Third Parties Sign On To EA's Origin Service

[Stahlseele]

You know Razer 1911?
The Cracker Group?
Yeah, they just released a NO ORIGIN Crack . .

[Mitchpate]

Reloaded had a BF3 "no Origin crack" the day before BF3 was officially released.  Just like Steam, cracking it is incredibly easy.  Where digital distributors make their money is by making a service that enhances the game's value to make it seem as though it's worth more than the sales price.  Steam does this and thus doesn't care to make their copyright protection any stronger.  Origin does not do this and sales are going to suffer for it.

[xInVicTuSx]

For now anyways.

Yeah I've been suffering through EA's shitty downloading services for years simply because I got sick of having to keep track of my CDs for my BF games. Its been shitty and buggy all along.

For now Origin doesn't really scare me much, if I get concerned there is always 1001 ways to get around it.

[Spooky]

The Steam service has nothing to do with permissions, it's required for the in-game Steam menu to work.

No, this is what the Steam Service is for: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6658684&postcount=26 . It has everything to do with permissions/priviliges and nothing to do with the in-game Steam menu.

[Az]

Yes, but Mitch is still right in that you either have the rights to install (or prompt for them) or you don't. The program can't just beg Windows "please please I really need to install but I don't have the rights so could you scan every folder and set them for me please please pretty please???". EA's "explanations" are explicit bullshit (and posted on Facebook no less).

Yes, but what if it does not have high enough elevation? They have to assume that a regular user is using the application, not an administrator and not someone who specifically lets the application run as administrator.

If a regular user is using the application and cannot elevate processes to administrator rights, then he can't install a service with administrator rights either. Unless the games are supposed to be installable by regular users in a corporate environment that provides that service... I don't really see the point.

[Mitchpate]

No, this is what the Steam Service is for: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6658684&postcount=26 . It has everything to do with permissions/priviliges and nothing to do with the in-game Steam menu.

If you disable the service you lose almost all in-game functionality, unless you have UAC disabled.  This is because Steam isn't programmed to trigger admin elevation anymore and if UAC prevents something then it just doesn't run.  The Steam Service runs with SYSTEM level access which bypasses UAC.  Without the Steam Service installed as a system service, last I checked anyway, the executable still ran as a regular program and everything behaved normally *IF* you have UAC disabled.  You just get an annoying warning message when you start Steam.

Regardless of what EA is claiming as their reasoning, there is no reason to arbitrarily set permissions on folders that your games aren't directly in.  No other digital distributor does this and if it were a lesser company most antivirus programs would flag it as suspicious.

[Spooky]

If you disable the service you lose almost all in-game functionality, unless you have UAC disabled.  This is because Steam isn't programmed to trigger admin elevation anymore and if UAC prevents something then it just doesn't run.  The Steam Service runs with SYSTEM level access which bypasses UAC.  Without the Steam Service installed as a system service, last I checked anyway, the executable still ran as a regular program and everything behaved normally *IF* you have UAC disabled.  You just get an annoying warning message when you start Steam.

Regardless of what EA is claiming as their reasoning, there is no reason to arbitrarily set permissions on folders that your games aren't directly in.  No other digital distributor does this and if it were a lesser company most antivirus programs would flag it as suspicious.

As explained by the VALVe employee, the Steam Service provides higher elevated privileges (which you accept during the installation) in order for games to be able to write to Program Files and the registry for instance, instead of having lots of individual UAC prompts. Maybe Origin is going the other (in my opinion much worse) way: changing the access rights of the actual Program Files folder, instead of having a service, that does the work.

[Mitchpate]

It doesn't work that way.  There's no way to modify 'Program Files' in that fashion.  If an action triggers UAC then it will always trigger UAC, you can't just modify 'Program Files' to bypass that.

Steam gets away with it because it funnels all it's file writing through the SYSTEM account which can freely write to any files not currently in use without triggering UAC.  User and Administrator accounts can't do that and no amount of permission modifying can change that.