EAs Origin considered spyware by german media

Arbalest

Arbalest

黒い剣士
Moderator
So i thought this would come across as interesting to some. Origin, EAs attempt at something steam-like for EA games, scans your computer. FOr what? i dunno, but it does. ( http://s7.directupload.net/images/111028/enxmldba.jpg - pic for interest)

So yeah, this is apparently against the German law, as such, every game that uses Origin is now fully refundable there(Battlefield 3 being one obviously) and the german media is referring to the platform as spyware.

It's been all over the news last week. The Origin EULA is against the German law so everyone has the right to return Origin games like Battlefield 3 or Fifa 12 for a full refund of the purchase price.

Battlefield 3 (PC) is the lowest rated game on amazon.de , a petition to ban Battlefield 3 in Germany already reached 10.000 signatures. Origin is classified as spyware in the German media.

Data protection organizations are already preparing an investigation against EA.

The petition and a lot of press links can be found here:
http://www.theorigin.de/wordpress/
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Apparently a lot of German Gamers are PC gamers so, you can see what the issue maybe.

EDIT: also this:

If you look at the screenshot closely you will see that it does not actually read any files. Instead it looks for their existence and recursively walks the directory. It does not read any of your files, at least not judging from this screenshot or anything I have found on my machine.
Lastly if you monitor the network traffic that Origin causes you will see that it does not transmit anything of value to EA. So far I have not seen anything bug login credentials being submitted.
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Yeah sure it may not send details or anything, but scanning your system and such regardless? Surely it shouldn't need to do that regardless.
 
Yeah, I can't decide from reports how significant this is. On the surface, it appears to be hideously underhanded, but in reality it seems more like the broad wording of the EULA has spooked people (wording that, apparently, was in previous EULAs in EA games).

Either way, it would have to be clearly shown to be a lot worse than it has been so far to put me off playing BF3. The sheer fact that Origin exists at all, especially in the "****** functionality is our specialty" state it is in at the moment, is probably more annoying.
 
This stuff's annoying for the moment, but I'm less bothered about it than a lot of people because I know that one day someone's going to hack all these online authentication systems wide open and let us do what we want anyway. You know it's getting ridiculous when you start pirating games you legally own just to be rid of the DRM.
 
Origin is a pile of wank and Germany is only calling it where it sees it.

And the reason Steam gets away with it is that, for as far as I know, it doesn't kneecap your system doing whatever. That and getting all of GTA for £5 but that's between me and Gabe.
 
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