EA Origin is shutting down | Hacker News Reader

EA Origin is shutting down

pcworld.com

24 pointsNKosmatos20 comments

A bit clickbait. EA is still running a store and you won't lose your games, it's just a new app and not called Origin.

Also the bit about 32 bit PC users having to buy a new one is a bit overblown. Who's still using a more than 20 year old computer as their main gaming rig?

My first-ever custom intel build was a Smithfield Pentium D in 2006. It was the budget dual-core option (dual core!). Overclocked it from 2.66 GHz to 3.6 GHz with 512MB of DDR-600 RAM.

It was 64 bit. The AMD Opteron was out of my budget at the time.

The point of confusion is that Windows 10 32-bit is the last release of 32-bit Windows and which goes out of support later this year. Windows 11 only has a 64-bit version.

64-bit binaries cannot run on Windows 10 32-bit, and presumably EA is dropping 32-bit binaries for EA Application if they even have them (admission: I have no idea if they do). This is why they want Windows 10 64-bit or above.

The authors are both confused and have no business writing for Personal Computer World.

Weird how the pirate repacks of modern games seem to be the only viable method to play a game for more than 3 years. Weird.

Steam's approach to piracy has always been to provide a better service than piracy.

The competition has yet to understand what that means.

DMM is about as good as Steam with how they present their client, but it's secluded to Japan.

Oh they're only getting rid of the Origin app. Now they're forcing you to switch to the new "EA App" https://www.ea.com/ea-app which I'm sure will be worse.

And switch soon, or you'll lose all your games.

I'm not sure who's in charge over there but it feels like they hate me personally.

Weird that Battlefield wasn't mentioned on the list of notable EA products.

Anyway... no tears shed here.

It's interesting, living in San Antonio Texas. We have a particular dominance of industries here where benevolent dominators exist. We have only one power company, and HEB, literally the best grocer in the nation, covers the town with only Walmart providing any competition.

All this to say, I wonder if that is why I'm kind of okay with Steam being such a dominant force in VG distribution. It's been doing it for 20+ years, it does it with relative benevolence, and makes money hand over fist. A toast to death, EA Origin, and whatever the hell Bethesda had! Haha.

I visited San Antonio once and went to an HEB. Incredible.

On the other hand, Gabe is in his 60s. What happens when he is no longer the guiding hand that keeps Valve private and/more or less consumer friendly?

You should visit an Aldi.

I think it's clear that the 'secret' to good (from a consumer perspective) business is ideologically motivated business leadership. Gaben remains the head of Steam/Valve and he is genuinely and enthusiastically into games. But when you look at companies like EA I think it's probable that their leadership have never been into games, ever.

They just view it as another business, like any other, with no meaningful attachment to what they're making, let alone the people buying their games, whatsoever. 'Battlefield 2042 is a tremendous game.' says EA, while Gaben has scrapped every attempted Half Life 3 effort for inability to deliver the sort of game he and fans want it to be, in spite of the fact that even a turd labeled Half Life 3 would sell a zillion copies - a la Diablo 3.

I don't believe gaben is the head of EA.

Hah, corrected. And if only.

Of things to brag about in Texas, power grid is not one of them.

Origin has already been functionally unusable already for most platforms, as if you launched it on any EA App compatible platform, Origin would automatically force update to the EA App unless you messed with the files to disable the check. Shutting down the app will mostly just pull up the ladder for anyone on an incompatible platform.

I switched to the EA App recently. It's definitely a lot more user hostile than Origin was. Unlike Origin, there's no setting in the app to make it close when you hit the X button, and every time you open the app it opens a full page of ads for their games, with no option to have to have it default to your library instead. All in all it really just seems like an enshittified update offering no new features I want and a lot of "features" I don't want.

Who I had no idea that EA was a federal agency!

> In order to proceed, you’ll need a PC with a 64-bit CPU — and that might mean you have to buy a new PC if you don’t want to lose your EA games.

Uh, can’t imagine too many people reading this are playing Origin-era EA games on a Pentium 4

Exactly. I feel like this author doesn't realise how long ago 32 bit was replaced. Only specifically retro gamers are still playing on PCs that old, and they're probably not online.

I'm surprised the launcher still supported any 32 bit operating systems this long.

Retro games are either played through emulators (ScummVM, DOSBox, etc.) or bought secondhand on physical media. Indeed both are offline and replayable forever and ever (granted that you back up the physical media you acquired accordingly).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com