Is Origin as Bad as Everyone Says?

[IllusionaryInnocence]

Okay yes I did a bit of research and there was a thing back in Germany about it accessing tax programs. My question is, in 2014. Is Origin as bad as everyone says? Can I safely use the program?

Because I plan to eventually do a full playthrough of Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3. However since Mass Effect 3 is not available on Steam and only on Origin, plus I wish to do it on PC because of the control scheme being generally better.

So is Origin as bad as everyone says? Or can I safely use the bloody thing without having to worry about spyware from EA's McDouche department?

 

[Novuake]

I haven't had issues... Although I find the IDEA of origin stupid.

 

[turboface20]

nah. its not 1/10th as good as steam but not bad.

 

[ryeshe]

It charges me in euros even though I live in Lebanon and the currencies we use are USD and LBP. I've had some troubles with downloads but other than that it should be fine. If a games only available on origin buy it.. if you have a choice always go with steam.

 

[Pinhedd]

Okay yes I did a bit of research and there was a thing back in Germany about it accessing tax programs. My question is, in 2014. Is Origin as bad as everyone says? Can I safely use the program?

Because I plan to eventually do a full playthrough of Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3. However since Mass Effect 3 is not available on Steam and only on Origin, plus I wish to do it on PC because of the control scheme being generally better.

So is Origin as bad as everyone says? Or can I safely use the bloody thing without having to worry about spyware from EA's McDouche department?

Yes, Origin works fine. It's very comparable to steam. The only drawback that I can think of is that it currently doesn't have a way to gift products to other users.

All of the "omg origin is spying on me!" posts are written by the usual cadre of useful internet idiots.

EA is not interested in your tax returns. Origin does scan the file system and registry for supported games that may have been installed externally so that it can add them to the game library. Steam does something similar, but only does so within the scope of a Steam Library.

 

[Rationale]

I haven't had any problems with it, at least, I don't think I have. ME3 works fine, no apparent spyware or anything.
Given a choice I'll always buy a game on Steam instead, but Origin isn't bad.

There was one time I installed Origin and something kept corrupting registry keys, but I think that was a coincidence and it was just some part of Windows that was broken, not Origin, as it went away when I reinstalled Windows.

So yeah. Origin isn't ideal (no such thing as ideal DRM), but it's not nearly as bad as people say. I still use it for a couple games.
Also, ME3 is pretty epic imo. It's the main reason I decided to try Origin. Definitely a worthy sequel to ME2, provided you get the free Extended Cut ending patch.

Also, if you have an Nvidia card you can use the 0x080100C5 flag to force supersample antialiasing in ME1 in your drivers. The SMAA injector would also work for antialiasing, for both AMD and Nvidia cards in ME1 and ME2.

ME3 has its own decent quality FXAA, so that doesn't really need more AA, but the 0x000000C1 flag should allow Nvidia owners to force sparse grid supersample antialiasing in ME3 if that's relevant.

Took me forever to find compatibility flags that actually work in Unreal 3 Engine games without causing bugs.

 

[IllusionaryInnocence]

Well that's reassuring. I'm just skeptical about reading the things on the internet (who would lie on the internet, amirite? ;D ), and given TomsHardware seems to know a thing or two about the upsides and downsides of programs, thought I might ask here and get a relatively unbiased perspective.

 

[RCguitarist]

It has never caused me any issues.