EA Origin trying to install itself on my computer? : Othor Games

» Sat May 12, 2012 7:34 pm

Except y'know... Steam can do the exact same thing. But no, hate on EA, because, y'know, Valve is awesome but EA sux.

Steam is polite enough to ask your permission before taking any anonymous information. EA hides it in the EULA, which 99.9% of people installing it dont read.

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:26 pm

Steam is polite enough to ask your permission before taking any anonymous information. EA hides it in the EULA, which 99.9% of people installing it dont read.

Anonymous. Most people forget that. And most people think Origin steals ALL the data, but it doesn't.

People have an irrational fear of EA. I must have missed the memo telling everyone on the Internet to hate EA unconditionally.

» Sat May 12, 2012 5:54 pm

did you use process explorer to see where the installer file is located? Could give you a clue what caused it to appear

» Sat May 12, 2012 10:07 pm

There is no Skynet, it's all been a lie. It's OrigiNet

Actually that has been the name given to the UK's military communication satellites since they started using them, but they're quite benign really. Especially compared to Origin.

» Sun May 13, 2012 4:15 am

http://i.imgur.com/MDUow.jpg

» Sat May 12, 2012 4:32 pm

By actually reading the Steam EULA?

I've read it as well. Here's the thing though: It says the exact same thing as Origin's EULA with slightly different terminology. They both can, and do, literally do the exact same thing. Frankly, the issue is that most people have their rose-tinted glasses superglued on when it comes to Valve, yet they look at EA with hatred. Hypocrisy at it's finest.

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:55 pm

If you don't want to ask on the EA Forums, I will for you if you want. The only EA games I have are Crysis and BFBC2 and have never had any problems with either of them and don't lpay either of them much anymore, so it won't matter to me if I get banned.

» Sun May 13, 2012 1:53 am

I've read it as well. Here's the thing though: It says the exact same thing as Origin's EULA with slightly different terminology. They both can, and do, literally do the exact same thing. Frankly, the issue is that most people have their rose-tinted glasses superglued on when it comes to Valve, yet they look at EA with hatred. Hypocrisy at it's finest.

Not really. We already told you, theres a big difference between the two companies. Look at past actions. EA is more than willing to perform under handed tactics. Valve isn't, there's a certian level of business like respect for their own customers there. They might both be capable of doing the sam ething, but in reality the evidence only fits one of them. So of course we're going ot treat them differently. Now if they went all EA? How long do you think they would last? There's just enough competing service sout there they could see a dent in their profits. Not to mention they can ask and people are more than willing to give. No need to take or resort to under handed tactics. Not to mention in the EULA from Steam last I checked they are limited to the Steam folder/games installed folders ect. Origins is authorized to look outside of that (assuming you agree to the EULA and install it).

So no, it isn't hypocricy. Get your facts straight please, dont put your own biases on others. If they were the exact same do you think so many would praise them? Would you have even needed to make this argument? No. Is Valve or any company flawless and every to be completely trusted? Again, no. But your not going to distort the facts and say we're all hipocrits. Nice try.

» Sat May 12, 2012 6:55 pm

Not really. We already told you, theres a big difference between the two companies. Look at past actions. EA is more than willing to perform under handed tactics. Valve isn't, there's a certian level of business like respect for their own customers there. They might both be capable of doing the sam ething, but in reality the evidence only fits one of them. So of course we're going ot treat them differently. Now if they went all EA? How long do you think they would last? There's just enough competing service sout there they could see a dent in their profits. Not to mention they can ask and people are more than willing to give. No need to take or resort to under handed tactics. Not to mention in the EULA from Steam last I checked they are limited to the Steam folder/games installed folders ect. Origins is authorized to look outside of that (assuming you agree to the EULA and install it).

So no, it isn't hypocricy. Get your facts straight please, dont put your own biases on others. If they were the exact same do you think so many would praise them? Would you have even needed to make this argument? No. Is Valve or any company flawless and every to be completely trusted? Again, no. But your not going to distort the facts and say we're all hipocrits. Nice try.

Not really, there isn't any difference between the two. Past actions show EA as getting nailed for things that either didn't happen or were overreacted upon by the community, while Valve gets off scott-free because hey! Gabe Newell is such a great guy, isn't he? Valve would never, EVER, you know, do things pretty much every business would do because Gabe's just so awesome. The disappearance of Crysis 2 from Steam jumps to mind especially. First reaction? EA's pulling their games from Steam! Did they? Nope. Steam removed the game due to EA offering DLC directly through the game client. Why would Steam do that?... Hmm... I don't know... To make money? Same reason EA allowed for in-game DLC purchase in the first place.

Oh, and here's the section of the EULA/Privacy Policy in question.

Spoiler

Collection and Use of Information
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.

"Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user.

"Individual information" is information about a user that is presented in a form distinguishable from information relating to other users but not in a form that personally identifies any user or enables the recipient to communicate directly with any user unless agreed to by the user in advance of such communication. This information may be used to improve Valve's products and online sites, for internal marketing studies, or simply to collect demographic information about Valve's users.

Valve may use customer contact information provided by users to send information about Valve, including news about product updates, contests, events, and other promotional materials, but only if the users agree to receive such communications. Except in the cases described below, Valve will not share personally identifiable information with any third party unless the user agrees to such disclosure in advance. "Personally identifiable information" consists of a user's name, email address, physical address, or other data about the user that enables the recipient to personally identify the user. While Valve collects personally identifiable information on a voluntary basis, for certain products and online sites, Valve's collection of personally identifiable information may be a requirement for access to the product or site. Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases situated in the United States. Valve may allow third parties performing services under contract with Valve to access stored information but such access shall only be to the extent necessary to provide those services. In those instances, the third party will be bound by the terms of this privacy policy. In some situations, personally identifiable information you input in connection with Steam may be made available to other users of Steam. For example, during registration of Steam, Valve collects a user's email address and nickname, and at the user's option, first and last name. Some of this information is searchable and available to other users within Steam. Valve has no obligation to keep the privacy of personally identifiable information that a user makes available to other users via Steam or other Valve software, such as in multiplayer or other public functions.

Personally identifiable information protected under this privacy policy and collected from users may be done in conjunction with associates under agreement with Valve. If an associate of Valve is collecting such personally identifiable information within one of our products or online sites, Valve will make users aware of this at the time the information is gathered. For example, product registration data for Half-Life is collected by Sierra Entertainment. If a user does not want to provide this information, the user may choose to opt out of providing this information. Additionally, if providing the information is a requirement of usage, the user may decline to use that particular service or product. When possible, Valve will make a reasonable effort to direct users to the privacy polices of these associates. Valve's privacy policy does not extend to associates of Valve.

