Origin compared to Steam

I have been a Steam member since the very beginning, with HL2, and seen a tremendous amount of growth over the years. I have purchased so many bundles during sales and whatnot, that my Steam account actually has 480 games in my library. Steam has always been very good to deal with, and the download speeds I get are whatever I can from my ISP, which is currently 3MBS which inside Steam my downloads come down at 3.0MBS, and rarely dip below 2.8. When I buy a new game, it arrives very quickly, so there is some sense of almost instant gratification. I love what the service has grown into, and will always maintain my account.

I spend a lot of time and money on gaming, PC and console, as has been the case since Pong, Colecovision, Atari, etc... I used to love EA, and those feelings began with the original Madden on the Genesis, as well as Road Rash, the NBA and NHL games. But something went terribly wrong with them, they began getting too big and too greedy.

I have used Origin, since I got a free copy of Battlefield 3 on there, and had to use it to get the game. Well, all I can say is I am not impressed at all. In fact, I have since purchased Mass Effect 1-3 on the service as well (purchased during a sale), and it took me a couple of days to download all three of those, with a max speed of 300k. There are several games right now only avaiable on Origin, that I will not buy for PC, because of the tremendously slow speeds they allow. I download a lot of things from the Internet, and Origin has to provide the slowest download speeds of any site I download from.

Steam has a much larger user base than does Origin, but is still able to provide me as much speed as my ISP can handle on a constant basis, and my downloads arrive very quickly. I have never recieved more than 400k from Origin, and that is only in small bursts. Due to this, I will not purchase any more games on Origin. If it is available for console, I will buy the game disc, if it is PC/Origin only then I guess I was just not meant to get that particular game.

I have twice had my entire Origin library suddenly become corrupted, and require complete installs. This has never happened with Steam, ever. Since these installs take days due to low speeds, it is not worth it for me to continue to spend my money there. I have no problem with spending my money on a sevice other than Steam, but when that service performs so terribly, as Origin does, then I must draw the line. It is increasingly clear that EA is attempting to maximize profits by minimizing spending on bandwidth. I fully understand business, and the need to maximize profits, but what I think EA is failing to understand is that you never cut in the areas of the platform itself, when it negatively impacts the end user. When the service is the platform, then you find other areas where you can cut spending and continue to maximize profits. As well, the better the service performs, the more games you sell, and the more customers you get by word of mouth, such as the case with Steam. I have had several game related discussions with folks at work, who all have Steam accounts, most of whom have never heard of Origin, and when I bring it up there is nothing positive said, therefore Origin loses even more potential customers.

I have read numerous threads on several forums, where people are complaining about slow download speeds (just search it on the web), and in several of those EA reps actually have responded, saying things such as server load, number of users connecting simultaneously, etc... Well, I never get slow speeds from Steam, and I guarantee they have a lot more simultaneous downloads going than Origin has ever had. If EA truly wants Origin to succeed, then they have got to understand that they have got to spend money on the service. Until they do I will no longer give them any of my business, and I know I am not the only one.

 

I refuse to install the garbage onto my machine. Steam is the only "frontend" worth using for downloading and playing games and it always will be. Valve basically prints money because of it so it will be very reliable and constantly updated. EA however could care less about consumers and everyone knows it, so they don't get much support and origin fails due to a low userbase. No one would even use it if they could launch BF3 some other way.

 

Origin is just as good as Steam far as I'm concerned if not better. Origin does have streaming capability with twitch.tv.

As for evilness? I think Valve is just as bad as EA is. Charging premium prices for expansion packs like L4D2 exemplifies that. Steam is a DRM, no different than Uplay and others. Though I don't like Uplay.

The ONLY advantage I can see with Steam over Origin is the huge sales Steam has. Origin sales are not impressive. As for multi-language support and region locking and using discounted keys, Origin hands down better than Steam.
- Which for me makes Origin better than Steam for day 1 releases. I can get much cheaper prices on Amazon and other discount stores than Steam day 1 and have them activated, working and in multi-player without any worry about region locking.
- Unlike Steam, with Origin I don't need VPN to activate or download. It's so easy and simple.

