State of PC Digital Download

There has been a couple things I've read related to this matter as of late. The first being Microsoft seemingly giving up on Games for Windows live and shutting down the service on July 1st 2014. While a lot of people will see this as a good thing considering there a quite number of folk who can't stand Microsofts GFWL platform, which I do understand as it isn't exactly the greatest out there. However I am one of the few(many? I haven't looked into figures) that still plays games on said platform, with the likes of Batman, Red Faction Guerilla, GTA 4 to name a few. All of these games I really enjoy and often go back to playing them on a some what regular (okay not that regular but they all get return visits over time), they also require you to sign into Microsofts service to play and save your game. My worry is how many developers will come around to patch out GFWL once it's gone? Will I still be able to play these games in a years time? Who is to say? Hopefully we will hear from them and whether they are going to sort this out.

I while I agree GFWL is a pain in the ass at times, Microsoft shouldn't have just bailed on PC gamers. It did have so much potential done right, under the right management and team it could have easily rivaled Steam, Origin (yes Origin it's a valid platform it just had a crappy launch like Steam did but that's a rant for another day) and other online distributors. They could have started cross platform gaming, pulled in gamers with Xbox exclusives such as Halo and Gears of War. But alas we got cock all, even though they are more than capable of making something decent (ie the Xbox interface). Why could they not have done something similar only on PC. Whether this is them MS scrapping the disaster of windows live and starting over from scratch or just giving up completely, only time will tell.

Next we have some news about Origin. They have recently set up a returns policy you can find here. This is quite a big step in Digital Download systems as usually when you buy something online you are kind of stuck with it. However under EAs new rules you can return game downloads for full refunds with 24 hours of the first time you launch the game, within seven days from when you purchase it, or within the first seven days after the games release if you pre ordered. No other DD platform has implemented such a clause in their ToS. EA definitely gained some kudos with this move. Granted it still has a while to gain the influence that Steam has but it's just a baby in comparison, however if EA keep pulling moves like this out the bag I'm sure they will catch up.

Origin Humble Bundle

I have returned once again to bring you news (I say news damn near every other website will tell u before me lol) of the Humble Origin Bundle.

After reading a few articles and the comments that were bound to come along with a lot of them came with their hatred to Origin (as did PewDiePew bundle they have going at the moment, never watched him dunno anything about him so I staying away from commenting about that.). At the end of the day, yes Origin are blatantly trying to pick up business for their DD service as it business putting the amount they have into Origin they are hardly going to turn round and say to the guys in the office 'Hey you guys just want to fuck off out system, instead of work we can go get drunk and eat pizza instead'. However if they can get away doing that props to them I'd love to get drunk and eat pizza for a living, anyway before I get too distracted I'll get to my point.

The point is EA and the Origin guys have taken it upon themselves to give you this deal in the name of charity. Whether you like EA/Origin at all is irrelevant as it is for a Charity. If you don't like EA you can give all your money to charity, If you don't like Origin, all the games are available on Steam with the exception of Dead Space 3, Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 starter set. But at the end of the day whether you like it or not EA are in fact doing this for charity. Yes, extra promotion will be a reason in there some where, does that really matter though. You can get 8 pretty awesome games for as little as a fiver can you really argue at that price. And I know there will be "but Origin is terrible and Steam is much better" comments out there.

However if we take a trip down memory lane, everyone hated Valve and Steam when it first came onto the scene way back when. It took them years of trust building and listening to what people what in the service to get where it is today. By all means Steam isn't perfect by any matters there a number of things that could and hopefully will be implemented in the future. I am giving Origin the benefit of the doubt as at least EA are doing better than Microsoft with the joke that is GFWL. Origin is still playing catch up as Valve has many years on them in the digital distribution field. The fact they are giving a lot of their best games away in the name of charity, I am going to give them Kudos for it. Granted I haven't used Origin for a while, not since I went through my Sim City phase I had no problems with it really, well except you can't auto update Sim City and have to open the log in to the game screen (and I'm assuming the rest of the games until you load up the game. That may have been fixed by now but don't quote me on that as I haven't checked.) I give it a year or 2 and see what they have done from here, these clients constantly get updated so I'm looking to see what they do. EA does need to knock down the prices on Origin though as they are more expensive that buying in an actual shop. But my dig at prices of digital download games is a complete story.

Anyway I've feed what ever trolls my come my way; now on to the bundle itself.

As always with the Humble Bundle it is a pay what you want scheme, the average purchase is around $5 at the moment and consists of:

• Dead Space
• Burnout Paradise
• Crysis 2
• Mirror's Edge
• Dead Space 3
• Medal of Honour
• Battlefield 3
• The Sims 3 + Starter Pack (which consists of Late Night Expansion Park and High-End Loft Stuff Expansion

Both Battlefield and The Sims require you to pay above the average to unlock. Are you really going to turn down this standard of games for such a low price. You are frankly an idiot if you do to be honest.

