Origin Message Board older than one year ago

Battlefield 3's launch was plagued with online issues, blocking gamers from going online with the popular multiplayer shooter, booting others and causing wide-spread server issues. But in an interview this morning with Kotaku, Electronic Arts says that after shipping 10 million copies of the game and having more than 2.2 million players log in to play, they think most of the online problems are behind them now. More »

#battlefield I bet you're wondering why no one loves you on the computer version of Battlefield 3. I bet some of you get booted after a couple minutes of play every... single... time... you log into a match. Don't worry it's not personal, it's just a bug. More »

EA says that 5 million people use Origin every day. Note that this isn't a measure of popularity; like Steam, it's hard to avoid a service when you practically have to use it to play certain games. More »

#origin While plenty of folks have a beef with EA's Origin, one Florida-based builder of custom gaming PCs has a particularly unique problem with the digital delivery service: People keep mistaking them for it. More »

If you're looking to opt out of the class-action lawsuit prevention clauses inserted by certain companies like Electronic Arts for Origin and Sony for PSN, a new service is seeking to streamline the process. The trick about opting out is consumers must send something known as a physical letter and use a "stamp" (an antiquated method of payment, we understand, to facilitate this analog-mail). Because this letter-mailing artform has been lost to time, GamersOptOut.com will help.

It goes without saying that you shouldn't do bad stuff, but what if you technically don't know you're doing something bad? That's the potential situation with the Battlefield 3 beta right now on PC, which has apparently been hacked to allow for up to 128 players on the Operation Metro map. But here's the thing: these hacked matches show up in the regular Battlelog, so players could potentially stumble in and not realize they're doing something wrong.

Regardless, EA wants you to know that doing so will put your Origin account in danger and potentially limit your access to all of the games you downloaded through EA's digital distribution platform to none. The above exchange, which allegedly went down in the EA forums last week, has since been pulled.

We've contacted EA for an official statement on the matter and will update this post accordingly.

[Thanks, Matt]

#battlefield Pretty much anything involving the word "Origin" and "ban" has PC gamers on a hair-trigger, and news yesterday from Battlefield 3 developer DICE certainly won't lower anyone's blood pressure. More »

#electronicarts While Sony's new "don't sue us" terms of service are terrible, let's not focus just on Sony. Other companies are now free to do the same thing. More »

That free game that Origin is offering for a Battlefield 3 pre-order? It's totally Dead Space 2! So now on top of early beta access and a host of DLC, EA is offering even greater incentive by offering a great game. Seems like a good deal to us!

But of course there's a catch: there's only a limited number of copies of Dead Space 2 available. It's really silly, considering the free copy is a download. What's the matter, EA? No more storage space in the old digital warehouse?

If you want to go with Origin, you've got until September 19 to pre-order Battlefield 3 for your free ticket to the nightmarish space-romp.

Wing Commander 3: Heart of The Tiger is available now on GOG.com for $6. Promoted at the time as an "Origin Interactive Movie" and filmed in Hollywood (remember when that mattered?), the game is still a great example of early 3D graphics, FMV and an industry having a "movies are the future of games" identity crisis.

Beyond Mark Hamill (Star Wars) in the lead, the game also featured John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Sliders) and Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange, Heroes).

If sprites and animations are more your thing, Wing Commander 1 + 2 are also available on GOG as a bundle for $6. There's no Mark Hamill, but there's totally a main character with blue hair.

#syndicate The forever-rumored reboot of EA's Syndicate franchise, originally created by the defunct Bullfrog Productions in 1993, is real. First gameplay details and a handful of screen shots have just leaked from Electronic Arts' Origin store, giving us our first glimpse at developer Starbreeze's new game. More »

#valve Electronic Arts' Origin service is running a three-for-the-price-of-two sale, on selected titles, this weekend. Three of the eligible games are published by Valve. EA and Valve haven't been very friendly of late, so perhaps this is a make-up gesture by Valve? More »

#battlefield Available as a preorder bonus at select retailers and EA's Origin service, the relatively unexciting Physical Warfare Pack gives us an excuse to look at more Battlefield 3, which is always good. More »

#gamingappoftheday The stealth of Metal Gear, from its top-down days, meets the path-drawing mechanics of Flight Control in Spy Mouse for iPhone and iPod touch. How well do stealth and touchscreen controls go together? More »

This week, people finally got around to reading the end user license agreement for EA's download service Origin, and found that it allowed EA to collect personal and usage data for marketing purposes. This contrasts with Steam's EULA, which allows Valve to collect and store information related to Steam and other Valve software only.