Furthermore, external websites and companies with links to and from Valve's online sites and products may collect personal information about users. Valve's privacy policy does not extend to these external websites and companies. Please refer directly to these companies and websites regarding their privacy policies.

Valve may release personally identifiable information to comply with court orders or laws that require us to disclose such information.

Now compare Steam's to Origin's. They've expanded it quite a lot since last I read it, and they've better illustrated exactly how the information is used.

Spoiler

III. What Is Personal Information And When Does EA Collect It?

EA collects both personal and non-personal consumer information. Personal information collected by EA is discussed below in this section. Non-personal information is discussed below in Section IV.

Personal information is information that identifies you and that can be used alone, to contact you on-line or off-line. EA may collect personal information from our online visitors during:

● Contest registration and prize acceptance;
● Warranty registration and requests;
● Customer support and/or technical service requests;
● Player match up and other head-to-head online competitions;
● Registration for games and/or special game-specific events;
● Newsletter subscriptions, referral services, and other marketing surveys and email campaigns;
● Registration for EA/Origin and/or other service accounts;
● Creation of a personal profile;
● Product, service and/or subscription orders;
● Service requests from third party service providers on our site;
● Access to our products and/or services on social networks or other third party services; and
● Otherwise through use of our software, mobile or online services where personal information is required for use and/or participation.

Information collected will vary depending upon the activity and may include your name, email address, phone number, home address, birth date, mobile phone number and credit card information. Visitors to EA Mobile may be asked to provide the name of their mobile service carrier, model of their mobile phone and a valid mobile number so that we may provide purchase instructions directly to their mobile phone. In that context, your mobile number will only be used to send you a text message with a link to download your game and will not be retained for any other purpose. Prize winners may be required to provide their Social Security or other identification number for tax purposes, and will be used only for prize fulfillment.

IV. What Is Non-Personal Information and When Does EA Collect It?

Non-personal information, alone, cannot be used to identify or contact you. EA collects non-personal information about your use of our online and mobile products and services both on our website and in the course of game play and software usage (on PC, mobile and game system platforms).

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country listed on our site at privacyadmin.ea.com, or if your country is not listed, by contacting the Privacy Policy Administrator in the United States. There may be instances where we are legally required to retain your information.

A. What Types of Non-Personal Information Does EA Collect?

When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or game system, we may collect certain non-personally identifiable information for purposes including improving our products and services, troubleshooting bugs, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of software updates, dynamically served content and product support as well as communicating with you. The non-personal information collected may include demographic information including gender, age, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, game system, media, mobile device, including unique device IDs or other device identifiers, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as username, user ID or persona, feature usage, game play statistics, scores and achievements, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles such as friends lists or purchases, for instance. We may also receive either non-personal or public information from third parties in connection with market and demographic studies and/or other data that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.

B. How Does EA Collect Non-Personal Information?

EA collects non-personal information along with personal information when you actively provide it in the context of various online and mobile activities including online and mobile purchases, game registration and marketing surveys, for instance. In addition, we and other third parties use cookies and other technologies to passively collect non-personal demographic information, personalize your experience on our sites and monitor advertisemants and other activities as described below. We may also derive from the information collected other facts, such as determining the applicable tax rate based on your IP address.

1. Cookies

Cookies are small files applied to your Internet browser to track movements within websites. We may link cookie information to personal information. Cookies link to information regarding what items you have selected for purchase at our store, pages you have viewed, or games you have played. This information is used to keep track of your shopping cart and make sure you don't see the same ad repeatedly, for example. Also, we use cookies to deliver content specific to your interest and to monitor website or game usage. We and third parties collect information on what games are played, how much time is spent playing the games and which ads or links are clicked. Some of our sites use an outside ad company to display ads. These ads contain cookies. Cookies received with banner ads are applied by our ad companies, and EA does not have access to this information. Most browsers are automatically set to accept cookies whenever you visit a website. You can disable cookies or set your browser to alert you when cookies are being sent. However some areas of our sites will not function properly if you do so. You can set your web browser to warn you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, or limit the type of cookies you allow. For more information concerning how to disable your cookies, please visit help.ea.com, support.popcap.com (for PopCap products) or swtor.com/support (for Star Wars?: The Old Republic).

We and other third parties may also use flash cookies, also known as “local shared objects,” on our sites that employ Flash technology. Flash cookies are small files similar to browser cookies and are used to remember the site’s settings to personalize the look and feel of the site. Like normal cookies, Flash cookies are represented as small files on your computer. One method of preventing Flash cookies from being placed is to adjust your preferences in the Macromedia Website Privacy Settings Panel at www.macromedia.com.

If you disable cookies, you may lose some of the features and functionality of playing our games, as cookies are necessary to track and enhance your game activities. Please note that companies delivering advertisemants in our games or on our websites may also use cookies or other technologies, and those practices are subject to their own policies.

Please note that this privacy policy covers the use of cookies by EA only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

2. Clear GIFs And Tracking Pixels

Clear GIFs (a.k.a. web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We do not use clear GIFs to collect personal information about you. However, we may use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a user to personalize user experience and for statistical anolysis of user experiences on our web pages.

We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by excluding our current users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.

3. Internet Log Files

EA and other third parties also may maintain log files which contain IP addresses. An IP address is a numeric address that may be assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. In general, we use log files to monitor traffic on our websites, to troubleshoot technical problems and authenticate users' entitlements to our products. In the event of user abuse of our websites, however, we may block certain IP addresses or game system IDs provided by our licensed hardware manufacturers. If available, IP addresses and game system IDs may be used to personally identify you in order to enforce our Terms of Service.

4. anolytic Metrics Tools and Other Technologies

EA also uses its own proprietary anolytic metrics tool and other third party anolytics technologies to collect non-personal information when you use our online products and services and/or play our games on your PC, game system and/or mobile device. These tools and technologies use server log files, web beacons, cookies, tracking pixels and other technologies to collect and anolyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), mobile or other hardware device ID or other device identifiers, browser types, browser language, information passed from your browser (if any), referring and exit pages, and URLs, platform type, the number of clicks, information about your media, peripheral hardware, software and/or applications installed on your machine and/or device, domain names and types, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, the date and amount of time spent on particular pages, other Internet and website usage information, game state and the date and time of activity on our websites or games, information about how your game is used, including game metrics and statistics, feature usage and purchase history, as well as unique hardware identifiers such as MAC Address, mobile unique device ID (if applicable) and other similar information.

