The client actually isn’t terrible at all. It’s not attractive. It’s got this orange toy vibe going, but it works, loads quickly, and has a functional lightweight overlay. It’s got no where near the features of Steam but it’s already miles beyond Live. The unchangeable password and download time limits are pure insanity though. I can’t imagine I’ll spend any serious money with this thing.
BTW, all this is so much discussing for the sake of discussing.
Do we even know if they are going to try to be a competitor of Steam with Origin?
For now it’s only EA games. No third party games for now, isn’t?
edit: i have found a FAQ
Q: Can I re-download old games I purchased?
A: Absolutely. All your previous purchases are still accessible from Origin.
Q: Can I re-download my games in general?
A: If you need to, yes. Please note that your already installed and previously purchased games are safe, sound, and work in exactly the same way as before.
Q: Is there a limit to the number of computers on which I can install my game?
A: Origin enables you to access your games from any PC, anytime, anywhere. Should you have an issue, contact Origin Help and we’ll get you fixed right up!
Q: Will my game download ever expire?
A: Digital download rights remain available for at least one year after purchase. Origin typically doesn’t retire games, and we’ve only retired around 10 of the 150 games we sell, and these have generally been because of the expiration of licensing rights. If you come across an issue, simply contact Origin Help and we’ll reconfigure things for you.
Lol this is reassuring! ;) :
Q: What happens if EA goes out of business?
A: Origin is powered by EA, the leading publisher of the world’s best games, and we’re not going away anytime soon.
oops… wrong comment. removed
They make it sound like Gametap where licenses change hands left and right. But couldn’t this happen to Steam as well? In fact, maybe that’s what happened with Crysis 2.
You could read this answer optimistically that Origin will only carry a game if they can get contract language that says their users can always download up to a year after purchase, even after the license is revoked by the publisher. I don’t know if that’s the case or if that’s even possible. (We could check with the 10 games they’ve retired.) But as far as I know, Steam and Gametap don’t give you any extra time either. My guess is Steam has a better track record than 10 out of 150 retired so we rarely hear about it.
When are we going to get details about why this game was pulled? Digital distribution companies are so bizarre. It always feels like they’re run out of a small back room, and there’s very little communication about what’s going on unless there’s a huge sale. I suppose the frontline implementation team is at the mercy of the licensing team and publishers and they have just as much trouble getting information. That’s a good way to confuse customers. With all the money they rake in, you’d think they’d improve the business structure.
I always assumed there is a difference between license to sell the game and the right to download it after buying it. After the sale it’s just backup as long as the service is running the game should be available. I know that’s how XBLA works and I thought that Steam worked the same way, but reading some comment’s now I’m unsure.
I don’t remember either because there have been so few cases on Steam. I thought there was at least one fairly well-known game they lost in a public fashion. Did they give people a certain period of time to redownload it? Wait, maybe I’m thinking of GOG instead.
Some expert industry monitor can take over from here. I just wanted to question whether that language in the EA FAQ is necessarily worse than any other DD service.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my original comment specifically about Crysis 2 being an Origin exclusive and then responding to my next post by saying this. Great job, Naeblis.
And is Orign some shitty platform? Really??
Right now, yes.
Shift, Shift 2, Bad Company 2.
Ohh, i was quoting you but really was thinking in answering a broader issue, the people swearing off Origin. Don’t take it personally.
Right now, yes.
I disagree. Didn’t have any problem with it.
This move is stupid. Stupid of EA.
It’s the equivalent of only being able to buy iPods at an Apple Store.
Holding back some of their most prized PC games to a digital store that only sells EA games, and is therefore of limited use to gamers no matter how well it’s designed, can’t possibly improve sales.
But it lets EA keep all the money, instead of giving some percentage to Steam, D2D, Impulse, etc.
EA is betting on:
(Full game price on Origin - lost sales + loads of customer data) > (full game price on other platforms - percentage taken by other platforms)
I have no desire to buy something at Origin. I would buy it almost anywhere else first. Unless Origin is going to undercut all those sales the other places have, why would I even make an account for a service where I can only buy one publisher’s games?
