What's the Beef With Origin?
- Thread starter Gaianus
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I'll preface this by saying that I don't have Origin. I've managed to avoid it thus far. Very sadly I'll probably lose that battle one day when I finally decide to play Mass Effect 3.
I'm surprised that some of these points regarding Origin haven't been made. I'll skip the ones that already have, since most of them are valid.
Origin wasn't created in the same spirit or intention that Steam was. Steam was originally a digital distribution tool for Valve to use for its own games for patching and downloading updates. Over time, they gradually added more multiplayer community support (which pissed a lot of people off at the time, since they cannibalized existing communities) and then they started adding more 3rd party games. Eventually it morphed into a full-blown digital distribution network that we know (and some of us love).
Origin wasn't created this way. And I think it's one of the main reasons everyone hates it.
EA sold games through Steam. EA's games sold through Steam quite well. Nobody to my knowledge had any issues with EA's games on Steam. I have many EA games through Steam myself, including Mass Effect 1 & 2, and Dragon Age 1 & 2.
Then EA decided that instead of distributing its games on Steam, it would make it's OWN digitial distribution system for its own games, like Valve had done. Steam was becoming too bargain-bin for EA. Steam Sales were incredibly popular, and I don't think EA wanted to play ball. EA didn't want to put Mass Effect on sale for $10, just so that it could compete with other "on sale" games. It wants you to pay $20 for Mass Effect. On Origin, EA wouldn't have to compete with game sales, and could keep the prices on its games as high as it wants. Go and look at the prices for EA's games on Origin and compare them with the sale prices you can get on Steam for other AAA titles, and I think you'll agree that EA prices its titles higher.
To add insult to injury, EA decided to then not offer any of its games through Steam anymore. This angered the game community. Everyone REALLY wanted to play Mass Effect 3. But we already had Mass Effect 1 and 2 on Steam, and we want to buy the 3rd on there too. Gamers don't want to be FORCED to use a game community just to play a game that they want to buy. Suddenly gamers who were used to Steam were forced to install Origin on their system to play the games they wanted to play.
Now to be fair, Steam does this too. There was quite a bit of griping a few years back that you would buy a DVD game in the store off the shelf, but then when you got it home, you had to install Steam and register the game on Steam in order to play. Origin just pissed us off more because we were USED to using Steam and had grown to like it, and we knew that there was really no good reason why we COULDN'T use Steam. It's just that EA didn't want us to.
EA could have built Origin and released Mass Effect 3 on both Steam AND on Origin. But instead they're essentially milking the game community. They're forcing the game community to help them build their Origin system, and they have the ability to manipulate us into doing this, because in the end the game community just wants to play Mass Effect 3, dammit. It's like always-on DRM, like SimCity. Gamers will ***** about it on forums forever, but in the end we just want to play the game.
We'll grumble about it until the end of the Earth, but in the end, we'll jump through whatever hoop EA wants us to jump through to play the games we want to play, and EA KNOWS THIS.
EA knows it can basically tell us to "Jump", and we'll grudgingly say "How high?" as long as after we're done we can play Mass Effect 3.
That's what I hate about Origin at least, and that's why I'm glad I'm not using it... yet.
I'm surprised that some of these points regarding Origin haven't been made. I'll skip the ones that already have, since most of them are valid.
Origin wasn't created in the same spirit or intention that Steam was. Steam was originally a digital distribution tool for Valve to use for its own games for patching and downloading updates. Over time, they gradually added more multiplayer community support (which pissed a lot of people off at the time, since they cannibalized existing communities) and then they started adding more 3rd party games. Eventually it morphed into a full-blown digital distribution network that we know (and some of us love).
Origin wasn't created this way. And I think it's one of the main reasons everyone hates it.
EA sold games through Steam. EA's games sold through Steam quite well. Nobody to my knowledge had any issues with EA's games on Steam. I have many EA games through Steam myself, including Mass Effect 1 & 2, and Dragon Age 1 & 2.
Then EA decided that instead of distributing its games on Steam, it would make it's OWN digitial distribution system for its own games, like Valve had done. Steam was becoming too bargain-bin for EA. Steam Sales were incredibly popular, and I don't think EA wanted to play ball. EA didn't want to put Mass Effect on sale for $10, just so that it could compete with other "on sale" games. It wants you to pay $20 for Mass Effect. On Origin, EA wouldn't have to compete with game sales, and could keep the prices on its games as high as it wants. Go and look at the prices for EA's games on Origin and compare them with the sale prices you can get on Steam for other AAA titles, and I think you'll agree that EA prices its titles higher.
To add insult to injury, EA decided to then not offer any of its games through Steam anymore. This angered the game community. Everyone REALLY wanted to play Mass Effect 3. But we already had Mass Effect 1 and 2 on Steam, and we want to buy the 3rd on there too. Gamers don't want to be FORCED to use a game community just to play a game that they want to buy. Suddenly gamers who were used to Steam were forced to install Origin on their system to play the games they wanted to play.
Now to be fair, Steam does this too. There was quite a bit of griping a few years back that you would buy a DVD game in the store off the shelf, but then when you got it home, you had to install Steam and register the game on Steam in order to play. Origin just pissed us off more because we were USED to using Steam and had grown to like it, and we knew that there was really no good reason why we COULDN'T use Steam. It's just that EA didn't want us to.
EA could have built Origin and released Mass Effect 3 on both Steam AND on Origin. But instead they're essentially milking the game community. They're forcing the game community to help them build their Origin system, and they have the ability to manipulate us into doing this, because in the end the game community just wants to play Mass Effect 3, dammit. It's like always-on DRM, like SimCity. Gamers will ***** about it on forums forever, but in the end we just want to play the game.
We'll grumble about it until the end of the Earth, but in the end, we'll jump through whatever hoop EA wants us to jump through to play the games we want to play, and EA KNOWS THIS.
EA knows it can basically tell us to "Jump", and we'll grudgingly say "How high?" as long as after we're done we can play Mass Effect 3.
That's what I hate about Origin at least, and that's why I'm glad I'm not using it... yet.
This.Genocidicles said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
- 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!
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.
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.
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.rasputin0009 said:
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.
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'.
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'.
Here, here.Thoric485 said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.Arbi Trax said:
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.
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.TehCookie said:
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.TehCookie said:
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.
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.