The third party anolytics companies who collect information on our sites and in the context of our online and mobile products and/or services may combine the information collected with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your activities across their network of websites as well as online and/or mobile products and services. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies.

Some EA websites and services use Google anolytics, a web anolytic service offered by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google anolytics uses “Cookies”, text files that are stored on your PC and that enables the anolysis of your usage of this website. The information about your usage of websites, collected through these cookies, will be transmitted to and stored on Google server based in the US. On behalf of EA, Google will use this information in order to evaluate your usage of this websites, to make reports on website activities and/or to provide the website operator with other services related to this websites. Your IP-address collected by Google anolytics will not be matched up with other data of Google. You may prevent the installation of cookies by adjusting your browser settings. Please note that if you disable cookies, it is possible that you may not use all functionalities of EA’s websites. You may also prevent the cookies from collecting and storing your information by downloading and installing the following browser-plugin under the following link http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de.

A non-exclusive list of the other anolytics companies that operate their own technologies on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com.

5. Third Party Ad Serving Technology

EA’s websites, online or mobile products or services may employ third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track. Some third-party dynamic in-game advertisemant serving technology enable advertising to be temporarily uploaded into your web browser or mobile device and replaced while you are online. We or third parties operating the advertisemant serving technology may use demographic information such as age and gender as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented within the site, online or mobile product or service and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We or third parties may log data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), unique device I.D., information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisemant(s) served, in game location, length of time an advertisemant was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisemant, advertisemant response (if any), and angle of view. The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology and to other third parties in a form that does not personally identify you.

The advertising companies who deliver ads for us may combine the information collected or obtained from EA with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your web browser's activities across their network of websites. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies.

A non-exclusive list of ad serving companies that operate their own networks on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com.

For more information about the practices of other large ad serving companies that may collect information based on your interaction with ads on this site and others, or to "opt out" of targeted advertising delivered by National Advertising Initiative (NAI) member ad networks, you should visit www.networkadvertising.org.

These ad serving technologies are integrated into our sites, online or mobile products and services; if you do not want to use this technology, do not play.

6. Anti-Cheat and Fraud Prevention Technologies

EA strives to provide a safe and fair gaming environment to all players of its games. To prevent fraudulent activities and behaviors that may negatively affect the experiences of a player, EA is authorized to use "anti-cheating" software, or applications for the prevention of fraud for our internet presence, during the use of our online products and/or services (including online games), and mobile platforms.

At login to EA online products and/or services, during the setup of an EA/Origin account, and/or at the point of sale, EA may collect data about your device in order to create a hash of machine components. Information collected for this purpose shall not be stored in retrievable form. EA uses the collected information for the prevention of fraud, and for authentication purposes. EA may consolidate the machine hash created for this purpose with your EA/Origin account; data consolidated this way will not be shared with any other third party, and will be used exclusively for security and authentication purposes by EA.

V. Information Provided To EA By Third Parties.

EA also obtains personal and non-personal information from third parties as discussed below. EA only uses this data for purposes consistent with this policy.

1. PlayStation?3 System

If you sign up to play EA games through a PlayStation?3 system, your PlayStation?Network account information will be provided to EA so that we can establish an EA Online account (also known as an Origin Account) for you. You need an EA Online account to play EA’s titles online. By signing up to play EA’s titles, you agree that limited user account information can be transferred to EA. Information transferred to EA includes your name, email address, online ID, country, language and date of birth but does not include credit card number or other financial account information.

2. Xbox LIVE

If you sign up to play EA games through Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Service, Microsoft will provide your Xbox LIVE user account information to EA so that we can establish an EA Online account for you. You need an EA Account (also known as an Origin Account) to play EA’s Xbox LIVE titles. By signing up to play EA's Xbox LIVE titles, you agree that Microsoft can transfer your user account information to EA. Information transferred from Microsoft to EA includes your Gamertag, email address, state or province, country, language and age but does not include credit card number or other financial account information.

3. Other Personal Information Collected From Third Parties

We may also receive other information from third parties, including in connection with the operation and distribution of our products and services as well as market and demographic studies that we use to supplement personal and anonymous information collected or provided directly by you. Some third party services such as Twitter and Facebook may also provide us with information from your accounts there with your permission.

By playing an EA game through a social network or other third party platform or service or by connecting to such a third party network, platform or service via one of our products and/or services, you are authorizing EA to collect, store, and use in accordance with this Privacy Policy any and all information that you agreed the social network or other third party platform could provide to EA through the social network/third party platform Application Programming Interface (API) based on your settings on the third party social network or platform. Your agreement takes place when you connect with the third party network, platform or service via our products and/or services, and/or when you connect with, “accept” or “allow” (or similar terms) one of our applications through a social network, or other third party platform or service.

We may also collect or receive information about you from other EA users who choose to upload their email and other contacts. This information will be stored by us and used primarily to help you and your friends connect.

VI. What Happens To The Information EA Collects?

A. How EA Uses Your Information

EA uses your information to fulfill your specific requests, purchase orders and to send you purchase confirmation and other account-related information. In addition, the personal information you provide will allow us to send you messages about things including new products, features, enhancements, special offers, upgrade opportunities, contests and events of interest. You may also later opt out of certain of these communications.

Otherwise, EA uses personal and non-personal information, both individually and combined together, to better enhance your uder experience, improve our products and services, understand the behavior and preferences of our customers, to troubleshoot technical problems, to serve static and dynamic advertising, for authenticaton purposes, to enforce our Terms of Service, to ensure proper functioning of our products and services as well as to help improve them. In addition, we combine non-personal information with personal information, such as an email address, for purposes including providing excellent customer service, administering loyalty programs, and tailoring our communications, offerings, web pages and/or game play experience to you.

By use of friend finder tools such as Facebook, Game Center or other third party services in our online and mobile products and services, you acknowledge that use of these friend finder tools will help you find your contacts and will also allow your contacts to associate your EA Account, also known as an Origin Account, (and related gaming entitlements, including games played on PC, mobile and console platforms) with your social networking profile and/or email address. Your resulting friends’ list, which may be accessible across EA social platforms as available, will be subject to this privacy policy. Note that the friends that you choose to include on any EA or Origin friends’ list may be able to find and/or identify you in the context of different EA products and services and see the profiles you have established. Those friends may also be able to see the gamertags that you use across EA's suite of products and services. Choose your friends carefully.

