ME3 & Origin

[cadefoster]

I have avoided using origin up 'till now because 1) I have no interest in using more then one game client and 2) that many people believe origin is just spyware for EA kinda freaks me out. I really don't want to miss out on ME3 though so to those of you who use it, just how invasive/unpleasant is origin to use?

 

[stephen-mc]

it monitors everything your computer does. i don't even see how its legal!

 

[Shi no Tenshi]

I have avoided using origin up 'till now because 1) I have no interest in using more then one game client and 2) that many people believe origin is just spyware for EA kinda freaks me out. I really don't want to miss out on ME3 though so to those of you who use it, just how invasive/unpleasant is origin to use?

Origin is clunky. It is something that you use because you have to, and avoid being in it as much as possible. It gets the job done, but that is about all you can say about it. On a decent system, it freezes often, forces you to reload things when navigating its menus, and is just plain annoying. The one time I bought something on it (ME3, coincidentally) It was much easier to buy it on their browser storefront than the application.

Basically, Origin is garbage. But you barely have to touch it to play the games that require it, luckily.

 

[nocturnal7x]

Idk, id wait until the game either comes out on steam and goes down to like 10 bucks or just ignore it. EA is a garbage company that has done nothing but force devs to dumb down their games for years. EA is also very anti PC, everything I have played from them recently (ME2, Crysis 2, BF3) have been piss poor at launch and poorly ported and or the PC version was just half assed or in the instance of BF3 extremely consolized maps.

Im never buying any EA game ever again. EA also blames all of their problems on piracy. IDK, crysis was an amazing game and it sold amazingly. Make good game, people will buy, you make *** game people are not going to waste 60 bucks on it EA. Look at crysis 2, piece of consolized ***, absolut abomination as far as graphics and gameplay, the horrendous butchering of the crysis. And the fact that crytek completely abandoned the story of crysis and warhead to move the franchise to console was the gravest atrocity committed against PC gaming in a long time.

Im done with EA. /rant

 

[casualcolors]

Origin's decent. I have it for BF3 and it hasn't diminished the game experience for me. I've never had it freeze, but I don't have any reason to extensively navigate it either. As far as how invasive is it? Probably too invasive if you're the kind of person who's prone to and paranoid about staring at child pornography. Otherwise it's equally as invasive as steam.

 

[stephen-mc]

Origin's decent. I have it for BF3 and it hasn't diminished the game experience for me. I've never had it freeze, but I don't have any reason to extensively navigate it either. As far as how invasive is it? Probably too invasive if you're the kind of person who's prone to and paranoid about staring at child pornography. Otherwise it's equally as invasive as steam.

steam asks you if it can snoop around your computer. which is fine , but how origin doesn't give you a choice
is why a lot of people are annoyed with EA (again)

 

[casualcolors]

steam asks you if it can snoop around your computer. which is fine , but how origin doesn't give you a choice
is why a lot of people are annoyed with EA (again)

Steam started out very much like Origin. And once again, if you don't have anything to hide then it's really not a problem. If you're not looking at kiddie porn they won't have any to see. If you aren't pirating games then they won't have anything to see and as an added bonus you won't be contributing your part to the ongoing eradication of the PC as a gaming platform by publishers, and if by some unforeseeable future hack it is used as a backdoor to your computer, join the class action lawsuit like every other similar occurrence in the history of the web.

Beyond that, it's already been proven that you can run Origin games without running Origin, so if you're the intrepid type, you can always perform your install and then never run Origin again.

 

[cadefoster]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't have anything to hide but I also don't see why origin needs access to everything on your computer. I think i'll wait to see if it ever comes to steam and if not, pick it up when its cheap on origin. That way I won;t feel so bad about being forced to use a service I don't want. As a side note, can anybody confirm that after the initail activation, ME3 will run with origin uninstalled?

 

[casualcolors]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't have anything to hide but I also don't see why origin needs access to everything on your computer. I think i'll wait to see if it ever comes to steam and if not, pick it up when its cheap on origin. That way I won;t feel so bad about being forced to use a service I don't want. As a side note, can anybody confirm that after the initail activation, ME3 will run with origin uninstalled?

It can be done for any Origin game so long as that game's community has enough interest in not using Origin to figure out how to get around it. Even BF3 was playable without origin within about 15 days of its release.

 

[cadefoster]

The reason why I ask is a friend of mine said he bought a few games with origin, decided to uninstall it, and his games still worked. No special workaround or anything. I was just wondering if it's the same with ME3.

