Maximum PC

So in the oct.11 issue, the article "EA Vents Steam" on pg. 8, talks about EA's Origin platform and EA's tiff with Valve over dlc. The article states "not only will Battlefield 3 require Origin validation regardless of purchase method, including retail, but the Origin client will be necessary to launch the game." The article describes this as a power play for digital market share, which I agree with to an extent, but it seems to me that it is more of a softlock form of anti-piracy. What ever happened to the good old days when you went to the store, bought a game, installed it, clicked the icon and was set forth upon a great journey? Now we are expected to maintain a constant connection to play a single player campaign so that EA can gather market data, system specs, userbase data, and god knows what else? EA has been angering me with thier actions for a couple years now. Starting with Need for Speed Shift which had unplayable broken code until an update was put out, then the hoops I had to go through to play Dragon Age II, which I preordered and picked up at midnight only to get home, install it, and find out that I had to wait untill midnight Pacific time to play it? I for one am now fully boycotting EA. I will not pay them another red cent until they back off and stop trying to control consumers. I have sent many letters and emails to EA complaining about their failings which seem to fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, since they will continue to make millions of dollars from those console gamers, me not buying a copy wont hurt them. I can only hope that others will see that EA is trying to pull all rights away from the user and force consumers to use thier software on thier terms (for a very dear price once Origin becomes subscription based like everything else). The reason I was intrigued by PC gaming in the first place was the versatility of the platform. The ability to create mod packs and essentially have free reign with MY copy of the software. Now companies like EA want 60+ dollars for a piece of software which you will have no rights over and no flexibility to play around with it. I call BS on that.

....and they keep wondering why there are so many pirates out there ....I will not be buying the game because of the DRM. It won't run in XP anyway.

Nasty

Usually you don't have any rights over the software other than to play it.

But yeah, EA is screwing up a lot lately, I still can't get over what they did to Command and Conquer 4, but I will buy BF3 no matter what, and that's the reason they keep doing whatever they want, they know that there will always be the hardcore fans who will buy their beloved games no matter what.
I hate myself for not being able to not buy the game and tell them to stop messing with us.

I agreed with everything you wrote .. especially your stand to stop buying their products .. you said 'my copy'.

It is not yours. You don't own anything other than a license to use the software as they see fit. This is true of all software.

If they don't want the help of the mod community to extend their games, that is their decision (and a poor one, in my opinion) ... but it is important to remember how and why the practice of purchasing software works.

There are pirates because people are greedy and assholes.

People pirated Torchlight ... it costs $20, is a wonderful game and works properly.

Yes, but those asshole will pirate no matter what, wouldn't you agree? It's not as if DRM stops them, and like you said, they're greedy assholes so they probably wouldn't buy the game anyhow. This leaves us with a really messed up system.
So, say some pirate goes to the Pirate Bay, downloads Dragon Age with the DLC and expansion, and then runs it with all of the bells and whistles, no problems. Me, on the other hand, I buy it on Steam, the Ultimate Edition no less, and I have a much harder process to go through. After I wait for it to download, I have to input my CD key, get redirected to a browser window where I register for a Bioware/EA forum account, input my CD key again, run DAO, log in to my Bioware/EA account in-game, look for where to input my DLC key, go back to the browser and navigate through the menus to find my DLC input area, and input the DLC key. Once that's done, I have, to run DAO again, manually set every DLC item to download, and now I have to leave the game running for 5 hours as it pulls 7 gigs of content off of EA's slow server. Once that's done, I go in to the game, and I finally start playing.
I can tell you, if they pull this shit again, I won't buy whatever game it is, no matter how excited I am for it. I already have a limited amount of free time, and don't want to deal with it, so I'd rather just play one of the games I own, or buy a different game. If I really want the game, I'll wait for it to be $5 on Steam instead of buying it new. That results in either a lost sale or a 90% profit loss. Pirates still do their thing, though, and now EA's down $45-$50.

Also, Torchlight is a good example, because I bought that game, and then just clicked on it. Bada-bing, bada-boom, I'm playing it in less than 2 minutes after downloading it.

I don't disagree that DRM sucks. I do disagree with anything that provides justification for piracy. Stealing is wrong.

Thankfully, Canada isn't crippled by stupid laws like the DMCA. Once I've purchased a game, I'm allowed to crack it for my own convenience. Freedom is a wonderful thing.

Yup! ... and what I do in the privacy of my home nobody knows if I don't tell em.

Nasty

i agree too many games make you go through shenanigans just to get started .. the only bright point about the drm is i dont need to use my disc to start the game once its loaded and activated i just have to click on the shortcut
unfortunatly the old days of just installing and getting started is gone except for the smaller publishers like torchlight or fate

Time to pack my bags and take a leap across the border. In fact I learned just how balls deep into the US Toronto was when I discovered I'm farther north then it... milder weather, bit more freedom with my software license, and public health care? I feel an "aye" coming on (or is they "eeh". That sounds indifferent though...).

Just one thing I hate more than DRM is dreaded wall of texts... please use the space bar to separate your thoughts. I would normally just reply with tl;dr in situations like this.

Anyhow, EA's Origin is just what Ubisoft did with their games and yes, I don't like the idea of having my single player game requiring a constant internet connection to play the game. It's a moot point for most situations since I have internet 99% of the times, mobile or otherwise.

What really annoys me about EA's Origin and their position of why they left Steam was the fact that they couldn't control DLC's exclusively. I like steam, its a nice system, it works, the fact that I have all my games in one launcher is a great allure for me. I don't like the idea of having yet another program running in the background, but I have come to accepted this fact just to play battlefield; at least I was able to port over all of my EA games to Origin, mostly for shits and giggles.

Probably the most disappointing thing about the whole point to port over to Origin to use BF3 is that they didn't integrate battlelog directly into Origin itself... WTF? So I gotta have origin, to launch my browser to launch the game? Then whats the point of having origin to begin with? And the fact that the friends list in Origin doesn't port over to battlelog seems stupid if we are forced to use our origin username as our BF alias (I hope not though)

Final thoughts, Please for the love of god EA, don't f*ck this up. It's more than annoying enough for us to accept an EA downloader to run full time in the background to play your games.

Woah, seriously? That's hilarious.