Why do we hate Origin?

C

Chihlidog

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
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Its not like I want to have 10 different distribution platforms on my machine but having recently purchased a one year Origin access membership I have to admit Im really impressed.

The amount of games I have access to for that amount is great. I dont like EA as a company but some of the games are great. Mass Effect of course. SC4. DA:O is supposedly awesome though I havent played it yet. I can see for someone that already has everything in the vault it isnt worth it but I hadnt played ME3 yet.....havent played SW battlefront....havent played DA....

For the 30 bucks it cost me Im just wondering why the hate. Sure I like Steam but ....
 
Can't speak for Origin Access, but I think the hate comes from people just not liking EA, loving Steam, not wanting extra programs, telemetry, or some combo of those things. Same with uPlay. I don't care myself, I think I got over my EA hate sometime around 2003. I've got terabytes of storage and 32GB of memory, I think I can spare a little space for Origin.

I will say that I don't typically leave Origin or uPlay running whereas Steam is almost always running.
 
EA has moved all their games to only their platform. I know I personally wouldn't have so much hate for EA if they still released their product on Steam. I have no problem with Ubisoft and having their program launch in the background but I do like having all my games in one location. The next problem I have with EA and anything they touch is that they totally destroy good game series as soon as they purchase studios. I would just like to see EA die and fade from gaming existence.
 
1. EA stopped doing new releases in Steam. Anything that was already there stayed, but AFAIK nothing new has been released on Steam since Origin came out. This pissed off people wanting to keep things consolidated under one system and not having to deal with multiple storefronts. People are mostly past this and its an old complaint.
2. Origin used to be a horrendously buggy piece of shit that was nearly unusable. Now it only has few quirks, but otherwise usable. One of their biggest issues is implementing the overlay feature into their own games without causing stability issues in those games (e.g. BF4 and BF1). To be fair, Steam had similar issues early on with their overlay. Unfortunately, EA has taken a bit longer than Valve did to fix the overlay issues.

-edit- I wasn't clear first time around.
 
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uPlay is the only client that I remember having genuine problems with when I tried using them (back when PYP promo with FC4, AC:U and I think The Crew), Origin, Steam, BNet client and GOG Galaxy all run well and don't really hinder my gaming even I have all 4 of them on.

Otherwise, I don't remember having as much of an issue against Origin as I did against EA.
 
One platform preferred and that is Steam.

The bargain for EA Orgin is off the charts though for LAN parties. $5 a month. (no minimum)gets you tons of games and 10 hours of brand new ones. It's fantastic for that. Great for non gamers who don't have all the games but will pay $5 to try out a LAN party.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
1. EA pulled all of their games from Steam. This pissed off people wanting to keep things consolidated under one system and not having to deal with multiple storefronts. People are mostly past this and its an old complaint.
2. Origin used to be a horrendously buggy piece of shit that was nearly unusable. Now it only has few quirks, but otherwise usable. One of their biggest issues is implementing the overlay feature into their own games without causing stability issues in those games (e.g. BF4 and BF1). To be fair, Steam had similar issues early on with their overlay. Unfortunately, EA has taken a bit longer than Valve did to fix the overlay issues.
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EA did not pull all of their games from Steam. If you take five seconds you will see several EA games are still there and are always put on sale during the big sales. The two games that got pulled were pulled by Valve, not EA. Valve changed their DLC policies after those games had released and while games already released were grandfathered in if they violated the new policy it didn't apply if those games released new DLC content. EA already had contracts in place for DLC sales and delivery for those games so Valve pulled them when new DLC was released. Crysis 2 was later re-added to Steam when a complete edition was released. DA2 unfortunately(?) never got a complete edition. After that EA stopped putting their games on Steam.
 
Derangel said:
EA did not pull all of their games from Steam. If you take five seconds you will see several EA games are still there and are always put on sale during the big sales. The two games that got pulled were pulled by Valve, not EA. Valve changed their DLC policies after those games had released and while games already released were grandfathered in if they violated the new policy it didn't apply if those games released new DLC content. EA already had contracts in place for DLC sales and delivery for those games so Valve pulled them when new DLC was released. Crysis 2 was later re-added to Steam when a complete edition was released. DA2 unfortunately(?) never got a complete edition. After that EA stopped putting their games on Steam.
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I was referring to their new releases. I probably should have stated as such. Thank you for clarifying that issue though. Most of the stuff that was there previously stayed on there (with the exceptions you mentioned), but AFAIK they haven't released anything new via Steam since Origin came out.
 