 

[C0MMANDO]

I like steam more b/c it has better voice chat
I use orgin b/c i play bf3

 

[HEXiT]

saying "if you have nothing to hide then why worry" is the wrong attitude...

most people dont have kiddy porn but they do have other private data and E.A. are demanding they have access to it just because you use there products...
not only are they wanting access to your pc they also want to sell your data to 3rd parties... with no opt out you have no choice other than not buying the game or breaking the law by installing an illegal copy (which the work around is) making you into a criminal...
steam on the other hand allows you to opt out and does not pass on the data it does collect to 3rd parties... it also only collects your system information ie your specs and usage data such as how long the pc has been on this session and how long it has been on total...
it doesnt scan your hdd for lists of directories or download your index data which origin can do...

nah sorry just because i have nothing to hide doesnt mean i want to prove it by letting them look at my data. they are even writing stuff into t eh eula that forbids lawsiutes over the theft of your data..... in the uk the data protection act is supposed to stop this kind of thing and its soon gonna be tested in court... it may well turn out that e.a has to scrap origin and rightly so...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113314-EA-Changes-Origin-Terms-of-Services-Forbids-Class-Action-Lawsuits this really is not a good sign for u.s. citizens but it wont stand up in an e.u court...


the ability to opt out is essential and until e.a allow it then i aint buying there games that use it...

 

[casualcolors]

the ability to opt out is essential and until e.a allow it then i aint buying there games that use it...

That is your right, and obviously no one is trying to take that away from you. Instead the only thing you lose is access to their games that use it. How much that stings an individual is up to them.

When people are afraid about origin selling their data (which is such a vague concept in and of itself but I won't get into that here unless you want to) to a third party, it rings about as true as when people screamed that ubisoft's always-on DRM was a rootkit, when in reality they were mad because it was tagged as DRM or because their internet was too garbage to stay in the game for more than 10 minutes at a time.

 

[Shi no Tenshi]

Steam started out very much like Origin. And once again, if you don't have anything to hide then it's really not a problem. If you're not looking at kiddie porn they won't have any to see. If you aren't pirating games then they won't have anything to see and as an added bonus you won't be contributing your part to the ongoing eradication of the PC as a gaming platform by publishers, and if by some unforeseeable future hack it is used as a backdoor to your computer, join the class action lawsuit like every other similar occurrence in the history of the web.

Beyond that, it's already been proven that you can run Origin games without running Origin, so if you're the intrepid type, you can always perform your install and then never run Origin again.

I must say, I hate the argument that Steam started out like Origin. Steam came out quite a while ago, and if you were using any piece of software that had flaws of software from nearly a decade ago, the creator would be rightfully reamed.

Yes, Steam had issues when it first came out. Origin had all the information about that prior to its release, yet has similar issues...I call that garbage, myself. Progress has been made, and Origin came out at a point that was passed at least 5 years prior to its release. Unacceptable.

On a side note, and more of a personal preference: I can't stand the web interface of BF3. I don't like the feel of it. It just seems clunky.

 

[casualcolors]

I must say, I hate the argument that Steam started out like Origin. Steam came out quite a while ago, and if you were using any piece of software that had flaws of software from nearly a decade ago, the creator would be rightfully reamed.

Yes, Steam had issues when it first came out. Origin had all the information about that prior to its release, yet has similar issues...I call that garbage, myself. Progress has been made, and Origin came out at a point that was passed at least 5 years prior to its release. Unacceptable.

On a side note, and more of a personal preference: I can't stand the web interface of BF3. I don't like the feel of it. It just seems clunky.

Despite how it feels to you, Origin is coded better, uses less system resources, has less interaction bugs with the games that it services, provides better in-game overlay despite the fact that you'll never use it, and is generally completely hands-off. The only thing Steam actually does better than Origin is the storefront. lol.

I actually interact with Origin almost daily, as well as Steam. And for all of the times steam has failures in tracking an achievement, suffers a bandwidth choke on their upload servers, fails to sync the cloud service, causes an in-game crash in a title that can also be played off Steam sans mysterious crashes, or doesn't recognize itself online, I can only say I've seen Origin crash twice, for a combined 10 minutes. Once when BF3 was released, and once when everyone got to download Karkand. Aside from those 2 times, Origin has been steadier and offered better download speeds during peak hours and peak consumption than Steam in my observation.

I have no preference either way and I own over 100 games on Steam, but those are just the facts. Aside from the store, Steam still ain't all that.

For the people who are concerned about what data Origin scans, it looks over program files for other installed games. It might seem a little hamfisted, but it's an attempt at auto-updating itself with purchases that support it made via other means such as Amazon's digital store.

