Electronic Arts says it hasn't consistently "succeeded in communicating what's available," asks for community feedback.
Electronic Arts has admitted that it has not communicated as best it could with its Origin online storefront, the publisher recently revealed in a message titled "Continuing the Origin Conversation" on its website.
"We haven't always succeeded in communicating what's already available," reads a line from the message.
To rectify this, EA is looking to its community for feedback. The company is asking users to respond to the page with a comment describing their favorite Origin feature, as well as a feature that should be added or improved.
A live question-and-answer session with Origin creative director Robert Kissinger and product manager Mike Lewis will be held on Tuesday, May 8, at 10 a.m. PDT. As of press time, close to 400 comments have been posted to the page.
Origin launched in June 2011 and attracted 9.3 million users, as of EA's latest count. By comparison, Valve's Steam platform presently boasts 40 million users. Also during 2011, Origin raked in $100 million and recently added numerous new publishing partners.
1 Like Origin is a problem because EA is treating it as a hurdle to jump through to play their games, rather than an enjoyment in itself. This is why Steam has succeeded, because most people have found the strengths of it. Origin in still lacking in almost all of these areas.
Origin is not "falling short". It is an abomination. I mean, if you're going to try to get a peace of that Steamy pie, at least make an effort. It's embarrassing. After I downloaded my games, I uninstalled with a sigh of relief.
Origin isn't as good as Steam, of course, but it's already way better than that POS called GFWL. It's still in beta, give it a lil bit of time and it will get better
All us old folks tend to prefer Steam but give it 10+ years or so and Origin could be the top dog. Take Bias out of the equation.
1 Like If you're going to come to market late against an established competitor, you've got to beat them on features/selection or beat them on price. Origin apparently does neither of these. As a result, it's not even on my gaming radar right now, and I'm a gamer who makes gets most of his PC games online.
4 Like Origin is spyware, plan and simple. Just read the EULA for it. I've since boycott: EA. Ubisoft, Blizzard and now Crytek for thier recent business practice of spyware and poor customer service and overbearing DRM. Origin need to be a simple system, a Store, Patcher and Downloader. No scanning or tracking what I play or have running.
@Neonic1985 Then you better stop using Windows 7, Chrome, itunes and others. Because they all do the same thing...
Electronic Arts says it hasn't consistently 'succeeded in communicating what's available,' asks for community feedback."Well, stop insulting and offending the player base who need legitimate help, there's a pretty good start.
Not to dog Origin just because it's EA's digital distribution system but the client is still slow to launch and it's also still a beta. This is almost a year after its introduction. If EA is serious about Origin they need to get innovative with the service and not just ape what Valve has done with Steam.
@ddg4005 Yes, I heard that a lot. Besides what you get from Steam is Gabe Nevell's way of doing stuff. He is always looking at providing a mix of value and biz to the gaming community. This is something I am not convinced EA is doing or even trying to. Steam is more gamer community friendly and I can't say the same for Origin though... atleast not now.
"Attracted" is probably the wrong verb to use in describing the method by which users were brought to Origin. I would've employed "dragged kicking and screaming to the vast, stinking behemoth", since EA *forced* us to use their crappy system in order to access online content for many of their games.
Lol At All the EA Bashers. Fair enough Origin is aload of crap, but Are EA honestly that bad of a company? i mean look at Activision! a new cod every year and everything eles they release u need to buy a new controler or Something. i used to agree EA was awful but over the years they seme to got better and better!
1 Like pfft "falling short"!!more like "EA and customer communication seperated by a 5000 light year a gap in space time"
Origin should be removed if you ask me. The feature I like the most about Origin is Steam.
And by that I mean, I don't see a need for Origin since I already have Steam and almost everything I own is on there already.
@arc_salvo Origin, is EA's second attempt in digital content distribution I think, they had something before this... can't recollect though. Well EA makes great games, but lousy softwares like this one. They should stick to distributing games via Steam and stuff. But its upto them. One way to check is make them available on both platforms and see where the community sways too. But I don't think they will do that since they would like users to sign up for Origin but why would someone who has zillion games in his Steam account wanna do that?
1 Like Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending EA's awful service, but for all of those people saying that Origin only has users because a couple of popular games were released as Origin-exclusive...
...Well, if I recall correctly, Steam started getting really big around the point The Orange Box came out. Team Fortress 2, anyone? Or Portal?
I'd love to see Origin die as much as the next person, but I don't think it's going to happen; I think we've only begun to see the beginning of Origin's presence in the market. It's quite clear to me that Steam and Origin are following extremely similar patterns of growth to each other. There was, in fact, a time when Steam was just as hated as Origin is now. But it eventually changed because of Valve's actually-good business practices, and of course lots of great games released on the service (Back then it was mostly first-party titles; the third-party support was limited to crappy stuff like Ragdoll Kung Fu )
However, unless EA starts making some really crazy business decisions, I don't see Origin ever actually dethroning Steam. Steam is simply too big, has been around for too long and is too rooted into the minds of players that there's no way Origin can topple it. But I don't think Origin was ever meant to take Steam down; it was only meant to take a chunk out of the obviously-profitable digital distribution market. And as long as it does that, Origin's not going to go anywhere, sadly.
12 Like Attracting 9.3 million users isn't impressive when you release Battlefield 3 and SWTOR at the same time as origin-exclusives.
