Anybody else here not liking EA's Origin service?

I downloaded to check it out because supposedly Battlefield 3 is going to use it for mplayer. It seems very clunky in comparison Steam with the auto-updating. I also hate the idea that if you don't login for over 2 years, they delete your account and you lose ownership of all of the games you downloaded through their service. In contrast, Valve has stated that they have a contingency plan allowing customers to retain ownership of their steam games in the event that they have to pull the plug on the service.

I really don't like this. Steam did so much to counteract the corporate ization of the PC (and in the case of PS3, even consoles!) gaming industry by companies like EA and Activision and I feel like Origin is poised to reverse all of that. I really hope that origin fails miserably, and yet despite this, I will not be able to resist the urge to buy BF3 (retail version of course, i'm not using Origin for any downloads).

 

Even if you buy a retail copy you are still forced to login with/use origin for BF3.

 

I definitely prefer Steam, but Origin doesn't bother me that much.

The only thing that irritates me is the fact that there's no quick way to reconnect to the store if you lose your internet connection. You have to completely exit and restart the app.

 

I have been out of PC gaming for about 5 years. However I do still pay attention to PC news. Although I haven't used Steam or Origin, Origin sounds like complete crap from what I'm hearing. I used to hate EA at the end of my PC days and now I'm starting to hate them even more due to their strict and money stealing scheme.

I only hate Gamestop more.

 

I actually don't care for either Steam nor Origin, but I don't see any disadvantages of using Origin vs Steam. I have 3 games on Origin and haven't had any problems.

One thing I do not like about Steam is their Offline mode; which can only be successfully toggled by being online first. I don't know if Origin has this asinine feature.

I would just expect all future big-name EA games to be released exclusively for Origin. Steam won't have any big name EA games, Origin won't have any big name Valve games.

Let the war begin!

 

Origin starts up much faster than Steam for me, and is generally considerably snappier in operation. Download speeds are also significantly faster than those of Steam (I usually download games/updates at under 1MB/s via Steam, I often get well over 2MB/s in Origin).

As for the account cancellation after 2 years of inactivity...I suppose that could be an issue if you realistically might go two full years without touching your games, but I have a hard time imagining I'll let that happen.

 

Lets get this debate going by posting Origins EULA, specifically section 2.

 

I think Steam has a perfect system/user inter-face. I'm not too fond of Origin, but it hasn't bothered me much. The only issue I have is, like many, is the 2-year account deletion due to inactivity.

 

I don't see anything in that section that seems particularly onerous.

 

posted at the same time as Jasp in seperate thread with the full details http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/606294-ea-origin-you-must-read.html

 

I like Steam but it is far, far, FAR from perfect.

 

Only thing I don't like about Origin is the update process where it freezes everything else during start up. Doesn't affect me much since I rarely ever run. Steam on the other hand seems to be taking longer and longer to startup/shutdown - I could just need to do a fresh Windows install, but I doubt it.

 

So many forum users here posting reasons not to use Origin and boycott EA ect.
Are you guys working for Valve or something? xD

Nearly all online services that share information with other users or services asks you to agree on "Terms of service" that enables them to do this legally.

Facebook does it, Google does it, Valve does it, EA needs to do this for them to legally have Battlelog, and so on.
If i where to make a list of all the companies that does this the list would be huge.

Im still gonna play Battlefield 3 regardless of Origin, and the game not being on Steam.

 

The two year account deactivation doesn't make sense. It's not like they store that much unique information for that user online. I'm assuming though that if you still had your key you could open a new account and register it and play it? In any case, even though I'm an advocate for Steam, I don't like the direction all of this is heading.

Eventually every major publisher will have their own online service and won't sell through other services, meaning you will have to juggle a half dozen or more clients to install and play your games. Already I've got Steam, Impulse, and now Origin, and Blizzard in some respects.

I guess someone could make a GUI to manage all those, but I believe that breaks Steam's and Origin's terms.

 

That's what I'm affraid of. If origin can push steam out the way then it doesn't send out good messages to game devs from our perspective.

Also, I agree that steam does have it problems but that can be fixed with time. Even given the similar EULA, I'd just trust valve more to not be an and tell us to "suck it up" should things go pearshape and the service go down.

