I'm confused.. one person's problem is systematic of everyone's. No system is perfect.. years later I can go into Valve forums on any given day and there are slews of people with problems..
Forum posts IMO have zero to do with overall functionality of anything. Hardly anyone that isnt experiencing problems will post.. "100% ok today! yeah!"
That message is not just about there being a bug, it's about a bug that erases your whole download, wasting hours of time... I've experienced random bugs in Valve games, but nothing like that.
Another reason why it's good practice to backup your game files once they're downloaded, preferably in an archive format you can open without relying on an external server.
Does that actually work, though? The older games download .cab files, but most of the newer games like BF3 do more Steam like installs, and nothing really usable gets backed up as far as I could tell. So I cut it off.
my SSD died recently.. using a USB case I was able to copy some of my directories from it to my new SSD.. including my Steam and Origin folder.. from there I re-installed both Steam and Origin over the old folders and Origin once I logged in showed all the games as "Ready to Install" rather than "Download" so just clicking that and having it to the install over again worked fine.
With Steam I actually had to delete all the files except the Steam.exe and the Steamapps subdirectory and just run steam.exe for it to redownload all the misc. files over and prompt me again for the security key. I had to verify local game caches for some of my games but that was more because several files on the old SSD wouldnt not read properly when I was copying files across.
Both were way better than having to re-download gigs of game data over again.
FYI, for the past 4 days or so EA Origin has been taking purchases and has just now started sending confirmation e-mails with download codes that may or may not work. This was systematic, their entire system was down.
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/li...
They never posted a notice or notified the customers at any point that they would not receive any form of confirmation. This led to some customers not realizing that their order went through and purchasing again. Their Tech Support was unable to access any order as "their tools were unavailable". Also, if you purchased via Amazon or a boxed copy you may have been unable to redeem your Origin code.
I ran into this trying to purchase Syndicate. They offered me a 5% coupon but it expires at the end of the month and does not apply to pre-orders. They promise me a refund but it will take up to 10 business days for the transaction to complete (though I've already been charged).
Does Origin have a "gift" option like Steam? I'm trapped with the Japanese overlay despite having everything set to English. I'm thinking of preordering ME3 but can not do it at this time.
Steam allows me to purchase games through a proxy site in Canadian dollars.
Edit: Only the store part is in Japanese. The rest is in English.
Edit 2: Origin isn't a very good service. It might be in a few years, but it isn't right now.
Edit 2: Origin isn't a very good service. It might be in a few years, but it isn't right now.
I echo this sentiment. I hope EA doesn't think their massive user numbers vindicate Origin in its current form. At this point I use it because I have to for a few games. Without their exclusives this service wouldn't have the quality to survive with such strong competition in Steam. Hopefully EA can right the ship. They have the basic, buggy core of what they need.
I can't even buy games using the current system. It took me blindly fumbling in a language I don't understand just to download a demo. Customer Support's official help was to give my information to a friend in Canada and have them buy the game for me.
I'm confused.. one person's problem is systematic of everyone's. No system is perfect.. years later I can go into Valve forums on any given day and there are slews of people with problems..
Forum posts IMO have zero to do with overall functionality of anything. Hardly anyone that isnt experiencing problems will post.. "100% ok today! yeah!"
The service isn't 100% unusable by all, sure. But there's quite a few more than "one person's problem." Great example of that would be:
FYI, for the past 4 days or so EA Origin has been taking purchases and has just now started sending confirmation e-mails with download codes that may or may not work. This was systematic, their entire system was down.
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/li...
They never posted a notice or notified the customers at any point that they would not receive any form of confirmation. This led to some customers not realizing that their order went through and purchasing again. Their Tech Support was unable to access any order as "their tools were unavailable". Also, if you purchased via Amazon or a boxed copy you may have been unable to redeem your Origin code.
I ran into this trying to purchase Syndicate. They offered me a 5% coupon but it expires at the end of the month and does not apply to pre-orders. They promise me a refund but it will take up to 10 business days for the transaction to complete (though I've already been charged).
Doesn't mean it can't be a great service, but it seems further from that goal now than it should be.
I think/hope the italicised item is probably relevant to Mass Effect 3
I hope it means the end of BioWare fun bux too.
So i logged on looking for a Syndicate PC demo (can't find one) and saw they have free demo streaming via gaikai. I loaded up Dead Space 2, and the services works pretty well. That's more than I can say for my interest in the game. I have no idea how I could have spent so little time (quit after 5 mins of gameplay that seemed exactly like the original that I actually beat) with the game and come away so bored.
TheGameguru wrote:I'm confused.. one person's problem is systematic of everyone's. No system is perfect.. years later I can go into Valve forums on any given day and there are slews of people with problems..