If you choose to use our referral service to "Tell a Friend" about an EA product or site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will send your friend an email on your behalf inviting him or her to visit the site or check out our product. EA stores your friend's name and email for a short period for the sole purpose of sending this email and for redundancy checking, to be sure that your friend does not receive multiple copies of the same email message. We do not keep or use this information for any other purpose.

Your participation in tournaments or other online game events is also conditional upon our collection, use, storage, transmission and public display of statistical data (such as your scores, rankings and achievements) generated through your participation.

B. Will EA Share My Information With Third Parties?

EA will never share your personally identifiable information with third parties without your consent. We may, however, share non-personally identifiable, aggregated and/or public information with third parties. There may be circumstances where you may share information on your own. Please see section XI for more details about your rights to information you share publicly on EA and other third party sites and forums. You may also opt in to allow EA to share your personal information with companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. To opt out of further communications from a marketing partner or sponsor with whom your information has been shared, please contact that partner or sponsor directly.

EA does not disclose any personal information about children under 18 years of age who have registered on any of our websites to third parties, or share or disclose personal information other than as set forth in this policy, provided however, that in the event of a merger, acquisition, or the unlikely event of bankruptcy, management of EA customer information may be transferred to its successor or assign regardless of age.

From time to time, EA employs third party contractors to collect personal information on our behalf to provide email delivery, product, prize or promotional fulfillment, contest administration, credit card processing, shipping or other services on our sites. When requesting these services, you may be asked to supply your name, mailing address, telephone number and email address to our contractors. We ask some third party contractors, such as credit agencies, data anolytics or market research firms, to supplement personal information that you provide to us for our own marketing and demographic studies, so that we can consistently improve our sites and related advertising to better meet our visitors' needs and preferences. To enrich our understanding of individual customers, we tie this information to the personal information you provide to us.

When our third party agents or service providers collect and/or have access any information other than non-personal, anonymous and/or aggregated data, EA requires that they use data consistently with our stated privacy policies and protect the confidentiality of personal information they collect or have access to in the course of their engagement by EA. These third parties are prohibited from using your personal information for any other purpose without your specific consent.

You will be notified before your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

We may also access and disclose personal information, including personal communications, in connection with report abuse functions in our products and services, to enforce legal rights and comply with the law, or to comply with an order from a government entity or other competent authority, or when we have reason to believe that a disclosure is necessary to address potential or actual injury or interference with our rights, property, operations, users or others who may be harmed or may suffer loss or damage, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, combat fraud and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on EA. Note that certain publically available information you post and communicate on our and third party sites and services is public information for which you have no expectation of privacy. See Section XI for more details.

VII. Where Is The Information Held?

EA is a global organization and the majority of the computer systems on which EA collects, stores, and uses the information it collects or receives are based in the United States and the Netherlands. We may also utilize data storage facilities located in Asia, Canada and/or the European Union. Your personal information may be transferred to, used, processed or held by EA in the United States and in other countries, including countries outside your country of residence both in and outside the European Union and Asia, and used for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

The servers and equipment on which your data is stored and processed may be owned and operated by third parties with whom EA has contracted to receive, store and process your personal and non-personal information. In addition, EA and those third parties that it has designated, may further transfer, store and process your personal information on servers and equipment located in other countries. You should be aware that the data protection laws of other countries may not be the same as the data protection laws of your country of residence. By submitting your personal information to EA, you agree to the transfer, storage and processing of your personal information as described in this section.

VIII. How Does EA Protect Your Personal Information?

EA understands the importance of keeping your information safe and secure. EA will make commercially reasonable effort to protect your personal information and ensure the security of our systems. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. We cannot assume responsibility or liability for unauthorized access to our servers and systems.

There isn't anything "sinister" or "under-handed" in either of those policies. Both, as I've said NUMEROUS times before, do exactly the same thing. The difference is soley in the wording.

As for your accusations of being biased, I most certainly am not. I like both companies equally, and frankly there's no need to be an [censored] to me because you assumed I don't. Also, I typically double and TRIPLE check my facts before I post. So yes, I DO in fact have all of my facts straight. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an early morning tomorrow, and frankly I'd rather not continue this discussion if you are going to be rude. Good day.

» Sun May 13, 2012 7:51 am

What is EA doing? Over the years they have done nothing but bought game companies, corrupted their material and turned fandoms against the creators. Are they in it for money, power? Was EA founded by some loonies who oppose video gaming?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to boycott ME3 if this keeps going on.

» Sat May 12, 2012 4:10 pm

What is EA doing? Over the years they have done nothing but bought game companies, corrupted their material and turned fandoms against the creators. Are they in it for money, power? Was EA founded by some loonies who oppose video gaming?

ISTR they were a proper games company at one time, but they do seem to have turned into the Kraft Foods of games companies.

» Sat May 12, 2012 4:52 pm

Interesting, very interesting....People already said stuff I was thinking so..... :wave:

» Sun May 13, 2012 3:44 am

did you use process explorer to see where the installer file is located? Could give you a clue what caused it to appear

That would be nice indeed. If it popped up after booting then surely the installer would have to be present on the hard drive in some form. Does it come up every time you boot?

» Sat May 12, 2012 6:03 pm

Assume that I am a Steam customer (which I am) and their privacy policy is just as bad as EA's. Then it still doesn't make sense to use Origin, because I really do not want two of them violating my privacy. So, no. I am not going to install Origin.

» Sun May 13, 2012 2:23 am

Not really, there isn't any difference between the two. Past actions show EA as getting nailed for things that either didn't happen or were overreacted upon by the community, while Valve gets off scott-free because hey! Gabe Newell is such a great guy, isn't he? Valve would never, EVER, you know, do things pretty much every business would do because Gabe's just so awesome. The disappearance of Crysis 2 from Steam jumps to mind especially. First reaction? EA's pulling their games from Steam! Did they? Nope. Steam removed the game due to EA offering DLC directly through the game client. Why would Steam do that?... Hmm... I don't know... To make money? Same reason EA allowed for in-game DLC purchase in the first place.

Oh, and here's the section of the EULA/Privacy Policy in question.

Spoiler

Collection and Use of Information
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.

"Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user.

"Individual information" is information about a user that is presented in a form distinguishable from information relating to other users but not in a form that personally identifies any user or enables the recipient to communicate directly with any user unless agreed to by the user in advance of such communication. This information may be used to improve Valve's products and online sites, for internal marketing studies, or simply to collect demographic information about Valve's users.

