EA's Origin DD service (not that Origin)

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm not sure about the exact financial mechanisms in place with something like this, but even if there isn't a cost to physically produce a new PC download of Battlefield 3, they're not free. There's probably a cost per license, or even just the cost of lost sales due to copies being given away.

It's a promotional cost. They're not free, but those people were buying a new copy of ME3 at full price direct from EA, and those people who got BF3 didn't have it already (not early adopters, possibly introducing new players to the game, and so on) and are in a position to sell DLC to.

You know what makes me outraged? That my friends (virtual internet friends though they be) would consent to a game company rooting through their personal information and holding their personal information hostage so that they could play another installment of a video game that they enjoyed. Something else that makes me outraged is when a company uses their market position as leverage to install shoddy always-on spyware on millions of computers. That bothers me more than a little bit. So I'm not going to shut up about that, if that's what you're trying to do Gameguru.

By the way, that case of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning being uninstalled due to a network error was not an isolated incident.

I also resent the insinuation that I (and others who may disparage Origin) spend my time trawling the EA and Origin forums looking for things I can bash Origin with. I pass along things that I run into in my ordinary course of internet travels. I feel that they may be of interest to people who are considering buying something through a channel that will erase their software without notice or explanation, and sell information about software they have installed and websites they visit.

BadKen wrote:

You know what makes me outraged? That my friends (virtual internet friends though they be) would consent to a game company rooting through their personal information and holding their personal information hostage so that they could play another installment of a video game that they enjoyed. Something else that makes me outraged is when a company uses their market position as leverage to install shoddy always-on spyware on millions of computers. That bothers me more than a little bit. So I'm not going to shut up about that, if that's what you're trying to do Gameguru.

In a world that includes social networks and a whole weather system of cloud services that people wilfully put their information into, you must spend a lot of time outraged.

Scratched wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm not sure about the exact financial mechanisms in place with something like this, but even if there isn't a cost to physically produce a new PC download of Battlefield 3, they're not free. There's probably a cost per license, or even just the cost of lost sales due to copies being given away.

It's a promotional cost. They're not free, but those people were buying a new copy of ME3 at full price direct from EA, and those people who got BF3 didn't have it already (not early adopters, possibly introducing new players to the game, and so on) and are in a position to sell DLC to.

Sure, but there's definitely a tipping point where a company has to decide that they'd be better off canceling their promotion early than continuing to hand out free copies of a $60 game.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

... than continuing to hand out free copies of a $60 game.

As you said yourself, it costs nothing to produce. It costs whatever they want to charge for it. In this case they got a boatload of publicity and a load of sales direct through the DD service they own without money going to any middleman. BF3 came out months ago and it's sales boom is long past, they were very unlikely to sell a significant number of copies at full price anyway.

Scratched wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

... than continuing to hand out free copies of a $60 game.

As you said yourself, it costs nothing to produce. It costs whatever they want to charge for it. In this case they got a boatload of publicity and a load of sales direct through the DD service they own without money going to any middleman. BF3 came out months ago and it's sales boom is long past, they were very unlikely to sell a significant number of copies at full price anyway.

There is a cost though. Each game sold incurs a maintenance cost since everything is digital. EA knows exactly what that cost of each player is and knows where the line is. Clearly they went over it.

Scratched wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

... than continuing to hand out free copies of a $60 game.

As you said yourself, it costs nothing to produce.

Not exactly true. There are probably significant license costs for both game tech and items in game. I know EA's been in a lawsuit about whether they have to pay licenses to reproduce vehicles in game, so I'm not sure if they are actually having to fork over money to manufacturers or not.

Still, I think they shouldn't have advertised an end date if this risk of a shutoff after X copies existed.

MannishBoy wrote:

Still, I think they shouldn't have advertised an end date if this risk of a shutoff after X copies existed.

This. Like I said, EA knows all of these numbers up front and they could've easily done that.

SixteenBlue wrote:

There is a cost though. Each game sold incurs a maintenance cost since everything is digital. EA knows exactly what that cost of each player is and knows where the line is. Clearly they went over it.

Precisely.

BadKen wrote:

By the way, that case of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning being uninstalled due to a network error was not an isolated incident.

That's my main issue. Theses aren't isolated incidents, they are system-wide issues that all customers are having. If Steam stopped delivering games for 3 to 4 days after taking the customers money, across their entire catalog, for all customers, without ever giving any public notice that they are experiencing order processing issues, on launch week of a triple-A game, it would be a trending topic on the new sites.

And Origin isn't EA's first attempt at digital distribution. They had EA Link, EA Downloader, EA Store, all of which were garbage. Steam didn't have much of a head start on EA, they just crushed them when it came execution. Maybe they didn't have the incentive because their games were being sold on Steam and now they do? Not sure, but my hopes aren't high.

I have numerous problems with Origin's policies, but tonight my hatred is purely technical. This is the third time that an Origin update has completely broken the program on my PC. The first 2 times I was able to uninstall and re-install it from scratch to get it working, but this time that isn't even helping. Any attempt to launch origin results in a CMD window briefly flashing on the screen (far too quickly to read) and then nothing.

I've been locked out of Battlefield 3 for a week now because of this bull***t, and there's absolutely nothing on the Origin help website to give me a clue about what the hell to do to fix this.

*This angry rant has been brought to you courtesy of a rather excellent 750ml bottle of barley wine.

I had something similar happen with Steam...no amount of uninstall and reinstall was working..I learned that it doesn't really uninstall. You have to manually delete everything but your steamapps folder and the steam.exe and just run the exe to rebuild everything..

Maybe something similar with Origin?

Elycion wrote:

Any attempt to launch origin results in a CMD window briefly flashing on the screen (far too quickly to read) and then nothing.

Can you launch Origin from the command line? That should at least keep the CMD window up to see error codes and whatnot.

TheGameguru wrote:

I had something similar happen with Steam...no amount of uninstall and reinstall was working..I learned that it doesn't really uninstall. You have to manually delete everything but your steamapps folder and the steam.exe and just run the exe to rebuild everything..

Maybe something similar with Origin?

I'd go with that as a first step. I remember a while ago their updater wasn't so smart and it got stalled waiting for itself, so you had to go into task manager and kill it, or just download the installer manually and do it yourself. As with all troubleshooting, try to start with a clean slate, uninstall origin and preserve your games (copy them somewhere if nothing else), clean out directories, grab the latest installer and go from there.

Unfortunately, I had already manually cleaned out Origin including deleting all registry entries related to it. Twice.

Running Origin from a CMD window wasn't a bad thought, but it just results in the same flash of a CMD window popping up and vanishing too fast to read. I suspect the CMD window is "UpdateTool.exe" trying to run and failing, because manually launching that file results in an identical window popup/vanish.

Which version are you on? The last time I tried the installer from their website is kept up to date (compared to steam, which installs and then pulls down an up to date version itself), so would that installer just put you on the latest version bypassing all the update stuff?

The changelog says they change their update mechanism with this version, so hopefully it's a change for the better for following updates.

I grabbed the installer from their website, so I was dealing with the latest client.

I finally got it to work about 20 minutes ago, I started clicking any executable in the Origin directory just to see what would happen. I can't be sure which of the two did the trick, but manually running "EAProxyInstaller.exe" or "OriginClientService.exe" appears to have fixed whatever broke during the install and Origin launches now.

/sigh

I wanted this fixed last night so I could drink beer and kill mannes

Oh, who am I kidding...mannes would have killed me, but that would have been fun too.

Watched Jolly Eskimo post on Twitter as Origin refused to allow him to instal Mass Effect 2.

Does Steam have issues? Sure. Can you search through their forums and find people who have had issues on Steam? Sure. That'd be a poor indicator of potential issues though, as the people who post there are the ones having issues. What if you chose a control group, perhaps a group of active gamers who posted on a site unrelated to Steam. Hey, GWJ might be a good test group- great!

Do some GWJers have issues with Steam? Absolutely. It's rare that I just run into people posting who are simply unable to make the service work. It happens though. How about Origin? If you used this same sample group- GWJ posters- and did the same test for Origin... forget the charade, Origin clearly has more issues on the user end than it should. Don't compare it to Steam- there's no reason for to make the direct comparison for the most part. Origin has more end user games than it should. And simply stating that in 4 years it might not have as many issues is putting far too little premium on the end-user experience.

I haven't used Origin yet though I will in the next game I install, Crysis 2. Am I likely to have issues with Origin? No. That doesn't invalidate that there are too many examples of the service not working to simply be okay with it. Ignoring the number of GWJers who have had issues (or oddly conflating them with those who post tech problems on a tech problem forum) is just odd and seems defensive in the weirdest way.

I, and most of the posters I've read here, aren't saying Origin is of El Diablo. Simply, if nothing else, the system is not where it should be for user experiences and it isn't just okay because the infrastructure is newish. It needs to be better.

GameGuru wrote:

Further from the goal compared to what?

Fer chrissake, Guru, you're blasting someone for not getting receipts when he buys things, and then not having luck getting refunds for double purchases in a timely fashion. This is basic functionality. Any e-tailer should be good at this.

Where the heck do you live that it's unreasonable to expect these things to work properly? Planet Scorn?

and sell information about software they have installed and websites they visit.

Wait, what? Did I miss something? Can you turn this off?

Malor wrote:
and sell information about software they have installed and websites they visit.

Wait, what? Did I miss something? Can you turn this off?

