GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

Changing PC Hardware Too Often Can Lock You Out of Origin Games, EA Confirms

Battlefield Hardline Benchmarking revealed Origin limitations.

312 Comments
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
00:00:00
Sorry, but you can't access this content!
Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

If you're benchmarking different PC hardware components in a short period of time you can accidentally lock yourself out of games that use Electronic Arts' digital distribution platform Origin, the publisher has confirmed.

The news comes out of Guru 3D, where writer Hilbert Hagedoorn discovered he had locked himself out of Battlefield Hardline while running a graphics performance test using different graphics cards.

After using a "handful" of graphics cards, he received a notification from Origin that too many computers have accessed his account's version of Battlefield Hardline. Hagedoorn thought that this was a new kind of digital rights management software associated with Battlefield Hardline, but Electronic Arts has since released a statement that this is a part of Origin in general.

"Origin authentication allows players to install a game on up to five different PCs every 24 hours," Electronic Arts said in a statement. "Players looking to benchmark more than five hardware configurations in one 24 hour period can contact our Customer Support team who can help."

It's not going to be an issue for most players, but at least now you know that if you're going to be testing a lot of new PC hardware components, you'll need to contact EA's Customer Support team first.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Join the conversation
There are 312 comments about this story