@TadThuggish: Wait, so because I use Steam, I suddenly can't use any other online service? Man, that SUCKS! Or I could just make a quick Origin account, download TOR, aaanndd.... What was the problem again? Oh right- TOR's actually looking like kinda garbage. As for anyone taking over WOW for any reason? Not likely for AT LEAST another year or two.
Uhhh.. So everyone else knows what's happening here right?
The Ori have taken over EA and are trying to spread the word about the path of Origin to our planet. If we don't accept and say "Hallowed are the Ori", they'll mount a crusade and purge us all.
Only one man can save us.
Love the Stargate reference :D that episode was damn amazing
First off, we have to stop their priors, they'll probably show up at E3
The only problem I see here is the lack of a TF2 hat you would receive if you pre-ordered TOR from Steam. Oh well...
But really, may I remind you that Blizzard Entertainment has successfully ran Battle.net and World of Warcraft with no need of assistance from Valve and the Steam service. If you seriously want to play The Old Republic, you'll buy it from them. If you hate EA and their digital offerings that much, buy the physical copy, plug in the CD Key online and have it backed up for later. Either way, just load the Launcher from Steam and launch the game from there.
I wonder if anyone still remembers the first launch of the EA online store and the way they charged you extra for the right to re-download the installer (after 3 months) for the games you purchased. Yep, buying a game and not having the ability to download it again because you didn't stump for the extra online fee.
Unless it's a £5 deal I think I'll stick to keeping my digital games locked to Steam or GOG just in case EA decide that the best way to help their bottom line is to remove my access to my games some day in the future. When you're selling people a digital license to access content then trust really is a key issue and I'm yet to hear EA explain away that previous policy in a way that makes it very clear they understand what they were doing was wrong.
The last EA download service was awful, wasn't it...? Or am I wrong?
I have Mass Effect 2, Sims 3, Crysis 2 and Medal of Honor there and I have no issues with it. Anyway. I just reinstalled Origins and it looks no different from the new features they added in EA DLM. Friends list and so on. Not seeing anything different so far.
ORIGIN, not Origins - as in the company called Origin Systems founded by Richard Garriot which EA bought in like '92 from which sprang Ultima, Wing Commander and other properties. Origin made Ultima Online, the daddy of all MMOs which is why they are using the name to sell SW : ToR.
I didn't have any issues getting Bad Company 2 from the EA digital store. That said, the hard drive that the installation media is on hasn't died yet. And who in the world wants to back up installation media? That stuff is huge. Think of this. To be safe, you need to have two copies of the installation media on separate drives. That's a lot of space. Now, include the space of the actual game once it's installed. We are talking a least 3x as much space needed with Origin as with Steam. Do I back up Steam games? Hell no. That's one of Steam's benefits.
I fear losing Bad Company 2 someday. Hard drives don't last forever, and I am only keeping a single copy of the installation media. Because of that hogwash, I do not want to be limited to getting Battlefield 3 from Origin. I'm thankful they're only going to make a special edition of it exclusive to Origin.
If EA starts to have better deals or gives me a valid reason to buy through them, I'll consider it. If they try to pull the whole limited downloads, shitty speeds, shitty prices, shitty patching thing they've done before they can lick a dick.
I hope for more competition for Steam so this is a good thing. I also like the new client, just installed it and it works well.
I buy boxed games still, so I won't be using it much, but I welcome a new push for PC gaming from EA and competition for Steam. Monopolies are bad people, no matter how much you might like Steam or Valve or whoever else.
Competition is always good for the consumer. That said, I don't know that this is at all going to be able to compete effectively against Steam, especially if EA don't step up their service quality.
Unless origin proves to be as good as if not better than steam, I am not using it. I wasn't really planning on buying the old republic, but if I do, it'll be through eb games. There's no way in hell I'm supporting this when I already have steam guard, automatic updates, integrated brower, friends lists and cloud saves. I already went through this crap when I bought the Saboteur. I had to download some stuipd external program that I never ended up using for anything afterwards.
Why can't they just accept that Steam is *the* way to get PC games now and stop making it a hassle on consumers. I think Blizzard shouldn't gate there stuff off via Battle.Net purchasing wise but at least there is functionality in that it at least effectively eliminates DRM and places everything on an account to account basis.