As for support, hands down, easily, EA Origin destroys Steam. You can call up an EA rep and they get you sorted fast and quick. Steam, email and wait 2 weeks.

I'm not defending EA/Origin, just saying, I don't think EA is more evil than Valve and think both of them are just as bad as the other. EA is also very friendly towards Indie developers, it's their choice to ignore that. I've also found EA Origin's download speeds to be superior to Valve's and much more consistent.

 

The vast majority of my games are on Steam, but I have gotten good customer service from EA in the past, while Valve takes 3 days to respond to my emails lol. Plus it's easy to set up games to download to any hard drive in your computer. Steam only lets you download certain games to different hdd locations, which sucks. Like Hula said, Origin is pretty convenient in my opinion, their sales and prices just suck.

I notice no difference in d/l speeds between them.

 

I use both.

Steam has better prices and better selection, but I like Origin's interface better, and I've had fewer bugginess problems with Origin than with Steam (I had trouble linking DLC to Borderlands 1 on Steam, KOTOR never worked on Steam for me and many others, and I've had periodic log-in problems on Steam).

I've noticed no difference in download speeds.

 

Cant say i get slow download speeds on Origin, it easily maxes out at around 8 MB/s while Steam barely reaches 7 MB/s when its not peak hour. The actual client has been solid as well with no freezing or crashes and the introduction of Twitch.tv livestreaming right from the ingame overlay is pretty nice as well.
But Steam vs Origin is like Xbox 360 vs PS3, so i wont start an argument here.

 

I can say that my average Origin download speed is 8-9mbps, but it goes up to even 13-14mbps. On Steam it's normally 4-5mbps and up to 7-8bmps. Also I can say about the support, that they are both bad. From EA i've got the answer after like 2-3 weeks and only one problem got solved, but they did actually tried to convince me that my nfs shift cd key is being seen as used when i try to enter the mp, because of blocked ports. When I had a problem with Deus Ex on Steam, than I've got also a non sense response. So personally I've got nothing against Origin, because without counting the advantages of Steam like the sales, bigger community etc. , than they are kind of both evenly good or bad.

 

I am by no means attempting to start an argument, only pointing out the issues I have had with a particular service. I have two gamming PCs, a ps3, 360, wii, wii u, several handhelds, and the list goes on. I am an equal opportunity gamer, and enjoy them all. I am not married to Steam, or any single service as to do so would be foolish on my part, but have always received great service in regards to Steam itself, even when I have had issues with a particular game. I have not had to use EA's support for Origin, so I cannot speak to that, but I know every time I have downloaded games from them, they are extremely slow compared to Steam, and are the only service that performs so poorly. Since I have had to download my games from them on more than one occassion, and gotten the exact same download speeds every time, I am unable to attribute it to a particular time, or date (such as he release date of a huge game). They have equally poor performance across the board from them, and therefore will not purchase any more games from them until they get the issues resolved.

I have seen several people such as yourself, respond in kind, that they get good download speeds from Origin. I do not understand the discrepency from one user to another, unless it is new vs older games, and they throttle more bandwidth to the newer of the two. I do not believe that to be the case however, as I have downloaded BF3 and ME3 from them, both new games, and gotten the same slow speeds.

 

Yeah don't know which email for Steam you are using, but I get a answer within 2 -3 days. Also my BF3 still disconnects at times and the EA reps haven't found out why.

4 years ago my CS:S key didn't work, Valve gave me a new one. Steam just got Greenlight.. definitely a good thing.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. Origin's capability with twitch.tv is amazing. Hands down.

Last but not least, you are right, none the less, no one is better than the other, Origin is DRM-free so yeah

 

EA Origin doesn't have greenlight, they simply waive distribution fees anyway for independent games that have been crowd sourced.

2-3 days is still substantially worse than talking to EA now.

As for BF3, its' not Origin fault, that would be EA ice's fault, that's netcoding and we all know BF3 has terrible net coding. How is a EA Origin service rep supposed to know how to fix Dice's crappy net coding?

And for CD keys not working, EA Origin will supply you a new key also if you can prove you bought it.

Agreed though, I don't think either is better, it just comes down to where I can get the game cheapest and I'm not going to not play a game just because it's exclusive to Origin.

