EA's Origin Is A PC Gamer's Worst Nightmare

Did you see the quote the other day where EA said Steam is like MySpace and Origin is going to be the Facebook of the digital distribution world. That one made me laugh.

The ONLY thing that keeps anyone using Origin is the exclusives. Releasing them >1 year later on steam or any other service doesn't count. And as far as great deals go EA also said that they aren't going to be doing that because it will devalue their IP's if they sell them for so cheap so often (Plus they don't really have the stock to do this yet anyway do they?)

Steam tells me that on a weekend I can buy a really good game for $15 or less, hell I got Arkham Asylum for $7.50, devalue IPs? Steam sales sell games, old games, new games, indie games... Origin you amuse me and since I dont play the military shooters or Mass Effect series I dont ever need to look in your direction.

Hey, I got Mass Effect 1+2 for $10 on a Steam sale. So you can play the first two without Origin at least. I love that I can get demo's on Steam, try before you buy. Still HATE downloads that take forever though.

I still have 5 games I bought on sale and havent played yet...

I've got 3...

It's my understanding that EA was pulling the Mass Effect games from the Steam store to make them Origin exclusives. Does anyone know anything more about that?

Jonathan_Leack for Prez.

Honestly, there isn't anything on Origin that is worth installing Origin to be able to play them. Steam on the other hand is evil (in a good way). I originally only installed it to get free TF2 and now I have a fairly large library of games, some of which I still haven't played. I'll grab things when they're on sale and forget I even bought them. The Summer sale is almost certainly going to start next week. I hope my wallet can handle it.

The thing that frustrates me the most about Origin, is how terribly it handles updating games. I mean, everything else pisses me off about it too, but recently this has become my biggest gripe. Every single time I install an update for Battlefield, I have to close origin and reopen it for the game to work properly. I'm not prompted to do this, rather, after trial and error (and the advice of my BF3 clanmates) I figured out this was the only thing that would make it work correctly. Plus, it's so damned hard to actually close the process via origin's terrible menus, the easiest way to do it is to open task manager and just end the process. What a piece of ****. /rant

I can definitely appreciate Steam, but I still try to use it as little as possible. My favorite purchase in recent memory is ARMA X because a) it is available on Steam for all you folks who are into that sort of thing and b) you can buy it straight from the dev's website, they give you download links and product keys. That is exactly how complicated digital distribution needs to be. The game runs without having anything else open, you don't need an account to play it, and yet it is still the most difficult to pirate game out there because of the way the (completely non intrusive) DRM works. Basically if the game is pirated, features start degrading over time in ways that are very difficult to code out.

I wish every game was like that, but still I'm glad you Steam bros have something that floats your boat.

Can I show this article to anyone who asks me why I don't like Origin?

Well, to be honest, when Steam first started it was just flat out terrible. It took a few years for it to get to the point it is at now. Even having said that, I dislike how some games make you tie to steam. I bought a physical copy of Skyrim but need Steam to play it. Not cool. Howver, steam makes up for their shortcomings by having a great service and the sales they have are second to none.

Also, after having to go through the debacle of having to buy Fallout 3 DLC on Games for Windows Live (because they did not come out on steam for quite a while) and being forced to run that program and then run steam to play my Fallout 3 DLC, I decided no more of these BS programs. So I say no to Origin already just off that. If they keep putting out exclusives then I'll just keep on missing them. Such is life.

tl;dr. why dont you like origin?

tl;dr because it's bad.

i havent had a problem with it.

Can you add the exclusive games to your Steam library?

its funny you complain about games being origin exclusive, yet your fine with steam, and valve, doing the EXACT SAME THING for almost a decade.

I forgot, its ok for valve to do whatever they want, including forcing steamworks on you in retail titles, but if EA does it, oh no now theres trouble!

Steam does it better, gives sales and free stuff. Its not perfect but it does its job.

ya, imagine that, a program thats been out for 10 years does it better than one that hasnt, thats like saying that this 10 year old game is more polished than this 2 year old game, no ****, steam didnt start out amazing either, it took years for that to happen, expecting origin to be on par with steam is just simply retarded.

Which begs the question of why EA thought it was a good idea in the first place.

Because competition is good? because just because someone else has a product out there, doesnt mean you shouldnt yourself?

I suppose you like monopolies.

I guess desura, GOG, and many other sites should just shut down because steams already out there.

I don't have experience with Desura, but GOG is actually good, in a lot of ways even better than steam, so if anything that just further proves the point that Origin is awful and has no reason to exist.

Also, pretty amusing assumption that if I don't want a terrible product it means I must prefer a monopoly on the whole business.

I like having all my info spread in browser form with battlefield 3, makes PC gaming different and efficient. No game engine to boot makes loading menus, customisation, communication faster. Steam is not perfect, at all. All for some kind of competition, steam has been sluggish and resource hoggy since day one.

I literally get zero performance difference playing a game with or without steam open. Doesn't really sound like you know what you're talking about. Hell, open steam right now and check your processes tab. Because it sure is using a whopping 40 MB of memory for me, less than half as much as Firefox.

wow listen to all you little bi***es. who cares. I have all my games on steam, but i only play battlefield 3 at the moment (ditched mw3 due to hackers).

i dont care that i have origin and steam running all the time, they are platforms for updating the games thats all they are good for.

so stfu noob tbh hth

Wow, angry nerd rage much?

Easy on the acronyms, your laziness is showing

Exclusive anything is never good for humanity.