Valve may use customer contact information provided by users to send information about Valve, including news about product updates, contests, events, and other promotional materials, but only if the users agree to receive such communications. Except in the cases described below, Valve will not share personally identifiable information with any third party unless the user agrees to such disclosure in advance. "Personally identifiable information" consists of a user's name, email address, physical address, or other data about the user that enables the recipient to personally identify the user. While Valve collects personally identifiable information on a voluntary basis, for certain products and online sites, Valve's collection of personally identifiable information may be a requirement for access to the product or site. Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases situated in the United States. Valve may allow third parties performing services under contract with Valve to access stored information but such access shall only be to the extent necessary to provide those services. In those instances, the third party will be bound by the terms of this privacy policy. In some situations, personally identifiable information you input in connection with Steam may be made available to other users of Steam. For example, during registration of Steam, Valve collects a user's email address and nickname, and at the user's option, first and last name. Some of this information is searchable and available to other users within Steam. Valve has no obligation to keep the privacy of personally identifiable information that a user makes available to other users via Steam or other Valve software, such as in multiplayer or other public functions.

Personally identifiable information protected under this privacy policy and collected from users may be done in conjunction with associates under agreement with Valve. If an associate of Valve is collecting such personally identifiable information within one of our products or online sites, Valve will make users aware of this at the time the information is gathered. For example, product registration data for Half-Life is collected by Sierra Entertainment. If a user does not want to provide this information, the user may choose to opt out of providing this information. Additionally, if providing the information is a requirement of usage, the user may decline to use that particular service or product. When possible, Valve will make a reasonable effort to direct users to the privacy polices of these associates. Valve's privacy policy does not extend to associates of Valve.

Furthermore, external websites and companies with links to and from Valve's online sites and products may collect personal information about users. Valve's privacy policy does not extend to these external websites and companies. Please refer directly to these companies and websites regarding their privacy policies.

Valve may release personally identifiable information to comply with court orders or laws that require us to disclose such information.

Now compare Steam's to Origin's. They've expanded it quite a lot since last I read it, and they've better illustrated exactly how the information is used.

Spoiler

III. What Is Personal Information And When Does EA Collect It?

EA collects both personal and non-personal consumer information. Personal information collected by EA is discussed below in this section. Non-personal information is discussed below in Section IV.

Personal information is information that identifies you and that can be used alone, to contact you on-line or off-line. EA may collect personal information from our online visitors during:

● Contest registration and prize acceptance;
● Warranty registration and requests;
● Customer support and/or technical service requests;
● Player match up and other head-to-head online competitions;
● Registration for games and/or special game-specific events;
● Newsletter subscriptions, referral services, and other marketing surveys and email campaigns;
● Registration for EA/Origin and/or other service accounts;
● Creation of a personal profile;
● Product, service and/or subscription orders;
● Service requests from third party service providers on our site;
● Access to our products and/or services on social networks or other third party services; and
● Otherwise through use of our software, mobile or online services where personal information is required for use and/or participation.

Information collected will vary depending upon the activity and may include your name, email address, phone number, home address, birth date, mobile phone number and credit card information. Visitors to EA Mobile may be asked to provide the name of their mobile service carrier, model of their mobile phone and a valid mobile number so that we may provide purchase instructions directly to their mobile phone. In that context, your mobile number will only be used to send you a text message with a link to download your game and will not be retained for any other purpose. Prize winners may be required to provide their Social Security or other identification number for tax purposes, and will be used only for prize fulfillment.

IV. What Is Non-Personal Information and When Does EA Collect It?

Non-personal information, alone, cannot be used to identify or contact you. EA collects non-personal information about your use of our online and mobile products and services both on our website and in the course of game play and software usage (on PC, mobile and game system platforms).

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country listed on our site at privacyadmin.ea.com, or if your country is not listed, by contacting the Privacy Policy Administrator in the United States. There may be instances where we are legally required to retain your information.

A. What Types of Non-Personal Information Does EA Collect?

When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or game system, we may collect certain non-personally identifiable information for purposes including improving our products and services, troubleshooting bugs, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of software updates, dynamically served content and product support as well as communicating with you. The non-personal information collected may include demographic information including gender, age, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, game system, media, mobile device, including unique device IDs or other device identifiers, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as username, user ID or persona, feature usage, game play statistics, scores and achievements, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles such as friends lists or purchases, for instance. We may also receive either non-personal or public information from third parties in connection with market and demographic studies and/or other data that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.

B. How Does EA Collect Non-Personal Information?

EA collects non-personal information along with personal information when you actively provide it in the context of various online and mobile activities including online and mobile purchases, game registration and marketing surveys, for instance. In addition, we and other third parties use cookies and other technologies to passively collect non-personal demographic information, personalize your experience on our sites and monitor advertisemants and other activities as described below. We may also derive from the information collected other facts, such as determining the applicable tax rate based on your IP address.

1. Cookies

Cookies are small files applied to your Internet browser to track movements within websites. We may link cookie information to personal information. Cookies link to information regarding what items you have selected for purchase at our store, pages you have viewed, or games you have played. This information is used to keep track of your shopping cart and make sure you don't see the same ad repeatedly, for example. Also, we use cookies to deliver content specific to your interest and to monitor website or game usage. We and third parties collect information on what games are played, how much time is spent playing the games and which ads or links are clicked. Some of our sites use an outside ad company to display ads. These ads contain cookies. Cookies received with banner ads are applied by our ad companies, and EA does not have access to this information. Most browsers are automatically set to accept cookies whenever you visit a website. You can disable cookies or set your browser to alert you when cookies are being sent. However some areas of our sites will not function properly if you do so. You can set your web browser to warn you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, or limit the type of cookies you allow. For more information concerning how to disable your cookies, please visit help.ea.com, support.popcap.com (for PopCap products) or swtor.com/support (for Star Wars?: The Old Republic).

We and other third parties may also use flash cookies, also known as “local shared objects,” on our sites that employ Flash technology. Flash cookies are small files similar to browser cookies and are used to remember the site’s settings to personalize the look and feel of the site. Like normal cookies, Flash cookies are represented as small files on your computer. One method of preventing Flash cookies from being placed is to adjust your preferences in the Macromedia Website Privacy Settings Panel at www.macromedia.com.

If you disable cookies, you may lose some of the features and functionality of playing our games, as cookies are necessary to track and enhance your game activities. Please note that companies delivering advertisemants in our games or on our websites may also use cookies or other technologies, and those practices are subject to their own policies.

Please note that this privacy policy covers the use of cookies by EA only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

2. Clear GIFs And Tracking Pixels

Clear GIFs (a.k.a. web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We do not use clear GIFs to collect personal information about you. However, we may use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a user to personalize user experience and for statistical anolysis of user experiences on our web pages.

We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by excluding our current users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.

