Screw Origin

Yeah Origin pretty much sucks.

I wish I had the choice of buying through whatever client I choose to. Fuck, sell it through Uplay, GoG, Steam, Origin, everything. Let the consumer choose which DRM & client to use. Nope, instead we get a bunch of shitty, half-working, half-assed clients as publishers try to lock people in.

At least Steam/Valve tries to work across the artificial boundaries publishers are frantically tripping over their dicks to build.

The point is that there's something else out there that Steam absolutely has to look at and go "Hmm, we need to make sure we're always doing better than those guys or we might lose our place on top".

And, hey, it's EA. EA might make an imitation that works, so the real thing has to stay on its toes, but EA will never quite get it right so Valve will stay on top.

Wait, Origin works consistently for you????

Dude that service is a nightmare of problems. Everyone I know personally has had consistent issues.

@chrissedoff: Steam isn't really forced to improve per se due to the existence of Origin (perhaps it should be the other way around) but the existence of competing services probably keeps both services or even all online distribution services in general pretty honest and also competitive in terms of pricing as well as the kind of services that would be rendered (e.g. customer service, stability, etc). Even though Steam is probably years ahead compared to everyone else, the existence of competition is good since it does force everyone to improve in order to stay in business and in the end, us, the consumers/potential customers, would benefit from it one way or another (e.g. massive discounted sales on games). :)

I don't even notice origin for Battlefield 4, launch the battlelog website and away i go. I also rarely have problems with Origin, and when i do the customer service is helpful and quick.

This is the problem I have with Origin too. They need to step their game up big time. Get more games on the platform and get features on parity with Steam. Only then will we see more positive things come out of both platforms. Steam is running away with it and they aren't even trying anymore.

In theory you're both absolutely right, but it's all academic since Origin still hasn't reached parity with Steam in terms of features or pricing (nor does it seem to be moving all that quickly in that direction) and none of the changes in Steam seem to have been spurred at all by the presence of Origin. Rather, they seem to be influenced far more by a desire to compete with Xbox and Playstation and by the meteoric rise in popularity of indie games over the past few years.

i had the same frustration when BF3 came out, but i gave in, used Origin, and it wasn't terrible.

@chrissedoff: Origin did have great sales this year even on their games that have come out earlier during the year (half off on DS3 and Crysis 3) and they do hold sales on games once in awhile. They just don't have as big library that Steam has so it's not as frequent.. I do agree with the sentiment that they are probably just trying to get their foot in the PC market considering how much it has grown over the last few years.

FRAK ORIGIN AND THE FRAKIN TOASTERS RUNNING THEIR SERVERS!!!! >:(

I guess the biggest difference (other than the nice thing of having all my games in one place) is that I trust Valve. They have shown time and again that they give a fuck about their customers. I trust that a game I buy on Steam is always going to be there for me years down the road. They have said in the past that if the service goes away they will flip a switch and allow you to download your games for "offline" mode.

EA on the other hand is the company that forced MS to let them use their own multiplayer servers for games on XBL just so they could shut them off next year and force you to buy the newer game. It is the same kind of heavy handed tactics at work here, and for that reason I don't trust the company to keep my digital purchases around for the future. EA has earned this level of distrust from their past actions, Vavle on the other hand has done nothing but earn my trust.

Have they fixed the thing where it locks your PC up for like 5 seconds every time you start it? I had that happen when I've used it many times and on many different machines, but that was I while ago. I don't think I even have it installed on my most recent Windows or Mac installs.

Thats the thing, this isn't competition. If Origin is the ONLY place you can get EA games (at least their big titles), then that is actually the exact opposite of competition. For it to be competition you would have to have the games on both platforms. Is this trend continues you will see far less competition on the PC, not more.

The only reason anyone anywhere uses the service is because they gate their games behind it, that isn't true of Steam. Steam has cheaper games, more selection, better features, and has a much better track record of not screwing their customers over to make a buck (exactly the opposite in fact). I would argue that Steam is almost single handedly responsible for the rebound in PC gaming that has happened in the last few years (combined with consoles aging so badly).

If Origin was doing something better or filling some gap Steam was not then it would be a different story. But it isn't, it is inferior in every way to Steam and is nothing more than the latest shitty move by EA. Remember this is the company that tried to force online passes down our throats too, they clearly don't give a fuck about their customers and are willing to use shitty businesses tactics to drive sales. Sure it is their "right" to do it, but it is beyond me why people would defend it. Backlash was heavy enough that they abandoned the online pass nonsense, we need more of that here.

Origin is fine. Battlelog also. What were you going to do with those two minutes anyway?

Yeah, screw Origin stories. Oh wait, I read the thread title wrong.

@mike17032: Origin allows game refunds. <drops mike>

Ohh le whining

@mike17032: Here's the other thing, you can buy Origin games on other digital retailers such as Gamefly, GreenManGaming, and Amazon. If what you are saying that EA games only comes out of Origin is not competition because they are gating their games behind Origin than by your reasoning and logic then that should be applied to Steam as well since you can't run Valve games without Steam. I do agree with you that Steam does have a more robust library, and all the other positives you have mentioned and they are (without any hard numbers on hand but its pretty obvious) the market leader in terms of the PC digital distribution service. Another thing is that you can also buy Origin games on other digital retailers for much cheaper as well same as with other PC download games that require Steam on their services. For example, GreenManGaming has had sales on Origin games before they even come out such as when I got for BF4 ($48).

