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Update (8/17): IMPORTANT, READ BEFORE BUYING. Several readers have messaged me saying EA/Origin's offer only ran through the first week of August although the email text Ars Technica received for the free game deal reads "this offer is only good for the month of August, and is exclusive to Origin customers only." My most sincere apologies if we mislead you and made you buy the game from EA's store. I'll be contacting EA and see if we can get them to honor the deal somehow or at least let us run some sort of giveaway around Battlefield 3's launch.
The original story is below:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as PC game digital distribution goes, Valve's Steam is king. They pioneered the industry with compelling game offers and a service that has worked well most of the time since its inception, but today they face fierce competition from other well established companies in the industry that want to take part of the action.
It's already been confirmed that Battlefield 3 won't appear on Steam when the game launches later this year, and that it will require EA's Origin service to be played regardless of where you buy it, including retail. The move won't necessarily please gamers, but at least EA seems willing to sweeten the deal by offering early access to the game's beta and most recently a free game if you pre-order Battlefield 3 today.
The bonus game deal runs until the end of the month. You get to pick from the following three titles: Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2 or Medal of Honor. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Formerly known as the EA Store, Origin joined the party not long ago taking a more aggressive approach against other distribution platforms. EA reportedly plans to tie certain game features to the service including cloud game saves, auto-patching and achievement tracking.
So far only the upcoming massively multiplayer online RPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic has been announced as an Origin exclusive. Other games' special editions have also been released primarily on Origin and there's of course the Crysis 2 case, which was pulled from Steam indefinitely though the game remains readily available from other services like Direct2Drive.
As a reminder, every Friday we post the best game deals on offer from the different services including Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse, and others whenever we find something worth reporting about.
User Comments: 35
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lawfer said:RH00D said:Guest said:
Too bad the graphics suck.
Come on man... At least put some effort into your trolling. I am disappoint.
Somebody call Troll HQ, trolls are running out of things to say.
Maybe he's just a baby troll, taking his first hesitant steps into a world outside his basement-nest. There is only so much trolling you can learn by lurking, at some point you're going to have to post something troll-like in nature.
Its important that we nurture his early efforts so that one day we can stand at our door with tears in our eyes watching him leave this board, and moving onto bigger and better pastures where he can spread his troll-wings and soar as high as he can.
Who knows how high he can go? Being banned from boards? Being dropped by an ISP? Perhaps even get raided by the FBI? And then when we gather to read articles about him on TS, Julio would point out that he used to be a member here, and we would look back at his early work, and say to ourselves: we knew him when.
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This is an old story and wrong. Free game was up till 7th august. Reported on shacknews I think. Are reported this offer and failed to update the story so far. Alot including me preordered 2 days ago and still received nothing from ea regarding the free game.
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Are=ars
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I have preordered on Origin 10 days ago and have yet to receive any such deal from EA......
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Yay Origin, why not charge us aussies double, no wait triple like every other online download market. Better yet, sell it around the world half price and restrict aussie ip's from purchasing it
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I'll be getting BF3 no matter what, but I'm actually starting to get interested in trying RO2 when it comes out... I'm probably 1 of the few here that hasn't played any WWII mp fps.
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What the article fails to mention is that the free game deal is exclusive to the US, like all previous deals and discounts that were available before on Origin, always exclusive to the US, while us Europeans don't get anything. ._.
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ezodagrom said:
What the article fails to mention is that the free game deal is exclusive to the US, like all previous deals and discounts that were available before on Origin, always exclusive to the US, while us Europeans don't get anything. ._.
EA pulled the, " God Bless Amerrrrrrika and no place else" card.
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EA pulled the, " God Bless Amerrrrrrika and no place else" card.
That is so they can get Toby Keith to play the game.
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I really don't care if I have to play over Westwood online or have to call a number anytime I want to log on. Hell I wouldn't care if it had ubisoft style DRM, I would play Battlefield 3 through hell or high water.
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