In response, EA issued a new, much softer-sounding version (PDF link here) of Origin's EULA. The new version no longer mentions marketing, but maintains the right to collect "nonpersonally identifiable data, including computer configuration, software usage, and peripherals connected. EA specifies that this data collection is done "for purposes of improving our products and services, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of software updates, dynamically served content and product support as well as communicating with you."

EA also added a note that seems directly inspired by the outcry over the last EULA. "EA knows that you care how information about you is collected, used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly," the document now reads. "Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and EA would never sell your personally identifiable information to anyone, nor would it ever use spyware or install spyware on users' machines."

#steam Electronic Arts has Origin. Valve has Steam. Both want you as a customer for their online game store. And so far, neither can work out their differences enough to ensure that Electronic Arts' games will be available on Valve's massive computer download service. More »

We already knew that pre-ordering Battlefield 3 on Origin (the only place on PC to play the game, of course) would net gamers access to an early beta in September, but it would seem EA is sweetening the pot with another offer: a free game. According to Ars Technica, one individual was sent the following statement via email after pre-ordering the game through Origin:
As a special thank you for pre-ordering Battlefield 3 early at Origin, we're offering you a bonus PC digital download game. Please apply the code below at the shopping cart to redeem one PC Digital version of one of our recommended shooter titles: Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2 or Medal of Honor. The price will be reduced to $0 after applying the code at your shopping cart. Hurry-this offer is only good for the month of August, and is exclusive to Origin customers only. See below for more details. Could this be enough to sway the haters? Probably not, but it's still a pretty sweet deal for PC gamers, if we may say so. Still, it's all through Origin, so depending on how you feel about EA's new platform, it may not be so sweet a deal after all.

Regardless of how you how you choose to purchase Battlefield 3, it looks like registration to EA's Origin service will be required. The news comes via DICE community manager Daniel Matros, who confirmed a lone gamer's suspicion via Twitter. In other words, all retail and digital copies, regardless of whether they were purchased via Origin or another digital distributor, players must have an origin membership.

It's not too surprising, given EA's recent trends. The company doesn't host its games on Xbox Live or PSN servers, instead requiring players to register for a separate EA account. The company also recently revealed that Battlefield 3 will not be offered via Steam, though it claims this is due to "restrictive terms" on Valve's part.

#battlefield Just for the record, if you're going to play Battlefield 3 on the PC, you're going to create and use an Electronic Arts Origin account. Period. Developer DICE has confirmed what, really, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, a couple days ago on Twitter. More »

#battlefield A few weeks ago, a list of retailers from which you'd be able to pre-order Battlefield 3, surely the biggest PC game of the year, was released. Popular online shopfront Steam wasn't among them. More »

While other retailers will hand out early access to Battlefield 3 DLC, Origin's pre-order bonus for Battlefield 3 is early access to ... Battlefield 3. If you buy the PC version of the game through EA's new store -- on any platform, as far as we can tell -- you'll get early access to the Battlefield 3 open beta "when it goes live in September 2011."

You'll also get the Back to Karkand DLC, two exclusive items for Battlefield Play4Free, and, if you buy the PC download version, the Physical Warfare Pack. So you basically get the stuff the other retailers offer in addition to the beta. EA is making a pretty good bribe argument in favor of its new shop, here.

Some astonishing controversy from Friday that escaped our gaze – Devolver Digital, they publishing Serious Sam 3: BFE, have announced that they’ve scrapped their planned proprietary digital distribution service, Krundle, and instead are opting to use Steam. And not Origin. The press release, containing their reasoning and what could have been (including features such as “Free-to-Play-for-Fifty-Bucks games wherein the consumer is free to play the game once it is purchased for $50″, and velvet-covered jet skis), is below.

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When it comes to digital distribution services, EA's Origin is the new kid in school. And who wants to hang out with the new kid? Nobody, that's who, unless the new kid has pockets full of candy. And by candy, we mean really cheap video-games.

From now until tomorrow, you can promise to be Origin's best friend forever in exchange for 36 PC games and/or expansion packs on sale for $4.99 each, including Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Spore, Mirror's Edge, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, and Littlest Pet Shop. Whether or not Origin's popularity on the playground will last when the candy runs out remains to be seen, but for right now we're willing to trade our chocolate milk for a copy of Sim City 4.

[Thanks, Thomas!]

During an investor conference call yesterday, EA CEO John Riccitiello formalized the company's three-point plan for the forseeable future. For fiscal 2012 and beyond, the three pillars of EA's business growth are IP: "building roughly twelve franchises into year-round businesses across a range of platforms, packaged goods, and digital," Platform, "building a solid ecosystem for leveraging our content and services, focusing on our own platform, Origin, while supporting our retail partners," and, finally, Talent: "investing in our creative and engineering talent to drive and maintain our IP across multiple platforms from console to social and PC to mobile."