Anyways you have just under 12 days left to take advantage of this frankly amazing deal

The future of Origin

I came across an interview with head of Origin, David Demartini on Games Industry about what the future holds for EAs digital distribution service, it's an interesting read. They want Origin to be 'the hub' for gamers and goes on to talk about cross platform though it does sound like they want to be something like Raptr which allows you to see acheivements, game collections, what you've been playing etc and rank you against friends. We seen cross platform gaming done, quite successfully may I add, with Valve and Portal 2 between PC and PS3. Hopefully this is a sign of things, I have been wanting this to happen since GFWL started (which I am still hoping will happen but I'm not holding my breath), cross platform gaming could and should have happened back then but alas Microsoft never followed through with what could have brought Xbox and PC gamers closer together, but I'm not going to get in to that rant now. EA are definitely big enough to fund this sort project, so maybe in the not to distant future we will see EA dabbling in cross platform games. I'm sure if one company sets the ground work for something like this others will follow suite. It needs to be done.

He also discusses Steam, talking about Valves raping of wallets... I mean sales and discounts and how Origin won't be going down this road. Saying how it cheapens your intellectual property. While I can see where he's coming from on the matter, I disagree with the fact it cheapens your ip, the fact of the matter is due to the fact that you are buying from a digital distributor the games shouldn't be the same price as they are if you are buying a hard copy. You have no case, instruction books or discs to make therefore no manufactor costs only those of for the upkeep of servers. I don't see how you can justify £40 for a downloadable copy of a game when it you pay the exact same amount for everything that comes with a hard copy. Then there is also the fact that we are in a recession and everyone can't afford to buy every single title that comes out at 40 quid a pop. Which is why I am yet to buy a single new AAA title this year. Purely because I can't afford to, along with the fact that if I wait a couple months it will be half the price, which points to his earlier comment about cheapening ips, but this is how businesses work. You set a price, if it doesn't sell well enough, you cut the price to increase sales, which is exactly what Valve do with Steam. Not every sale they do is ridiculously discounted they generally range from 10% and upwards, if we take the lowest discount thats only 3-4 quid off a new game. Then there is the fact these sales can rejuvinise games vastly increasing their popularity and even extending the life span of games.

Anyway I have rambled on enough for now, I am interested to see what Origin do in the future, I've never really used it so can't comment on how good or bad I think it is, however they are the new kids on the block and have to prove themselves and it would seem they are attempting to do that as it has had multiple updates during it's first year and looks like they are going to continue to do so.

I want some Battlefield with my Mass Effect

Back on Valentines day, EA made lonely gamers day (probably gamers that arn't lonely aswell) by not only releasing the Mass Effect 3 demo (which I happened to enjoy except for everything being bound to one key which you couldn't change but I've already had a little rant about that) they also announced that upon pre-ordering Mass Effect 3 through their Origin service they would get a free downloadable copy of Battlefield 3. This offer was supposed to last until the 5th of March, but 2 days after announcing this they decide to pull the offer without a explanation in site. As you may have guessed this has pissed off a lot of punters. The deal was frankly amazing and no doubt would have dragged a lot of new clients over to their Origin service, which if they want to catch up with Steam and for it to be successful they will need to play hard ball which they seemed to be doing with this offer. But for them to suddenly pull it as I said before will piss people off. It's a bad move on their part. What ever the reason behind, this is unacceptable really, it's bad business offering something, getting peoples hopes up then taking it away just because you can. While they obviously have a reason behind doing this, it yet to be announced to the public. If you did happen to get in on this deal during the two days it was available you will still get your code by the 8th of March. Below are a couple tweets for the Origin account pretty much saying what I just did, minus me ranting of course.

Cheap Games on Origin

Like it or loathe it. It seems like EA's Origin client is here to stay. I got an email from EA advertising some offers they have on games. To be honest they are decently priced. If they keep doing offers like this regularly. I will consider using them a lot more than I do now. The offer stands until the 5th February.

• Mass Effect 2 - £10
• Dead Space 2 - £7.50
• Dragon Age 2 - £7.50
• Bulletstorm - £7.50
• Shank - £5
• Gatling Gears - £5
• Mirrors Edge - £5
• Command & Conquer 4 - £10 
• Medal of Honour - £7.50 (It's Honour not Honor)
• Alice: Madness Returns - £7.50
• Mass Effect - £3
• Dead Space - £3
• Spore - £6
• Darkspore - £4.50
  

For the prices they are you can't really complain. Sure, you could probably wait for most of them to come round to Steam sales for a lot of them, but if they keep up with offers similarly priced to Steam sales I reckon they could definitely sway some people over. It is a step in the right direction for Origin. They need to keep this up and keep working on their desktop client as well and let me have a changeable profile name dammit.