3. Internet Log Files

EA and other third parties also may maintain log files which contain IP addresses. An IP address is a numeric address that may be assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. In general, we use log files to monitor traffic on our websites, to troubleshoot technical problems and authenticate users' entitlements to our products. In the event of user abuse of our websites, however, we may block certain IP addresses or game system IDs provided by our licensed hardware manufacturers. If available, IP addresses and game system IDs may be used to personally identify you in order to enforce our Terms of Service.

4. anolytic Metrics Tools and Other Technologies

EA also uses its own proprietary anolytic metrics tool and other third party anolytics technologies to collect non-personal information when you use our online products and services and/or play our games on your PC, game system and/or mobile device. These tools and technologies use server log files, web beacons, cookies, tracking pixels and other technologies to collect and anolyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), mobile or other hardware device ID or other device identifiers, browser types, browser language, information passed from your browser (if any), referring and exit pages, and URLs, platform type, the number of clicks, information about your media, peripheral hardware, software and/or applications installed on your machine and/or device, domain names and types, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, the date and amount of time spent on particular pages, other Internet and website usage information, game state and the date and time of activity on our websites or games, information about how your game is used, including game metrics and statistics, feature usage and purchase history, as well as unique hardware identifiers such as MAC Address, mobile unique device ID (if applicable) and other similar information.

The third party anolytics companies who collect information on our sites and in the context of our online and mobile products and/or services may combine the information collected with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your activities across their network of websites as well as online and/or mobile products and services. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies.

Some EA websites and services use Google anolytics, a web anolytic service offered by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google anolytics uses “Cookies”, text files that are stored on your PC and that enables the anolysis of your usage of this website. The information about your usage of websites, collected through these cookies, will be transmitted to and stored on Google server based in the US. On behalf of EA, Google will use this information in order to evaluate your usage of this websites, to make reports on website activities and/or to provide the website operator with other services related to this websites. Your IP-address collected by Google anolytics will not be matched up with other data of Google. You may prevent the installation of cookies by adjusting your browser settings. Please note that if you disable cookies, it is possible that you may not use all functionalities of EA’s websites. You may also prevent the cookies from collecting and storing your information by downloading and installing the following browser-plugin under the following link http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de.

A non-exclusive list of the other anolytics companies that operate their own technologies on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com.

5. Third Party Ad Serving Technology

EA’s websites, online or mobile products or services may employ third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track. Some third-party dynamic in-game advertisemant serving technology enable advertising to be temporarily uploaded into your web browser or mobile device and replaced while you are online. We or third parties operating the advertisemant serving technology may use demographic information such as age and gender as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented within the site, online or mobile product or service and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We or third parties may log data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), unique device I.D., information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisemant(s) served, in game location, length of time an advertisemant was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisemant, advertisemant response (if any), and angle of view. The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology and to other third parties in a form that does not personally identify you.

The advertising companies who deliver ads for us may combine the information collected or obtained from EA with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your web browser's activities across their network of websites. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies.

A non-exclusive list of ad serving companies that operate their own networks on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com.

For more information about the practices of other large ad serving companies that may collect information based on your interaction with ads on this site and others, or to "opt out" of targeted advertising delivered by National Advertising Initiative (NAI) member ad networks, you should visit www.networkadvertising.org.

These ad serving technologies are integrated into our sites, online or mobile products and services; if you do not want to use this technology, do not play.

6. Anti-Cheat and Fraud Prevention Technologies

EA strives to provide a safe and fair gaming environment to all players of its games. To prevent fraudulent activities and behaviors that may negatively affect the experiences of a player, EA is authorized to use "anti-cheating" software, or applications for the prevention of fraud for our internet presence, during the use of our online products and/or services (including online games), and mobile platforms.

At login to EA online products and/or services, during the setup of an EA/Origin account, and/or at the point of sale, EA may collect data about your device in order to create a hash of machine components. Information collected for this purpose shall not be stored in retrievable form. EA uses the collected information for the prevention of fraud, and for authentication purposes. EA may consolidate the machine hash created for this purpose with your EA/Origin account; data consolidated this way will not be shared with any other third party, and will be used exclusively for security and authentication purposes by EA.

V. Information Provided To EA By Third Parties.

EA also obtains personal and non-personal information from third parties as discussed below. EA only uses this data for purposes consistent with this policy.

1. PlayStation?3 System

If you sign up to play EA games through a PlayStation?3 system, your PlayStation?Network account information will be provided to EA so that we can establish an EA Online account (also known as an Origin Account) for you. You need an EA Online account to play EA’s titles online. By signing up to play EA’s titles, you agree that limited user account information can be transferred to EA. Information transferred to EA includes your name, email address, online ID, country, language and date of birth but does not include credit card number or other financial account information.

2. Xbox LIVE

If you sign up to play EA games through Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Service, Microsoft will provide your Xbox LIVE user account information to EA so that we can establish an EA Online account for you. You need an EA Account (also known as an Origin Account) to play EA’s Xbox LIVE titles. By signing up to play EA's Xbox LIVE titles, you agree that Microsoft can transfer your user account information to EA. Information transferred from Microsoft to EA includes your Gamertag, email address, state or province, country, language and age but does not include credit card number or other financial account information.

3. Other Personal Information Collected From Third Parties

We may also receive other information from third parties, including in connection with the operation and distribution of our products and services as well as market and demographic studies that we use to supplement personal and anonymous information collected or provided directly by you. Some third party services such as Twitter and Facebook may also provide us with information from your accounts there with your permission.

By playing an EA game through a social network or other third party platform or service or by connecting to such a third party network, platform or service via one of our products and/or services, you are authorizing EA to collect, store, and use in accordance with this Privacy Policy any and all information that you agreed the social network or other third party platform could provide to EA through the social network/third party platform Application Programming Interface (API) based on your settings on the third party social network or platform. Your agreement takes place when you connect with the third party network, platform or service via our products and/or services, and/or when you connect with, “accept” or “allow” (or similar terms) one of our applications through a social network, or other third party platform or service.

We may also collect or receive information about you from other EA users who choose to upload their email and other contacts. This information will be stored by us and used primarily to help you and your friends connect.

VI. What Happens To The Information EA Collects?

A. How EA Uses Your Information

EA uses your information to fulfill your specific requests, purchase orders and to send you purchase confirmation and other account-related information. In addition, the personal information you provide will allow us to send you messages about things including new products, features, enhancements, special offers, upgrade opportunities, contests and events of interest. You may also later opt out of certain of these communications.

