steam. Steam has an incredible thing going for it, it's basically a monopoly. Thing is EA is going about it the wrong way. Having exclusivity for their own titles I can understand but forcing Origin on an unwilling public I don't. I'm buying the retail version of BF3 because I thought it'd be the best way to avoid having to bother with Origin, (although I expected I would have to have it.) I don't care about Origin and I don't want it. EA's job is to make me want it, not just thrust it on me whether I want it or not.

Now Steam initially was packaged with games like Counter Strike and Half-Life but I'd say this is not how most people nowadays got into it. I know I didn't, I wanted Steam because of what it offered. Now that digital distribution has been established there is no need to force it on people. If it's a good service people will use it. Look at the whole deal with Internet browsers. The vast majority of us start with IE but few of us don't move onto things like Firefox or Chrome. EA needs to try and be a valid competitor because forcing Origin on the gaming public is going to make that public resistant, particularly because EA is a company that doesn't even have a good public image to begin with.

I think it would do everyone good to have a valid competitor to Steam but I don't think EA is the sort of company that has the appropriate strategy to deliver this. Not yet anyway.

 

[martin's a madman]

I can't personally see myself using it, and I don't currently really want any of the games that are exclusive to it, plus I really like Steam and it has so far filled every need I've had with digital distrubution.

That being said, other people might want it, and they should be able to have it.

EA's Origin is merely an experimental push to try and test a variety of markets left nigh-untouched by the major publishers.
Hopefully it will either adapt to the different, cheaper world of DD or be completely ignored by people who like the fact that Steam gives them good deals....I still don't really see the reason for it though. It's like they wanted something to cement and record their consumer base - so they released a downloadable service out of the blue to coincide with the release of two major properties....

I may seriously rethink The Old Republic if it forces me to download Origins, if I do I'll download with the utmost resentment.

I love this image.
Just a random guy at a computer staring down the percentage bar of a download, shaking his head in obvious disgust and anger as it ticks ever onwards.

I'd picture it as someone sort of grumbling, with only the corner of their mouth moving.

 

[UberNoodle]

So you think that Steam should be the only DD company in the world?

Wow.

Do you think that that was adequate rebuttal?

Wow.

Steam is a stellar product and service, so it certainly deserves all the praise that it gets. Should it be the only DD service out there? No. However, if EA wishes to compete with it, Origin must do it via features, robustness, quality and reliability. Right now, it has very little of any of these things. I have several games on the service already. Some have failed to install correctly, others refuse to run with Origin's other features. Generally, the whole service lacks the support to be as great as Steam.

And will EA ever give it? I hope so, because right now, their strategy of forced conversions is very short-sighted, and it will only alienate and dissatisfy gamers if when they finally arrive at Origin, they find that there's very little to be gained. It doesn't matter to consumers whether or not Origin will grow to match Steam when all the features that are missing from it can be had RIGHT NOW with Steam. That's the nature of competition. Certainly, the nature of competition is cheapest when it relies on locking product away from rivals.

 

[gbemery]

I may seriously rethink The Old Republic if it forces me to download Origins, if I do I'll download with the utmost resentment.

Do tell, how does one download with the utmost resentment? Do you just click the download button that much harder?

Edit: Origin is EA's take on digital distribution

Yes, it is and they have every right to do it. Steam has had the run of the field. EA just is trying to get a piece of the pie now. They are only doing a sound business practice. Obviously a lot of gamers now don't care to 'own' their games and would rather get it via digital distribution. EA is just giving the gamer what they want. Now in order to launch a DD client they can't let their games sale on other DD platforms or else people who already have those clients, ie Steam, won't bother to download Origin and Origin would sputter and die before it had a chance. What they are hoping is that all the people who are throwing shit fits about Origin making EA's games exclusive to it, forcing lets face it avid Steam users to download it, will eventually stop their pouting and download the client and game anyway. Which will most likely happen in most cases. Because if most of those people had such an issue with EA to begin with then it shouldn't matter to them because they wouldn't care about EA games. Plus diversity is the best thing for the commercial field. It provides competition and keeps things evolving.

As for me I prefer to have things I buy in hand, so I won't have a problem with Origin unless they start to make everything through Origin and get rid of physical copies. In that case I will just find other publishers to buy from until they do the same. If that happens then I shall most likely give up new gaming and just play what I already own.