Also there's the fact that if we end up with multiple clients there will also be more chance of us losing our games since there would be competition. If origin went out I wouldn't count on EA being nice and giving us keys for our games.

As for people having problems with steam on offline mode, I've never had an issue. If I log onto steam when I don't have a connection it just tells me it can't connect and gives me the option of starting in offline mode or trying the connection again.

On the download rate side of things, while I don't doubt that origin has a faster download rate, it wouldn't take much for valve to modify steam to get the same. Maybe steam is actually knowingly making is download slowly so that it doesn't max out your connection, which is a good thing in some situations.

 

I sold my PC but from people's opinion and recent talk, Origin is garbage.

 

i think its good for what it is, a store where ea can sell their games. what origin would provide over steam, is direct customer service. its like a band making producing and selling their own music instead of using a middle man. in the end it is more efficient for ea, and they can offer more discounts due to the elimination of the middleman. so all in all i really like the service and from personal experience the service is excellent, perhaps a little slow but still very good.

 

If Steam were run by a neutral third party and not Valve things would probably be different. But that's not the case, so I feel like EA and Valve are taking their ball and going home.

As far as downloads, change your download location from Steam -> Settings -> Downloads + Cloud and try a different location. That's what I do when download speeds suffer. I usually get my max download rate.

 

I don't like Origin. I've never had an issue with Steam, but since EA downloader became Origin, I cannot play Crysis Warhead. I've done multiple chat sessions and no results. All my steam games work fine. EA said a Level 3 specialist would contact me in 48 hrs, but that was a week ago, and I haven't heard from them, I will call back on Friday. I'd love to get into BF3, but EA is not earning my business so far. I think I'd rather play MW3.

 

I don't personally have problems with steam download rates but some people complain about it. It would be nice if they had an optional download accelerator though. When firedownload actually worked (it's still stuck on FF 3.6) it would boost my DL speed quite significantly. I'm not sure how it would fare with the steam servers though since the limit most likely isn't on their side.

 

What ever happened to "competition is good for the consumer"?

 

Competition doesn't exist anymore.

 

Steam sucked when it was first released. So why are some of you being so harsh with Origin which still has some ways to before it's mature?

 

I can always log on to steam offline when I don't have a connection... not sure what is wrong with what you're trying. it always warns me that steam cannot connect, then gives me options to try again, close, or play offline.

 

Yeah, the only time I ever tried to log into Steam with no internet connection available, it asked me if I wanted to use offline mode and I said yes and it worked just fine.

 

It's been a hit and miss for me. Living up here in Washington, we occasionally run into power lines/power cables going out during wind storms (most of the time just my cable and internet going out).

I would say most of the time (70%) it works, but every once and a while it just says some kind of error. I even go as far as turning off my wireless receiver and it still won't work.

It's probably just me, my luck with laptops isn't great

 

Next time, open task manager, go to processes tab, find Steam.exe *32, select it and end process, then boot up steam again. If the outage happens while steam is up, it may cause weird issues. Killing the process and starting it up again should give you the option to play in offline mode.

 

EA's Origin to delete inactive accounts | bit-gamer.net

 

when in doubt, use skidrow version

 

Holy crap thats freaky lol.

 

Hehehe, you guys are suckers. I will be enjoying Steam/vALVE's games and BF3, and I won't tell you how END OF DISCUSSION.

/Thread Closed. WHIZZZZ!!!!

 

The offline mode is one of the best implementations Steam offers. And no, it is not true you have to be online first. I have several times exited Steam (online), restarted my PC and then log offline without going online. On the other hand I have had very few problems when their servers are down (or in maintenance) that I can't log offline.

Actually I don't expect only the AAA titles being excluded from Steam, but rather their whole future releases.

Back on topic: I haven't used Origin a lot (actually only 3 minutes) and I was dissappointed that only DA: Origins and ME2 were recognized as registered since I also have ME which I was forced to make an account in the BiowEAre social club.

 

He means that you cannot log into Steam if you have no Clientbob file or you have signed out, gone offline, and then are trying to sign in. Hope you get what I'm saying.

 

And when it was released there wasn't any competition. This is not the case today.