 

As long as I save money

 

I'm getting around 2.00 meg a second downloading crysis 2. I have games with both distributors, and I Just use what I need to use to play my games. Not a real huge difference for me.

 

I find it to be more stable and less prone to crashing than Steam as well as faster downloads but at the same time it is still far behind Steam's far superior set of client features and community. Also Steam's catalogue of games is far greater in number than Origin's. Lastly Steam definitely has the better sales no doubt about that.

Overall Origin is ok but I only plan to use it for the exclusive games such as Mass Effect 3 and SimCity etc etc. I prefer Steam and I can't see Origin catching up anytime soon.

 

Thing i hate about origin is i have 2 accounts with 3 games on 1 and 4 on the other. They won't merge them for me, stating it would overwrite the games on the account.

 

Well the problem is that on Origin I have 30 games and I can download everyone of them with the same average download speed. This thing actually happens on steam, when older games do download slower than newer ones. I know that is very strange, but it's also I think a region problem. And on steam were talking about almost 250 games, from which a part of them download slower than the others.

 

I installed Origin in order to get a free game, Mass Effect 2. I wasn't keen on it, but I thought, "hey, free game!" Then I was pleasantly surprised to see Origin is not a resource hog and when you exit the client, it shuts down completely

Also, the download speeds for both Origin and Steam are about the same for me, 12 MB/s up to 12.5MB/s. I have 100Mbps connection, so Origin is already hitting the maximum possible DL speed my connection can deliver.

There is also I think a text chat with support feature, would be helpful for Steam to incorporate.

Where Origin fails epically is in the UI for the store. It is damn complicated to find a specific game or DLC you want and their search system sucks . I bought DA2 on Steam and was considering buying some DLC for Dragon Age 2, but it never appeared in the Steam store.

First I contacted the Origin tech support and was told I should use my Steam product key to download the game via Origin, and then I could click "shop for add-ons." I did so; however, even after downloading DA2 again, I still cannot buy any of the DLC on Origin. There is no "shop for add ons" button for DA2.

I contacted Origin tech support again and was told I needed to go to bioware.com to purchase DLC for this game. I didn't see any convenient store front to puchase the DLC, but was instructed to select the "Games" drop down menu, then DA2, then Official DLC. Then I learned that you can't simply buy the DLC directly using your credit card. Instead, you must buy 1600 "Bioware points" and if you buy something you will end up with leftover points.

The entire experience was very frustrating and left me with no further interest in attempting to buy this DLC. If it were available on Origin to buy directly using a credit card, I would have considered it, but I have no interest in purchasing "Bioware points." The Origin tech support rep recommended buying the DLC at Wal-mart, but I don't have any optical disc drive in my laptop, so I can only buy digital downloads.

It's difficult to understand the reasoning behind why EA has made it so complicated for PC users to buy DLC for some of their games. In comparison, buying DLC on Steam is a completely hassle-free experience. It's very easy to find any DLC you are looking for, click once to add to cart and then check out. And the prices are in dollars, not "points." Also there are freqently discount sales for DLC as much as 50% or 75% off MSRP. I don't think the DA2 DLC has ever been on sale, even though we are approaching 2 years after the game's release date.

Also, when you factor in Steam Workshop and modding tools, even developer software integrated into the Steam client, as well as the social features like game trading, groups, chatrooms, screenshots, sharing your own mod projects and videos with people in your friends list, sharing game guides, etc., and the fact that Steam has a 60 million user base head start, there is absolutely no reason to buy any game on Origin that is also offered on Steam. I'd even be willing to pay a few dollars more for a version of a game with Steam product key.

Since EA insists on keeping its games off of Steam, the end result is the players miss out on all the social interactive features the game could have offered if it was available on Steam. Most people seem to use Origin solely in order to play some EA game like BF3 or ME3 and then immediately shut off the client. In contrast Steam is very sticky, and I have it almost always running when I'm home, working on mod projects, interacting quite a bit with folks in my friends list, etc.

