Valve Boss: EA Origin Isn't ''Doing Anything Super-Well Yet''

[Guest]

Gabe Newell had quite a few things to say about EA's Origin service on the Seven Day Cooldown podcast.

Valve Boss: EA Origin Isn't ''Doing Anything Super-Well Yet'' : Read more

 

[casualcolors]

This article would be more endearing to me if Valve was speaking from point of higher moral ground. Unfortunately, as bad as EA is, Valve still hasn't bothered to add independent volume control to their game trailers since it doesn't have anything to do with pushing games out of the door. Neither company is a sparkling example of competence and Valve's customer service rivals EA's for which is the most abjectly lacking. Furthermore for every bug Origin has, Steam has an equally annoying counterpart bug. If it weren't for potential good sales, and in EA's case a couple of decent exclusive titles, I wouldn't use either of these services at all. By any objective metric, they both reflect an industry catering to users with monumentally low expectations.

 

[mrpijey]

Why would EA ever allow their stuff back onto Steam? EA has by now shown it's all about the money and not a bit (hah!) about customer satisfaction, quality or long term support. So naturally EA wants to close in all their products into Origin and never let it go, thinking they can be a serious competitor to Steam...

 

[casualcolors]

[citation][nom]mrpijey[/nom]Why would EA ever allow their stuff back onto Steam? EA has by now shown it's all about the money and not a bit (hah!) about customer satisfaction, quality or long term support. So naturally EA wants to close in all their products into Origin and never let it go, thinking they can be a serious competitor to Steam...[/citation]

Perhaps if you had a clearer understanding of history as recent as within the last 12 months, you'd be familiar with the reason why EA pulled their games from the Steam service in the first place. Their products that weren't originally part and parcel to the Origin service were rolled into it to essentially fill the role of the old EA downloader, which is presently defunct. The games were pulled from Steam because Valve attempted to assert a DLC policy concerning Battlefield 3 in particular that was disagreeable to EA and bordered on harmful to other retailers that EA supplies both retail game copies as well as DLC to. Regardless of how you want to look at EA, both they and Valve are eminently shrewd and you shouldn't be misled into thinking there is any good guy or bad guy when it comes to corporate relations in the world. That's an entirely too simple light to view things in.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Origin sucks. They need to ditch it and take advantage of Steam once again.

 

[rantoc]

Orgin downloads are always at 9-10mb/sec, Steam downloads about 1-2mb/sec. I hope Valve turn up the steam, the service is closer to still water than steam as of late - At least in Northern Europe. Both are download services and download speed is in my book one of the biggest values as a customer.

 

[DroKing]

EA's full of it. They pulled them all off steam because they wanna jack prices up period. I already compared prices steam n origin on website and I seen some games being 30 buck more expensive on origin over steam. EA actions are very obvious no discussion.

 

[thrakazog]

I'm not sure why there's so much hooha over origin. I use both steam and origin, and have never had problems with them. I've seen a couple new releases from EA appear on both origin and steam. Warp was one, don't remember the other. As far as I'm concerned, they are just a couple stores to buy stuff at. Whichever has the best price price, I get it there. For instance, been watching steam for a long time looking for a sale on street fighter 4 AE. But it's always been $39.99, never cheaper. When origin had it for $10, I grabbed it.

I agree, for the most part, they don't have a lot of stuff for sale yet on origin. But they are still growing.
I'll use them to buy stuff whenever it's cheap or something I want, the same as I do on steam.

 

[dameon51]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]Orgin downloads are always at 9-10mb/sec, Steam downloads about 1-2mb/sec. I hope Valve turn up the steam, the service is closer to still water than steam as of late - At least in Northern Europe. Both are download services and download speed is in my book one of the biggest values as a customer.[/citation]
I've gotten 4.5 mb/s here (japan)

 

[zybch]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]Orgin downloads are always at 9-10mb/sec, Steam downloads about 1-2mb/sec. I hope Valve turn up the steam, the service is closer to still water than steam as of late - At least in Northern Europe. Both are download services and download speed is in my book one of the biggest values as a customer.[/citation]
Just change the servers steam uses to the US ones and you'll see your download speeds improve almost immediately. Its the same for me in Australia, I get okay'ish speeds but when I change to the US servers my game downloads fly.

