I hate EA for... ummm... Dang, it seems I have forgotten. I can forget, but never forgive!

That aside, Ubisoft and EA are probably my favorite publishers in GOG (in that order). I just don't necessarily always like what they do outside GOG. :)

Steam already has competition, it's called GOG. And it's actually healthy, not just less diseased...

Hear hear.

Competition is good.

I also wish UBI would manage to clear up UPlay to become one other competitor in the marked, and that GOG manages to provide an (optional, DRM free) alternative client. The more the better, but I do think clients is the way forward. I think the DD only sites will become more and more marginalised and catering only to a niche audience in the end.

Yep. And it was Virgin Int. who sold Westwood to EA. They were the greedy bastards. EA just accepted the offer.

It's hard to say that Steam and GOG are direct competitors because most of GOG games are not being sold on Steam and most of Steam games are not being sold on GOG.

You don't blame them, but I do. EA has been buying up promising companies just to exploit their IP and drive them into the ground as long as I can remember.

And what about all the other bullshit that EA has pulled? They have embraced every anti-consumer practice available. They had online passes in everything, including single-player games. They championed SecuROM long after other companies abandoned it. They have gleefully used day 1 DLC *cough*Mass Effect 3*cough*, microtransactions *cough*Dead Space 3*cough*, and always online requirements *cough*SimCity*cough*. They have pretty much managed to outactivision Activision at this point.

Well, mine still doesn't show the game anywhere. But I just got a "Redeem free sims points" button appearing in my sims website account that thanked me for buying the game after I redeemed them.

So maybe both sims site and origin will update with the game today along the day.

They have been starting to overlap more and more over time though:

- GOG starting to sell indie games.
- Steam starting to sell more and more classics.

Mainly what is missing from GOG are new or semi-new AAA titles... but nowadays quite often e.g. EA seems to like to keep them in Origin.

But yeah, to get proper competition to Steam, I guess the likes of Origin and UPlay are needed, with their new AAA titles.

jeez what a piece of crap. Decided to give battlefield 3 a go since i could buy it cheap with the bundle. Took a while to get it validated, then when i start to play some website laucher thing pops up. You actually have to start your game using a website. Then the campaign doesn't lauch, after some searching and trying some stuff it finally works. After 30 mins the game crashed and no i can't get to campaign to launch anymore and then they question why people didn't like it....

Won't happen. They're not even able to let you choose the language of the store. You can change the language of the client, yes, but the store remains untouched. And don't ask for help with this. They'll just forward you to an support chat (great idea!) with some indian guys and copy&paste answers (bad idea). One day (Long ago. I don't know the actual state of this matter. Just that the store is still untouched by language choice.) there was an "useful" answer on their forums. Some support guy said, that it's impossible to change the language of the store and that they can't change this. In plain language: Your problem.

I'm fine with a spanish store. But this problem exists since 2009 (when Origin still was "EA Download Manager", or something like that) and until today, EA didn't do anything about it. They just don't care. That's not the way to compete with Steam.

Oh well another bundle to avoid because it's tied to some pointless client which I'll never use. Of course, if did use it then, gradually, every single game in the world will require its own client.

Oh well, no loss.

Bullfrog wasn't a promising company when EA bought them. They were agonising company at best.

word of warning for those who bought TS3 starter and have TS3 in their Origin account. If the expansion/stuff pack did NOT register, contact live chat for two new keys. It did NOT register for me and I have TS3 attached to my account

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Yeah, I think they decided to sell themselves to EA because they were earning gazillions. Because that's what you do - when you are having a major success, you sell that success to somebody else. Makes sense and sounds like a reasonable business practice.

btw. did anyone successfully registered his The Sims 3 copy on thesims3.com? I added it to Origin, but when I try to use the product code on this site it says the key is invalid

edit: oh, it seems it added automatically to my thesims3 account. So no free 1000 SimPoints for registration.