So far despite a few bearable issues that I could easily avoid, EA Origin seems to be a legitimite DD service. All the negativity agianst it is just fanboys and trolls raging about what they did to bioware, literally I used to hate EA (still do, just in a cautious sense) but it's starting to phase out of me. The true turning point for my phasing out of hating EA was after I saw that EA won the Consurmerist polls for Worst Corperate Company in America that made me disgusted, really EA ,the worst company ever, won to Bank of America, one of the financial companies along with Citifinancial,Goldmansachs,Lehman Brothers and more that directly and indirectly cause and helped today's massive home foreclosers, corrupting our political system, and creating a world wide recession, lost to EA an entertainment company that pissed off people because Mass Effect 3's ending was bad which is feeble compared to what those financial banks have done. I don't know about you but if I was in a train and I see two seat avaliable, I would rather sit next the CEO of EA than the CEO of whoever runs those financial banking companies.

Nothin wrong with it. It resembles Steam several years ago when it was newer, lacks a few of its refinements, but it's perfectly functional.

You mispelt one of your words.

Steam doesn't snoop on your system...

Origin was given permission to read all files on your system and transmit the data outbound when you installed it.

Read one of my statments above. also so what why would EA care that I have installed say Microsoft Powerpoint 2010 version on my computer which I use for college and transmit that data to whoever which if you asked me it's useless to them

For me Origin is way better than Steam. Main reason is less problematic DRM. I don't get why Steam require turning on offline mode before going offline. When my Internet connection go down I can't play any Steam game because I wasn't prepared. On Origin there is no such problem.

You can go offline mode but you can't play some of games without preparing offline mode first.

I'm not a specialist about that because I use steam only for Steamworks games, so I don't know how it exactly work and with which games, but last time I had such problem with DX:HR.

Never played BF3, but no, EA's Origin is okay. It's actually improving a lot over time, too.

I'll take your word for it when I'm using Steam. Thank you everybody, you have all made my fear and paranoia against Origin dissapear overnight, I appreciated it and it taught me a lesson: Never Always Listen To Whiney Trolls.

My greatest beef with Origin is that I have a huge pile of retail games that they don't support, have no plan of supporting anytime soon, but now force everything new to be tied to it.

While it may sounds dumb, there is a reasoning, most retail games from EA on the last few years, like Dead Space 2 or Burnout Paradise require you to make an EA account, (granted most is for multiplayer only) meaning it would be WAY smarter if EA did the logical thing (And what Valve did) and update these games so instead of having to sign in inside the game, just tying then to Origin would suffice, but no, they didn't updated any of their games, nor did they remove the inside drm even if the games are tied to Origin, so you sign in Origin, and then Sign in the game.

The service is not bad, but it's miles far from good, their digital store is tied to your specific country, so if they don't support a particular game on your country, tough luck, my digital store is comprised of 30 games or so, most of them insanely overpriced, their support is pedantic if you don't want to use the solution they are providing (Crysis Warfare, run out of installs? tough luck, either register on Origin or never play the game again) and the Origin program makes suspicious scans every now and then outside of the Origin folder, not to mention the insanity of installing Battlefield 3 and then having to open your game through your browser, like this was a Korean MMO or something. (Why would you need a program for that...)

I'll be honest, I really wished Origin to succeed, I'm not trash talking for the sake of trolling, I really want a new Digital Distro to appear so the market becomes more competitive and gamers worldwide have fairer prices and better games all around, but I dislike Origin because they had almost 10 years to analyze Steam's success and see what made it work, instead they just piece together a rushed piece of bloatware and then started to test it out, and make it better, and even with EA's insane amount of cash, I don't see it working, at least for me anytime soon.

I like neither, Steam nor Origin.

But from my experience:

It's usually easier to register a game on Steam, never had any issue there. On the other side I had issues with the two new only game I registered on Origin (i.e. Alice Madness Returns and Mass Effect 3) from the "register serial" widows not being displayed correctly to the registration failing, to the game being registered but not appearing in my collection or refusing to start.

But once done with the "registration" part, I would say that Origin is less obnoxious when playing offline, it's much faster, switch to offline mode automatically, keep the offline mode (I played all of ME3 without ever connecting online, DLC included, had to reconnect several time with Dx HR )

Concerning the "snooping" part, I have a Windows install/partition dedicated to DRM using games, this install only has access to the "DRM using games" Hard drive and nothing else so they can snoop all they want.

When you have a customer base of millions you can afford to lose a few. They've practically bragged about how they'll take away all your games in the not too distant past and they've done nothing to clarify that position despite numerous requests for them to do so.

My only "have to" experience with Origin was ME 3 and that worked without a hitch. There are still some minor interface issues (why can't I open the download directory of my extras through Origin?) but they are only minor problems. Apart from that I use Origin as a "online backup" for my older retails like ME 2 and Dead Space 2. Works like a charm for that.

Their support is very good, from what I've seen. They gifted me a game for a ME 3 problem that I didn't have.

And the "banning problem" is because your forum account is connected to your origin account, so they can't ban you from the forums without banning you from your games. GOG had a similar problem in the beginning. If you don't use the forums, there shouldn't be any problems.

And all that "EA only wants to make money" crap talk is really childish. GOG, Valve, Ubisoft, the grocery store across the street are all only in it because of the money. Heck, one of the greediest negotiation partners I ever had was the Red Cross (They really are some greedy, cheating fucknuts).

What surprises me about Origin the most is how ugly, useless and unfuctional it is.
EA store client has been around for years, they had years and years of possibility to rip off features from Steam or other clients, they have insane EA resources...and yet Origin is still an ugly useless piece of shit as ever.

I mean, it works, which is about the only good thing I can say about it.
It is ugly as hell and offers no benefit whatsoever.
I hope EA will step up their game...and stops their idiot behaviour of banning people and so on.

ps: I am just watching Stargate SG1 season 10 and I am a bit alergic to word Origin as well :-)