 

It might actually be the other way around. I've read somewhere that Valve requires you to put all DLCs on Steam store with game as well. So that's why no newer EA games, even though ME is still on Steam. But I'm pretty sure the agreement was "mutual".

 

Big differences:

Steam supports dozens of developers and publishers and especially Indie developers.

Origin supports EA only.

Origin is ok, but exclusivity to not allow users a choice of buying their content on Steam is what irritates me.

 

That's not true. EA supports Indie, it's Indie developers choice to not take advantage of it.

And other developers do use EA Origin's service such as Capcom etc.

The big difference is Origin is not a huge behemouth DRM like Steam is, Steamworks. That's probably why it's not as attractive to some big developers like 2K Games and their subsidiaries. Steam is great because a lot of chumps think it's nice and rosy when in fact it's a gigantic DRM service.

 

This. I am not kidding.

Is the worst thing, ever, known, to human history. I cannot understand what kind of terrible mistake Origin has made. It's not like THEY WILL LOSE MONEY.

This. I am not kidding.

Is the worst thing, ever, known, to human history. I cannot understand what kind of terrible mistake Origin has made. It's not like THEY WILL LOSE MONEY.

 

ROFL yes it does in their mind. Why give 30% to Valve? I agree, why should they. If I was running EA, I'd think Origin exclusivity is a great idea. Of course I'd also lower the price a bit since I no longer have to pay fees to other distributions, making Origin even MORE appealing than the competitive distributors. I think the mistake EA is making is not making BF3, BF4, Dead Space, Mass Effect etc Origin exclusive, but not passing on the savings to us consumers. I don't see any reason why it benefits them to continue to sell at $60.

 

Of course they are going to use their flagship titles to get people to install Origin. If they didn't do this, there would be almost nobody at all using the Origin client. What Ubisoft did is almost even more ridiculous, allowing people to buy their games on Steam, but you still have to launch the Ubi client from the Steam client, which is nuts.

Back in the day, Valve did the same thing, people complained about the requirement to install Steam in order to play Half Life or Portal, but it worked and eventually Steam caught on.

The reason why Ubisoft and Origin are trying to build their client installed base is simple. Every game they sell on their own client store has almost zero cost of goods. They cut out all the costs associated with disc replication, shipping, commissions, rebates, POS displays, trade ads, retailer and wholesaler margin, and they cut out the 20-30% distribution fee that Valve charges for games sold on Steam. And when you use their client they have a captive audience for marketing the rest of their games.

They just don't have a handle on what makes something like the Steam client actually useful from a gamer's perspective. My prediction is that within about five years, clients like Origin and Uplay will eventually switch to a cloud based streaming model like Netflix. You pay a monthly Origin subscription fee and you can play any EA game, rendered remotely on a server and streamed to your PC or tablet. Then they will try to sell you virtual goods and Multiplayer item packs, etc., on top of the subscription fee.

Steam may also eventually incorporate some form of cloud based gaming or subscription model, but in contrast with Origin, Valve seems to be planning to move the Steam client more toward something with a massive focus on user generated content. Gaben has mentioned some wild concepts in this area. For example, they plan to incorporate individualized user storefronts, so Steam users can promote their favorite games to friends and receive some payment for every game they sell. I think the next iterations of features like Greenlight and the Workshop will also take user generated content to the next level. There are already guys making $500k per year designing TF2 hats for the Workshop.

 

I guess I should have mostly exclusively EA titles. There are few new games these days without some form of DRM. I don't like the fact that I don't "own" the games I buy but technically I never had. Just it was a lot harder to police before everything became download. It's more convenient but you pay the price for DRM.

I'm not sure how EA supports Indie. They offer nothing even remotely close to Steam "greenlight". Indie developers want their games Steam available and Valve supports them and the process and the cause.

I'm a huge fan of the Battlefield series of games, and the earlier Jane's titles (aging myself a bit there) which were published by EA too. I really liked Crysis and Warhead too. But as far as online services go, they have a long ways to go.

Erm, show me where they charge 20-30% distribution fee please. All that information is completely NDA, confidential. I'm sure every contract is different and negotiated. I don't imagine it's that much. Not only that, they can always dictate pricing to Steam as well. Some people would pay up to 20% more for a game on Steam, I guarantee it. $60 vs $50 on Origin for example. I can pretty much guarantee sales and profits would increase more than they are now if they offered the same product on Steam.