@TadThuggish: Wait, so because I use Steam, I suddenly can't use any other online service? Man, that SUCKS! Or I could just make a quick Origin account, download TOR, aaanndd.... What was the problem again? Oh right- TOR's actually looking like kinda garbage. As for anyone taking over WOW for any reason? Not likely for AT LEAST another year or two.
I didn't see any digital distribution sales on the site, and there hard copy prices are easily beat by Amazon. They're going to have to cut prices and have sales if they want to be competitive.
If it's not on Steam and it's on PC, I won't buy it.
And that is exactly why we need more competition like this. Don't let Steam become a monopoly.
I should clarify, I just don't want to buy anything directly from EA. :-) I wouldn't mind if someone else launched a competing download service. Also I don't like that they will only sell it on their service. I would be okay with them having it on both, but making it a better deal on their own service. I have all of my friends list, games, etc on Steam so I don't have a compelling reason to leave the platform. I have no interest in investing any money into a EA product as I have had some major problems with their downloadable services in the past.
Is anyone else a little bothered by the name? Or a lot bothered, for that matter. There are a lot of old school PC gamers out there who have never forgiven EA for what they did to Origin Systems, and this feels a little like they are twisting the knife.
Will they let people download their games purchased via the service whenever they want, even years after, like Steam does, or will they be aholes about it again?
TL;DR. but i don't think i care for either at this point especially with Guild Wars 2 coming out sometime. i suppose competition is good but just sick of all the fucking exclusivity shit: services, dlc, etc
It is plain silly to say if it is not on steam then I wont play it. More Competition for Steam if it is as easy to use as Steam is a good thing. It has be on Steam level of portability and usability otherwise it wont last. Competition forces innovation, Madden vs. 2k was a good thing for us consumers.
It might work if the site sells purely EA stuff. I don't think it can take down Steam though.
It doesn't matter - I'll go with what's cheapest. If Steam have BF3 cheaper than on the EA store, then I'll get it on Steam. If the EA store has it cheaper, I'll get it there. I'm going to let the market solve this one folks. Or, maybe, I'll get legitimate steam codes from some Eastern European Site for way cheaper. I got BFBC2 for 30 bucks a month after it came out.
Uhhh.. So everyone else knows what's happening here right?
The Ori have taken over EA and are trying to spread the word about the path of Origin to our planet. If we don't accept and say "Hallowed are the Ori", they'll mount a crusade and purge us all.
Only one man can save us.
Love the Stargate reference :D that episode was damn amazing First off, we have to stop their priors, they'll probably show up at E3
Brother, we must band together against this most heinous foe.
Yeah, so when I downloaded Portal 2 off of Steam, I used around 7-8% of my entire family's monthly bandwidth cap. With all the E3 video streaming I'll be doing online this month, that means the only games I'll be buying will be retail boxes, 'cuz I can't afford the extra GBs.
Sometimes I feel like I live in a 3rd world country...and this EA store won't make any kind of real difference to me...
After the terrible experience I had with my one attempt to download an EA game off their old service, I think it's going to take more than a rebranding for them to try to get me back.
And there always need to be more reference to The Wire.
If it's not on Steam and it's on PC, I won't buy it.
And that is exactly why we need more competition like this. Don't let Steam become a monopoly.
Steam will never be a true monopoly. If Steam ever starts sucking, then it's pretty easy for a competitor to start up a service or take over an existing service and drag customers away by promising better stuff (see above).
The problem is that every service that's ever tried to compete with Steam has been incredibly worse in terms of price, ease of use, customer support, and pretty much every other area you'd judge a service like this. That's not a monopoly, that's just being the best in the business. There's no reason to support a worse service just for the sake of competition. Competition is supporting a better service when it comes along.
And undoubtedly EA's service is going to be far worse than Steam, except for having exclusivity over games they publish. If the best thing you can say about your download service is "it's the only way to buy X game" that isn't engendering any goodwill. That's just trying to force people to use your crappy download platform.
Keeping in touch with the relevance of games like Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty these days, let me put my opinion about this new attempt at debunking Steam: you're shooting yourself in the foot, EA. But you know what? I don't care. Go ahead and do whatever you want.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along
with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely
increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.
Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other
Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll
send you an email once approved.
Log in to comment