 

[Shi no Tenshi]

I would beg to differ on that. The overlay is slower, the in-game browser more laggy, and the uses of it tends to be quite buggy. I have had the cloud backup screw up no less than 3 times in the 10 times I have played ME3 so far. Small sample size yes, but to say that it works that much better is also a fallacy of only your own perception.

In the hundreds of times I have played games on steam, I have never had a problem with the cloud backup, in speed or in regular usage.

Every time I use the overlay in origin, it has been slower with its responsiveness, versus how my experience with steam has been. The integration of any sort of friend communication has been poor, and my friends have taken to using steam's chat service instead while we play.

I'm glad you have had less bugs with the small amount of interaction you are saying one has with origin...but that just is telling me that you aren't using enough features to run into the annoyance of using it.

 

[casualcolors]

I would beg to differ on that. The overlay is slower, the in-game browser more laggy, and the uses of it tends to be quite buggy. I have had the cloud backup screw up no less than 3 times in the 10 times I have played ME3 so far. Small sample size yes, but to say that it works that much better is also a fallacy of only your own perception.

In the hundreds of times I have played games on steam, I have never had a problem with the cloud backup, in speed or in regular usage.

Every time I use the overlay in origin, it has been slower with its responsiveness, versus how my experience with steam has been. The integration of any sort of friend communication has been poor, and my friends have taken to using steam's chat service instead while we play.

I'm glad you have had less bugs with the small amount of interaction you are saying one has with origin...but that just is telling me that you aren't using enough features to run into the annoyance of using it.

You've used a few of its features since ME3 has been released (a title plagued by countless non-origin related bugs so far as well). I've been using it every day since BF3 came out. I'm not sure who you think has experienced the smaller sample size.

I find its reaction with the overlay to be faster than Steam's, and in addition I love that you can disable origin interaction completely during games, significantly reducing its memory footprint. To be honest in that last regard it is leagues ahead of Steam.

My point ultimately is not that either steam or origin is perfect, but rather they are both sufficient. Origin does a lot of things better than Steam, whereas Steam has the better store front. The existence of Origin is more beneficial to gamers than the minor inconvenience of having a second program on your computer (that auto-launches itself when needed). It provides competition with Steam, in a market that Valve has dominated (digital distribution). Amazon Digital Downloads is providing another source of competition and with the aggressive sales that have been seen on Amazon, and on Origin (50% off a lot of their library this week) that gives Valve more cause to have weekend sales and such more often than they do. You have to remember that a lot of the incentive for Valve to post steam deals has waned over the last couple of years since the service has taken off, since they can automatically push a wider profit margin on any digital ware over the boxed copy that another distributor would have to work with. That said, the more competition in the digital distribution market, the better. At least for the consumer. That alone is enough reason to toss some business Amazon, Origin, GOG, GF etc's way.

A lot of the problems with Mass Effect 3 don't come from the publisher's side of the house. They come from a developer that committed to a date, built a game that in a lot of ways feels regressive, and was designed from the ground up with day one DLC (and don't fool yourself into thinking Bioware is such a benevolent studio as to not push this kind of crap just as hard as EA wants to).

 

[Shi no Tenshi]

You've used a few of its features since ME3 has been released (a title plagued by countless non-origin related bugs so far as well). I've been using it every day since BF3 came out. I'm not sure who you think has experienced the smaller sample size.

I find its reaction with the overlay to be faster than Steam's, and in addition I love that you can disable origin interaction completely during games, significantly reducing its memory footprint. To be honest in that last regard it is leagues ahead of Steam.

My point ultimately is not that either steam or origin is perfect, but rather they are both sufficient. Origin does a lot of things better than Steam, whereas Steam has the better store front. The existence of Origin is more beneficial to gamers than the minor inconvenience of having a second program on your computer (that auto-launches itself when needed). It provides competition with Steam, in a market that Valve has dominated (digital distribution). Amazon Digital Downloads is providing another source of competition and with the aggressive sales that have been seen on Amazon, and on Origin (50% off a lot of their library this week) that gives Valve more cause to have weekend sales and such more often than they do. You have to remember that a lot of the incentive for Valve to post steam deals has waned over the last couple of years since the service has taken off, since they can automatically push a wider profit margin on any digital ware over the boxed copy that another distributor would have to work with. That said, the more competition in the digital distribution market, the better. At least for the consumer. That alone is enough reason to toss some business Amazon, Origin, GOG, GF etc's way.

A lot of the problems with Mass Effect 3 don't come from the publisher's side of the house. They come from a developer that committed to a date, built a game that in a lot of ways feels regressive, and was designed from the ground up with day one DLC (and don't fool yourself into thinking Bioware is such a benevolent studio as to not push this kind of crap just as hard as EA wants to).