The "IP" central to EA's strategy includes, of course, things like Madden, Battlefield, The Sims, and FIFA. "Platform" is easily summarized as "Origin." As for "Talent," that includes high-profile acquisitions like PopCap as well as growth in existing EA studios -- like the Austin expansion EA just announced.

#review The first full day I spent actually playing games on the Origin PC EON17-S gaming laptop was a day filled with the wonders of 3D PC gaming, NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses only leaving my face during brief trips to see my newborn sons at the other end of the hospital. More »

#mobile Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed on the iPhone and iPad will use Electronic Art's new Origin online service, allowing players to access a universal friend's list, as well as extra race tracks and in-game cash, the publisher said today. More »

While EA insists that its new (-ly rebranded) download service Origin has "never been about" competing with Steam in the PC space, the same can't be said for Origin and Apple's mobile Game Center service. During its Summer Showcase event, the megapublisher just demoed a mobile version of Origin running on iOS (through an iPad app in this instance, pictured above) promising a cross-platform experience using the same Origin ID you (may or may not) have on your PC.

While originally announced alongside the PC application, today was the first time EA demoed the mobile offering. The Origin app will let you see your friend list and its accompanying news feed, sharing what your digi-friends are doing in Origin, regardless of platform. The EA rep then launched a new version of Need for Speed on iOS directly from Origin; this version uses Origin to push your friends' leaderboard data into the game, a feature EA dubiously claims wasn't possible before Origin. More relevant was the Scrabble demo showing the game being played simultaneously across four platforms, including iPad, iPhone, Android, and Facebook. Because your games are stored "in the cloud" (read: Origin) you can start your game on any platform and continue it on another. EA says the game will be available on Android next week for free, and should support "almost every device at launch."

The Origin mobile app will support the iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, though EA hasn't said when it will be made available. We'll update this post when we've got more information.

#steamvsorigin EA and Crytek's Crysis 2 was available on Valve's Steam service until this week. Now it's available "only on Origin," Electronic Arts' new digital store (and a few others, actually). Despite the change and conjecture about the motivations behind it, EA says it was not behind the decision to pull Crysis 2 from Steam. More »

#crysomemore You may have missed your chance to purchase shooter Crysis 2 on anything but EA's new Origin service, the re-branded EA Store that aims to go head-to-head with the likes of Valve's Steam platform. Crysis 2 has been yanked from Steam, with EA saying it's now available "only on Origin." More »

In the realm of online download services, Steam has few legitimate competitors. It's ubiquitous with the concept of digital distribution on the PC, to the point where anyone directly challenging Valve's online retail behemoth would need to come with some serious firepower to even make a dent in the thing's usage numbers.

Evidently, EA is betting that it has the firepower necessary to be successful with its own entry into the digital distribution space. EA today announced Origin, a new online download service that, on the surface, looks more or less like a re-branding of the publisher's original online store. However, EA is banking on turning Origin into the go-to place to purchase EA products online. Over 150 titles, including PC and console titles (which, yes, you will still have to have shipped to you) are now available on the newly-launched website.

More interestingly, EA plans to offer "exclusive special editions" of games like Battlefield 3, Alice: Madness Returns, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and FIFA 12. And then there is the small matter of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which EA states will only be available online via the Origin service. Yes, those married to the antiquated notions of "stores" and "physical copies of games" can still go buy a boxed copy in a retail store, but for those looking to pre-order and download online, Origin will be your sole option in the matter.

Origin does have some other practical uses, especially in the mobile space. Origin will have its own mobile application, and will be integrated directly into EA's mobile games. There are also social networking features, including friends lists and the ability to see what EA games your friends are playing, though those are things most any gaming service includes nowadays.

This whole thing becomes extremely interesting when you consider that EA has traditionally been Valve's distribution partner for its various console games. EA most recently acted as distributor for Valve's acclaimed puzzle/adventure sequel, Portal 2. One might think that this would leave the relationship between the two companies perhaps... a bit strained. Though if EA just plans to stick to selling its own games, maybe Valve will simply treat this like the buzzing of flies around its all-powerful head, and simply go on about its business as usual, paying no mind to this new player in the game.

Regardless, it's an intriguing shift in priority for EA, who clearly see online distribution as something they want a bigger piece of in terms of marketshare. As a streetwise stick-up man once said: "You come at the king, you best not miss."

So is Origin going to be Avon Barksdale, making lots of noise but ultimately unable to bring down the king? Or will it be Kenard, the deadly threat you just don't see coming?