EA Wins Consumerist's Golden Poo twice in a Row; Whines and Compla

[brokenergy]

So a company that makes games that a section of the community doesn't like get's the golden poo but a bank that ruins lives or Vodaphone doesn't? Sounds more like first world problems

[JimboUK]

Don't get me started on Vodafone, their service used to be excellent but these days it's semi functional at best. I was getting garbage data through their 3G, I tried the SIM in two other phones and they were the same, when I called them they insisted all three phones were faulty and tried to sell me another one. A quick check of their forum showed the problem was widespread, when they did finally admit there may be a local problem I was told it would take up to three months to fix, needless to say I found another provider.

[gaminggriffin]

It wasn't enough for EA to ruin great company's, They had to go and make origin :mad:

[ginnyfizz]

An excellent point. Origin bleaaaarghhhhhhh.....

[Zewp]

Lisnpuppy, on 09 Apr 2013 - 15:37, said:

All right don't even start this stuff. Be nice and don't make smart arse comments or responses to smart arse comments. *points to report button* Be terrible for folks to get into trouble over a thread about the most hated company in America. ~LIsnpuppy

I'm honestly not quite sure what the issue with my post is? I was merely pointing out that the resources argument is no longer valid concerning discussions around DRM schemes such as Steam or Origin. Steam uses, at most, 100mb, and that's while running a download. Origin is a lot more lightweight and is likely to use a lot less. Considering the average PC gamer should be using at least 4GB RAM by now, an application that uses up 100mb of RAM really isn't all that serious. I was merely contributing to the discussion, which I feel is part of the purpose of a discussion forum.

 

Unless the issue lies with my calculator comment, in which case I want to point out that I do not recall the use of witticisms being against the forum rules. I meant no offence with the comment and I do not see why anyone should have taken offence, much less why I should be reprimanded for it.

 

However, seeing as I do not further want to derail this thread, I will conclude by saying that the allegations that Origin scans your HDD and sends all data found to EA are nothing more than conspiracy theories. Have a look at this post on Reddit:

 

 

Quote

Yay. Conspiracies. So let's see what Origin really does, shall we?

If you hook process monitor onto Origin you will not see Origin scanning anything, independently of how long you use it. So what triggered the OP's screenshot?

Origin on installation will try to find games installed on your harddrive and automatically register them within Origin. It does that in a couple of different ways:

• It reads the windows games registry
• It looks for games in Program Files
• It looks for games in ProgramData (where, for unknown reason the OP's SMS and tax software are storing the data instead of the user profile where that data should go!)
• it reads the xfire config if it finds one for games

If you look at the screenshot closely you will see that it does not actually read any files. Instead it looks for their existence and recursively walks the directory. It does not read any of your files, at least not judging from this screenshot or anything I have found on my machine.

Lastly if you monitor the network traffic that Origin causes you will see that it does not transmit anything of value to EA. So far I have not seen anything bug login credentials being submitted.

But it's always so much more fun to assume that software is inherently evil. You can hook a syscall monitor on any application and you will see that it operates all over the drive. That's not something unique to Origin. Steam will do the same if you click the "add non steam game" button.

//EDIT: something I forgot: I think people should not run any sysinternals tools without a basic understanding of what they do or at least not jump to conclusions.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/lsoj6/still_thinking_eas_origin_is_harmless/c2vbjty

 

Basically, what Origin does is scan for the existence of EA games on your system. I can actually confirm this, as shortly after installing Origin on my PC for the first time I received NFS Hot Pursuit. At first I thought it was free, but upon closer inspection I realised that the CD key on Origin matches the one I have on Steam, so it merely incorporated a game I had previously installed in Steam. Dunno about you guys, I dislike EA as much as the next guy, but that doesn't sound quite so harmful to me.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Zewp

[Beriallord]

Actually I would add Newegg.com to the list of worst companies I ever had to deal with. They send me a DOA hard drive and I have to pay the return shipping? Really? I guess the next time I need to buy a bunch of parts to build a PC I'm gonna drive 120 miles to the nearest microcenter out of spite for Newegg.

 

Also I've frequently had to RMA stuff over the years back to Newegg, but it wasn't until recently they change their policy and charge the customer for return shipping on bad parts. Last time I built a PC with Newegg parts, I had several bad parts. 2 DOA MBs (in a row), 1 bad stick of ram, PSU was low on the 12v rail, case looked like it was dinged up with a forklift. It would have cost me like $100 to RMA all that. If I had to pay that out of pocket, I would be seriously pissed.

 

Also another thing, I got accused of mishandling a motherboard because the guy said its incredibly unlikely I got 2 bad ones in a row. The nicest way I can put my response is I let him have a piece of my mind for that comment, and he put me on the phone with his supervisor. People like that sometimes make me wish I was Darth Vader.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Beriallord

[Illiad86]

Hmm that's too bad about Newegg, they've always been good when I have RMAed something. But yeah, paying the return shipping sucks. That's why you go for the cheapest shipping the post office will give you :P Sometimes, they give you a decent deal on newegg with UPS, but I haven't had to RMA anything back to them in a long time.

 

Little tip, if it's RAM by Gskill or any other brand that offers a lifetime warranty, it's normally a heck of a lot cheaper to RMA directly to the manufacturer.

 

But yeah, hate EA with a passion. Haven't purchased one of their games in a long time. None are worth it anyways, and they are not worth dealing with.

[LadyMilla]

 

Lisnpuppy, on 09 Apr 2013 - 15:37, said:

All right don't even start this stuff. Be nice and don't make smart arse comments or responses to smart arse comments. *points to report button* Be terrible for folks to get into trouble over a thread about the most hated company in America. ~LIsnpuppy

I'm honestly not quite sure what the issue with my post is? ...

 

Lisnpuppy's response was aimed at lonewolf_kai's post and not yours.

[hoofhearted4]

I buy from Newegg all the time. i did get a messed up GPU once, but Ive never had a problem with them. I love Newegg! Always fast shipping, and usually cheaper then Amazon. I dont think there is a Newegg Store or anything equivilent anywhere near me.

[lonewolfkai]

 

 

Lisnpuppy, on 09 Apr 2013 - 15:37, said:

All right don't even start this stuff. Be nice and don't make smart arse comments or responses to smart arse comments. *points to report button* Be terrible for folks to get into trouble over a thread about the most hated company in America. ~LIsnpuppy

I'm honestly not quite sure what the issue with my post is? ...

 

Lisnpuppy's response was aimed at lonewolf_kai's post and not yours.

 

I think it was aimed at both of us. Her telling him not to make smart arse comments and telling me not to respond with smart arse comments. That's the way I took it. Either way, it both applies. :D

 

Anyways, I've never had a problem with Newegg either. I built a PC from scratch just last year as well. I did have a harddrive problem, but it was the manufacturer's problem, not Neweggs. However, Newegg replaced it regardless. The only thing I had to pay for was fast shipping. They were going to pay for the shipping otherwise.

Edited April 16, 2013 by lonewolf_kai