EA's Origin DD service (not that Origin)

SixteenBlue wrote:
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.

Heh. It was magical time. It was 2/29.

MannishBoy wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
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.

Heh. It was magical time. It was 2/29.

March 5-6, 2012 was a magical time.

For me, it has pretty much come down to this. I don't groan when I see I'm forced to use Origin, but I'm not pleased about it either. It's not a terrible mess that I have with GFW Live even to this day, but it's also not that great considering the EADM/Origin has technically been around just as long as Steam has and it's still missing basic features. Also, I have had a similar customer service nightmare with EA, although from what I've heard Steam isn't that much better. That said, for me Steam just works the way I want it to for the most part so I never had to contact customer service.

So in the end, I don't mind using Origin, but I also don't plan on buying any non-EA games off this service either, regardless of price.

Don't worry, Guru, I get what you're saying.

My problem with the Origin service (and admittedly it's a minor one) is that they don't have a service that is comparable to Steam out of the gates. Granted, Steam faltered in its first steps as well, and took a couple years to get right, but A) that was years ago, and B) they didn't really have any competition. Whereas now, Steam dominates and Origin has specifically set out to compete with Steam. So it isn't unreasonable to expect Origin to debut with services at the same level from the start-- indeed, why use a similar service if it doesn't make better offerings on top of what you already get with their direct competition? This isn't to say that Origin won't get better, but the fact that they didn't start on at least a somewhat even level to their competition says a lot to me about the poor infrastructure EA developed to support the platform (ie, how little they care about their service and how much more they care about about the bottom line). That's not a platform I'd like to support (though I have to in order to play BF3, admittedly).

WipEout wrote:

Don't worry, Guru, I get what you're saying.

My problem with the Origin service (and admittedly it's a minor one) is that they don't have a service that is comparable to Steam out of the gates. Granted, Steam faltered in its first steps as well, and took a couple years to get right, but A) that was years ago, and B) they didn't really have any competition. Whereas now, Steam dominates and Origin has specifically set out to compete with Steam. So it isn't unreasonable to expect Origin to debut with services at the same level from the start-- indeed, why use a similar service if it doesn't make better offerings on top of what you already get with their direct competition? This isn't to say that Origin won't get better, but the fact that they didn't start on at least a somewhat even level to their competition says a lot to me about the poor infrastructure EA developed to support the platform (ie, how little they care about their service and how much more they care about about the bottom line). That's not a platform I'd like to support (though I have to in order to play BF3, admittedly).

All this and...

It's not like EA are providing a (comparable or better) service that I have a "free" choice about. If I want to play a game from them, they are using their market position, to force me to install a piece of software, which given their EULA, may or may not become spyware in the future. The only reason I have Origin installed on my machine right now is because I bought Syndicate before I realised it was EA published, and once I'm done with syndicate they'll both be uninstalled.

Additionally, I maintain my desktop machine with the barest minimum amount of software that I need/want installed. I've already made my choice about game-delivery/social-gaming platform so I don't really appreciate having to install software which is essentially just bloatware; in that it's replicating services that software I've already installed does better (see also: GFWL).

With regards the "free" choice, I appreciate that I'm free not to buy any EA games if I object to Origin so much. But then the choice I'm given is between "downloading a game plus a piece of bloatware I really don't want" and "not having the game at all". That is literally the type of choice that makes people turn to bittorrent. There's nothing about a computer game that requires any game-delivery platform to also be running. I'm fine with EA not wanting to deal with Steam but if they were really acting in good faith they could provide a non-origin version of Syndicate, ME:3, or whatever.

Make origin inescapably awesome and I'll gladly come aboard but while it remains bloatware (from my POV) give me the option to opt out.

DanB wrote:

With regards the "free" choice, I appreciate that I'm free not to buy any EA games if I object to Origin so much. But then the choice I'm given is between "downloading a game plus a piece of bloatware I really don't want" and "not having the game at all". That is literally the type of choice that makes people turn to bittorrent. There's nothing about a computer game that requires any game-delivery platform to also be running. I'm fine with EA not wanting to deal with Steam but if they were really acting in good faith they could provide a non-origin version of Syndicate, ME:3, or whatever.

Or as you say one sentence earlier, just not buy the game and not pirate it. I was bored earlier and took a trip to the steam forums, and was not shocked to see people trying to justify buying ME3 to themselves even though it's not on steam, or that they'll buy it when it's cheaper. Pirating it is still saying to EA that the game has some value to you, and you're still invested in it, if not financially yet.

The problem with the rest of that paragraph is other games companies, including Valve/steam, Ubisoft/uplay, Blizzard/battle.net etc. ME3 relies upon Origin in the same way that Valve's games rely upon the steam infrastructure, Assassin's creed relies upon Ubisoft's servers, and so on. That's pretty much a clock you can't turn back, so what it looks like to me is that you don't want to deal with EA's online service just because it's that particular company, rather than the online service itself. Now if you're going to criticise a service, pick specific points (customer service, download rates, policies, etc) but not just the fact that it exists.

