There seems to be a lot of ill-will wished towards EA and Origin as of late. Some of it may be deserved, but some of it seems to be based on a few things that are either incorrect, or pretty unlikely. This is one industry outsider's view of some of the more common complaints about Origin and some personal views on how things may unfold.
1) All EA games will require Origin running in order to play
Why I think it's not likely:
EA's flagship release for Origin will be SWTOR. Bioware's Stephen Reid (community manager for SWTOR) posted the following:
While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you’ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic.
Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals.
However, you won’t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you’ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that.
Note that he says Origin will not be required to patch and launch the game. As well. any games currently purchased on Origin do not require it running. One would think that if it was going to be required to launch games, they would have started doing it with the relaunch/rebranding of the store.
Where this is coming from:
People just assume that it's going to operate the same way as Steam, since that's what they're used to and that's what they've come to expect.
2) EA is going to pull everything from Steam and make it exclusive to Origin
Why I think it's not likely:
Currently the only title that has been confirmed as being exclusive to Origin for digital distribution is SWTOR. Every other game is available on other digital distribution services. EA likes money as much as the next corporation and knows how much revenue it generates from having titles elsewhere.
Where this is coming from:
Crysis 2 was removed from Steam for violating updated business terms on the service. This caused people to assume that EA were making their games exclusive to their service even though it was still available on other distributors sites. The subsequent listing of BF3 available for purchase everywhere but Steam also fueled these rumours. In truth, Crysis 2 was likely pulled due to having it's own in-game store for DLC distribution, which circumvented Valve being properly compensated for DLC sales. It's likely BF3 will feature a similar store for DLC, and thus cannot be listed on Steam.
3) EA is trying to make a competitor to Steam
Why I think it's not likely:
Not even EA is so dense as to think that they can get people to abandon Steam in favour of Origin. People are so heavily invested in that service as to make switching impossible. Steam has an almost insurmountable lead in terms of development, features, and consumer trust. What EA can do however, is try to develop a publisher-specific version of something like D2D. A simple online storefront that simply delivers the games to you, without any added features. However, because it won't have any advantages over Steam, they're leveraging the one thing they can. Exclusivity. Without it, people wouldn't give Origin a thought, much like the relaunch of the Games for Windows Marketplace. Why buy games on that service when they're already on the one you want? So by making a few key titles unavailable on the primary market holder (and one title fully exclusive digitally), it at least gets people considering their platform.
Where this is coming from:
Everyone assumes any online distribution services is trying to be the next Steam. It's not helped by EA execs saying that they think they can compete with Steam. They may be able to in terms of profit on their own titles (the EA store is listed 3rd in the top digital retailers after Steam and D2D), but attempting to convert users to Origin is a fools errand.
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