Origin versus steam, the battle for the gaming sandbox

I'm not usually an early adopter of any game but with the Release of Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 it was an obvious opportunity for a comparison between Valve's Steam and EA's Origin. 

In recent months EA has decided to host its own Origin gaming portal for its games eschewing Valve's Steam client.  Whether it's bad blood between companies or just EA's desire to tightly control it IP assets it's obvious that anything with an EA logo is going to be handled by Origin. 

I have a decent cache of recent game titles which until recently could be serviced by steam just by entering the installation code using the "Activate game on Steam" option.  As a test I attempted to activate a number of EA titles on Steam the other day and found every code rejected.  At present the only EA game that still exists on Steam in my "Library" is the recent Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.  I could not activate my codes from Need for Speed : Shift or Shift2 nor could I activate Burnout Paradise.

When I attempted to activate Burnout Paradise on Origin, however, it showed up as a game I could install. 

So as it stands now if you want to have a "Steam" like experience with an EA game, apparently you have to use the Origin client.

So what does this mean for the average gamer?  Probably little more than an inconvenience, truth be told.  I've grown to appreciate the maturity of the steam platform  and it's numerous improvements. 

For example; Steam would always let you play a game in your library while updates were active but only recently would it allow those downloads to continue while you played your game.  There's an area in the Steam client portal where you can monitor such downloads and can start, stop, resume or cancel them. 

With the advent of multi-core processors and powerful GPU's, it's less likely a background download will tax your system when involved in a graphics heavy game than in years past.  Before this change an active game would pause the download which could be annoying if you had a number of updates.  The prospect of waiting for them to complete could quickly derail a game night. 

Origin functions much like Steam except that it frequently has large client updates and a less intuitive interface.  It's hard, for example, to figure out whether a game update is happening or to find the game activation dialog (which is on the settings menu). 

Steam isn't perfect as I've had issues with hidden dialogs prompting for activation keys while I sit wondering why my game has frozen.  If you're one for third party content that isn't part of an official DLC pack it can be difficult to install.  I'd expect Origin to have the same issues.

Both Steam and Origin tend to want to default to your primary hard drive for installation.  This includes game titles unless there's a dialog that allows a change which is rare when a game is delivered via one of these portals. 

To their credit both Origin and Steam will recognize retail versions of new games and add them to your library of games but still use your media to install.  That's important as I'd rather install 12GB of game content from a DVD than wait a day for the download.  Still, if you lose or damage that media, you haven't lost the game, always a plus.

A major difference between the platforms concerns special pricing.  Steam frequently runs sales on older titles or holiday events.  Often Downloadable Content or demo versions are available via the Steam Client as well.  Origin's pricing generally mirrors suggested retail.  While I've bought many games on Steam at a discount, every game that shows up in Origin was purchased much more reasonably elsewhere. 

A welcome carryover from Steam to Origin is the portability of your gaming titles.  Finally you can play your favorite game on any pc so long as you have registered it with your Origin account.  I'm hopeful this signals a new paradigm where copy protection follows the user instead of the hardware.  To its credit EA was one of the first publishers to allow multiple installs in most of its recent EULAs.   I'm glad to see the Steam model adopted as a natural progression of that.  Perhaps this signals the end of treating every customer as a thief instead of a valued asset.

To be fair, Origin is still a Beta product which involves seemingly never ending updates and a less polished interface.  I have to wonder if it was wise to pull an entire library off of a relatively stable delivery platform in favor of a more questionable one. 

Origin makes the purchase of games convenient much like Steam but since it's a walled garden where only EA can play, there's not much room for competition.  I think until something changes EA will find itself activating its games from other sources like Amazon and Newegg more than via its portal which calls Origin's existence into question. 

People enjoy Steam for a variety of reasons including:

games from a number of publishers,

convenience,

special bundles

and of course pricing.

I was hesitant to install origin because EA's past includes a history of invasive copy protection schemes, spotty server reliability and abandonment of older titles. 

Steam is a mature platform and the jury is still out on Origin.  If you like EA titles you're going to be stuck with it unless you don't install Origin which in the case of Battlefield 3 is not really an option.  Right now I prefer Steam but I'm glad to at least have access to my EA titles on Origin.

One more note.  As of this writing Steam has released a statement concerning recent compromise of their servers.  While it's unlikely that the intruders will be able to use any information gleaned I'd still advise a password change or your Steam credentials.

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