Origin was launched by Electronic Arts in 2011: the publisher wanted to collect all the cream from the games they publish independently, without sharing the profits with other services owners (before the launch of Origin EA games were published in Steam). This news was not greeted favorably by the community, used to the virtual monopoly of Valve’s service, but the gamers who wanted to play the latest Battlefield, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and FIFA games had nowhere to go – they had to install another launcher.
Since then Origin has quietly existed on the PC market without competing with Steam. The store sells games published by Electronic Arts, as well as projects from other publishers. As for the convenience of the client, there are social features like a friends list and chat, cloud saves, and auto-update games, but the service still falls short of Steam in terms of their number (forget about adding one-click mods and decorating your profile).
OriginGames on Origin can get good discounts in two or three months after release
However, its main task – to sell games and provide online component – Origin fulfills its main task. You can pay for purchases using popular payment systems, and for users from different parts of the world there are regional prices (although in recent years there has been a tendency to increase them). In addition, EA regularly conducts sales and free game giveaways. You can get your money back for the game within 14 days of purchase or 24 hours after the first launch.
Finally, the last distinctive feature of the service is the Origin Access and Origin Access Premier subscriptions. These allow you to play all of EA’s new games, as well as many games from the Origin catalog, for a monthly fee. The advantage of a subscription (for the frequent gamer) is that its annual price does not exceed the cost of two or three AAA-projects, but it gives access to a very impressive library of titles, and often even allows you to launch new items a few days before the official release date.
In 2019-2020, Electronic Arts adopted a new tactic: the publisher’s games stopped being Origin exclusives, and gradually moved first to Steam, and then to the Epic Games Store.
Previously the new FIFA, Battlefield, Need for Speed games you could buy only in EA store, but now the list of services where they are available is much wider. This initiative has given a nice boost forgotten Electronic Arts multiplayer games – for example, the shooter Titanfall 2, which is literally at the moment of release on Steam broke into the top sales.
However, users still have to link accounts in third-party stores to Origin. A small price to pay for the opportunity to add games like Dragon Age Inquisition or Mass Effect Andromeda to your Steam library, but a small residue remains.