Blaugust Post #20

The Multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 is very good. That almost makes up for the fact that Origin is intensely frustrating to deal with. We spent a larger amount of time on Thursday trying to get into the game than actually playing it, because a bug that’s been around for months is apparently not fixed, and hit me.

I understand it…

The oft-quoted number is that Steam takes a 30% cut of everything sold on their store. I’ve heard rumors that that number is no longer accurate, but even if it is, it’s understandable that companies might want a part of that slice of the pie back. EA was the first company I can think of the entirely break ties with Valve (which is kind of ironic after they published Portal 2 on consoles). Ubisoft followed with UPlay, but that seems to be less relevant as time goes on. EA actually has releases big enough that they can maintain Origin independently. They’ve actually done some things on Origin that I would say work better than Steam, as they had an actual functional return policy first, and their customer service is very good. I haven’t had to deal with Steam’s customer service, but from what I hear it’s generally pretty awful.

…But I don’t have to like it

The actual origin client itself is pretty terrible. The in-game overlay had a nice UI, but it’s been broken for (apparently) several months. It’s allegedly fixed in the beta release, but not for me. (In addition, despite not working, having it enabled makes my game crash.) As mentioned, there’s also that issue with the friends list. Unfortunately, the only thing I can really do here is vote with my wallet, and while EA continues to make excellent games like this, I’m afraid I’m stuck voting for something I don’t like.

Kind of like a real election.