Origin is Better than Steam – at Least in One Way

EA has made a dramatic change to the Origin game distribution service in the past few weeks in a swing to take Steam fans away from the more dominant PC service.

[Jacktrauma]

It's going to take a lot to get people to move away from steam, especially with the game release debacles EA is quickly getting known for.

[JoeIsMad]

Yeah, this doesn't discount the fact that new titles tend to blow up, but EA is moving away from their former title of "worst company in the world" and giving things away for free. People like that stuff, I hear.

[randomass171]

Steam gives out free things from time to time too. I feel as though Steam's success led to it becoming a very community based platform. It's hard to move away from that to just about anything, let alone Origin.

[BattleAxe]

People will never move away from Steam, but I think PC gamers are beginning to accept Steam ever since they started things like the Great Game Guarantee, big 70% off sales kind of like Steam, the On The House free games promotions and the brand new free gameplay weekend which started this weekend with the full access of Titanfall for 48 hours. Origin is a work in progress, but it's heading in the right direction.

[randomass171]

I'm none too fond of EA myself, mostly because of how they handle microtransactions and of course Battlefield 4's unfinished state. It would take a lot to convince me to buy games off of an online platform that they own.

edit: @JoelsMad Free indeed, and free's never bad. But Steam does do free demos and "Play for the weekend for free" events with some games as well. Not sure if this is more robust, but Steam does also do the free thing a bit.

[JoeIsMad]

That's the beauty of this service change - everything is free. Broken, but free.

[JoeIsMad]

For sure, Random. The thing is - as written here, Steam gives it away for the weekend, while Origin lets you play on your time. 48 hours of trial time begins when you first open the title.

[3-4-5]

I got Plants vs Zombies & Peggle for free from Origin within the past 5 days.

* While it's cool that they were free, let's not act like they just gave away a $60 game for free or anything. Keep it in perspective here.

What STEAM does better, it does better than Origin.

Origin offers certain games you can't get on STEAM.

If I could play BF4 on STEAM I would, and so would 90% of everyone else who plays it and EA knows this.

Origins exists to protect the money they make from their own games initially.

[JBSleek]

Or you could simply just use both. There is no one or the either.

[Volkama]

Thought I was going mad for a minute there. Had to open both Steam and Origin on my PC whilst pinching myself, and then read your comment just to reaffirm that yes, I can use both.

[F4sterTh4nFTL]

Origin has some very high profile exclusive EA games that steam does not so Origin is not totally useless. Besides Origin has greatly improved since launch and has become a very tolerable piece of software to use. I think I actually like it now, but STEAM is still the king.

[darx]

Meh...I'll stick with Steam thanks!

[XtraTrstrL]

Hah, I'll just go there and play the free trials, and if I like it - buy it on Steam(unless it's one of the EA titles they keep only on Origin, cuz they suck and need the exclusivity to survive at all vs Steam).

[Debaitable]

They suck for keeping their exclusives but Valve gets a free pass for keeping their games exclusive to Steam? OK.

[XtraTrstrL]

Well, Valve is also a developer, it's not the same. EA is a huge publishing powerhouse that owns half the gaming world on it's own. If EA was also a hardcore dev team and had few and far apart gems of games like Valve does and had it only on Origin to boost their service, that'd be fine. That's not the case though, they are merely the uber rich publishers of BF, and they are keeping it away from Steam to boost crappy Origin.

[LAWSON72]

The difference is Valve takes advantage of their service with awesome features that enhance and expand the experience offered by the game.

[DxTrixterz]

Does Origin have summer sale?

[Volkama]

They had a sale a couple of weeks ago, yes. They called it the "games you will actually play" sale.

It didn't change daily or have flash and community sales, and generally had far less available. But decent prices, I picked up 5 games.

[ISNeko]

I can appreciate the stuff EA is trying to do with Origin. Grabbed the Game Time demo for Titanfall. My goodness that game takes up so much damn space.

[Volkama]

I would appreciate it more if it didn't come hand-in-hand with their mission to inflict console game retail prices on us. £50-£60 for a single game? Nah that's not how we do things over here...

[Jovanian]

It takes up like 50 gigs...that is insanity. I hear most of it is due to the sound files or something. Whatever the case, they did a horrible job at managing its size

[Milesprowers]

Grand theft Auto V ... Coming soon to Steam..

[DxTrixterz]

Two words...Mods and Workshop.

[Jovanian]

Stupid title. Steam is still quite better, although I am quite happy Origin is stepping their game up so that they could potentially be a big competitor for Steam, because in the end the consumers will benefit from this.

[TXIDarkAvenger]

Origin can do whatever it wants, I'll just keep Steam and have Origin at the same time. No way would I leave Steam will all my games for Origin.

[DxTrixterz]

I wonder what will happen to 'our' games (ehm licences) once Steam and Origin gets shut down one day.

[TXIDarkAvenger]

I read some where if the service is shut down, you can still play offline. I'm pretty sure Games for Windows is doing that excluding the games moved to Steam for online play.

[ROQFrost]

Steam > Origin