What you mean we?

It's just another delivery platform as far as I'm concerned. ME:A downloaded, installed, and worked perfectly for me, today. I only wish the game was as good.
 
Chihlidog said:
Its not like I want to have 10 different distribution platforms on my machine but having recently purchased a one year Origin access membership I have to admit Im really impressed.
For the 30 bucks it cost me Im just wondering why the hate. Sure I like Steam but ....
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Citation needed. Who are you talking about that "hate" Origin?

The only thing I hate are pointless, low-effort threads that go in circles and don't really contribute anything.
 
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Got to consider that Origin was a good business move for EA. I'm not going to blame a developer not wanting to hand over 30% of its PC sales revenue to a competitor.
 
Ea blows. Origin works fine but yeah. Ea and their corporate rush rush hire for hr and not for talent bullshit is where I have issues. The latest mass effect being the primary example of said corporate horseshit.
 
Tried to install Battlefield One onto my gaming drive after a completely fresh install of Windows. Origin saw the old install and used the old download files. Went really fast and was impressed!

Tried to play the game and all it does is crash over and over. Tried to repair the game, but nothing worked. I uninstalled Origin and BF1 from the Control Panel. Downloaded Origin and BF1 fresh. Can't get Origin to run for 10 seconds before crashing. Repair tries to fix stuff, but it can't fix a broken Origin install.

Guess I shall reinstall my OS again since three more attempts do the same thing result in more, "Crash, crash, crash!"

Oh I did the same thing with UPLAY and Steam with perfect results. :) So it's nothing special that I was trying with Origin. Origin even has an option to save old installers so you'd think that using the installers would work.
 
From what i've seen most of the "hate" comes from users who refuse to use anything other than Steam (oh the irony) and people who hate EA (for whatever reason). Personally i've had many more issues with Steam than Origin, and on Origin I actually had someone respond from CS on each occasion i encountered some issues. With Steam you're SOL.
 
I have no beef with Origin. If you edit your preferences properly, you don't even see it.

(Although they did break the "exit Origin upon launching game" function recently. It can be fixed by rolling back, but still a "Google pain in the ass".)
 
they just say they hate Origin since its cool to hate on EA

personally I like Origin, maybe not as sophisticated as steam but its a good platform and EA's customer service is hands and fist over steam's.. I was able to register 90% of my old EA disk games in origin.. and for the 10% I couldn't a few weren't available on origin yet and the other few they gave me the upgraded game.. I ended up getting Crysis 2 for free when I couldn't get my warhead key to register..
 
I like Origin better than Steam. I think the Steam interface is dated as fuck. I've had tons of trouble getting the Steam service to install since Windows 7. I don't care for how it handles DLC compared to Origin either. Steam is nicer when you want to just relocate it to another drive than Origin is but I don't do that very often.
 
See Ryan's post near the top for the bulk of my answer. As far as the actual app itself, it's not THAT bad really. I only have it for Mass Effect 3 and Mirror's Edge 2 because they didn't come to Steam like the rest in both series. It's never caused me any trouble, but as mentioned above, it's stupid to have a bunch of separate game clients running. I use Steam as my primary source. I absolutely LOVE GOG, but I don't run their client on my main game system for the same reason. (though I do run it on two different laptops that I don't do much Steam gaming on) I just think it's stupid to have to log into mulitple clients to play one's game collection. I dislike EA, but Origin really isn't too bad as far as these things go. I flat out refuse to use uPlay. I have a login from when I played through the Flashback Remake, but that's it. Luckily the Rayman game I have doesn't require me to log in to uPlay. :D
 
Ever since I installed Windows 8.1, it has refused to install for me. Went back and forth with tech support, and also scoured the web for solutions but have still unable to install it.

It worked flawlessly on Windows 7 however.
 
