image: 122lu88The Battlefield 3 Beta launched recently and for the majority of PC gamers, this will be the first time they'll have used EA's new digital distribution system, downloader and online store - by the name of Origin. For those who aren't too familiar with Origin, it's EA's answer to the popular Steam network. Following the high profile public spat between EA and Valve, EA pulled all of their popular titles from Steam and created their own download service. EA and Origin is now in direct competition with Valve and Steam. But, competition is good, right? Right. As a PC gamer, I love Steam - even with a monopolised online market they continuously offer fantastic deals and provide excellent support. A competitor in their market-place could well have been a good thing, ensuring that Steam maintains it's quality of service, value and keeps it on it's toes. Unfortunately, that competitor is EA and as a PC gamer I do not like EA. They have a bad reputation of rushing out release after release, unfinished products at full retail price, poor support, milking the DLC market dry and are responsible of crushing many aspiring small developers.

Yet it is with Origin that the masses are in uproar over. Quite simply if you want to play an EA game you have to use Origin. Case in point, if you want to play Battlefield 3 you have two choices: either buy a digital copy and download from Origin or buy a retail disc and register it online through Origin. Regardless, you'll have to use Origin and in doing so you must agree to their EULA. We've all agreed to hundreds of User Agreements and I'd say that most of us have never read anything of what we are agreeing to, but one thorough denizen over at the Escapist Forums stumbled across a quite extraordinary clause, one that ensures that I will not be installing Origin and may well make you think twice about downloading the software onto your PC. Under the paragraph titled "Consent to Collection and Use of Data", the EULA reads:

QuoteYou agree that EA may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol Address), operating system, Application usage (including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online services. EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you. IF YOU DO NOT WANT EA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE, TRANSMIT OR DISPLAY THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE APPLICATION. This and all other data provided to EA and/or collected by EA in connection with your installation and use of this Application is collected, used, stored and transmitted in accordance with EA’s Privacy Policy located at www.ea.com. To the extent that anything in this section conflicts with the terms of EA’s Privacy Policy, the terms of the Privacy Policy shall control.


To summarise, Origin's:
- is always on, not just when you're playing an EA game (and it is a memory hog)
- scans your entire system and reports back everything you have installed
- monitors your internet usage and tracks your browsing history
- sells all gathered information to 3rd party advertisers

EA also has plans to launch Origin's for your mobile device and integrate social network hooks so not only will they be selling the data from your hard drive, but also the data from your phone and your friends list.

The simple fact is that by playing any EA exclusive such as Battlefield 3 or Mass Effect 3, you have to agree that EA will continuously distribute your personal information to make money on you by selling the contents of your hard drive, your browsing history, or anything else. Why should I be a cash point vector in their business plan? Once I've paid for my game, that should be the end of the one-time transaction, my money for their game. There is simply no other industry in which this would be acceptable, other than gaming.

Given the high profile security collapse at Sony and their own controversial EULA revision, I'd rather that Sony, EA or anyone else do less data mining on me given the recent track record of gaming company IT security. I quite frankly do not trust them as nothing is ever truly anonymous on the internet.

As some of you might be aware, popular sights such as Google and Facebook track your cookies to personalise your Google ads or search results, but what Origin is doing is different as this is me playing a game in my own privacy. I would have no issue with providing them data on how I played the game that I bought from them, but they have no right to any other data of mine.

It's obvious that EA doesn't think they can make enough money by just selling and distributing games, so they have put an unethical business plan in place whereby they continuously make money by selling any customers data to the highest bidder. I want to support gaming and in particular PC gaming, but I frankly refuse to sign up to Origin's so that they can extract whatever data they please for free so that an EA executive can drive a new Ferrari.