Otherwise, EA uses personal and non-personal information, both individually and combined together, to better enhance your uder experience, improve our products and services, understand the behavior and preferences of our customers, to troubleshoot technical problems, to serve static and dynamic advertising, for authenticaton purposes, to enforce our Terms of Service, to ensure proper functioning of our products and services as well as to help improve them. In addition, we combine non-personal information with personal information, such as an email address, for purposes including providing excellent customer service, administering loyalty programs, and tailoring our communications, offerings, web pages and/or game play experience to you.

By use of friend finder tools such as Facebook, Game Center or other third party services in our online and mobile products and services, you acknowledge that use of these friend finder tools will help you find your contacts and will also allow your contacts to associate your EA Account, also known as an Origin Account, (and related gaming entitlements, including games played on PC, mobile and console platforms) with your social networking profile and/or email address. Your resulting friends’ list, which may be accessible across EA social platforms as available, will be subject to this privacy policy. Note that the friends that you choose to include on any EA or Origin friends’ list may be able to find and/or identify you in the context of different EA products and services and see the profiles you have established. Those friends may also be able to see the gamertags that you use across EA's suite of products and services. Choose your friends carefully.

If you choose to use our referral service to "Tell a Friend" about an EA product or site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will send your friend an email on your behalf inviting him or her to visit the site or check out our product. EA stores your friend's name and email for a short period for the sole purpose of sending this email and for redundancy checking, to be sure that your friend does not receive multiple copies of the same email message. We do not keep or use this information for any other purpose.

Your participation in tournaments or other online game events is also conditional upon our collection, use, storage, transmission and public display of statistical data (such as your scores, rankings and achievements) generated through your participation.

B. Will EA Share My Information With Third Parties?

EA will never share your personally identifiable information with third parties without your consent. We may, however, share non-personally identifiable, aggregated and/or public information with third parties. There may be circumstances where you may share information on your own. Please see section XI for more details about your rights to information you share publicly on EA and other third party sites and forums. You may also opt in to allow EA to share your personal information with companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. To opt out of further communications from a marketing partner or sponsor with whom your information has been shared, please contact that partner or sponsor directly.

EA does not disclose any personal information about children under 18 years of age who have registered on any of our websites to third parties, or share or disclose personal information other than as set forth in this policy, provided however, that in the event of a merger, acquisition, or the unlikely event of bankruptcy, management of EA customer information may be transferred to its successor or assign regardless of age.

From time to time, EA employs third party contractors to collect personal information on our behalf to provide email delivery, product, prize or promotional fulfillment, contest administration, credit card processing, shipping or other services on our sites. When requesting these services, you may be asked to supply your name, mailing address, telephone number and email address to our contractors. We ask some third party contractors, such as credit agencies, data anolytics or market research firms, to supplement personal information that you provide to us for our own marketing and demographic studies, so that we can consistently improve our sites and related advertising to better meet our visitors' needs and preferences. To enrich our understanding of individual customers, we tie this information to the personal information you provide to us.

When our third party agents or service providers collect and/or have access any information other than non-personal, anonymous and/or aggregated data, EA requires that they use data consistently with our stated privacy policies and protect the confidentiality of personal information they collect or have access to in the course of their engagement by EA. These third parties are prohibited from using your personal information for any other purpose without your specific consent.

You will be notified before your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

We may also access and disclose personal information, including personal communications, in connection with report abuse functions in our products and services, to enforce legal rights and comply with the law, or to comply with an order from a government entity or other competent authority, or when we have reason to believe that a disclosure is necessary to address potential or actual injury or interference with our rights, property, operations, users or others who may be harmed or may suffer loss or damage, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, combat fraud and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on EA. Note that certain publically available information you post and communicate on our and third party sites and services is public information for which you have no expectation of privacy. See Section XI for more details.

VII. Where Is The Information Held?

EA is a global organization and the majority of the computer systems on which EA collects, stores, and uses the information it collects or receives are based in the United States and the Netherlands. We may also utilize data storage facilities located in Asia, Canada and/or the European Union. Your personal information may be transferred to, used, processed or held by EA in the United States and in other countries, including countries outside your country of residence both in and outside the European Union and Asia, and used for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

The servers and equipment on which your data is stored and processed may be owned and operated by third parties with whom EA has contracted to receive, store and process your personal and non-personal information. In addition, EA and those third parties that it has designated, may further transfer, store and process your personal information on servers and equipment located in other countries. You should be aware that the data protection laws of other countries may not be the same as the data protection laws of your country of residence. By submitting your personal information to EA, you agree to the transfer, storage and processing of your personal information as described in this section.

VIII. How Does EA Protect Your Personal Information?

EA understands the importance of keeping your information safe and secure. EA will make commercially reasonable effort to protect your personal information and ensure the security of our systems. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. We cannot assume responsibility or liability for unauthorized access to our servers and systems.

There isn't anything "sinister" or "under-handed" in either of those policies. Both, as I've said NUMEROUS times before, do exactly the same thing. The difference is soley in the wording.

As for your accusations of being biased, I most certainly am not. I like both companies equally, and frankly there's no need to be an [censored] to me because you assumed I don't. Also, I typically double and TRIPLE check my facts before I post. So yes, I DO in fact have all of my facts straight. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an early morning tomorrow, and frankly I'd rather not continue this discussion if you are going to be rude. Good day.

I dont see two companies called EA or Valve with some quantum link through space time. IE a clone, so as much as you want to will and trick yourself into think they're the same. They aren't. No amount of hard willed bang your opinion into anothers head is going to change that fact. Even the wording is different, want to know why? So it can be interpreted differently. You've even said it yourself it's "pretty much" but isn't the exact same. So no, you are being biased. The one fact I'm very confident in is that no two people will ever be the same, from a science perspective it is very comforting to know that. So how could two companies be identical? They arent. Also all the other comapanies seem quite fine with Steams DLC system, it only makes sense if you rprovide a service you want to make some money off of it. If EA has a problem with this, and it did then they can leave. And they did, taking their games with them. Or at least the ones not elligible to be on Steam. They made their choice, so dont put the blame on Steam here. Just because EA has a lot of weight and heft they tried to get a free ride for their DLC on Steam. Why should they be the exemption? Could they choose to act similarily in the future? Yes, wopuld Steam have to suffer the consequences? Yes. Is it possible Steam may act like EA in the future? Yes. Because time is the cleanser of the old, eventually new people will join their company. It's not entirely impossible they wont go the EA route someday, time is afterall nothing but vast. But to say they're the same now is really quite a stretch of the imagination. Different people, different companies. Also please go to the gigantic Steam thread and but your head in there please, this is about Origin installing on his computer. Seriously this is a major topic derailment. EA has a vast track record for not being so good. Valve as far as I am aware is spotless. So time is ultimately the one to defeat your argument, for now.