No, you can't turn it off. Read the Origin Terms of Service. Here is the option you are given:

"IF YOU DO NOT WANT EA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE, TRANSMIT OR DISPLAY THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE APPLICATION."

I really don't understand why anyone would put this on their system.

Just out of interest, can someone refresh me on where Origin was caught snooping on browsing? Not the EULA stuff.

Scratched wrote:

Just out of interest, can someone refresh me on where Origin was caught snooping on browsing? Not the EULA stuff.

It was not caught snooping on browsing. The Terms of Service are broad enough to permit EA to collect and resell information about your software and software usage. It also allows them to do it when Origin is uninstalled, because it specifically allows them to gather data about installation and uninstallation of Origin. Because this information will be used to facilitate software updates, dynamically served content, product support and online services, the ability to use and monitor your network connections is almost certainly a feature of the software.

http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/eula/US/e...

This EULA gives them WAY too much freedom, and there is no way to opt out. It's easy to say "oh, but they would never monitor your http traffic" but the fact is that they give themselves the right to do so. If they have the ability and it can be used to increase their shareholder value, they are bound to use it eventually.

I agree that that's an egregious EULA. But I want to play ME3. So I think what I'm going to do is dedicate a fresh Windows install on a spare drive just to Origin. With the 'rearm' tool, Windows will run for ages without activation, so I don't have to burn one... I'll be long since done with ME3 by the time it's an issue. Then I can just dump my savegames to my network server, uninstall, and wipe the drive.

This is probably fairly ridiculous for most people, but I've got a spare drive and a Win7 SD card all ready to go, so honestly it'll only take about an hour to set up, and it's not like I'll be paying much attention for the great majority of the time.

Only downside is that the PC becomes a dedicated ME3 box, but I can cold boot and swap drive cables to get back to normal. It's an easy reach, probably about thirty seconds to change over. And EA will get nothing useful from me except my external IP address, and whatever parts of my actual play they decide to snoop on.

demonbox wrote:

Watched Jolly Eskimo post on Twitter as Origin refused to allow him to instal Mass Effect 2.

Since he posted it elsewhere:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/WdSXv.jpg)

jollyeskimo wrote:

And the thing is... instead of being able to force a file integrity check like in Steam, I literally have no recourse in Origin other than to delete the files manually in explorer (no, I couldn't uninstall it, because it wasn't installed), and then re-download in hopes that it'll work.

I tried this thrice in hopes that the download was somehow corrupted. Then I said f*ck it and downloaded it on Steam. To add insult to injury, Steam's regional download servers were much faster too.

The ME3 demo worked like a charm on Origin, I'll give them that... but this has given me some serious reservations about actually buying it.

Edit: So I restarted Origin, and somehow ME2 says that it's been successfully downloaded/installed (I ran parallel installs of it overnight). I thought that was odd, so I gave it a try. Turns out Origin and Steam doesn't mix very well... and somehow Origin is now hooked into my Steam install of ME2, but it can only launch from Steam because it would crash in Origin.

ಠ_ಠ;

I think the last patch for Origin was supposed to fix that.

I installed ME2 a bit back via Origin, and it didn't do that, so it's a bug they sound like they introduced then fixed.

When did they patch that out? Eskimo was tweeting this over this past weekend.

demonbox wrote:

When did they patch that out? Eskimo was tweeting this over this past weekend.

I know they released a patch for Origin sometime around the 2/30. And I know I read somewhere that people trying to do the install for ME3 that didn't buy from Origin were having that same "insert disc" error, and that they were correcting it with a patch or some kind of fix.

I'm not sure if the one from last week solve the disc issue or of it was something else. However, I'd download the newest client even if you haven't gotten an update notice from the client just to see if that fixes things. I think the latest client is recommended for ME3, anyway.

MannishBoy wrote:
demonbox wrote:

When did they patch that out? Eskimo was tweeting this over this past weekend.

I know they released a patch for Origin sometime around the 2/30.

No wonder Eskimo didn't get it.

Malor wrote:
GameGuru wrote:

Further from the goal compared to what?

Fer chrissake, Guru, you're blasting someone for not getting receipts when he buys things, and then not having luck getting refunds for double purchases in a timely fashion. This is basic functionality. Any e-tailer should be good at this.

Where the heck do you live that it's unreasonable to expect these things to work properly? Planet Scorn?

/sigh

First of.. I didnt blast anyone.. I never said it wasnt unreasonable to expect things to work properly.. If anyone reads I was simply trying to point out that any product/retailer etc.. if taken on a case by case basis is "worthless" even the much beloved Steam.

This isnt a hard concept to grasp.

My concern here is that its very apparent to me that this bashing of EA/Origin by some people reads more like an agenda rather than being a "good netcitizen"