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.

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.

    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.

> But there’s a significant difference. Valve’s policy is self-restricted to anything on your PC directly relating to its own products. EA’s is so broad that it gives the publisher permission to scan your entire hard drive, and report back absolutely anything you may have installed, and indeed when you may use it, and then pass that information on the third parties.

So currently Valve uses that clause mainly to scan for cheats and hacks; EA goes way beyond.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/24/eas-origin-eula-p...

EA also updated Origin's EULA after that article was posted:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/26/ea-revises-origin-eula-dat...

But not the Privacy Policy.

All they changed is the tone of the language, and nothing else.

I have seen Steam pop up a dialog that says what they collected and asks if you would like to submit it or not. It does not seem like they submit the information without your explicit consent.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

The parent post has been edited since I made my comment.