Posted June 20, 2012
Please note that this is not a "let's bash EA and hate everything" thread, just a simple telling of my recent experiences with their Origin plataform.
It has been a while since I began to risk using EA's Origin. While not taking great risks, I have been mainly using it to create backup copies of my EA games, with a good rate of sucess, I must say. I've also had some EA games gifted to me through Origin.
With success comes more willingness to risk, so I eventually bought Syndicate at retail, it's a game that needs Origin to run. I even risked my first direct buy on Origin, Sim City 4. Both worked greatly.
So, yesterday I decided to enjoy Origin's mega sale and buy Dead Space 2 and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
All hell broke loose.
First, I couldn't buy the games from the store in the client, after entering my billing information the “continue” button would simply do nothing, but show a small loading symbol briefly. I tried the live chat support and the advisor prompted me to use the store through a browser.
First attempt was on Firefox, where I could add NFS to my cart, but due to some bug, not DS2. I decided to proceed with buying NFS only and found another bug, a translation one. The credit card holder's name field was labeled “Método de Pagamento” (Payment Method). It took me a couple of minutes to figure it out. Game bought, I tried DS2 again, only this time through Internet Explorer and it finally worked.
Aquisiton problems solved, the download problems began. Even though running Origin as an administrator, NFS would refuse to download based on “you must be logged in as an administrator to do this”. Eventually I noticed that the error is random, and when I manage to make a single game download, the others that were failing begin download would start too.
This enabled me to download NFS and when it finished downloading, a new error ocurred: the game won't finish installing. It just keeps “instaling” forever. If I kill Origin through the task manager and restart it, when I promt the game installation again the administrator error message pops in (the same trick as before also bypass it, but the installation gets stuck again).
I tried a variety of solution tips offered by the live chat guys through all of the process. I set Origin to compatibility mode (Win XP service pack 2, don't ask me why, it should work correctly with my Win 7 32bits), uninstalling and reinstalling Origin (this killed my Sim City 4 installation and the new install won't finish too), turning off user account control and finally, deleting NFS content and redownloading it.
Nothing worked.
A search through Google revelead that the install error is common and relates to Origin being unable to alter Windows Registry. People have been resolving it by adding the correct lines to the Registry manually. By association, the cause of the download problem is the same, Origin is unable to realize it has adminstrator priviledges.
I'm not angry at EA, but annoyed by such an error happening for quite some time (according to the forums I visited) and still not being patched. I also couldn't find a proper channel to report bugs in the application, something that would allow me to at least let them know about the bugs and bad experience I'm having.
Last, but not least, as a fun fact: investigating NFS's installation folder I figured that, while the game Launcher won't work, telling me it can't find the game installed, the game itself works perfectly.
It has been a while since I began to risk using EA's Origin. While not taking great risks, I have been mainly using it to create backup copies of my EA games, with a good rate of sucess, I must say. I've also had some EA games gifted to me through Origin.
With success comes more willingness to risk, so I eventually bought Syndicate at retail, it's a game that needs Origin to run. I even risked my first direct buy on Origin, Sim City 4. Both worked greatly.
So, yesterday I decided to enjoy Origin's mega sale and buy Dead Space 2 and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
All hell broke loose.
First, I couldn't buy the games from the store in the client, after entering my billing information the “continue” button would simply do nothing, but show a small loading symbol briefly. I tried the live chat support and the advisor prompted me to use the store through a browser.
First attempt was on Firefox, where I could add NFS to my cart, but due to some bug, not DS2. I decided to proceed with buying NFS only and found another bug, a translation one. The credit card holder's name field was labeled “Método de Pagamento” (Payment Method). It took me a couple of minutes to figure it out. Game bought, I tried DS2 again, only this time through Internet Explorer and it finally worked.
Aquisiton problems solved, the download problems began. Even though running Origin as an administrator, NFS would refuse to download based on “you must be logged in as an administrator to do this”. Eventually I noticed that the error is random, and when I manage to make a single game download, the others that were failing begin download would start too.
This enabled me to download NFS and when it finished downloading, a new error ocurred: the game won't finish installing. It just keeps “instaling” forever. If I kill Origin through the task manager and restart it, when I promt the game installation again the administrator error message pops in (the same trick as before also bypass it, but the installation gets stuck again).
I tried a variety of solution tips offered by the live chat guys through all of the process. I set Origin to compatibility mode (Win XP service pack 2, don't ask me why, it should work correctly with my Win 7 32bits), uninstalling and reinstalling Origin (this killed my Sim City 4 installation and the new install won't finish too), turning off user account control and finally, deleting NFS content and redownloading it.
Nothing worked.
A search through Google revelead that the install error is common and relates to Origin being unable to alter Windows Registry. People have been resolving it by adding the correct lines to the Registry manually. By association, the cause of the download problem is the same, Origin is unable to realize it has adminstrator priviledges.
I'm not angry at EA, but annoyed by such an error happening for quite some time (according to the forums I visited) and still not being patched. I also couldn't find a proper channel to report bugs in the application, something that would allow me to at least let them know about the bugs and bad experience I'm having.
Last, but not least, as a fun fact: investigating NFS's installation folder I figured that, while the game Launcher won't work, telling me it can't find the game installed, the game itself works perfectly.
