EA’s Origin strikes again, with patches this time

Ever heard of Origin? No? Battlefield 3 on Steam, ring a bell? Of course not since you can’t get it there, and Origin is the reason why. To make a long story short, players despise Origin, recently even more with the release of a patch, although not in the way you would think.

PC gamers who bought Battlefield 3 outside of EA’s Origin platform won’t get patches from anywhere else, not even in standalone versions…well, officially at least (who knows).

This has been confirmed by both EA and DICE in an email exchange with Ausgamers. As you’ve most probably seen/heard, the latest patch weighs a hefty 3.5GB, something that Australian players on limited download plans have found a bit hard to swallow, as a result they requested EA to release standalone files that could be downloaded from local ISPs instead of abroad.

“Many Australians have had issues downloading the huge volumes of content relating to Battlefield 3,” the site reports. “The recent release of a 3.5 GB patch was another reminder that, for those of us on limited download plans, keeping games up to date is a bit of a hassle when your ISP isn’t able to mirror them locally.”

This has never been a secret as EA has always said they want to keep updates and content packs within the EA ecosystem, which means that the popular FPS will only update through Origin. Apparently, this action has been taken for piracy reasons. This exclusive factor is all part of a controversy surrounding the disappearance of EA games on Valve Software’s Steam platform.

Although, nothing is set in stone, or at least not entirely, EA and DICE may eventually change their mind if multiplayer traffic diminishes due to gamers being unable to download and install patches, especially patches with a weight ranging in the gigabyte section.

Fans are encouraged to make their way through the official game forum to give their thoughts about the major patching problems.

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