I would just like to respond to one thing, as this argument is serving no purpose. That one thing is this: I have also been using it since BF3. I have purchased 3 games on Origin, and each one has had hassles. You are going from your experience, I am going from a dozen people I know personally's experience.

You cannot even concede that it has issues, and seem to just want to strawman everything. Not worth my time, and nobody will really get anything out of this by reading it.

 

[casualcolors]

I would just like to respond to one thing, as this argument is serving no purpose. That one thing is this: I have also been using it since BF3. I have purchased 3 games on Origin, and each one has had hassles. You are going from your experience, I am going from a dozen people I know personally's experience.

You cannot even concede that it has issues, and seem to just want to strawman everything. Not worth my time, and nobody will really get anything out of this by reading it.

I never said it was without issues. It was posited in this thread that steam is somehow better, when steam exhibits the same problems and with more frequency, at the cost of more system resource no less. If you can point out anywhere that I suggested that Origin has no flaws, be my guest. You took it that way because you're exasperated a. with me and b. with your purchase.

And since you don't seem to acknowledge (due to being intentionally obtuse or that you just decided not to read a portion of my post, whichever) that ultimately the existence of a successful Origin (and for that matter every other digital distributor that could potentially compete with Valve) is above all else financially beneficial to the PC gaming community, I have to agree with you that this will be a complete waste of your time.

If you do get curious as to why I might be sticking my neck out for Origin, you should read back to the beginning of this thread where people ask questions like, "I don't even see how it's legal?!" because they don't even understand what it does or how it works. And at the same time their lack of perspective (or just intelligence in general) unintentionally favors a market where Valve monopolizes digital distribution and sets the price on their own whim. Personally, I don't prefer that scenario. That could be due to the fact that I finished 10th grade economics, or the fact that I pay for my own games.

 

[Slava]

I would just like to respond to one thing, as this argument is serving no purpose. That one thing is this: I have also been using it since BF3. I have purchased 3 games on Origin, and each one has had hassles. You are going from your experience, I am going from a dozen people I know personally's experience.

You cannot even concede that it has issues, and seem to just want to strawman everything. Not worth my time, and nobody will really get anything out of this by reading it.

This Casualcolors guy must be paid by EA or some other publisher or several .. or all of them to defend them. I have to give it to him, he is quite eloquent and can be persuasive but you cannot win any points in a discussion/argument with him. He is always right and you are a moron. Give him a few more posts and he will call you a moron or unintelligent or some such. Just check my thread entitled "The future of gaming: Will we let them continue to abuse us?"

I hope the community at Tom's figures him out soon.

 

[jaguarskx]

Personally, I don't really like any type of DRM whether it is Origin or Steam. I think I will buy ME3, but as soon as I finish the game I'm going to uninstall it and Origin.

One thing that really irks me is the Day 1 DLC fiasco.

 

[Slava]

Personally, I don't really like any type of DRM whether it is Origin or Steam. I think I will buy ME3, but as soon as I finish the game I'm going to uninstall it and Origin.

One thing that really irks me is the Day 1 DLC fiasco.

I can't say I am the authority on this but I've read on a few forums that uninstalling Origin DOES NOT remove SecuROM spyware.

You need to Google SecuROM and go to their web site. They have a utility which will remove SecuROM but once you do that NONE of the Steam or Origin games will work unless you Activate them again (various games have different numbers of Activations available to you). And to activate them again you will need to install Steam, Origin, etc.

I can't be one thousand percent sure about the above, but this is what I've read a number of times on different forums.

Research it further to be sure.

 

[jaguarskx]

The problem with removing SecuROM is that I need it for Fallout 3 which I still play from time to time. I love how Fallout 3 was designed as an open-ended game; something that Mass Effect will never be.

 

[casualcolors]

I can't say I am the authority on this but I've read on a few forums that uninstalling Origin DOES NOT remove SecuROM spyware.

You need to Google SecuROM and go to their web site. They have a utility which will remove SecuROM but once you do that NONE of the Steam or Origin games will work unless you Activate them again (various games have different numbers of Activations available to you). And to activate them again you will need to install Steam, Origin, etc.

I can't be one thousand percent sure about the above, but this is what I've read a number of times on different forums.

Research it further to be sure.

Securom isn't spyware, and you should read the Tweakers write up on it.

That said, you need the games activated through either service if they are games that can only run through servers provided by valve/ea/etc or if they are games with cloud save features and such. After activation, many games can be made to run without either service running in the background, but not all titles can be manipulated this way.

 

[Slava]

....

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