 

[zachusaman]

[citation][nom]casualcolors[/nom]Perhaps if you had a clearer understanding of history as recent as within the last 12 months, you'd be familiar with the reason why EA pulled their games from the Steam service in the first place. Their products that weren't originally part and parcel to the Origin service were rolled into it to essentially fill the role of the old EA downloader, which is presently defunct. The games were pulled from Steam because Valve attempted to assert a DLC policy concerning Battlefield 3 in particular that was disagreeable to EA and bordered on harmful to other retailers that EA supplies both retail game copies as well as DLC to. Regardless of how you want to look at EA, both they and Valve are eminently shrewd and you shouldn't be misled into thinking there is any good guy or bad guy when it comes to corporate relations in the world. That's an entirely too simple light to view things in.[/citation]

From what I understand, Steams game policy is this: If your game has DLC, it must be available to steam users. EA went out of their way and made some crysis 2 dlc exclusive to some other service, and Steam pulled the plug.
(then Crysis 2 went ahead and won the most pirated game of the year award)

 

[alvine]

i only use origin for battlefield 3, other than than steam ftw i love their weekly deals

 

[mindless728]

The only thing that bothers me about Origin is the fact that I know have to have a separate digital locker for my games. Its a pain in the ass to be honest.

 

[tolham]

competition is good, but origin has a ways to go before i'll touch it.

 

[bucknutty]

I have been using steam now for like 7 years. It works well and I am used to it. Origin and even Battle.net are just sort of their. They are not good or bad, I use them because I must. I really wish I could port all my Origin game and Battle.net games into steam and only have one log in to remeber.

 

[Kand]

EA Origin sucks big time, you need to install their software to get 1 game !!!
with STEAM i get games from 10 developers inside the same software !

 

[Guest]

I have not purchased at least 6 games from EA as I don't want to deal with another download/gaming platform. Smarten up, EA!

 

[matt_b]

EA assured that the service wasn’t meant to be a competitor for Valve’s Steam

I had a very good laugh at this line. Money/greed, deception, price-jacking, etc/ are synonymous with EA. Their PR can try and spread jokes like the line above all they want, but their reputation has a deep history and most consumers know better to not trust what this company has to say. Too bad I haven't been able to play ME3, Crysis 2, or DA 2 yet, my antivirus keeps flagging this thing called Origin as malware

 

[mrpijey]

[quotemsg=9362604,4,489803]Perhaps if you had a clearer understanding of history as recent as within the last 12 months, you'd be familiar with the reason why EA pulled their games from the Steam service in the first place. Their products that weren't originally part and parcel to the Origin service were rolled into it to essentially fill the role of the old EA downloader, which is presently defunct. The games were pulled from Steam because Valve attempted to assert a DLC policy concerning Battlefield 3 in particular that was disagreeable to EA and bordered on harmful to other retailers that EA supplies both retail game copies as well as DLC to. Regardless of how you want to look at EA, both they and Valve are eminently shrewd and you shouldn't be misled into thinking there is any good guy or bad guy when it comes to corporate relations in the world. That's an entirely too simple light to view things in.[/quotemsg]

Oh I understand it just fine thank you. My main issue isn't with Origin itself (even if I hate that I need to have yet another leaky service with my personal info just to play a game) but with EA that is by now well known for its hatred towards paying customers.

And one very good point made in this thread is that Steam covers a lot of publishers. Origin covers EA, period. So when will we have BethesdaStore? ID-Wallet? MojangShop? ActivisionDollarSqueezer? Every publisher makes their own little store, just to pump customers of more personal info, draconian copy protections and buggy inbetween-software to slow down and cripple our computers... Steam was first and it has developed to a well respected and well used service. And one would think that companies would try to use the most known and most populated services to promote their software, not to make small stores of their own carrying a handful of games instead of thousands like Steam.

