EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-s-origin-may-be-glorified-spyware-causes-mass-upset-209745.phtml

by X4 • 15 years ago

115 63 15 years ago

It's also against german law. The software pictures, cell phone backups etc. and more and reportedly uploads the information to EA.

Luckily EA didn't arrive on Linux yet :)

X4• 15 years ago

http://s1.directupload.net/file/d/2691/fglehhsj_jpg.htm http://i44.tinypic.com/2lc8q37.jpg Many upset people discuss their experiences and view in Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-3-Pc/product-reviews/B002I...

ukdm• 15 years ago

This was posted back in August, hasn't EA changed the EULA since then? http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield-3/news/6331203/...

mattmanser• 15 years ago

They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing.

Also the Germans are going nuts about it because they claim the Origin EULA is a violation of privacy laws:

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/3477/article/origin-s-inv...

I was under the impression that Steam's anti-cheat bot actually did something similar to this too, scanning running programs to search for aimbots and the like. This might go further though, I have no idea if it scans non-steam folders.

lclarkmichalek• 15 years ago

I thought most EULAs were ruled invalid in Germany, as you pay for the product before you accept the EULA.

Havoc• 15 years ago

Nobody cares about what gets scanned on the HDD. Antivirus, indexing apps etc all do that. Its the attempt to legally extract the info and (ab)use it that angers everyone.

cube13• 15 years ago

>They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing.

They removed it from the Origin Terms of Service, which is nice, but left it in the privacy policy, so the overall change is... nothing.

Luyt• 15 years ago

This is why I install my games on a separate bootable harddisk, which I only boot when I want to play a game.

JonWood• 15 years ago

I do that as well.

Because games are the only reason I'd want to run Windows.

davidw• 15 years ago

My favorite video game is "emacs". If you align all the characters correctly, you can make the computer do some pretty incredible things.

The RMS level is a bitch though.

Edit: I'm not joking about Emacs - sitting down to write some code/create something is what I do for fun.

sandycheeks• 15 years ago

I've been doing this also for a couple of years now. It is amazing what most games do to a PC. Try watching your processes, services, network connections and the traffic going over them when you boot up a PC with a recent game installed on it. That's before you even run it to play anything.

tjoff• 15 years ago

Reboot to play a game is way too much of a hassle (IMO). What I'd want is a hypervisor that could handle graphics acceleration for one virtual machine at a time. When I wanted to play I just switched virtual machine and moved the ability to accelerate graphics from my workstation virtual machine to the gaming virtual machine (similar to the way some notebooks that have an integrated and a more powerful external graphics card can switch between them during runtime).

That would be a dream come true for me (if it worked well).

dan00• 15 years ago

Isn't the other harddisk still visible and searchable?

timdorr• 15 years ago

If a piece of software is looking for other mountable partitions, mounting them, and reading data off of them, I would think that would be looked at as incredibly suspicious.

adamgray• 15 years ago

I did this too but had the other disks mounted (sometimes my girlfriend wants to stream media off the PC to her PS3 while I'm playing games). I have noticed that Origin will spin up inactive disks when launching Battlefield 3 (even causing the game to crash when joining a multiplayer server when the disk spinup time is > their timeout). It's ridiculous.

dietcokedrinker• 15 years ago

I hope the bad Amazon reviews based on Origin, which is just a poor Steam clone, don't deter people from buying Battlefield 3 - it is easily the best PC FPS game there has been for a long time. With a half decent graphics card it's no exaggeration to say the graphics are jaw dropping, and the game play matches it.

Unfortunately if you lose your internet connection mid game, Origin closes the game immediately. You lose all XP/progress you have made in the game since you launched it.

Steam had its share of problems when it launched and it looks like Origin is exactly the same, except the tool isn't there to make our gaming lives better but to stop piracy without giving a crap about the gaming experience.

tibbon• 15 years ago

I'm guessing this is what EA is hoping for. Have a few killer games to pull people in, and hopefully they overlook and forget about problems and eventually become happy customers.

100tonmantis• 15 years ago

I sure hope it does deter them. To show other publishers that making a neat game does not give them the right to spy on their customers.

maximilianburke2• 15 years ago

    By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree
    that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual
    information, and personally identifiable information, as 
    defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and 
    individual information with other parties. Valve shall not
    share personally identifiable information with other 
    parties, except as described in the policy below.

It doesn't seem like it's much different than Steam. Check out the System Information option from the Help drop-down menu, I don't think it gathers that information by guessing. Steam was also forced onto users with the release of a much-anticipated product -- in Valve's case it was Half Life 2.

ajross• 15 years ago

Exactly. Bad behavior should be punished. If companies could just release any junk they wanted and paper it over with a hit game, the online rights world would be a worse place even than it is now.

hkarthik• 15 years ago

Agreed on BF3 being an awesome game on the PC. I've been catching up with my old college buddies to play it and we haven't had this much fun since Counter-strike Source was released.

Those of us that were around in the early days of Steam remember how much it sucked originally. It wasn't uncommon to hear it referred to as "Steaming pile of shit". And it definitely collects data on your machine as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)#Steam_Communit...

kkyqqp2• 15 years ago

Are you an EA employee who created an account just to make this comment?

chollida1• 15 years ago

His/her comment seems pretty critical of EA and Origin. The Battlefield 3 comments I'd agree with.

Infact I'd agree with pretty much the entire statement and I've been around here for along time.

I'm not sure why you think liking a video game and begin critical of the company who produces it would mean the poster is an employee of the company.

OriginalSyn• 15 years ago

It has deterred me from buying BF3 but the BF3 beta also deterred me from buying BF3. BF3 was full of bugs that were also in BC2, based on previous performance these bugs will not get fixed for a long time.

