Origin Shmorigin

[Swish]

So here's a serious topic. I might be writing in my usual flippant style, but please understand that everything contained in this post is actually genuinely sincere.

EA have pulled* Crysis 2 from Steam, and are planning on making all of their future big releases, including the much anticipated Battlefield 3, exclusive to their godawful Origin service too.

Cue gamers' predictable whining and entitlement issues... BUT WAIT!

On this occasion, VGL forumites, on THIS occasion, right now, this historic moment...

They are absolutely right.

Allow me to now more or less quote something I wrote elsewhere minus the sweary bits, which explains why they are right:

This isn't Nerd Entitlement rearing its tedious head again. This actually seriously matters. If publishers are in complete exclusive control of the sale and distribution of their products, it kills competition, dead. Pay RRP or **** off, basically. It's essentially price-fixing, but legal. EA literally must not be allowed to set a precedent for this, or the PC market is totally ****ed.

But there is something we can do, which is so simple it goddamn hurts. From now until they concede, we should all exclusively buy any EA PC games we want boxed from retailers. They're cheaper for us that way, count towards overall sales figures (a full on boycott would **** the actual developers, who it must be emphasised are not the responsible party here), and EA get considerably less revenue per copy than they would if they were still selling on Steam. They want 100% through Origin, so we'll give them 50% through Amazon.

Spread the word - there's bound to be loads of people all over who wrongly have it in their heads that Origin is their only viable option, and this form of protest could actually produce results, since they would have to concede that their 70% cut of Steam sales is considerably better than retail. We should do this, rather than just signing the inevitable impotent Internet petition or whatever. It's important.

Is this too political for the VGL forums? Not that I particularly care if it is or not. Still posting it.

*EDIT: It seems that they didn't (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/15/eh-crysis-2-steam-axe-not-an-ea-decision/#more-62325), or they did, but that's not why, or something. Point stands about future exclusive releases and protest methods, anyway.

[don]

I have always been a big retail fan.
And I'll add one more reason: many companies latelly have been assume that is given that everyone has a super fast and reliable internet connection, and many even defend that in a near future - say, 10 years or so- most retail would be replace by online digital destribution. I think we need to keep retail alive.

[Swish]

... and many even defent that in a near future - say, 10 years or so- most retail would be replace by online digital destribution.

What's more, if that does happen, we can't let it happen like this. Imagine if Origin actually was your only option.

[RetroVortex]

I actually have origin on my PC at the moment, aaaaand....

Its exactly the same as their old PC download manager.

Just reskinned.

And though EA do sometimes have a decent deal, its just not up to scratch compared with Steam, and it never will be.

There's a good reason for this, and that, is that most of the companies that make digital download services, are doing it for their own services, and not to actually improve anything.

Sure Steam has DRM, but it has chat, it has friends, it has easy click and play functionality, effort to improve security (THAT CAN BE TURNED OFF!!), and other stuff.
Plus Steam has nice deals, and gets indie on there.

The best download services, and the ones that truely work are relatively neutral.

Valve are relatively neutral. Sure they make their own stuff, and sell it, but they make it for a niche, per se, they make it for their own clients.

They don't deliberatly try to throttle other publishers.

If Origin ever gets off the ground, and they decide to sell other stuff, I bet the gloves will come off then.

Big publishers are never nice, and they never play fair.

Overall its pretty stupid to limit your distribution possibilities, especially only to something as limited, and comparatively obscure service like Origin.

However, despite all this, I don't think I could boycott Origin, for it is holding hostage something I have been anticipation for so long:

The Old Republic.

Now if the game isn't very good, then fine I won't bite, but if the reviews are good enough, then I'm helpless.

I FREAKIN' LOVE KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC 1+2!
And I would play anything in the series, anything

[don]

What's more, if that does happen, we can't let it happen like this. Imagine if Origin actually was your only option.

I'm not familiar with Origin, but no competition is always bad.
I honestly don't know how is Steam these days either. I unistalled it a couple of years ago, back then my internet traffic was still pretty limited and Steam just consumed it like there was no tomorrow by just having it opened.

[Swish]

To be fair, Steam is a slight compromise to this kind of lack of competition as it is, but from an end-user perspective it's an unintrusive and convenient one. When publishers monopolise their own catalogues as EA is planning, there's no competition at all on specific products. Conversely, when the rest of Steam's games are competing with other services (Direct2Drive etc.), it sets a kind of standard on the service for pricing which Valve's own games have no choice but to adhere to - a third party AAA game is this price on GOG, so it needs to be around the same or cheaper on Steam, so in turn this Valve-developed AAA game's price has to reflect that standard. You don't get that if you're just selling your own stuff, and that's the only place it can be bought.

[Myrph]

I'll admit, I'm currently using origin for Dragon Age 2 and have pre ordered Alice Madness returns on it, in order to get my copy of the first Alice (also the soundtrack sampler will be nice), so I'm not really in a position to suddenly drop it now.
That being said, of course, I will generally pick up boxed released over digital releases, as 90% of the time they're cheaper. The only time I usually go digital is when Steam have something decent on sale.

[Terraguy]

After all, competition is good for the consumer. That's why I support multiple digital download sites.

[don]

Somebody please explain me this:

I got an e-mail from Bioware saying that it was hacked and I had to reset my password, I follow the link they give me and it leads me to an EA site, and they say they're going to give me a new pasword and that my EA account will migrate to Origin.

What the hell?

[Terraguy]

Sounds like they're trying to move everyone over to Origin so they can show they've had an increase in account formations. Then again, if you had an account with EA, it was bound to become Origin, so that shouldn't have been too surprising.

[don]

Then again, if you had an account with EA, it was bound to become Origin, so that shouldn't have been too surprising.

I had no account with EA. I only had an account with Bioware.

[Swish]

I had no account with EA. I only had an account with Bioware.
Same thing, bro. EA has wholly owned BioWare since 2007.

[Songbird]

Strange, I have some connections to EA thanks to M.E, but they haven't sent anything to me.

[Myrph]

It was a specific Bioware forum (a 10 year old Neverwinter Nights forum I believe) that was compromised and as a result everyone who had accounts with Bioware from that forum was contacted on the off chance that people also had EA accounts with the same details. If you had the EA account, without the old Bioware account, you wouldn't have been affected.

[Songbird]

It was a specific Bioware forum (a 10 year old Neverwinter Nights forum I believe) that was compromised and as a result everyone who had accounts with Bioware from that forum was contacted on the off chance that people also had EA accounts with the same details. If you had the EA account, without the old Bioware account, you wouldn't have been affected.

Ah, thanks for the explanation Myrph.

[don]

I had only registered in the Jade Empire forums. Back then I wrote a guide for people to install and run the game on Vista, since there was no official support outside Windows XP.