Also I know for a fact that companies do things that they really shouldn't. Who has a spotless track record? Valve (as far as I know). Who has had plenty of bad press over the years? EA. Not to say I "trust" Valve, but it would be a far greater amount than EA. Because you seem to think these laws and paper [censored] is what makes a company. It isn't, people make a company. People comit crimes all the time, some we'll never know about.

» Sun May 13, 2012 3:12 am

I dunno; I agree with Valve having a much better public image than EA, and I'd go as far as to say that they do seem less untrustworthy, I'm still not happy about their way of doing business, i.e. they sell me permission to play games that I never own rather than me having a straightforward licence to use and sell that copy as I would normally. The business relationship feels too biased in their favour and because of that I wouldn't use Steam by choice but sadly it seems to have its tentacles everywhere these days so it's hard to avoid.

But I also agree with MadIce that even if Valve aren't as trustworthy as people like to think, even if they're no better than EA, it makes no sense at all to invite a second set of problems to the party. I suspect that, again, I'll end up using Origin under duress unless I want to simply not play the games where it's mandatory, but that does seem to make a bit of a mockery of consumer choice.

» Sun May 13, 2012 2:27 am

I'm afraid I'm going to have to boycott ME3 if this keeps going on.

I am already going to do that, these people need to wake up *sigh*

» Sun May 13, 2012 5:42 am

Or rather, worry that Origin IS Skynet. :blink:

*nods*

EA has become increasingly bold lately in their attempts to combat piracy of games. These attempts are bordering if not going into the area of invasion of privacy. It's one thing to scan a computer for games a company published seeing if they are on your computer. However it's an entirely different ball game if they are allowed to scan your entire computer determining *hey this is pirated* then calling the feds on you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y02BQO70KLs

This is primarily the reason why I refuse to buy/play BF3 due to origin being installed on it. Already believe that gamers should form a lawsuit against EA presenting their own code against them showing how it monitors our computer. Even with the option to accept/decline it there are elements in there that are hidden away making it difficult to determine what they do except to a lawyer with an 8 year degree from lawschool.

» Sat May 12, 2012 3:29 pm

*nods*

This is primarily the reason why I refuse to buy/play BF3 due to origin being installed on it. Already believe that gamers should form a lawsuit against EA presenting their own code against them showing how it monitors our computer.

Just how much does it monitor my computer if I get it though? Because I don't want it trying to pen adverts and me for games it thinks I like.

» Sun May 13, 2012 7:24 am

This is primarily the reason why I refuse to buy/play BF3 due to origin being installed on it. Already believe that gamers should form a lawsuit against EA presenting their own code against them showing how it monitors our computer. Even with the option to accept/decline it there are elements in there that are hidden away making it difficult to determine what they do except to a lawyer with an 8 year degree from lawschool.

EA do seem to be one of the worst culprits for writing impenetrable EULAs: they're not exactly proponents of plain English, though my main complaint is that they're pretty much the antithesis of conciseness: they seem to be deliberately long and waffly presumably in the hope that most people will give up reading just a part of the way through so it's a convenient way of burying inconvenient clauses.

They're far from being the only culprits in this regard, and a lot of corporations could do with being far more brief and more straightforward (okay, it's their customers rather than them who'd benefit, which I guess is the point), but EA's EULAs do seem to be some of the worse examples out there.

» Sat May 12, 2012 11:34 pm

Just how much does it monitor my computer if I get it though? Because I don't want it trying to pen adverts and me for games it thinks I like.

I'm unsure myself since I absolutely refuse to go anywhere near origins. Would say the worst rumors i've heard is that it can scan your entire system like an Anti-virus program. It'll look seeing what you have and if it detects something it doesn't like the program will flag you. After that i'm not sure how EA can act since that kind of information gathering is illegal even if you accept the rules of Orgins and its use. Think MMO games also monitor your computer however their extent is minor since they may mostly monitor what goes on in the background.

They'll most do that to determine if you have a 3rd party programming running trying to corrupt their software.

EULAs: they're not exactly proponents of plain English

Sadly most if not all End User License Agreements (EULAs) are written in Lawyerese so that if a case is brought against the company they have backing to help them out. However these "Lawyerese" are abused heavily to write in pretty much whatever the company may want. That's why beta testing games can be quite hazardous because if a company determines you caused them financial damage for leaking content they can seek monetary reparations. There was a program that was circulating around a while back that took in all of the EULA code then converted that so called lawyer gibberish into plain easy english.

Not sure exactly what happened to the program but it was pretty dang nifty and nearly downloaded it myself.

Just to show you how thorough some of these programs are I took I survey from steam a while back. It cataloged every and I do mean EVERY program that was on my computer. As to what they do with that information its hard to say but by consenting to that agreement if they find something they don't like they could do something to me. Luckily all my stuff is legitimately owned so I have nothing to fear though letting companies rummage around in my closet for skeletons is a bit rude.

» Sun May 13, 2012 5:20 am

Oh my god, ow. The irony hurts.

Players: Hey EA can you ease up on the restrictive DRM and licensing? It's really making us parnoid how your wathcing us. First amedment!
EA: NO! PIRATES ARE ZE EVIL!
EA Supporters: There is no such thing as true freedom. Fair use isn't all that good ect. Garbage.
Textron: Yo, get our helicopters out of your damn game. Or pay us some damn money for the license. We dont want you to use this without permission.
EA: FAIR USE! FIRST AMENDMENT! I WANT MY RIGHTS!!!!
Everyone Else in the Entire world: -_-

Irony... overload. Can't breath through laughter. Oh my god. Hahahahah. I mean it's not a perfect parallel, but I find it quite poetic. Sorry for putting this here, not sure where to place it.
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-using-first-amendment-to-keep-helicopters-in-bf3-219301.phtml

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:52 pm

snip

Heh, that is rathr ironic :teehee:

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:18 pm

Irony... overload. Can't breath through laughter. Oh my god. Hahahahah. I mean it's not a perfect parallel, but I find it quite poetic. Sorry for putting this here, not sure where to place it.
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-using-first-amendment-to-keep-helicopters-in-bf3-219301.phtml

hopefully they won't get their way, actual money went into the design of those helicopters

» Sun May 13, 2012 1:27 am

hopefully they won't get their way, actual money went into the design of those helicopters

Pretty soon, tax payer's money :shifty: