EA pokes fun at Steam through Origin sale

EA’s Origin service has long had green eyes pointed straight at Steam, with dreams of one day being as popular as the dominant digital download platform. Its latest stab at the Valve run service, is on the main page of the Origin site. Alongside some box art from a few different games, it says: “70 per cent off games you’ll actually play,” referencing the fact that 40 per cent of all purchased Steam games are never played.

Clicking the picture sends you through to the store page, where discounts on games like Mass Effect 3, BF3, Sims 3, Mirror’s Edge, Bulletstorm and a bunch of other titles are awaiting you.

There’s actually a lot of games there, some of them pretty damn good, but it is odd to see EA doing such big sales, since for a long time it made a thing of saying it wouldn’t discount games and that by doing so Valve was devaluing the gaming market. Many others would agree with that sentiment, since it’s clear a lot of people don’t buy games at launch anymore but wait for a few months to get the discounts – something that can kill a multiplayer game quite quickly by capping its players.

That said, Origin is doing some things that Steam isn’t, such as offering game returns on EA published titles if you don’t like them. GoG does something similar, giving you a specific window after release or booting the game to do so.

EA also gives away AAA games from time to time “on the house,” though Valve would need to release more games for that policy to make sense.