saldite: It's Steam from EA. It's also a download manager, too, though. If the game is made by EA and is post-Origin, you need Origin to play it since that'll be the form of DRM. Third-party games or older EA games do not need Origin to be running when you start them (a lot of them have really draconian forms of DRM like SecuROM or that limited activations bullshit. I haven't run into them, but I had an annoying issue with Dragon Age Origins and it's DLC since you need to be online in order for the DLC to work).

It's not a bad client, but I feel like EA could be doing more with it. I mentioned DA:O above, since I almost wonder why Origin itself couldn't verify that. Or for other games like Mass Effect 2 where I still need some BIoWare points shit to buy the DLC on a separate website outside of the service itself (brilliant!) when the client could handle that, too. It's like EA has a decent client and DRM method (comparable to Steam), but they don't use it unless it's the newest of their own games.