Do you HONESTLY think that pirating a game like this is hard?

[Mánagarmr]

It's not so much Origin as a program that bothers me. It's the mere fact that if you post ANYTHING remotely wrong on their forums, you get a permaban ON ORIGIN, locking you out of your purchased games.

This is a "sum up" post: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/17/eas-unwieldy-banhammer-ea-responds/

Plus I have huge gripe with EA in general. They have a habit of taking awesome game concepts, stripping them bare and sell for $70. They've destroyed so many games. Also, since I'm already on Steam, why should I need yet another digital distributor simply to play a game? Of course, they might just not sell it on Steam at all. Then I might get a boxed copy, provided they do not require Origin. If they do, it's a big NO.

Also, I'm curious what you mean about "silen installs"? I've never had any issues with Steam whatsoever :S Download speeds are near 2-2,2 Mb/s, which is pretty much what my broadband handles.

[doctorfrog]

The best approach to stuff like Origin (ugh, this was once a name that meant something) is to ignore it for six months and not wring your hands in the meantime.

In that time, the most egregious bits of the system will be wringed out, or the whole thing will have tanked.

And if it doesn't turn out the way you would have preferred? Wait longer. If GOG, NES emulators, Abandonia, indie devs, or any other darn thing has told me, if a game's good enough to really be played, it's good enough to wait for, and it'll also be good enough to be remembered later for you to play it the way you want to.

"But what if I don't get to play my video game until it is out of date?"

If the game is "out of date," you don't want to play it bad enough, or it really isn't that great, and it's time to get over it.

In short: relax, and let the really angsty, angry gamers do all the work for you. In the end, you'll never be at the end of your life wondering why you didn't get to play enough video games.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, since I'm already on Steam, why should I need yet another digital distributor simply to play a game?

I've never had any issues with Steam whatsoever :S Download speeds are near 2-2,2 Mb/s, which is pretty much what my broadband handles.

This gets at the thing I hope they do: offer on origin, without having to install steam, and offer on steam, without having to install origin.  Why?  Because there's always a percentage of users who run into problems with steam, and presumably there will always be a percentage of users who run into problems with EA/origin.

Anyway, doctorfrog has it right: don't worry about it   Missing ME3 because the publisher is actively making your experience intolerable is a shame, but in the bigger picture...

[eRe4s3r]

In the bigger picture nobody who played ME1 and ME2 will miss ME3, even if you had to install HELL DRM itself (or, well, pirate it). Because lets face it, theres exactly 1 sci-fi rpg series out there, and that is mass effect.

Also, I'm curious what you mean about "silen installs"? I've never had any issues with Steam whatsoever :S Download speeds are near 2-2,2 Mb/s, which is pretty much what my broadband handles.

Example
1) Bought a game called Xotic
2) After payment and when you press "install/download your bought games" server busy, server busy.. for about 3 hours straight.
3) After download, MSVCPP or some other nonsense pops up and wants to install, even though its already installed, this it notices and closes outright
4) Not only that, but .Net 3.5 redis pops up and notices that its already installed (so why is it popping up and telling me?) only choice here is "cancel"
5) After doing that after every game start steam now happily executes the .Net 3.5 redis and mscpp installation again... with popups, unless i delete the install vdf

The only reason i even still bother with steam is the huge sales.

Steam user experience when you are German is complete crap. ;( (I mean, we got like 6 different region servers in Germany, and they often swing between MAX and 0 kb/s - thats not what i call good speeds

This is particularly silly because it doesn't allow for background downloading, so when you play a game of that bundle the whole bundle stops downloading until you finish.. wasting more of my time.

[c4sc4]

This is particularly silly because it doesn't allow for background downloading, so when you play a game of that bundle the whole bundle stops downloading until you finish.. wasting more of my time.

That is my biggest annoyance with steam. I mean you can alt tab out to manually restart the download so why does it need to pause in the first place, it's so annoying.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah, and it gets better when updates start to pile up why playing a game and you exit and suddenly it starts 40 updates... (exaggeration..) but when you stop playing its probably not because you have time to leave your PC wasting bandwidth over night (my pc never runs over night for example, i got a low-energy-consuming NAS for that)

So what happen is you stop playing, shut steam and next start-up you can't play any game that has an update going until that is done. And heaven forbid you start steam with that situation while a high-load is around. Because then you can wait hours for anything to complete.

Of all the DRM sorts steam is by far the stupidiest, it doesn't actually DRM anything, but when it updates you are SOL until its done. Essentially being worse than any online DRM.

[Cyborg]

The reason they pause your downloads is because it lags people and generally ruins the online experience. When steam first started (remember the green interface when loading up counterstrike?),  everyone complained about what it was doing in the background while they were playing. That's why it is the way it is, and I like it that way. The last thing I need in a competitive match is someone lagging because they don't know how to control their own queue.

[eRe4s3r]

It would be easy for them to make this an option that we can set though, in fact, another option should be that before update i am notified that there is an update, and only when i authorize updates for that app after i was notified does it DOWNLOAD them.. it ain't rocket science!

But steam feels like an intern coded it and thats even now, many many years after the nightmare that was the first steam beta with css

Actually, why isn't there a SPEED setting that limits speed to what we enter in the first place. I just don't get it. Its like valve doesn't actually care at all anymore. They don't actually improve steam, they just add crap on top, but its still the same broken mess they released with the beta.