Forum posts IMO have zero to do with overall functionality of anything. Hardly anyone that isnt experiencing problems will post.. "100% ok today! yeah!"
The service isn't 100% unusable by all, sure. But there's quite a few more than "one person's problem." Great example of that would be:
Rexneron wrote:FYI, for the past 4 days or so EA Origin has been taking purchases and has just now started sending confirmation e-mails with download codes that may or may not work. This was systematic, their entire system was down.
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/li...
They never posted a notice or notified the customers at any point that they would not receive any form of confirmation. This led to some customers not realizing that their order went through and purchasing again. Their Tech Support was unable to access any order as "their tools were unavailable". Also, if you purchased via Amazon or a boxed copy you may have been unable to redeem your Origin code.
I ran into this trying to purchase Syndicate. They offered me a 5% coupon but it expires at the end of the month and does not apply to pre-orders. They promise me a refund but it will take up to 10 business days for the transaction to complete (though I've already been charged).
Doesn't mean it can't be a great service, but it seems further from that goal now than it should be.
I just don't get it... I mean I'm completely dumbfounded anymore these days by these threads..
Further from the goal compared to what? What are we really talking about here? Is Origin perfect? NO. is Origin as good as Steam? NO. Is Steam perfect? NO... if our only measure is apparently customer service and back end issues.. since if I go to the Steam Forums there's a "ton" of people having various issues with Steam.
Last I checked, Steam's never had a problem where they've taken people's money and not even acknowledged that the purchase was made for days on end and on top of that, never bothered to tell anyone about it or stop taking orders until their system was fixed. And on top of that, not being able to fix it because of broken tools and offering basically nothing for your trouble. I'm sorry that's outrageously bad service, I don't care whether it's EA or not. If you find that acceptable, well I don't know what else to say about it.
Last I checked, Steam's never had a problem where they've taken people's money and not even acknowledged that the purchase was made for days on end and on top of that, never bothered to tell anyone about it or stop taking orders until their system was fixed. And on top of that, not being able to fix it because of broken tools and offering basically nothing for your trouble. I'm sorry that's outrageously bad service, I don't care whether it's EA or not. If you find that acceptable, well I don't know what else to say about it.
No, but they've disabled people's accounts with thousands of dollars spent without giving any reason. One of the games blogs had the long story about a guy that that happened to not long ago, and that wasn't the first time I'd read a similar story.
None are perfect. All of these places screw up.
You're completely right there and Steam's policy on that is very bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Steam here but I don't think the case cited with Origin (which is only one of several major customer service related issues they've had) is something that's worth being dismissed into the "angry Internet men" file. I wasn't even affected by that but a company EA's size who wants to compete in the digital space should have better systems in place than that. It's perfectly fair to point out bad customer service from anyone when it's existence is properly demonstrated.
You're completely right there and Steam's policy on that is very bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Steam here but I don't think the case cited with Origin (which is only one of several major customer service related issues they've had) is something that's worth being dismissed into the "angry Internet men" file. I wasn't even affected by that but a company EA's size who wants to compete in the digital space should have better systems in place than that. It's perfectly fair to point out bad customer service from anyone when it's existence is properly demonstrated.
I must be explaining things wrong somehow.. when did I say that Origin was in the "right" or "doing things properly". I'm only pointing out that isolating specific customer cases isn't indicative of the whole situation. Why discuss one particular incident at all? Do we have a Valve thread where we find forum threads where someone had an issue and then post it and say.. See VALVE and STEAM sucks!!!
We've shut down threads that were simply about Female Doggoing about a particular company (see the Sony thread) if this thread is soley to find incidents where a customer has had an issue and point at it and say OMGZ Origin sucks.. then whats the point?
Parallax Abstraction wrote:You're completely right there and Steam's policy on that is very bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Steam here but I don't think the case cited with Origin (which is only one of several major customer service related issues they've had) is something that's worth being dismissed into the "angry Internet men" file. I wasn't even affected by that but a company EA's size who wants to compete in the digital space should have better systems in place than that. It's perfectly fair to point out bad customer service from anyone when it's existence is properly demonstrated.
I must be explaining things wrong somehow.. when did I say that Origin was in the "right" or "doing things properly". I'm only pointing out that isolating specific customer cases isn't indicative of the whole situation. Why discuss one particular incident at all? Do we have a Valve thread where we find forum threads where someone had an issue and then post it and say.. See VALVE and STEAM sucks!!!
We've shut down threads that were simply about Female Doggoing about a particular company (see the Sony thread) if this thread is soley to find incidents where a customer has had an issue and point at it and say OMGZ Origin sucks.. then whats the point?
