EA To Provide Free Distribution To Kickstarter Games

New submitter The God of Code writes "EA has announced that they will be waiving all Origin distribution fees for crowd-funded games — like those from Kickstarter — for the first 90 days. 'The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,' Origin VP David DeMartini commented. 'It's also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.' The recently funded Wasteland 2 developer Brian Fargo applauds EA's move, saying, 'Having Origin waive their distribution fees for 90 days for fan funded games is a major economic bonus for small developers. We look forward to bringing Wasteland 2 to the Origin audience.'"

Comments

Origin

[bonch]

Just your friendly neighborhood reminder that Origin tracks your hardware, installed applications, software usage habits and more with no way to opt-out, unlike Steam. This is the new games industry.

Re:Origin

[Applekid]

EA offering to lend you a hand is a little like making a deal with the Devil.

Re:Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

EA isn't offering to lend a hand. They're trying to woo popular indie projects to them, because they see that almost every single one advertisers in their campaigns that they *are* going with Steam.

This is EA saying "WE ARE RELEVANT, TOO!".

Re:Origin

[vux984]

The gamer/law article calling it a non-story doesn't make it so.

The terms EA expect you to agree to exceed what any one else is expecting you to agree to.

The reference to the "privacy policy" is irrlevant. It doesn't matter what the privacy policy says. They've declared they can take stock of everything installed on your computer, what is running, and when you run things. Period.

It doesn't really matter what they promise to do with that information. They don't need it as a condition of providing me service, they have no business collecting it in the first place, and not providing an opt-in or even an opt-out is bullshit.

As an addendum, a "privacy policy" is pretty weaksauce in terms of a legally binding document granting you protection. Its a policy -- since when does a company policy count as a legally binding contract with you?

Re:Origin

[vux984]

The privacy policy does matter, as the 'legally binding document' dictates that the privacy policy trumps the EULA.

Then why put it in the eula? Seriously. Given the community is fairly upset about it, why not just remove it?

If you're not cool with that, don't use the service, that's opting-out. Get your games from Steam, or buy a console.

I don't buy "Origin" games. However, I think its perfectly legitimate for me to tell them as loudly as I like why I don't buy them, and to advocate others not buy them as well.

But a company saying "we want to know what hardware people have, and what installation/uninstallation problems they have and what background processes may be running that will b0rk our shit, and you need to tell us that in order to use our service" isn't worth raising a fuss over.

It is to me. There are all kinds of abusive things they can do with the information that fall short of selling it. And more to the point, I don't really care what they do with it; I don't think its any of their damned business.

Microsoft asks for permission to send an error report, and I can turn that off without any issue. If Microsoft made it a condition of using their operating system that they got to collect this information, there would be huge lawsuits. And lets be honest here... microsoft has at least as much, if not more of a legitimate need for this data. But they have decency to ask for it, and respect the wishes of users who say "no".

EA doesn't.

I run it under a different user account and lock it out of anywhere I don't think it needs to be.

Then perhaps you should be posting the links to sandboxing origin's client rather than links claiming Origin is a "non-story", because I don't have any software on my PC that I've felt compelled to sandbox to that degree just to retain some that level of control over my own privacy from the vendor.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh shit! There are about to be a metric shit-ton of big budget games by people who have been in the industry for years and know what works and what doesn't and we won't be seeing a shiny dime from them. Over the same period we have been pissing off our customers with our crazier and crazier RDM schemes, we need to stay relevent!"

Re:Translation

[The Asmodeus]

Crowd funded = big budget? I think you maybe posted in the wrong thread..

Re:You'd think

[h4rr4r]

Have they dropped their obnoxious DRM yet?

Re:You'd think

[shutdown -p now]

So long as it's not sold exclusively through Origin, I don't see a problem.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

rent a virtual server with a tiny fraction of your kickstarter funds

seed a torrent

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