With regards the "free" choice, I appreciate that I'm free not to buy any EA games if I object to Origin so much. But then the choice I'm given is between "downloading a game plus a piece of bloatware I really don't want" and "not having the game at all". That is literally the type of choice that makes people turn to bittorrent. There's nothing about a computer game that requires any game-delivery platform to also be running. I'm fine with EA not wanting to deal with Steam but if they were really acting in good faith they could provide a non-origin version of Syndicate, ME:3, or whatever.

That is not a right in any sense of the word.. you HAVE ZERO right to steal ever.. As well one could simply point out that where can I buy Valve PC games anywhere without having to both buy through Steam and install Steam...as well as have Steam running in the background as well.

I can't argue about Bloatware or whatever.. I feel that this is one of those issues that people have a pre-disposition to that no one can ever convince otherwise. I would simply point out that in this world of processing power.. Origin is stealing very little in the terms of performance from your system. You can even disable it from starting up with Windows.. so you only have it run when you launch a game.. this is a fact. Check perfmon when Origin is running.. and check the settings screen on Origin.

My problem with the Origin service (and admittedly it's a minor one) is that they don't have a service that is comparable to Steam out of the gates. Granted, Steam faltered in its first steps as well, and took a couple years to get right, but A) that was years ago, and B) they didn't really have any competition. Whereas now, Steam dominates and Origin has specifically set out to compete with Steam. So it isn't unreasonable to expect Origin to debut with services at the same level from the start-- indeed, why use a similar service if it doesn't make better offerings on top of what you already get with their direct competition? This isn't to say that Origin won't get better, but the fact that they didn't start on at least a somewhat even level to their competition says a lot to me about the poor infrastructure EA developed to support the platform (ie, how little they care about their service and how much more they care about about the bottom line). That's not a platform I'd like to support (though I have to in order to play BF3, admittedly).

I don't disagree.. in this day and age there is no "excuse" to not launch a completely competitive product. Its by no stretch of the imagination that EA is using its exclusives as a platform to "beta" test Origin and allow themselves the luxury of not dumping boatloads of cash up front into development but rather stretch out those development dollars over time and thus hedge their investment risk.

If Origin was a complete bust then its a far less loss of dollars if you develop in the fashion that EA chose to. Is it awesome for consumers?? no.. did EA abuse their competitive advantage (platform exclusives like BF3, ME3) yep. Can you do something about it? Yep.. just don't buy the products.. Every sale you make and Female Doggo about afterwards is just hot air.

Scratched wrote:

Ubisoft/uplay, Blizzard/battle.net etc.

Things I do not have installed on my PC. I've specifically bought Ubisoft games on the PS3 to avoid the rigmarole of unwanted, enforced nonsense on the PC. Although when I last installed WoW it didn't require that I download a store front for Blizzard products (maybe that's changed, Blizzard games don't do a whole lot for me).

ME3 relies upon Origin in the same way that Valve's games rely upon the steam infrastructure, Assassin's creed relies upon Ubisoft's servers, and so on. That's pretty much a clock you can't turn back, so what it looks like to me is that you don't want to deal with EA's online service just because it's that particular company, rather than the online service itself. Now if you're going to criticise a service, pick specific points (customer service, download rates, policies, etc) but not just the fact that it exists.

I'm not sure which part of "it's replicating services that software I've already installed does better" you missed? Origin isn't just a couple of libraries of netcode for multiplayer or EA server access. It's also a whole store front and social-games platform. I already have those, I don't really care for them in Steam but at least they're done well, and relatively unobtrusive.

So the first to market should be granted monopoly? Aren't there also people concerned about steam being everywhere? You can't win.

Scratched wrote:

So the first to market should be granted monopoly? Aren't there also people concerned about steam being everywhere? You can't win.

"Make origin inescapably awesome and I'll gladly come aboard but while it remains bloatware (from my POV) give me the option to opt out."

Most of what I've bought on Steam was available elsewhere though, so hardly a monopoly. But I can't buy Syndicate from GamersGate without the install subsequently requiring that I install Origin, even though I chose Gamersgate as my vendor of choice.

TheGameguru wrote:
With regards the "free" choice, I appreciate that I'm free not to buy any EA games if I object to Origin so much. But then the choice I'm given is between "downloading a game plus a piece of bloatware I really don't want" and "not having the game at all". That is literally the type of choice that makes people turn to bittorrent. There's nothing about a computer game that requires any game-delivery platform to also be running. I'm fine with EA not wanting to deal with Steam but if they were really acting in good faith they could provide a non-origin version of Syndicate, ME:3, or whatever.

That is not a right in any sense of the word.. you HAVE ZERO right to steal ever..

Whether it's right or not is kind of irrelevant. What people actually do in response is all that really matters.

TheGameguru wrote:

As well one could simply point out that where can I buy Valve PC games anywhere without having to both buy through Steam and install Steam...as well as have Steam running in the background as well.

Yeah that's pretty sucky too. I find it annoying that Steam has to be a resident process and each subsequent new process that installs itself annoys me a little more.