 

Oh I am sorry I thought using caps lock or just big letters would clarify that I wasn't serious, even though I instinctively said I was in the beginning.

But yeah I agree with you both, really valid points.

 

Steam
-1 million buttons
-Everything loads slowly
-Download speed fluctuates between 0kB/s to 100kB/s everytime
-Connection problems 9/10 of the time, usually followed by a freeze
-Logins in 3 minutes or freezes when it can't
-Connection lost= freeze+crash
-Support is crap, just the normal "clear your cache" BS

Origin
-Simple
-Loads OK
-Store loads reasonably
-Download speed is stable
-Rarely any connection problems
-Logins in 5-10 seconds
-Does not crash upon disconnected from network
-Live phone/chat support


Apart from EA managing Origin. It wins and beats steam hands down.

 

That sometimes happen to me as well. The problem partly may be due to a larger user base.

 

Forbes claimes Valve takes a 30% cut, I've seen some other articles claim they reduce it a bit to 20% or so depending on whether the game incorporates Steamworks. Who knows, perhaps they have some other arrangements with specific publishers as well as more favorable terms for different tiers, etc. But 20-30% is quite reasonable. Retailers, wholesalers and all those other costs take a much larger cut out of the packaged retail copies.

I completely agree that that BF3, ME3 and Dead Space 3 could certainly increase total sales and overall profits if they were sold on Steam, even taking into account Valve's distribution fee. However, if you were an executive at EA, you would be concerned about the long term consequences of failing to set up your own digital store and failing to leverage your popular titles to convince consumers to install your client.

By requiring every BF3 and ME3 player to install Origin, they can proudly demonstrate to their shareholders that they have a digital download platform with X million subscribers, without considering the reality that people don't get the same functionality out of their client and there is not the same level of social interaction or "stickyness" - their subscribers only use the platform because they had to install it to play their game.

 

origin is awful... you have no idea how many complaints you see on the multiplayer forums where origin disconnects people from games even though their net connection was fine. origin download speed seems to be around 2-3 megs so thats pretty good.

not sure about steam since I never depend on a stable connection from them... their download speed seems to be between 1-2 megs which is decent.

 

Download speeds are about the same for me on both clients. I have no problem with EA making their games exclusive to Origin since Valve does it with their games. Their storefront is organized pretty lousy though and needs a lot of impovement.

Only thing I like on the Steam client that Origin doesn't have is archiving. I tried backing BF3 up to an external a couple times and the back up ended up corrupted, or Origin just wouldn't accept the back up. Makes it a pain to re-download, especially now with the d/l size increasing with each DLC.

 

I don't know why, but the steam client always has lots of bugs for me. It crashes and sometimes takes forever to do simple tasks.

 

I feel for you guys having Steam issues. I've been a Steam member since 2004 and never had issues. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for it to load the client, but otherwise pretty seamless after that. Download speeds are usually 2-3MB/sec, near my peak bandwidth for Steam, and about same for Origin usually.

I guess if you want to rate the services as far as functionality, fine. But you can't exclusively use Origin unless you only want EA games (and a handful of others). At least with Steam you get a gigantic array of games from pretty much every publisher, and most of the EA games too.

I just don't want all publishers to go this route. Too many damn clients to manage.

I do like that, but Steam needs to improve the archiving software immensely considering the constant updates. It would be nice if you could have it check your archive/backup directory (user chosen of course, please, not only Steam\backups) and do incremental backups or schedule backup times to re-archive anything that's been updated.

 

Only problem I've had with Origin is that I can't delete my CC info from the billing page. Contacted them multiple times about the problem and they say uninstall the client (tried, didn't work).

