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EA makes a loss of $45 mil previous quarter.

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Yes, they still use Capsule on non-steamable games. The argument, unless I misunderstood, is that there are several other companies out there that exclusively require you to use their front-end system for their games. Other than EA, I'm not aware of another company that does that.

I think there's a bit of misunderstanding here. There's multiple reasons people dislike EA. That's the conversation. What I said about different front ends applies to EA specifically. Yes there are currently mulitple front ends, and yes most of them activate on Steam as that is a game by game basis. My comments were pointed at EA as being the primer in what is exclusivity among companies and front ends. I don't care if I can only buy my games "from" you, but I do care if you arbitrarily make me jump through hoops to do it. Will there be 50 others (and yes exaggeration, but come on, if that's all you can point out, you've missed the point entirely) who knows? But that is what EA's move with Origin and exclusivity of their games is trying to push.

The current crop of them are not exclusive to a specific game company, and there is the difference between them and EA. Blizzard is another one, but it was around YEARS (many many) years before anyone else and was meant as a multiplayer front end. They expanded on that later as more games came out, but it is integrated into the games, not a separate external app. Nitpicky if you will, but they just do it better (even though battlenet 2.0 sucks ass).
 
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If you treat you customers like dirt with DRM you are going to sell less games. Its well and good having no pirates but if you still don't make money well then the question becomes what is it you should be doing. Clearly sequel after sequel isn't working.

Due to issues I had in the past with EA's terrible DRM and abysmal customer service, I haven't bought anything published by them in years. Seems like any time I might reconsider, there's another forum post or news article bemoaning the same problems. They apparently haven't learned anything so I'm not giving them any business.

I wonder how many other people there are like me who are completely done with them.
 
This is one popular sentiment about EA I just do not get.
Blizzard games require battle.net, steamworks games require Steam. How is Origin any different...

The difference is that Steam actually works. B.net actually works. Origin? DA:O would not work and I had to fiddle with it to get it going. Origin is broken. And if I have to install Origin to play a game, I am most likely to NOT BUY THE GAME. F U EA.
 
The difference is that Steam actually works. B.net actually works. Origin? DA:O would not work and I had to fiddle with it to get it going.

I've had Steam literally 'break' at least three different games and require full re-installs (as well as registry mods to fix the incomplete uninstall procedure for one of them), a few years ago at my parents house Steam was 100% inaccessible for weeks at a time, and I've had far more issues with Steam disconnects than I have had Origin disconnects. I don't think this makes Steam a bad service, I think it means it's run by humans.

Whenever Steam first came out and was a required installation with HL2, it was a mess and had a ton of negative press. Origin is 'young' as well.
 
Whenever Steam first came out and was a required installation with HL2, it was a mess and had a ton of negative press. Origin is 'young' as well.

When Origin reaches the level of maturity that Steam has now and drops all of the data mining I might consider it.
I stayed off of Steam (going as far as to uninstall it and HL2 once I was done playing it) for many years until it matured, and even then I was reluctant to use it once it was mature.
 
I've had Steam literally 'break' at least three different games and require full re-installs (as well as registry mods to fix the incomplete uninstall procedure for one of them), a few years ago at my parents house Steam was 100% inaccessible for weeks at a time, and I've had far more issues with Steam disconnects than I have had Origin disconnects. I don't think this makes Steam a bad service, I think it means it's run by humans.

Whenever Steam first came out and was a required installation with HL2, it was a mess and had a ton of negative press. Origin is 'young' as well.

I had problems with origin disconnecting me in the middle of a ME3 multiplayer game and not letting me back in for the rest of the night multiple times. Meanwhile, we were all using steam chat and it was working fine, so it wasn't an internet issue.

Bought the DLC for ME3, and actually had to I actually had to call origin support TWICE to get that shit associated properly to my account because it thinks I pirated it. My friend had to do the same for his copy as well, but he had a different issue with the DLC not being recognized.

Origin can potentially be a good platform, but until it matures I won't be playing any games on it. Actually SimCity4 is on sale at GMG today and I decided not to pick it up because it requires origin.
 
one nice thing about having games on different services is i can play multiplayer on cs:go and my girl can play diablo 3 on my other box.

sometimes you're limited to one multiplayer game per client unless it's a seperate auth system for online play.
 
one nice thing about having games on different services is i can play multiplayer on cs:go and my girl can play diablo 3 on my other box.

sometimes you're limited to one multiplayer game per client unless it's a seperate auth system for online play.

You could get around this by having a steam account for each specific game. My brother does this. While I think it's a good idea overall, I'm just too lazy to do it lol.
 
Because having front ends and having to make workarounds just to play a game is the ideal solution. 🙄

Trust me, not defending Steam at all. It was horrid when it first came out and pretty much the only reason it took off is because of Half Life and people are lazy and like auto updates. If it was exclusive to just Valve games, it wouldn't be nearly as popular.
 
Ubisoft should be quaking in their boots because all they have left is the AC series and that cow has been milked dry, and they have an even worse reputation for DRM.
 
Because having front ends and having to make workarounds just to play a game is the ideal solution. 🙄

Trust me, not defending Steam at all. It was horrid when it first came out and pretty much the only reason it took off is because of Half Life and people are lazy and like auto updates. If it was exclusive to just Valve games, it wouldn't be nearly as popular.

Don't forget the crazy sales. Which EA said lowers the value of IPs but then went on to hold their own sales.
 
Well, I kind of agree that having too much of a discount at the wrong time is a bit damaging for the image of the brand. However, sales done correctly are a good thing for anyone that is on the fence. Also, steam sales are not that great anymore. I personally just wait for them to go all the way down to 5 dollars or if I want the game sooner I can find better deals from other purchasing sites.
 
You could get around this by having a steam account for each specific game. My brother does this. While I think it's a good idea overall, I'm just too lazy to do it lol.

Yeah, I thought about that myself. To bad there isn't some sort of account manager front end to do it.
 
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