For what it’s worth, Alice and Crysis 2 are both still available on D2D and Impulse. Battlefield 3 preorder is available on D2D. Mass Effect 3 preorder on D2D, not Impulse. This looks more like an attack specifically on Steam than making games exclusive to Origin, but maybe they’re just waiting for some sort of contract period to expire before games are pulled from those other services, too.
Modern day capitalism at its finest. I’m all for competition in the digital retail space, but what is EA doing to lure me as a consumer? Are they taking advantage of not paying a retailer a fat percentage and offering BF3 at a 20% discount? Are they wooing me with a service which has features that Steam doesn’t have? No. Instead they try to cram it down my throat by removing my options.
Yes, I understand Valve did the same thing, but there were no really established digital distributors at the time. That being said, I only got Steam with the Orange Box…and why did I do that? Because they lured me in with such a ludicrously awesome deal. I would have gladly paid $50 for TF2 alone. They then won me over by developing Steam into a genuinely good platform that has a ton of features I really like.
EA Downloader? Shit service that I’ve had nothing but problems with. I hate being railroaded into using a service which I despise and find inferior to my other platforms of choice.
I don’t get the predictions of failure. I understand the skepticism that EA can pull off a consumer-friendly, convenient, and supported DD store, but why do people automatically think it will fail?
Blizzard seems to do just fine offering their products only through their service and retail.
Will gamers really just not buy games like BF3 because they can only get it digitally through EA’s store? My gut instinct says no. The average gamer will just bitch and moan and buy it anyway. Or, they’ll buy it at retail and have to associate it with Origin anyway.
Long term success is a better question. Will EA stick to their guns?
To be fair, Blizzard has a history of running their own service and only selling their games digitally through their own service.
EA, on the other hand, has been stupid with Steam for years. It took years before they ever put any games on there, once they did they were often late, there are still some games that never made it to Steam, and now they’re taking games off Steam that were previously on there.
If this was just a new trend starting with Battlefield 3, I guess I could understand (though it would still be stupid), but it’s just another step in a history of stupid moves in digital distribution, and they’re retroactively changing things just for the fuck of it.
To the people that don’t think this is a big deal, what happens if/when Ubisoft does this? Then maybe Activision decides to do it or THQ, also Take 2 etc and you have games spread among a dozen diffrent commercial services? That sounds great…
I can handle a game or two. But I question the fundamentals of their vision (from RPS):
Steam and Crysis 2 wasn’t specifically addressed, but Gibeau told GamesIndustry.biz today that “you talk about platform exclusives like Halo or Uncharted… EA’s going to have some of our own platform exclusives.”
I’ve seen nothing to indicate that PC gamers want or care about a platform within PC space. Maybe EA knows more than we do. Maybe they see Steam loyalty** as the development of a de facto platform, and that’s where we’re moving to. But I think they need to make that case (internally at least) before they can construct a statement like that quote. Otherwise they’ll crash trying to force an existing framework into a market where no one wants it.
** By Steam loyalty I mean the slavish devotion to the service because people want to keep their games organized in one place or are too lazy to install from multiple different sources, plus legitimate reasons like friends lists and achievements
i have BC2, I’ll try it tonight and see if I have an issue.
It seems Gibeau has a very different definition of platform. PC users are very familiar with competing services (IE/Firefox/Chrome) but there’s nothing stopping us from using whatever we want. If Steam and Origin were subscription services it might be more analogous to platforms, but it’s just the normal corporate competition that most users try to stay out of.
Competition is a good thing for consumers - IF this takes off, games could end up being cheaper all around, or more deals could be offered.
At least, thats how it works in many markets.
I must say though, if I were EA, I would offer something special to get people to get Origin, instead of taking away options, like, a free game or two of their older titles.
Sure, and I’m all for it. But it’s not a platform. He’s talking about Origin as if it were the same as Xbox Live, you know the thing that’s part of the Xbox 360 and only the Xbox 360 and a part of every Xbox 360 game. Unless EA has plans to integrate all of it’s games into some kind of Origin OS, it’s still just a distribution service.
I’m not a software industry guy so I’m wrestling with all these terms. Your distinction between service and platform seems like it might explain why that direct quote didn’t make any sense.
In ten years bandwidth might be cheap enough that we download directly from the publishers. They can outsource support. Then it’s – what? – a matter of supporting certain services for friends lists and achievements? How does the marketing impact of Steam fit in? When do you become a platform?