EA acknowledges that Gamers dislike Origin – Video Games Update
David DeMartini who is the head of Electronic Arts (EA) digital distribution service Origin accepts that gamers do not want change and they are opposed to the idea of having two popular digital distribution services.
Origin started off as EA Download Manager (EADM) and was simply a tool for patching and updating regular retail games. EA then started to offer full game downloads to users who had already purchased the game and registered it on EADM. EA announced that it
will be scrapping EADM altogether and will be starting Origin, a digital distribution service and online game store similar to Valve’s Steam. Origin first came out on June 3, 2011.
Gamers were not too pleased with the news of another digital distribution service launching, especially since EA was behind it. EA has acquired a reputation of being ‘evil’ and ‘greedy’ over the years and many gamers believe that the giant publisher is responsible
for ‘destroying’ good developers once it acquires them.
One of the reasons for all the hate was that EA removed many of its popular games from Steam’s library and made them exclusive to Origin. This annoyed many gamers who wanted all their online purchases on just one platform, namely Steam which has been out
since 2003 and has created a very loyal fan-base since then.
Origin’s End User License Agreement (EULA) also contained a pretty nasty clause which gave EA the right to snoop around the users’ computer while Origin was running on the system. Many gamers called out EA on that and claimed that they will boycott the service.
It also didn’t help that the Origin launch was riddled with bugs and issues for many users and on top of that gamers with issues had to deal with horrendous customer support.
"People forget that when Steam launched, there was a lot of backlash from the core. Origin represents a change, and anytime EA does something that is significant in the industry, it generates a certain amount of reaction,” said DeMartini in defence of the
recently launched digital distribution service.
Well, it’s good to see that EA is aware of where Origin stands with the gamers but so far they don’t seem to be making an effort to actually improve the service as the Origin forums are still filled with threads reporting various bugs and issues with the
service.
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