And I also know very well the corporate world is everything but a dance on roses but here I choose the lesser of two evils - Valve. Valve has quality products behind them, a well established customer support and they listen to their fans. EA has gone from a respected developer to a black hole where there is no escape from - once EA sets their sight on a good developer they get sucked in and forced to make crappy console rehashes and endless sequels, each worse than the previous. I can't remember when the last time I was really excited over an EA game. Valve has continued to suprise me with excellent titles that stand up to time even today. Half-Life series. Portal series. Team Fortress 2. Heck, even Counter-Strike which I refuse to touch, but I can still see the quality behind it. With EA it's been endless crap products that may have looked nice at the surface, but quickly fell apart as soon as you touched it. And these endless sequels... The Sims series being the most notorious ones. The utter crappy Need For Speed series they dragged through the mud. And now Battlefield going the same way. There is just no end to their hunger of swallowing up creative studios and remaking them into drones, forking out one bad sequel after another.

There was once a time I pulled a smile everytime I heard "EA Games - It's In the Game!". Today it's more "Oh crap, I hope this isn't one more cheesy console port sequel...". And yes, I am old enough to have experienced Skate Or Die! which was their first game. i still have the original floppy.

Sorry for the long post, but I just don't have much respect for EA anymore after their swallowed up and killed most of my favorite developer studios - Bullfrog, Interplay, Binary Systems, Origin Systems (Wing Commander ), Maxis, Digital Illusions (for whom I worked for). And now I have to use their shoddy software just to play an occasional game from them (which is Mass Effect 3, and soon Crysis 3). Phooey.

EA, give Valve a nice present, kiss and make up and strike some kind of deal. For the good of the customers.

 

[catatafish]

I couldn't care less about any of this except for one thing......pardoning banned players. Banned means banned, not grounded. This just tells me that there are A LOT of banned players for them to forgive them and get them back as paying customers. If Pete Rose can't return to baseball, then I_Use_Aimbot_to_Dart_Spam shouldn't get to return to BF3.

 

[hapkido]

[citation][nom]mindless728[/nom]The only thing that bothers me about Origin is the fact that I know have to have a separate digital locker for my games. Its a pain in the ass to be honest.[/citation]

No it's not. When we used to have to make individual boot disks for games and reboot the computer every time we wanted to play, that was a PITA. Starting two separate programs is not inconvenient at all, especially considering you can start both with Windows.

Steam has a larger library of games, better deals, and better community features. Origin has a smaller footprint, faster download speeds, and lets you choose where to install games. As far as game launchers, they both do their job equally well.

 

[ubercake]

Sure, EA got the store/purchase part of the Origin process function right away. But it's the game launch part of it that sucks a mean sack.

The Origin game connection process / launcher is what keeps the Origin product as Beta (check the title bar next time you run Origin) on our desktops. It bites. Don't hit the 'Close Game' button during the 'initializing...', 'logging in...', or 'connecting...' phases of the launch in BF3 or you'll end up with a hung bf3.exe process.

It currently can't even come close to competing with Steam from that standpoint.

EA should never have unleashed a crappy beta Origin product on their paying customers.

 

[frostyfireball]

EA's loss, I won't be buying EA games if I have to do it through Origin. ME3 will be the exception, but after that I'm done with them until Origin dies.

 

[giovanni86]

Well said Gabe newell. Steam is a great platform for games, but it wasn't always all nice and smooth, took it a long time to get there. EA is known for wanting $$$, and although i will agree prices on steam are cheaper at times I have seen EA have lower prices then steam on certain days(Keep your EYES peeled at ALL times) Saying that though Origin isn't even a year old and i baffles me how many people hate it. I haven't had an issue yet meaning it could be complete USER ERROR when it comes to running origin. Had a friend who had an issue until i checked something on his settings on origin and whalala game ran =D No real magic trick to it, just an unchecked box.. The whole browser thing blows for BF3 and i do hope that they implement the game with its own menu with its own create a local server if they ever stop supporting it(that also includes releasing the tool kit for modders out there) besides that i find 0 problems running both at the same time. But people will whine and moan because its in the nature for babys to cry any time something doesn't go there way. Oh well. Back to BF3.

 

[billybobser]

Won't use EA service, so won't be buying EA games.

I'm sure EA's profits are rising based on this news.

Given how cuthroat EA are, it's hard to imagine their service growing into anything other than an online shop for their own games, as opposed to a multi publisher distribution engine.