Like how there should be an option to opt-out of the prerequesite installations, and an option to limit maximum concurrent downloads. Also you just described perfectly why nobody sane has steam open and plays a game. Because it still does what you say they want to prevent. Why? Well BC2 and BF3 and many other online games do NOT run over steam. That means when you play them and steam is open, any time an update comes out it lags you out, randomly. This is actually part of why i hate steam. Always have to close it when playing online because you can not regulate what steam does when theres updates in any way. (because obviously you'd want the updates, just not all 15 at once..)

[Cydonia]

Everything eRe4s3r sasys seems valid to me, of course valve should fix these things.
But somehow this barely bothers me and now, since I know that you can alt+Tab and resume your downloads while playing, most of my problems with steam are gone.

[Cyborg]

I still don't like it. Even if that were an option. I don't want people downloading during competitive gaming. There is more than just your available bandwidth at stake. The vast majority of people online haven't the foggiest idea of how anything works. Frankly, they are used to living in their Apple walled gardens, clicking on things with their fingers, and hoping for the best. No, when I'm competitive gaming, I really want this kind of thing to be explicit for that very reason.

[c4sc4]

I still don't like it. Even if that were an option. I don't want people downloading during competitive gaming. There is more than just your available bandwidth at stake. The vast majority of people online haven't the foggiest idea of how anything works. Frankly, they are used to living in their Apple walled gardens, clicking on things with their fingers, and hoping for the best. No, when I'm competitive gaming, I really want this kind of thing to be explicit for that very reason.

Yeah but when I'm playing a single player game, I want my games to download in the background.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I'm on the same boat with Origin.  I don't trust them with my computer or account, especially when they can ban you for such a minor thing.  Steam works just fine for me and forcing me to another store, a happy customer does not make. 

King

[Cyborg]

Yeah but when I'm playing a single player game, I want my games to download in the background.

And you can, by explicitly clicking on the button. It makes the behavior one of volition, not one that is automated or subject to, "I forgot," or "I don't know what I'm doing."

[keith.lamothe]

It would be easy for them to make this an option that we can set though, in fact, another option should be that before update i am notified that there is an update, and only when i authorize updates for that app after i was notified does it DOWNLOAD them.. it ain't rocket science!

1) Library
2) On the library list, right-click game you don't want auto-updates for
3) On the right-click context menu, click Properties
4) On the Properties window, click the Updates tab
5) On the Updates tab, click the dropdown under Automatic Updates
6) Change to "Do Not Automatically Update This Game"

Granted, it's a pain to have to do that for every single game (somebody made a tool once to do it for all games but that appears to be out-of-date), but I did want to point out that the option is there.  Also, relatively few games have frequent or large updates (TF2 and most source-engine stuff, Dungeon Defender, etc) and the others tend to be pretty infrequent about it.

But steam feels like an intern coded it and thats even now, many many years after the nightmare that was the first steam beta with css

I understand your frustration with it, and there are some glaring omissions (the game categorization feature is kinda sad, the aforementioned inability to set the update option globally, etc), and there are some longstanding technical problems that plague a certain percent of the users (servers available to take your money but too busy to send you your game, install.vdf tomfoolery, etc) but it's waaaay above intern-level.  I've seen software written by interns.  I've had to understand it, maintain it, and design and implement the replacement   This is a different beast.

Anyway, my point isn't that steam is a great piece of software.  It... isn't.  I like the service, I'm very grateful to the company from a couple of different angles, but I only have a truce with the actual client software.  But if we lapse into the disproportionate reaction of condemning its every 1 and 0 to various layers of the underworld we subvert our own rationality.  That can be fairly entertaining, of course.

[festa_freak]

It would be easy for them to make this an option that we can set though, in fact, another option should be that before update i am notified that there is an update, and only when i authorize updates for that app after i was notified does it DOWNLOAD them.. it ain't rocket science!

1) Library
2) On the library list, right-click game you don't want auto-updates for
3) On the right-click context menu, click Properties
4) On the Properties window, click the Updates tab
5) On the Updates tab, click the dropdown under Automatic Updates
6) Change to "Do Not Automatically Update This Game"

Granted, it's a pain to have to do that for every single game (somebody made a tool once to do it for all games but that appears to be out-of-date), but I did want to point out that the option is there.  Also, relatively few games have frequent or large updates (TF2 and most source-engine stuff, Dungeon Defender, etc) and the others tend to be pretty infrequent about it.

But steam feels like an intern coded it and thats even now, many many years after the nightmare that was the first steam beta with css

I understand your frustration with it, and there are some glaring omissions (the game categorization feature is kinda sad, the aforementioned inability to set the update option globally, etc), and there are some longstanding technical problems that plague a certain percent of the users (servers available to take your money but too busy to send you your game, install.vdf tomfoolery, etc) but it's waaaay above intern-level.  I've seen software written by interns.  I've had to understand it, maintain it, and design and implement the replacement   This is a different beast.

Anyway, my point isn't that steam is a great piece of software.  It... isn't.  I like the service, I'm very grateful to the company from a couple of different angles, but I only have a truce with the actual client software.  But if we lapse into the disproportionate reaction of condemning its every 1 and 0 to various layers of the underworld we subvert our own rationality.  That can be fairly entertaining, of course.

I explicitly set this option in Skyrim (the do not update option) so as not to break any mods and it STILL downloaded updates.  I asked steam about it and they basically wanted me to delete EVERTHING (minus games) in my steam folder and re-download the program.  Why can it not work properly right now?!?

I have no problems with steam and I used to abhor the offline mode.  I was locked out of my games so much when I didn't have access to internet but now it seems to be better.