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EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

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Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#11

Post by tibbon »

dietcokedrinker wrote: post #6

I hope the bad Amazon reviews based on Origin, which is just a poor Steam clone, don't deter people from buying Battlefield 3 - it is easily the best PC FPS game there has been for a long time. With a half decent graphics card it's no exaggeration to say the graphics are jaw dropping, and the game play matches it. Unfortunately if you lose your internet connection mid game, Origin closes the game immediately. You los…

I'm guessing this is what EA is hoping for. Have a few killer games to pull people in, and hopefully they overlook and forget about problems and eventually become happy customers.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#12

Post by ryanhuff »

click170 wrote: post #9

This sounds like the kind of thing that some MBA came up with; Suit: "And in the Terms of Service, add some note so that we can use their personal info for marketing." Cubicle-ee: "That's a little sleezy and sounds like it may backfire.." Suit: "Nonsense, nobody reads the ToS and everybody is data mining people's personal info these days, they can't get mad at us without getting mad at everyone else too. Look at Goog…

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#13

Post by 100tonmantis »

dietcokedrinker wrote: post #6

I hope the bad Amazon reviews based on Origin, which is just a poor Steam clone, don't deter people from buying Battlefield 3 - it is easily the best PC FPS game there has been for a long time. With a half decent graphics card it's no exaggeration to say the graphics are jaw dropping, and the game play matches it. Unfortunately if you lose your internet connection mid game, Origin closes the game immediately. You los…

I sure hope it does deter them. To show other publishers that making a neat game does not give them the right to spy on their customers.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#14

Post by Xylakant »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #7
mattmanser wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing. Also the Germans are going nuts about it because they claim the Origin EULA is a violation of privacy laws: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/3477/article/origin-s-inv... I was under the impression that Steam's anti-cheat bot actually did something similar to this too, scanning running programs to search for aim…

I thought most EULAs were ruled invalid in Germany, as you pay for the product before you accept the EULA.

While this is technically true, the Origin EULA would be invalid in large parts even if it were accepted before paying. There's a detailed article (in german) here: http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/battlefield-3/artikel/analyse_...

There's a provision in german law that EULAs may not contain clauses deemed "surprising" or "unexpected". There are multiple paragraphs in the Origin EULA that violate this principle (such as reserving the right to scan all data on your computer).

There's another rule that customers may not be placed at a significant disadvantage if you're dealing with private customers. This rule is violated for example when EA reserves the right to terminate support for the game (rendering it effectively unusable) at any time at their sole discretion.

There's other minor points such as attempting to move eventual lawsuits out of country or reserving the right to unilaterally change the EULA at any time but that's more or less the icing on the cake.

The obvious consensus is that the EULA is invalid in pretty much any given point. Which means that the game is defective and may be returned to the store at any point after buying - a tempting idea actually :)

In other news: EA seems to back off a little http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Electronic-Arts-reagi... (german as well)

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#15

Post by outworlder »

ryanhuff wrote: post #12
click170 wrote: post #9

This sounds like the kind of thing that some MBA came up with; Suit: "And in the Terms of Service, add some note so that we can use their personal info for marketing." Cubicle-ee: "That's a little sleezy and sounds like it may backfire.." Suit: "Nonsense, nobody reads the ToS and everybody is data mining people's personal info these days, they can't get mad at us without getting mad at everyone else too. Look at Goog…

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

Because in most companies, it is the "coders" who are in charge, right?

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#17

Post by hkarthik »

dietcokedrinker wrote: post #6

I hope the bad Amazon reviews based on Origin, which is just a poor Steam clone, don't deter people from buying Battlefield 3 - it is easily the best PC FPS game there has been for a long time. With a half decent graphics card it's no exaggeration to say the graphics are jaw dropping, and the game play matches it. Unfortunately if you lose your internet connection mid game, Origin closes the game immediately. You los…

Agreed on BF3 being an awesome game on the PC. I've been catching up with my old college buddies to play it and we haven't had this much fun since Counter-strike Source was released.

Those of us that were around in the early days of Steam remember how much it sucked originally. It wasn't uncommon to hear it referred to as "Steaming pile of shit". And it definitely collects data on your machine as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)#Steam_Communit...

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#18

Post by sandycheeks »

Luyt wrote: post #5

This is why I install my games on a separate bootable harddisk, which I only boot when I want to play a game.

I've been doing this also for a couple of years now. It is amazing what most games do to a PC. Try watching your processes, services, network connections and the traffic going over them when you boot up a PC with a recent game installed on it. That's before you even run it to play anything.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#19

Post by cube13 »

mattmanser wrote: post #4
ukdm wrote: post #3

This was posted back in August, hasn't EA changed the EULA since then? http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield-3/news/6331203/...

They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing. Also the Germans are going nuts about it because they claim the Origin EULA is a violation of privacy laws: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/3477/article/origin-s-inv... I was under the impression that Steam's anti-cheat bot actually did something similar to this too, scanning running programs to search for aim…

>They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing.

They removed it from the Origin Terms of Service, which is nice, but left it in the privacy policy, so the overall change is... nothing.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#20

Post by dlikhten »

outworlder wrote: post #15
ryanhuff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

Because in most companies, it is the "coders" who are in charge, right?

flame/troll bait aside... This was most definitely intentional. EA has demonstrated a lack of giving a shit about customers since Spore and even before that. Spore was a catalyst. They prey on ignorance of users. The truth is by now someone is reading the TOS, and posting about it. The problem is that not everyone reads those posts.

And kids? They don't care about their "privacy" its "gimme mah game!!@?!@!@!@!#%$!" if you disagree with that statement deal with a hormone filled teenager.

Of course those kids who don't get the game will naturally look for hacked alternatives. And this is where EA's lack of understanding of the real world will bite them in the ass.

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