They are still competing in a sense since all the games that are available on the PC can still be bought with other third party digital distribution retailers. Another thing is that I'm not just isolating it to both Steam AND Origin, but I'm talking about the digital distribution landscape in general as we see it right now. Sure Origin or any other digital retailer does not need to fill some sort of gap as you were pointing out but I'm glad that at the very least neither "major" digital distribution client is denying other digital retailers from selling their games on their services. The point I'm making is that the existence of Origin and other digital retailers would only benefit all of us in the long run like I said in the previous post since I've always seen great discounted sales on all types of games, including games that are only on Origin and not just Steam. Also who knows down the line, EA is going to make their currently Origin-exclusive triple A titles available on Steam as well. There are older EA owned/published games that are still being sold on Steam. It's not like the window has completely closed on this entirely.

I really liked Stardock's Impulse as a competitor for Steam. But then GameStop bought it from them and it became a lot less likeable.

Eh. I took the plunge. I didn't particularly like BF3 and had an OK time with Bad Company 2, but I did jump in on those games very late, and I did kinda play those games like a runnin fool. I'm in the mood for something slower paced and requiring more care, so hopefully this is that, cause I bought it already.

I like my impulse buys more when they aren't $60, but whaddayagonnado.

@crithon: i think it won't happend

As some others are saying, Origin is perfectly fine. It was never bad even. Everyone jumps on the EA hate train because why not. I don't even interact with Origin when I turn on my computer. I open my web browser, and the battle log tab loads up, I select the server I want and play. (Just make sure you set Origin to run and log in automatically when you turn your PC on)

Even if you had to actually open and interact with the client every time it's still not a big deal and you'll get over it. I just don't understand how clicking an orange icon to play a game vs. clicking a grey icon is such a complete and utter hindrance that you wouldn't play an awesome game. Leave both clients open and running. Your system resources surely aren't that sparse.

That was possibly the only thing that could have redeemed this awful thread.

No way, man. Dude's got 256mb of RAM.

Ugh, Origin is so terrible. So many problems launching, updating, and downloading games, it's just not worth the headaches.

I prefer not having to use a launcher for any game. Steam is only better because my friends list there. Origin uses less resources than Steam (although both are relatively lightweight). It's never given me any issues and I always get steady 16-17 MB/s speeds from their servers. If my drunk math is right, that's nearly maxing out my 150Mbit connection. Speeds from Steam are all over the place and never as high as I get from Origin. Add shortcuts to your Steam library or to your desktop. Disable notifications and keep Origin minimized. You literally never have to see it and it doesn't use much RAM.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Steam overall if I have to choose the lesser of two evils. But refusing to play a game because it launches in Origin is silly to me. It works good, stays hidden, and they offer refunds on games now. Valve sure made their DRM taste sweet. I think much of the Origin hate is because EA is the "big evil corporation" and Valve is still seen as the good guy. Preferring not to use it and saying it's a horrible piece of software are two different things. Nothing about Origin (that I've personally experienced) is horrible enough to warrant depriving yourself of a great game.

My biggest complaint was separate friends lists, which is easily fixed by adding a shortcut into your Steam library. Open the game from Steam and you've got your Steam friends, overlay, and notifications available in your Origin games.

I like Steam a lot because I have the bulk of my PC library there and I actually use a lot of the back end stuff like guides/workshop/etc. I think I originally installed Origin to play BF3 and all in all, it isn't really that big a deal for me to pop open Origin to play EA games. Sure, it'd be easier if they were all on Steam but I can understand why EA wouldn't want to cut in Valve if they can do it on their own.

@thatonedudenick I used to think separate and individual installed games was better until I started running into the issue of not having easy access to games I've uninstalled. Even titles that I can recover online like Blizzard titles are way more of a hassle than say just selecting the greyed out name from my steam library and reinstalling it. That along with cloud save support pushed me towards just outright preferring a Steam/Origin like service to keep tabs on my game library. At least until one or the other goes out of business and all my titles disappear forever =P

Origin is pretty good.

Well, it's more like going to a pizza place and getting annoyed because they don't sell pepperoni pizzas and you have to walk a block down to the pizza shop that sells only pepperoni pizzas and nothing else, all to get the pepperoni pizza you wanted.

Valve isn't a shitty company with shitty practices, for one. I would gladly give EA my money if they cared about more than green ink on their little books.

You will all play titanfall and you will all love it.

News flesh. You are gonna pay money to EA no matter what.

@mike17032: I don't really understand Origin hate anymore. The program works perfectly fine and is just as stable as Steam. I understand wanting games in one service but come on...get over it.

BF4 says it supports Vista.

AMD seems to have dropped support for Vista 64-bit.

BF4 says it needs 13.9 drivers; 13.4 are the latest for Vista 64-bit.

Fuck. This.

It's your fault for going with AMD. Don't mean to be harsh, but compatibility has always been an issue with ATi cards.

@greggd: Good to know!

Competition is always good. The issue with Origin is that some of their high level policies make it hard to tolerate them let alone like them. And it has some technical problems that seem to be random or inconsistent.