 

tbh i was waiting a long time for such a game for me to overlook it because of developer's software. bf3> owns everything atm. we are gamers, at the end of the day we will enjoy the game as it is. steam = origin. get used to it imo

 

Yeah, but I don't have to worry about losing the game if I don't log in for two years.

First off, I don't play any EA pc games. Like Activision, most of the games they put out are un-original crap. I think the last one I bought was crysis, and the sequel is a perfect example of how their philosophy of dumbing down games to reach bigger audiences/profits ruins their own franchises. So yes I can see myself playing the crap out of BF 3 and not touching origin for a long time before re-visiting the game.

Second, It's the shear principle. There's no reason for the 2 year deactivation other than squeezing every dime they can out of the consumer. They're part of the reason that minor little DLC costs money. Valve on the other hand, releases all of the expanded content for their games for free (look at left for dead 2, the content of the game has more than doubled since the game was released and you don't have to pay a dime if you own it on PC). I hope that EA bottoms out someday and falls hard, although I don't see it happening any time soon.

 

EA: Inactive Origin accounts won't be deleted - Shacknews.com - Video Game News, Trailers, Game Videos, and Files

I think everyone just misunderstands what they were saying about the deactivation. Like the poster above.

 

Bro, they're not deleting anyone's account that actually has games attached to it. They're only deleting spam accounts.

 

I think a lot of people are predisposed to be upset about origin, primarily because valve and steam are both awesome.

origin, even if it's great, will still be a nuisance compared to having the game available on steam.

Nevertheless, it's looking like origin is going to work just fine, but I would still prefer steam. Whatever.

 

i installed it yesterday to register nfs shift2.

it froze and i raged. uninstalled and never installing it again (UNLESS bf3 is super epic)

 

Uh yes it is. There is no competition for EA's AAA titles. They are Origin exclusive. No competition. Which is EXACTLY the same thing Steam did. They created something to digitally distribute their game exclusively through their system even though there were game download sites available. So I don't see any reason why people are moaning and complaining here. It's just hypocrisy is all it is.

I also think it's hilarious that people think Valve is better than EA. I haven't played anything from Valve in years that I thought was good. L4D was snore. L4D2 was a ripoff, selling me L4D again with $50 tag. Portal 2 was disappointing. It's all still DX9 and no 64 bit support yet. Steam itself has no plans on upgrading for 64 bit even though a lot of gamers have been using 64 bit OS for half a decade now. Valve still charges exorbitant prices for their crappy games that look like they were developed in 2002. But because it's Valve it's OK and it's awesome. But when EA publishes Crysis 2 which has graphics that is 100x better than what Valve is capable of, everyone cries and whines claiming EA is evil for not having DX11 support out of the box on Day 1.
- Frankly what is really disappointing about Valve is that they charge full price for games which are in reality mods of Half Life 2. It's pathetic, yet again, it's Valve so it's OK. Valve is awesome because they punch you in the face, and you cry, another punch in the face please. Oh and btw I'd like handful of DRM, but I won't call it DRM because I'm a DRM hating hypocrite.

HYPOCRISY and UNFAIR prejudice and judgement is all this is. I guess it's the cool thing to do, to love Valve and hate EA, or in other words, it's cool to be a hypocrite. Oh no EA uses DRM, completely forgetting the entire STEAM is a DRM. Oh but Steam DRM isn't invasive. Neither is EA DRM hypocrite.

 

LOL. Valve games are NOT mods of Half-Life 2. They're using the same engine, in the same way people use the CryEngine or UT3 engine. I personally have nothing against Origin or EA. I just want to be able to store all my games in a single convenient location. That's what I like about Steam.

 

I dont really like origin right now because of the nonstop problems i had just trying to get the damn bf3 alpha test downloaded. It took me no foolin 3 days to download that alpha because i kept getting download errors. i tired contacting support about it they told me "close out origin and restart, that SHOULD fix it" well i said if it doesnt work what should i try. they told me " ill let you know when that happens" I said "how? wouldnt closing origin close this chat?" after a very long frustrating pause i was given instructions on one other thing to try (neither of which worked) My frustration with support is more then enough to put me off their services but when you have to wait 2 hrs to get that crap service it makes you want to burn the program to a disc and shove it up their you know what.