One of the serious things was that I had to change my password to something less secure, huge red flag there, only slightly less concerning than a company sending you your old password plain text when you want to reset it.

My trust of EA is nearing my trust of Sony. I've been boycotting Sony as a company since their whole rootkit debacle and every time I consider rescinding that boycott they do something that totally justifies it. I'm not boycotting EA yet but I'm being cautious, I'm not going to put my neck on the line and adopt their early stuff until I'm reasonably assured it's not going to do something evil through negligence or intention.

click1704• 15 years ago

This sounds like the kind of thing that some MBA came up with;

Suit: "And in the Terms of Service, add some note so that we can use their personal info for marketing."

Cubicle-ee: "That's a little sleezy and sounds like it may backfire.."

Suit: "Nonsense, nobody reads the ToS and everybody is data mining people's personal info these days, they can't get mad at us without getting mad at everyone else too. Look at Google."

ryanhuff3• 15 years ago

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

outworlder• 15 years ago

Because in most companies, it is the "coders" who are in charge, right?

click1704• 15 years ago

No no, I think you misunderstand my point.

It's the suits job, nay legal obligation in the case of a publicly held company, to maximize profits. More and more frequently we're seeing profits take precedence over privacy and customers, and I don't think that would have been possible as a bottom-up change coming from coders. No, this change came from the top, and coming from the top it spread to the tops of other companies like wildfire.

Also, I have no hesitations about throwing lawyers under the bus as well. They're the front line in the battle that these companies are waging against, what are often times paying customers, never mind that they're paying customers too and that they're ruining the future for our and their own children. What, you think it's just a matter of perspective and a lawyer sees things differently than I do? Show me one lawyer who has no qualms about arguing that a corporation is a person, and I'll show you a person who's sold their soul.

bonzoesc3• 15 years ago

It sounds more like legal:

Suit: "We're collecting this data? Why?"

Cubicle-dweller: "Dunno, seemed useful."

Suit: "Well, we better put something in the ToS about it so our customers know that we're storing it."

click1704• 15 years ago

If it wasn't for the specific wording in the ToS allowing them to sell your info to marketers, I would be happy giving them that benefit of the doubt.

AJ007• 15 years ago

There is actually a case where Sears paid consumers for permission to spy on them and the FTC did not agree it was lawful: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/06/sears.shtm

EA is run by idiots if they think they can get away with this.

bstar77• 15 years ago

I know this is off topic, but it really burns me up to see the once mighty Origin Systems relegated to this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_Systems

dlikhten2• 15 years ago

I second this sentiment. Crusader no regret was one of my favorite games growing up. I don't believe I ever finished it, it was a difficult game, then again back then many things were hahahaha.

bonzoesc3• 15 years ago

They got bought out nineteen years ago; it's not the "once mighty Origin Systems," it's a trademark that EA owns becoming attached to a product.

astrodust• 15 years ago

Brand Necrophilia.

corncobpipe2• 15 years ago

I admit I haven't read all the comments here so I apologize if someone else has made the following comment. This story is nonsense.

Install Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653), launch Process Explorer, install Origin, launch Origin, log in with your username/password. Let Process Explorer run for an hour or so and filter out any results where the Origin directory is being read.

What are you going to find? Nothing.

Most of this outrage is based on a photoshopped screenshot in a BF3 forum, the rest is speculation, not based on fact.

Try the Process Manger experiment for yourself.

jonursenbach• 15 years ago

They may not actually be collecting data right now, but the ToS explicitly grants them the ability to do so at some point in the future.

corncobpipe2• 15 years ago

People are freaking out on this like it's already happening. I point out how you can monitor the program and now I'm getting a negative feedback? Fuck this place.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

For all their bullshit, EA has a point about Steam. I hope they get them to change their mind about in-app purchases.

nomdeplume• 15 years ago

best quote ever = "Reddit, known for its anger over everything..."

andypants• 15 years ago

Also doesn't help in this case that reddit loves steam and hates ea and origin.

And the article is 2 months old, what's up with that? Is this the most sensational article that can be found when searching for 'origin spyware'?

Too• 15 years ago

Can this even be legal? I see this is getting more and more common. Something has to be done about it now before every program you install starts calling home with info about your personal files.

Spotify does the same thing. Read the user agreement, in there somewhere theres a line about giving them full right to analyze and track your personal music collection that you have stored locally on your computer. Yes, that means your local mp3-files completely unrelated to the spotify service.

Silhouette• 15 years ago

There are all kinds of ways this could potentially be invalidated in law, depending on your jurisdiction: privacy laws, computer misuse laws, unfair contract terms protections/limitations on what would be considered reasonable in a contract of adhesion, and indeed the fundamental question of what legal status any given EULA has and whether it is enforceable at all.

Unfortunately, governments seem unwilling to legislate to provide any clarity on EULAs despite their vast scope. Until they do, what we have is a mixed bag of case law, which has little consistency between jurisdictions or even sometimes within the same jurisdiction, and which in any case covers only a tiny number of very specific cases rather than giving much guidance on the broader principles.

I suspect that means if this is going to be struck down, it's going to be in places that have worthwhile privacy laws, which sadly are few and far between in the world today since technology seems to be running at least a decade ahead of the law's ability to deal with its implications, particularly with regard to form contracts and privacy where the increasing dependence on conducting business via automated on-line systems has profound implications.

uses• 15 years ago

This is a low-quality submission. It's a two month old, three paragraph blog entry expressing a vague sentiment, with links to low-quality sources.

killEA• 15 years ago

EAOrigin will not last long. They gained UNLIMITED access to your system without consents, even when they should be scanning theirs own produce instead.

EA must leave PC Marketing at once and stick with Consoles.

By breaching every countries privacy law under false Amerikan Democratic.

Can we say Shitocratic?.

EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

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