EA vs. The World

Recent news indicates that EA is pulling its AAA titles from Valve's online distribution system (Steam) and offering them exclusively on EA's new digital download service, Origin.  Before explaining why I desperately hate this development, I want to briefly describe the interesting history of Origin's origin.

It began as a game developer founded by the Garriott brothers in 1983 after they severed ties with Sierra On-Line to continue publishing their Ultima line.  Over the next fifteen years, they became one of the darlings of PC gaming, creating some of the most memorable titles of the era:  Ultimas 3-Online, Wing Commander, Privateer, and System Shock.  The uncommon success of the company was likely due to the roster of developers they had in-house that resembled something like the mid-90's Expos:  John Romero (id Software), Raymond Benson (MicroProse), Tom Chilton (Blizzard), and Warren Spector (Ion Storm) being the most notable names.

Like many successful gaming ventures, the company was bought out by EA and pulverized into dust.  Once they tasted the sweet nectar of subscription fees, EA limited Origin to only supporting the Ultima Online series.  By this point most of the talent had fled to greener pastures.  Origin was shut down in 2004, some few months before Tom Chilton's release of World of Warcraft, which changed the face of online gaming.

The name has now been revived as EA's Steam-like download service.  They even kept the spirit of the original logo, a curiously thoughtful touch on an otherwise ruthless industry move to leverage EA's publishing catalog to corner the digital download market.  Crysis 2 has been pulled from Steam (precisely one year after EA's Crysis sale in the summer of 2010) and they've made announcements indicating that major titles like Battlefield 3, Fifa 2012, and possibly Mass Effect 3 will all be exclusive to the Origin service.

Fuck that noise.

Let me state that I'm not against EA opening their own store with their own desktop app.  EA and Stardock and whoever else feels like dipping their toes into the digital pool can go have fun.  However, the exclusivity bothers the fuck out of me, and there are many arguments for why I refuse to download BF3 through Origin:

1) I happen to like Steam, and my entire gaming library is now seamlessly integrated into Steam, so I'm not using another service.  Steam is convenient.  It offers viable voice chat.  It's unobtrustive and just works, unlike (say) the EA Download Manager, which wormed its way into my startup config files and required constant manual removal.  I have no faith that Origin will Just Work, and zero faith that it'll only run when I want it to.

2) EA has demonstrated a willingness to shut down its online servers the moment that game stops selling retail.  I have no faith that Origin will permit lifetime redownloads, or that they'll decrypt your library if the service shuts down.  This is not a company which prioritizes customer service.

3) EA is a festering pile of shit.  They're already carving up BF3 into retailer-exclusive bonuses.  Unlike when they did this for Dragon Age, this will materially affect online multiplayer competitive balance.  Snipers with a flash suppressor will have a measured advantage in a large battlefield.  And now they're withholding major title releases from the biggest distributors in the business?  As much as I'm salivating for BF3 and ME3, I'd refuse to buy just out of spite.  Or, perhaps better, I'll wait a few months and buy used, so they don't see a single fucking dime of my money.

I'm hoping that the internet backlash against these practices will put EA games back on Steam, but I suspect (and I suspect EA suspects) that nerd internet rage won't prevent them from shelling out $60 on launch day, boxed, digital, or otherwise.  Even hardened Steam zealots will find a way to justify buying Mass Effect 3.

I guess I can always buy a physical copy...