U-Play, Origin, and Lord Gaben er Steam

Capitalism is about money and choice, the freedom to buy the things from people for stuff or services you like. But...computers are weird...and they change people's perceptions of things for reasons I cannot understand. Unlike in the real world where I can go buy, say Super Mario from Gamestop or Best Buy and the game remains indistinguishable from either place, people who buy something on a PC have a very different understanding of the same item they bought between services like Origin, U-Play or Steam. Somehow, Mass Effect is a magically different game if you buy it on Steam. People of the internet will claim how profoundly better Mass Effect is on Steam versus Origin. Or how much worse Far Cry 3 is on PC because of U-Play.

I personally fail to understand any of these claims myself, nor does anyone ever present me with a decent argument as to why the services of U-Play and Origin inherently make a game worse.

You don't hear this same spat from people reading Game of Thrones on an iPad versus someone reading it on a Surface Pro or Kindle do you? Never once have I heard someone tell me "Man that new Stephen King book was great, too bad I bought it on my Kindle." But you'll hear this all the time from gamers wishing they could play Titanfall on Steam instead of Origin.

I ask, what's the difference? I personally see none. All three services are pretty darn good, they take up few if any system resources, and they are all very well made. Furthermore, the actual game you are playing doesn't change in the slightest just because you booted up one platform that has more orange than one that is mostly black in color. Sure your friend lists are different, the game library is different, and oh dear your achievements are given by someone other than our Lord Gaben...errrr Steam. Big whoop, I still fail to see how any of that decreases the quality of the game.

Was Super Mario a worse game because you had to blow in your Nintendo to make it work? Sure it was irritating, but the games were still great, we put up with it. The games EA and Ubisoft put out are also fantastic, and as long as your PC isn't a buggy mess you won't be doing any blowing to get them to work. So what is really getting everyone's goat on these different platforms that the PC has? I have some theories:

U-Play:  When U-Play came out it also came with a caveat that you must always be online to play the game, it would even boot you out if your connection was interrupted. As DRM restrictions go, this is by far the worst one. Ubisoft quickly removed this restriction after all the flack. They went so far as to add things in their service that no one else has. Achievements actually earn you DLC for the games you play. No one seems to care though, they just still hate U-Play presumably for this reason.

Origin: I feel like Origin only gets a bad rap for a few reasons. One is people love to hate EA, they just do. I'm not sure why exactly. Sure they make some lame choices like the Sim City debacle (another always online idea...see the trend?), the botched Battlefield 4 fiasco (something that should be online that failed to stay online harharhar), and of course people hating EA for making a Madden game every year (yet it still sells like hot cakes). The other reason Origin gets so much hate is that EA refuses to sell their games on Steam now and people like having all their games in one happy little place in their computer. News flash, your games on Steam aren't all in one happy place either on your computer technically. Some games root your saves into My Documents, some in My Games folders, others will actually use the Steam folder by default. Want to mod them? Again, more searching for the right files, more poking around. It isn't the same thing as having a PS4 and shoving all your games in it people, PC gaming requires some work and that will never change.

I think the main complaint with both is people don't like "more DRM." DRM gets an understandably bad rap because it restricts gamers on using the thing they bought. PC gaming in general is restrictive in that you can't lend or borrow games you have like console gamers can. We used to be able to buy one game and install it on all of our friends PC then use the disc as a frisbee and still play the game. Then DRM stepped in to make sure everyone was buying the game. It mainly came about as an answer to Torrents and people outright stealing the games. DRM became so restrictive and so terrible though, that it soon became less intrusive and less of a hassle for gamers to just steal the game. More DRM inevitably led to more people stealing games. People buying games legitimately suffered from DRM whereas gamers who stole the game didn't. It was awful. There was a time where Gears of War was programmed literally to stop working on PC on the new year of 2011 (I think that's the right year) but people who stole the game didn't notice at all. This was fixed, but just one of many, many examples of where DRM was a hindrance.

Cut to today where most every company has gotten the hint that people don't like intrusive DRM schemes anymore. No longer are there games that require you to be online for the sole purpose of DRM despite all the rumor flinging about Sim City 5 their goal was more of an interactive city game, not imposed DRM. And yeah, it was a bad idea lol. Never the less, Origin, U-Play and Steam all have the exact same amount of DRM which requires you to...load their program *gasp*

Such a hurdle has never been faced by PC gamers. Loading a program? What blasphemy is this, what heresy, what...what....wtf? Really is that all it is? Why are people complaining about this?

I think the worst amount of complaining comes in the form of Amazon reviews of games. Any time you see a PC version of a game on Amazon it's likely to have 3 or less stars regardless of game quality. What are people complaining about you ask? God you're dumb...it's the DRM of course! What reasoning do they give for not liking it? Because...it's...because DRM that's why! And that's it...These people are somehow trapped in 7 years ago back when DRM was bad. I swear it's like these guys don't even play the game and just review all of them to knock DRM.

Let's go back to my book example one more time. A better comparison would be if someone bitched online because they bought The Stand on Amazon Kindle and could only read it with the Kindle app on their iPad, but instead wanted to read it on the iBook app or whatever it's called. It's the same device, the same book, just a different animation of page turning...RIOT!

Here's what I grew up with and had to deal with...remember when you had to RENT games from a store? That's a building for those of you who just turned 15 years old. Back then you had to hope they had a copy in stock. You didn't worry about WHAT you played it on, you worried about WHEN you got to play it at all. If it was out of stock all you could do was peer over the counter and see who had it so you could hunt them down and steal the game...ok I never did that...I was never tall enough to peer over the counter.

The point of this rant of course, is quit your damn bitching!

*Apparently loading up Origin, U-Play and Steam all at the same time is akin to spinning around 3 times in a mirror at midnight chanting to summon Bloody Mary*