Competing with Steam is hard to do, but credit to EA for trying.
Competing with Steam is hard to do, but credit to EA for trying.
Electronic Arts have announced that new publishers will be joining their burgeoning list of companies offering games on the Origin digital distribution platform, including developer Trion Worlds and their popular MMORPG Rift. New Rift subscribers will also be entitled to Origin-specific perks and in-game benefits, depending on the edition they purchase. They join their more illustrious brethren Warner Brothers, CAPCOM and THQ in signing up to the service which is a direct competitor to Steam.
It’s also worth noting that amongst these publishers is CD Projekt RED, who also own and operate the rival digital distribution platform Good Old Games, specialising in older titles which have fallen out of support but retain a cult following. The other publishers included in this announcement are Autumn, Recoil, Freebird, 1C Company, inXile Entertainment, Paradox Interactive, Core Learning and N3V; whilst popular, most would be classed as ‘indies’ in today’s parlance.
Origin has come under fire in recent months for their dubious Terms of Service and this week were the subject of an excoriating article in the Escapist Magazine focussing on their pricing and inability to exploit the EA back catalogue to combat the perceived damage of used game sales. It’s clear that EA has a lot of work to do to sway customers seemingly content with other well established alternatives.
Source: Destructoid