Steam wasnt all that bad when it first started up and support was no where near that terrible. I also had no idea that my ea account automatically generated an origin account so i guess that saved me a little time but over all origin is extremely flawed in its current state (last i saw it was still a beta)

I would much rather just use steam as it already has almost all my games on it. I would much rather only have on program installed but thatll never happen lol. I dont see myself using origin much if at all and ill probably just have it on the back burner just like games for windows.

 

Are you serious?

Valve is the most respected PC game developer for a reason.

 

Probably gonna recieve unlimited rage for this, but i have to say hulawafu77 brings up some good points with this.
+ Rep to you.

 

you guys aren't understanding each other. EA has no competition for EA's software.

Valve "got a pass" (they really didn't, they had to work hard to win people over by improving their product over time) on steam because there were no other digital distribution channels available at the time.

The point is that the state of steam in 2003 has nothing to do with the state of origin in 2011. If it were 2003, then yeah, origin and steam could fight it out. However, it's 2011, and steam already works perfectly. There's no point giving origin "the pass" if it has issues since steam is available.

 

I do find it absurd that EA doesn't want their games on Steam, at least new release titles. While I doubt having it on Origin only will dissuade too many people from buying it, I'm certain sales would have been much higher had they offered it on Steam, even if Valve did take a portion of the profits.

Realistically, EA could have offered BF3 for $50 on Origin and $60 on Steam, and would have most likely profited just the same, with potentially more sales.

 

You bring up good points, but you must realize the other end.

PEOPLE EXPECT FUN FROM VALVE GAMES AND I GOT COOP FUN FROM L4D2!

PEOPLE EXPECT GRAPHICS AND AWESOME GAMEPLAY FROM EA!

Soz' for da' caps'.

EA is a lot more richer then vALVE. I expect more then just a fun game.
Steam is clunky, but I have used Origin and it is so crap, so crap, so crap, so crap, that I would sell my G700 mouse just to revert back to Steam if I was forced to use Origin.

$50 buck tag for L4D2? Dude, where do you get your L4D games. I got mine for 13 NZD. And I modded the whole engine for shizzles and giggles.

I would expect EA's BF3 to be moddable. And EA doesn't want 20% to go to vALVE? This shows they're corrupt. The reason why vALVE charges 9.99 bucks for older games is because they're great! BF2 looks like HL1 and BF2 is pricer which sort of proves your comment wrong.

The reason why vALVE doesn't want to change to 64bit is because some people still use 32bit. And they don't want to leave them behind in the dust do they? And Crysis 2 killed a franchise. If it was PC only then it would have been cupcakes and rainbows and no complaining etc.

And this is for people who care about which DirectX their game is in this is a message to you; STOP BEING A DUMB BABY. DX9 compared to DX10 is very little for a huge performance drop. DX9 Crysis 1 looks better then any DX11 game. See the problem? DX9 is fully optimized for everything. Which is good. Tessellation is not worth it, Crysis 2 DX11 patch proved this.

Honestly, if you think vALVE's new games are mods of HL2. Then you need to look at EA's games as well. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2? Just different lighting.

Steam isn't a Ubisoft which uses CRAP DRM, Steam's DRM is good. AND YOU CANNOT STOP PIRATES, THEY WILL GET OVER EVERY TIDAL WAVE AND ROCK IN THEIR LULZ SHIP.

This is all in my opinion good debate. This is why Valve is highly respected. Their not money hungry unlike EA/DICE who cancelled BF1943 for BF3 because BF1943 won't make enough money so they ditched it.

 

This is S-M-A-R-T.

 

Hey man, you never talked about games in your previous post, don't try to shift the topic and assume nobody will notice it . Also remember that Steam sucked not because they sold their exclusive games but rather the service was not mature. So far EA seems to be doing good but the true test will be when BF3 and TOR are released, since digital distribution is not easy.

We should also remember that Steam has very good deals every half a year. Personally I have no problems with EA trying to get more profits by killing the middle man and replacing it with Origin, I do have problems with their shoddy PR trying to blame the competition for pulling out games (Crysis 2, DA 2) and denying Origin is a competence. They should have said in a forward manner (we don't like Steam, we will be handling DD personally, etc) and everything would be right.