Like many others, I use Steam primarily because of the amazing deals. I have a difficult time justifying a $60 purchase on a video game

 

Ok, well I have to give credit where credit is due. I have upgraded my internet speed since starting this thread, and am happy to report it made all the difference in the world when it comes to Origin. I now get a steady 6 full MBs, vs the under 400k I was getting when I had a 25Mbs pipe. I upgraded to 50Mbs, and it def made a difference with Origin, and everything else for that matter. I now get bursts from Steam over 9MBs, and steady downloads averaging around 8, and with Origin I now get the aforementioned 6MB. Oddly, I did not change ISPs, addresses, routers, or anything other than the new DICIS 3 Modem, and am not sure why there was such a huge discrepency previously, between the two. The gap has been greatly narrowed for sure. I wil gladly use Origin now, as long as this level of DL service remains.

 

If you could only get 400K on a 25mbit account provision either your ISP was screwing you or your modem was crap. I'm glad you got it sorted out nevertheless!

 

Steam used to have memory leak errors. I would close it after it's been running for 24 hours (if you're one of those guys who leaves his/her comp running). Atop of being a resource hog, Steam will simply not install updates to your games properly if you haven't restarted it sometimes. Sometimes a quick signout/exit and then resigning in will allow the game to load properly.

 

yeah for some pre-load games you have to restart Steam for it to recognize the preload is available.

 

Haha, yes I remember desperately restarting the steam client during those first 10-20 minutes when the preloads unlocked for Civ 5, Skyrim and New Vegas. I seem to recall the preload for Witcher 2 unlocked late for some reason.

 

Yeah, it was only Origin that got that terrible throughput, on Steam I got 3MBs consitently, and everwhere else was up there as well. Origin was the only service affected, which is why I don't understand why it works great all of sudden. It caused me to refuse purchasing anything on Origin, due to the poor service, and was the driver behind this thread as well.

 

I may have to install origin to play DA2, I'm getting close to finishing DA:O.

 

Don't play DA2, trust me. I know you liked DA:O. I did too. But DA2, is garbage. DA2 also has little to do with DA:O. It's not even the same story line or anything. It doesn't add any lore, it's really random. Oh and the story for DA2, just a rags to riches story with some religious morons. Boring.

 

Yeah, DA2 feels like a bunch of unconnected side-quests all within one city and the surrounding story. If there are darkspawn in it, I haven't seen them yet, and I'm about 10 hours in. It has none of the epic scope of DA1. It also has a very different feel, more anime-meets-comic-book and less D&D-realistic-fantasy-ish. DA2 was a huge step back from DA:O.

...now I want to play DA:O.

 

the repeating dungeons man. I was traumatized by that. *shrudder* *totally over-dramatized*

 

steam has been awesome to me. downloaded crysis maximum edition and the files were not working after a week and they refunded my money. gave me new copies of crysis and warhead and gave me a 50 doller credit towards anything.


cant say anything about origon i have never used it. but ive herad some horror stories . downloads are fast tho i hear.

 

Damn.. I suppose if it's that bad I may have to skip it. How disappointing. My backlog is too large to waste time on a unanimously panned game.

 

DA2 was the biggest "swing and a miss" BioWare has had in recent memory. I understand what they were trying to do...tell a fantasy story that WASN'T the stereotypical "peasant turns into hero and changes the course of the climactic battle between good and evil where the fate of the world hangs in the balance." Interesting concept. Execution was catastrophically bad, hampered by a lack of any OTHER meaningful story and ridiculous repetitive overuse of a half-dozen dungeons.

If you want some BioWare RPG action after you finish DA:O, pick up Neverwinter Nights (first game and expansions...think it's called "Diamond Edition"). It was amazing. And it's dirt-cheap nowadays on both Steam and Origin, I think.

 

I've played everything previous to DA:O.. I mean everything... I'm old.. I'm trying to catch up. I think risen 2 and Gothic 4 are about the only rpg's left. I may have to start digging into the non-rpg backlog.

 

I didnt like any of the Dragon Age games.. I thought some of the combat abilities of the rogue was cool in DA2.. but yea the overly instanced game was annoying.

 

The only bad thing about Steam is how the constant sales drain my wallet and fill my library with games I'll never play

 

The only thing i use is Steam, It has everything right their in a nice little package. Downloads fast, Has all the games, And now all kinds of community and green light stuff so i become part of the community instead of just a end user.

 

I like both. You can't hate Origin if you like Battlefield 3