That's pretty fair. There is, however, some context. There were many posts saying "Based off EA's past, I except this to be ..." and a lot of these new posts validate those predictions. It's not entirely just an EA Female Doggo fest. Establishing a pattern of customer service from EA is pretty valuable. Steam's pattern of customer service is usually much better, even if they do make some catastrophic mistakes.
Is it just that this is a dedicated thread that's the problem?
SixteenBlue wrote:That's pretty fair. There is, however, some context. There were many posts saying "Based off EA's past, I except this to be ..." and a lot of these new posts validate those predictions. It's not entirely just an EA Female Doggo fest. Establishing a pattern of customer service from EA is pretty valuable. Steam's pattern of customer service is usually much better, even if they do make some catastrophic mistakes.
Is it just that this is a dedicated thread that's the problem?
I think EA have a bit of reputation baggage they bring with them, even though it might be from totally unrelated areas of the business and relatively ancient history. EA have people looking for problems to criticise them.
That's probably true but on the other hand I've seen a ton of customer support/experience related baggage that they rightfully deserve. In fact that's my only real concern with them. They make good games.
Scratched wrote:SixteenBlue wrote:That's pretty fair. There is, however, some context. There were many posts saying "Based off EA's past, I except this to be ..." and a lot of these new posts validate those predictions. It's not entirely just an EA Female Doggo fest. Establishing a pattern of customer service from EA is pretty valuable. Steam's pattern of customer service is usually much better, even if they do make some catastrophic mistakes.
Is it just that this is a dedicated thread that's the problem?
I think EA have a bit of reputation baggage they bring with them, even though it might be from totally unrelated areas of the business and relatively ancient history. EA have people looking for problems to criticise them.
That's probably true but on the other hand I've seen a ton of customer support/experience related baggage that they rightfully deserve. In fact that's my only real concern with them. They make good games.
I've also seen some very good customer support from them. Even reported from cranky people on reddit.
They fixed some stuff for me awhile back, too, and their chat rep was very efficient.
Definitely not perfect, but also not the Store of the Antichrist, either.
Store of the Antichrist
I think that label's reserved for when Activision ultimately reveals their downloadable store
TheGameguru wrote:Parallax Abstraction wrote:You're completely right there and Steam's policy on that is very bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Steam here but I don't think the case cited with Origin (which is only one of several major customer service related issues they've had) is something that's worth being dismissed into the "angry Internet men" file. I wasn't even affected by that but a company EA's size who wants to compete in the digital space should have better systems in place than that. It's perfectly fair to point out bad customer service from anyone when it's existence is properly demonstrated.
I must be explaining things wrong somehow.. when did I say that Origin was in the "right" or "doing things properly". I'm only pointing out that isolating specific customer cases isn't indicative of the whole situation. Why discuss one particular incident at all? Do we have a Valve thread where we find forum threads where someone had an issue and then post it and say.. See VALVE and STEAM sucks!!!
We've shut down threads that were simply about Female Doggoing about a particular company (see the Sony thread) if this thread is soley to find incidents where a customer has had an issue and point at it and say OMGZ Origin sucks.. then whats the point?
That's pretty fair. There is, however, some context. There were many posts saying "Based off EA's past, I except this to be ..." and a lot of these new posts validate those predictions. It's not entirely just an EA Female Doggo fest. Establishing a pattern of customer service from EA is pretty valuable. Steam's pattern of customer service is usually much better, even if they do make some catastrophic mistakes.
Is it just that this is a dedicated thread that's the problem?
Low hanging fruit though.. honestly what service these days doesnt have issues?? nothing is 100% perfect (as was pointed out previously).
4 years from now Origin could match Valve feature for feature and possibly even surpass it.. and I would bet everything I own that you would go into the Origin forums and it would be FILLED with complaints and customers having all sorts of issues.
If we all refuse to let go of the past then we all have no future. Someone smarter than me told me that one day.
Wow, way to stay classy, EA!
The offer of a free download code for Battlefield 3 was supposed to last until March 5. However, we received the following from Origin.Due to the overwhelming response, Origin Store is discontinuing the below offer as of 2/16: Pre-order Mass Effect 3 for PC and get a free copy of Battlefield 3 for PC for free.
People really liked something so you decide to stop doing it? That sounds like a great way to do business.
People really liked something so you decide to stop doing it? That sounds like a great way to do business.
I'm guessing they looked at the numbers on the buy DA2 get ME2 free promotion and figured they weren't in any financial danger
People really liked something so you decide to stop doing it? That sounds like a great way to do business.
It happens all the time with giveaways like this. Not just with gaming but with all kinds of business. If demand is significantly higher than expected, companies will pull the plug on the deal rather than keep handing out freebies that cost them money.
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.
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