Origin has become a pretty nice platform, I just don't like having all these damn clients to download and manage. I have so many games I've forgotten to play just because they were on uPlay or gog, etc and I hadn't fired them up in a while. Not to mention the incessant updating every fucking time I start my rig. That shit has gotten really, really old. UPlay is the only one I genuinely dislike, Ubi just isn't worth their own platform, sorry.
 
I don't mind Origin, although I'm not a big fan of the new UI they launched last fall. The interface doesn't scale so the fonts are tiny at 4K.
Other than that, it's fine. Download speeds are quick and I've never had any technical issues with it.
I have to admit I do wish EA's games were still all on Steam, but it's not that big of a deal.
Uplay, GOG, and Battle.net are probably clumsier than Origin is, but they're all usable now, too.
 
It's tolerable except there's a none issue with some web process that a piece of it. When it goes to shit and bugger up your CPU and network. I forget what the process is, something like "EAwebupdate". I killed it and block it from running. My other issue is I dont appear to have an option for download speed limiting. I'm only on 40Mbps cable so it will kill my connection if I let it run full hog. The last install I did I let it run overnight so it wouldn't bother me, but it is annoying.
 
I hate origin because its downloads super slow. I am in afghanistan right now and have shit internet but I get around 100-120kbs dl speed on steam and on torrents but origin only dls at like 50 which is a pretty big drop. so its going to take me weeks to dl Mass Effect Andromeda.

I also dont like the interface/ui its clunky, like they tried to streamline it too much.
 
chenw said:
uPlay is the only client that I remember having genuine problems with when I tried using them (back when PYP promo with FC4, AC:U and I think The Crew), Origin, Steam, BNet client and GOG Galaxy all run well and don't really hinder my gaming even I have all 4 of them on.

Otherwise, I don't remember having as much of an issue against Origin as I did against EA.
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Origin had launching and startup issues for a few years. It would half start then restart over and over and over and over... you had to click run in offline mode in like 1.5 seconds to get out of the start loop. It has had other issues as well. It also doesn't handle throttling background downloading as well as steam.
 
Why i don't like origin

- You make a child account but then you cant buy game for it. Even from the parent account the child account is associated with.... THe WTF is the point of having a child account when i have to go out to but the game in a store for it anyway ?
- The game i bought on my parental account hoping i could select which account it would go to, is still not refunded even though i called them the same day and they said they would fix it...
- password length max of 16 characters.... WHY WHY a max lengt that short ?
 
I don't like their backup methods for games. I have crap internet, so I don't like to re-download 50GB every time I reinstall a game. Steam lets you do backups and restores of game content through the interface. Origin requires you to manually dig into the folder structure for your game and backup the files/folders yourself. Then to restore, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops (start a reinstall online, cancel it, then close the client, then go and manually restore folders, then restart the client, and restart the download). This is their "recommended" method from their support staff.

It's been years and they've never bothered to add this into their client as a feature. Steam and GoG Galaxy have done it forever.
 
The purpose of Origin was to not give a cut to Valve/Steam. After BF3, browser based games, etc. they had virtually no interaction with me. Any games in their lineup I hear from somewhere else.

Last time I had checked you couldn't 'gift' to someone. When my daughter wanted Dragon Age: Inquisition I had to buy a physical copy from Amazon.

Tripping over dollars to pickup dimes IMHO
 
SvenBent said:
Why i don't like origin

- You make a child account but then you cant buy game for it. Even from the parent account the child account is associated with.... THe WTF is the point of having a child account when i have to go out to but the game in a store for it anyway ?
- The game i bought on my parental account hoping i could select which account it would go to, is still not refunded even though i called them the same day and they said they would fix it...
- password length max of 16 characters.... WHY WHY a max lengt that short ?
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The reason for the 'max length' on passwords has to do with the back-end data encryption.
 
The lack of any built in backup system is just stupid this late in the game. Games should be distributed in flash drives or blurays as an option. That's not just an Origin problem. The download sizes of these new games are prohibitively large. 14-20 hours of downloading if that's all that's all using my internet bandwidth. With the times the download needs to be paused to stream video, work from home, others playing online games, etc... that works out to multiple days before I can get the game up and running if I can only download from 11 pm to 7 am.