It doesn't mean people like the service, it means they've been forced to install this crap.
@LtReviews I agree Mr. Reviews. I have Origin too, but only for SWTOR. That is the one and only program I have on there.
8 Like I had to install Origin on my computer to play the Mass Effect 3 demo. A DEMO. I could have done without that spyware on my computer.
"favorite Origin feature" u kidding me? i had to register to that sh** just to play mass effect 3 x(
10 Like EA forgets to admit that Origin is a program completely made off of greed and envy at Steam.And is a pathetic program.
??Aside from the servers falling just in my gaming sessions what bothers me the most is the exclusivity. I have to pay in Origin with EUROS and my salary is in AR$... what kind of cynic joke is that?
And no weekend deals! :( Oh I can cope with that just don't try to force Origin on us.
Surely they should make all there prices £1 below all of the steam titles and their sales would sky rocket :P
@Richmaester6907 Sorry buddy, I won't sway for just a pound... you really think this will work? EA wont do that too
5 Like Origins is not going anywhere. Neither is Steam. They should co-exist. Valve games on Origin and EA games on Steam it should be up to us the consumer which we run it on. Maybe Origin has a better price or Steam a better interface etc. This exclusive crap have to have one or other for certain games sucks
3 Like The console market would like to have a word with you about exclusivity bullcrap....
8 Like Wait a minute I thought you had a huge install base customers using origin... Oh yeah, that was just the people that had to install it to run a game that shouldn't have needed it only to uninstall it as fast as possible once we could run the game. Sorry I forgot those numbers were just lies for the investors.
6 Like I bought ME3 at a midnight launch and as soon as it was available I installed a crack that allowed ME3 to run without Origin. I, as a paying customer, had to install a crack... pretty sad but I am sure there are thousands of others who did the same just to be able to remove Origins from their computer.
It took a lot of time but Valve and Steam have built a trust with it's clients and fan-base. EA knows as much about loyalty (to their fans) as a rattlesnake.
5 Like Whats the point of looking to the community for feedback when they ignore it and do the complete opposite anyway?
11 Like Here's your feedback EA... If you want my business, put your games back on Steam. Else, I can do without.
3 Like It's ironic that I couldn't log on to ME3 all yesterday and this morning, thus rendering my DLC and games that had DLC useless. I did have a similar problem with Arkham City on Steam once, but that problem was fixed quickly.
Origin shouldn't go away. It helps push Steam to continue to strive to compete and stay fresh. Along with other competing services. I only use Steam, but I wouldn't suggest that people ignore Origin. People should give Origin a try and provide feedback to EA about their experiences. It's extremely important for gamer's to participate and encourage the services as they will help define how games are delivered in the future. Let's not have a "console war" with delivery systems on the PC.
1 Like @Hvac0120 Well I believe.. and it is surprising that you have not noticed... Steam is always striving to compete and stay afresh always even when Origin was not around. Origin's existence makes no difference but rather make people more appreciative of what Steam is doing.
9 Like @Hvac0120 This isn't so much about which has the superior digital store, it's far more about EA, and more specifically, the reputation they've earned over the past years. EVEN IF, Steam and Origin were very similar models that both ran great with few bugs, you'd still see people shunning Origin simply because it's EA...and I don't blame them one bit.
1st, the most obvious. DROP ORIGIN LIKE AN UGLY BABY. It's overall inferior to Steam and will stay that way unless major overhauls are made.
If you absolutely "must" continue to support Origin, at the very least add the option to opt out of the info grabbing. Make it less like glorified spyware, then it'll suck less, but nowhere near what it SHOULD be.
2 Like I think Origin's problems go far beyond 'communication problems'... but typical EA ignoring the real problems and focusing on some non-issue...
My advice to EA is bow out. Steam does it better and Valve has a solid reputation. Origin contains spyware and EA is a terrible company that has done a irreversible disservice to gaming.
EA almost makes me miss Ubisoft....nah I'm j/k, Ubi sucked even worse and that is saying something. The mad DRM kings.
Instead of forcing it on people, maybe they should have launched it by giving a 10%+ discount to all new users (to avoid grief from other distributors) on their first party games. Instead, they took away everyone's choice and decided the monopoly meant that they didn't have to give competitive prices.
Also, it wouldn't hurt for them to have game sales on par with all of the other digital sale sites like Steam and Amazon. Every time I've looked at EA's store they have nothing under $10 other than what is cross-platform with mobile devices...
Dear EA, you want to let people know what is listed on your site then send an email once a week telling the people that sign up for your service what is new and upcoming, I mean after all one of the reasons that you decided to split from Steam was so that you could directly interact with your customers so start doing it. The other option would be to just sell Origin to Valve and let them handle it since they seem to have almost no issue advertising to their users what is new and available on their service.
Until Origin starts offering ridiculously low price sales for games, then that will catch my eye. Come on, I keep picking up $5 - $10 games off of steam like it's nothing. Also better way to talk to your friends, Origin groups sounds weird..
Anyways they had many years to study Steam's success, they can only blame themselves for not listening to the community.
Hate to say it but Steam is like WoW, nothing will topple it nor come close. Though I do hope Origin stays, competition is always good for the consumer. :)
EA has teamed up with game broadcasting network to offer Origin users the ability to broadcast gaming sessions live to Twitch channels.
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