Origin gains more clientele

I realise a lot of people aren't the biggest fan of Origin in its current state. From what I have heard complaint wise it does need a lot of work which over time hopefully will. EA have now partnered up with a number of new publishers wanting to use their Origin service. Origin will now be offering games from the following companies:

• CD Projekt Red
• Trion Worlds
• Freebird Games
• Recoil Games
• Autumn Games
• 1C Company
• inXile Entertainment
• Paradox Interactive
• Core Learning Ltd
• N3V Games

They seem to be getting a decent number of third party publishers on their digital download service. I hope they keep at it work on their Origin client and offer us more sales in hope to sway us away from Steam. If they can offer me games cheaper than them I will quite happily start using them. It would be good to see Steam with some true competition. Yes, there are a number of digital download services, but they are all rather small in comparison. Steam is the current reigning champion of PC gaming. If EA keep going the way they are in a few years I reckon they will be up there. If not it will just end up like GFWL. I have no problem with EA and what they are trying to do but if they want to win over the PC community they are going to have to work for it.

Mass Effect 3 will require Origin

News has it that Mass Effect 3 will require Origin for both physical and digital copies. So for those not a fan of Origin you may want to give this a miss.

Biowares Chris Priestly has come out to say quite obvious things related to the games connection to EAs digital distribution system like both digital and physical copies will require "a one time, single authorisation for the for the single player" and that "there is no limit to the number of installs. Playing Mass Effect 3 multi-player will require will require a constant connection". 

Who would have thought playing multi-player would require an online connection. You know because we haven't been playing multiplayer games online for years now have we. Why he even mentioned the limit on the amount you can install a game you have rightly purchased I don't even know. I install games I own on a number of different computers and have uninstalled and reinstalled games numerous times. I don't need someone to tell me I can install my game where ever and when I want, I already know that. 

According to IGNs piece on this he has mentioned it not being on Steam due to their "restrictive terms of service", the exact phrase that was used last time Valve and EA had problems, I think with Battlefield along with some other games getting pulled. We can sit and debate all day long about the reasoning behind it whether you think Steam have got restrictive ToS or it's EAs way to narrow the competition a little. The thing that annoys me most is the fact that neither side have actually came out and said exactly what these terms are. Every bit of news about this is vague, "it limits how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content". That doesn't explain anything. How does it do that? It can't be about only selling DLC through Steam as many GFWL games do exactly that, Bioshock 2 being a prime example as I have bought DLC through the GFWL store for my Steam copy of Bioshock 2, I'm sure many other games apply to my theory here as well. I would be less annoyed if they just came out and said we don't like it due to this, this and these parts of your terms and actually provide these terms for people so they actually understand what is going on, rather than sitting behind vague and blatantly prepared comments on the matter. I want actual answers, not pish (I'm bringing pish back it's not used enough) people will be "yeah, okay, whatever" then forget about.

Anyway I digress, long story short if you were hoping on picking up the latest installment of Mass Effect on Steam, think again. Just remember you have an unlimited amount of installs when you get it.......

Wii U may use Origin

I came across an article at gamerant suggesting Nintendos new console might uses EAs digital distribution service. I actually plan on getting a Wii U as I have had a Nintendo console since Snes (or gameboy if that counts). It's an interesting concept anyway. I know a lot of people aren't a fan of Origin. I can't say on this matter as I have never really used it. If anything this may give Nintendo some better games if they are to team up with EA. I also noticed the comments ripping on Origin and how Steam is better are coming in as well. It's a new system it's not going to be amazing straight off, just like Steam wasn't and still isn't (I love it but it's not perfect). I am giving EA benefit of the doubt with Origin to see how it turns out.

EA to expands games on Origin

EA have recently announced that they will be expanding on games available on Origin. Up until now EA have only sold their own titles on Origin, soon they will be seeing the likes of Batman: Arkham City and Saints Row: The Third along with other additional titles promised in the coming months. While it is heavy disliked by a lot of people at the moment, I feel it is a good thing they are widening the variety games available on their platform. Of course they still have quite the road ahead of them if they even want to get remotely near Steam and their popularity but if they keep up adding new titles it will surely help.

I will quite happily use Origin if the price is right, I generally go with where ever is cheaper at the moment it tends to be either Amazon or Steam sales. The fact they have Battlefield 3 priced at £40 for a digital download there is no way in hell I'm buying it for that price especially when you can buy a boxed version of the game for 10 quid less and actually physically own it. They certainly need to lower the prices if they want to tempt folk across to their platform even if it is only on their own games.

The Origin Matter

EA have annoyed alot of folk recently with the whole pulling their games from Steam. The few games they have removed I'm not to fussed about anyway so makes no difference to me anyway. There seems to be much debate on the actual reasons behind this, they are essentially just doing what Valve did all those years ago with Half Life 2. Everyone hated Steam when it first came out now 5 years later they seemed to have fought there way into the majority of PC gamers hearts. EA seem to be doing the same thing granted a few years to late. While it is easy to point out the flaws in a system, which I have quite a list of. I am writing a pros and cons list I will actually post it later when I've used Origin properly, ie bought games, got friends etc on there, most of the cons so far are pretty much layout of the whole thing. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them time to sort stuff out considering they are still just in a beta at the moment. One thing that has been mentioned though is the bit in the Terms of Service about how if you haven't used your account/games for over 2 years you may lose. That is the same principle of me going out buying a Dvd for example then me not watching it for a couple years and the producers coming into my living room and taking it off my shelf and telling me if you aren't going to watch it regularly you can't have it at all. Now you have to go buy another copy. It's not right.