pacov

Origin

Screw me once, EA.  Shame on me.

Screw me twice, shame on me. 

No thanks.

I bought it on Steam for $49.99. Two days later, it's half that Origin. Which I only found out as I was buying Battlefield 3 for half price.

Honestly, I don't regret it. My experience with Origin and BF3 has been atrocious. The service is stupid, overbearing, and a resource hog considering you have Origins, ESN Sonar and your web browser open to play one freaking game. It's trying so hard to be Steam without really providing the services intelligently.

The DRM on AC was hard enough to swallow. Having SecuROM, GFWL AND Origins? Seriously, I can accept DRM but that's beyond the pale. At least I don't feel like Steam has its hand up my kiester while I'm trying to play.

And I have to chuckle about Origin's pricing. They've blown away expectations about how long it would take them to start discounting. They must be desperate to have users start building a game base on Origins so they feel attached to it the way they do Steam. Slashing the price of a game that released on PC literally 2 days prior by 50%? That's almost unheard of.

Arkham City, while being an amazing game, has to be the biggest example of how paranoid the industry has gotten and how obnoxious it's become for a legitimate customer to play a game they paid for. No less than 3 online service providers are involved in watching me play Arkham City to make sure I'm not doing it illegally, every time, while I play. It's got a 5 activation limit, so even if I'm a legitimate user my rights are curtailed.

I love the game to death but even more than Battlefield 3 and Origins, Arkham City has convinced me piracy is a good and rightful thing. If the industry insists it has the right to be as paranoid as it wants and has the right to punish all consumers to protect their own interests, piracy is a legitimate response from their own customers. Even if I pay for a game, I reserve the right to crack the shit out of it. And if that means being a seed for a crack for someone who DIDNT pay for it....well, I guess some publishers have to suffer for the actions of the others. Sound familar, AAA industry?

It's really been a year for DRM. Skyrim, Arkham City and Battlefield 3 have all brought a level of new attention to DRM. If this is the way games are going in the next year, I may be done purchasing AAA games altogether until they start behaving ethically. It's not like there's a lack of quality indie games out there on the cheap or for free.

Not being able to play Skyrim offline is an inconvenience to me, yes. The 5 activation limit on Arkham Asylum is not only a huge inconvenience, it's screwing me out of my ownership. So yes there. GFWL is an inconvenience every time I have to log into a service I have no intention of using.

It's not at the level of Ubisoft's Always-On DRM failing, but it's still annoying and unnecessary.

Offer their games on a service that doesn't seem like it's dry humping the worst of the Facebook fad? Remove all the stupid 3rd party requirements from being able to launch the game? Ditch the stupid mandatory web browser to launch games an integrate it into the Origin platform which is staring them right in the face? Origin's marketing position has everything to do with how it presents itself and the quality of the service. Even people that like BF3 find the Battlelog and Origins stupid and unnecessary. At this point, the only thing they can do to bring people to Origin is to make steep cuts to great titles. Because nothing else will entice people. Certainly not "the ability to connect with friends and hoohah their fucking hoohahs."

Doesn't Origin invade your computer and search for things? I would need a pretty big discount to ever use Origin. 

I canceled my pre-order of Arkham City all together because they pulled that "lets push the PC edition back a month" plan. Since they saw fit to screw me over on the platform I WAS going to BUY it for, well, I decided to screw them over on the price of the game...

Do I feel bad? Nope. That's what they get for treating PC gamers like criminals, lost sales. It really sucks too because Arkham City is an Amazing game and DC deserves every single cent of the licensing fee and Rocksteady deserves the money for making such a kick ass game. I'm betting it was EA who pulled the plug on releasing the PC version on schedule.

Not too bad my friend, how are you? Things are going ok for me except on the money front. I've got a new doctor and I'm on better meds but the medical bills are killing me and my family. My wife and I added up our bills for the month (Dec) and then subtracted that from what we know our income will be before Christmas and after paying for my doctors visit and meds for December we'll have a whopping $40 for Christmas shopping. Of course that makes me feel responsible for the fact that my wife is freaking out over not having the money to do the Christmas shopping she wants to do. Luckily I've squirreled away a $100 to do the shopping for her Christmas present but she doesn't know that. I'm not too concerned with what I want for Christmas. I'd rather make sure my wife has a good Christmas than anything else.

Sorry to get off topic everyone.

Yeah i am agree on $29.99...from where i can get.... cremation rings

Thought I'd revive this and update the OP.  This is now on sale via steam for $25.

http://slickdeals.net/f/3741876-Steam-PC-Batman-Arkham-City-25

I play games like this using a 360 controller, so there's no real difference to me.  You can usually get a wired 360 controller pretty cheap.  If I was using keyboard mouse, I don't think I'd like it though.