I preordered Andromeda and it's still going to be tomorrow before I can actually get in game. First world problem I know but it is 2017 gosh darnit.
 
It's funny to see all the love for Origin in here, I would not have expected that. It's a decent client these days but it just recently got to that point and took years to get there. I do agree that their customer service is better than Steam but I think that says more about Valve than EA.

I think that EA does more harm than good to the video game industry from a players perspective but more importantly EA has a history of shutting down DRM servers. Losing access is a risk with any of these clients and it has mostly been online features that have been shut down but it doesn't really make me trust them.
 
SixFootDuo said:
The reason for the 'max length' on passwords has to do with the back-end data encryption.
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that is still a bs that it is so small. you password with letters and numbers should cover a size that minimum you encryption key size.

in this case the 16 charcter of letters and numbers (Case sensitive is around
332329305696010000000000000000

128bit is
340282366920938463463374607431770000000

So yeah making the password the weakspot and unable to cover a decent key size is not acceptable imho
 
otherweeb said:
Missing out on 125 million user eyeballs that weren't looking for your game in the first place? I can.
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For a smaller developer sure, but I don't think anyone that's into games and PC gaming is unaware of EA or its most popular games. The question is how many more people would buy EA games if they were on Steam. Some I'm sure. But I think people who have a problem with Origin probably have a bigger problem with EA in the first place.

Personally as long as Origin works well, and it does these days, I don't think people who actually want to play these games care that much.
 
Ebernanut said:
It's funny to see all the love for Origin in here, I would not have expected that. It's a decent client these days but it just recently got to that point and took years to get there. I do agree that their customer service is better than Steam but I think that says more about Valve than EA.

I think that EA does more harm than good to the video game industry from a players perspective but more importantly EA has a history of shutting down DRM servers. Losing access is a risk with any of these clients and it has mostly been online features that have been shut down but it doesn't really make me trust them.
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It's funny, I think Valve is rolling in money so they don't care what the client's actually like. They never bothered to get with the times either and make DLC management better. EA lives for cash (and can never get enough) so they made it easy as fuck to buy and manage your DLC. I will say that I don't care for the current beta Origin client. I liked the last one a lot better.
 
otherweeb said:
Missing out on 125 million user eyeballs that weren't looking for your game in the first place? I can.
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I think you'd have to quantify this a little more.... origin rarely reports its user install base, maybe in an earning's call at the end of the quarter, but can't say I listen in and I am having a hard time finding the latest (newer than 2014) steam user count

last report I saw was steam had that 125 million active back in 2015

the last comparison I could find which even report origin active users was back in 2014 where steam had 50million and origin had 30million

in the end though I don't think it matters that much
EA has done nothing but report major increases in revenue and profits over the years .. their latest reports a 3.04 Billion dollar profit..

For all the hate EA gets, the produce stuff everyone wants to play and games people are willing to pay for ... and those that say they'll never play an EA game lie through their teeth

considering EA knows how to make games and make money off games, I'm sure they've done all the math and the research as to if they want to put their games on steam or not.

IMO it doesn't really matter.. gamers know where to get the games they want to play.. Uplay, Origin, GOG, Steam (anyone remember GreenMan Gaming had a client?).. we know where to go.. If anything I can appreciate Origin and its focus, steam as of late is so convoluted and just a "puke" of games that it almost makes it un attractive to even shop on steam anymore and rarely rarely rarely do I ever happen-stance by a game on steam advertising that I might want to buy..
 
I hate it because it's ~another~ distribution client that wants to run full time on my PC (Steam, Glyph, GoG, My.com, etc. etc.). It doesn't integrate games I already have (or at least I haven't taken the time to add the hundreds of titles to it one by one), so therefore I only ever launch it when I want to play a newer EA title. Which honestly, most EA titles any more, I'm just getting on PS4 (if at all) and not bothing with PC versions.

I'm not necessarily in love with Steam, but it is very good at letting me put whatever I want in my Library and at least acting as a launcher.

It's all about convenience. The only reason I run Origin occasionally is to grab whatever free game they are offering and stick it in my library, but honestly, I don't think I've played a game through origin in a very long time - probably when ME3 came out and I DLed the demo, hated it, and that's been that.
 
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