TheGameguru wrote:

I can't argue about Bloatware or whatever.. I feel that this is one of those issues that people have a pre-disposition to that no one can ever convince otherwise. I would simply point out that in this world of processing power.. Origin is stealing very little in the terms of performance from your system. You can even disable it from starting up with Windows.. so you only have it run when you launch a game.. this is a fact. Check perfmon when Origin is running.. and check the settings screen on Origin.

No doubt but bloatware can be bloatware not just because of the processing load but also because of the interaction with other processes. More things running leads to greater potential for non-favourable interactions with other processes. GWFL was the last forced install and it has never played right with my system so when a new game requires some new, forced install it's just another thing that makes me roll my eyes and wait for the errors. In origin's favour, unlike GWFL, it at least hasn't made Syndicate crash lots but I have only booted syndicate 3 times since launch.

I'd be curious the exact amount of games that are 100% Steamworks (i.e. any physical or digital copy purchased from any source Amazon etc..) require Steam Account and Steam vs. the EA Origin exclusives.

All I have to say at this point is that Origin makes me regret selling my Xbox 360, and is making me seriously consider buying another, or a PS3.

So you bought ME3 then?

Nope, not going to buy any software that requires Origin until they make it more reliable and fix its EULA. I *want* to buy ME3, but I'm not going to install Origin in its current form.

I am an old grumpy gamer who remembers all those wonderfull nice things EA did in the 90's but lets put that aside for the moment. Frankly I am past the whole I dont want to use Origin I must Steam argument, I know EA and probably every other publisher in the next 2 years will force me to play games they way they want me to rather than the way I want.

I just want to have fun with the limited dollars and time I get.... Having said that I will be D*** if I am going to hand EA 60-70 bucks for crap like this. I love ME and one day I will play ME3 and find out what the ending of the story is. But not if that means rewarding EA with a major chunk of my gaming dolllars. Considering Crysis 2 is like 15-30 depending on sales I know it wont be too long and I can hand them 10 bucks to get my fix.

So... apparently not all downloads are created equal.

Pause during download of ME3 to do other stuff for a while? Resume and pick up where you left off.

Pause during download of ME3 day one DLC to play some ME3 multi-player? Resume and start the download over.

Hypatian wrote:

So... apparently not all downloads are created equal.

Pause during download of ME3 to do other stuff for a while? Resume and pick up where you left off.

Pause during download of ME3 day one DLC to play some ME3 multi-player? Resume and start the download over.

These are the kinds of issues Origin has that absolutely blow my mind. How does this even happen?

What surprises me is that because the ME3 launch will bring Origin a ton of attention, why didn't EA also launch a new, improved, and ridiculously well-tested Origin service at roughly the same time? It's like they've never heard that first impressions are the most important. Maybe they aren't actually serious about competing with Steam beyond simply forcing people to use it by restricting availability via other sites?

complexmath wrote:

Maybe they aren't actually serious about competing with Steam beyond simply forcing people to use it by restricting availability via other sites?

Bingo. Why put time and effort and resources into Origin, when you can simply force a monopoly?

I think you can trace the current incarnation's roots back to 2007, via EADM. It does seem like only in the last year they've really given a damn about it though.

LtWarhound wrote:
complexmath wrote:

Maybe they aren't actually serious about competing with Steam beyond simply forcing people to use it by restricting availability via other sites?

Bingo. Why put time and effort and resources into Origin, when you can simply force a monopoly?

I'm not going to assume that this is the case, but I will say that EA has done nothing dissuade me from believing this to be true. EA needs to demonstrate to me that they are interested in more than strong-arming into using their service. I don't have any problem with them using content as a major argument for why I would use their service (even if I don't love it) but they do need to offer more than just that as well.

I've been trying to change my avatar in origin for a couple days and I get the message temporarily unavailable. The store page takes a bunch of refreshes to also show up. It's getting old.

Gabe is worth over $1B+

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/07/ye...

I'm not even sure he imagined this kind of success when they first started Valve...

Valve still has some ways to go but they are certainly gaining on EA in terms of Market CAP.

TheGameguru wrote:

Gabe is worth over $1B+

How much of that is invested in knives?

iaintgotnopants wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Gabe is worth over $1B+

How much of that is invested in knives?

On the video where I saw Gabe showing off his knife collection in his office it looked like he favored the cheap, cheesy kind of knives instead of actual quality functional pieces. I'm guessing even given the inflated prices for some of those "art" fantasy knives it's not all that much.

He probably has one of these for sure...

http://www.raven-armoury.co.uk/storm...

Has anyone here had any success merging their Origin accounts? I have two accounts (one was the imported Bioware account that I had before Origin) and games and DLC spread across both. I had a chat session with EA and the rep said their policy is not to merge accounts, which sounds like a stupid policy to me. But I seem to remember someone here saying that they'd been able to merge accounts.

Is anyone aware of a setting to stop marketing pop-ups when I log into origin?

Notch agrees with much of this thread:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/dangero...