Just recently EA announced that they were running a special for those who pre-order Mass Effect 3 through Origin; you get a copy of Battlefield 3 for free. This is a pretty awesome deal and one net me a free copy of a game I've been wanting for some time plus I had just beaten Mass Effect 1 and 2. It was perfect and I was more than happy to start using Origin after trying to avoid their service despite having a few purchases there.

Heading over to the store online took me to the European site which would only display prices in Euros. I couldn't access the US store and when I went to check out it wouldn't allow me to input my US billing information.

Downloading the Origin software yielded even worse results as it won't let me log in at all. I get an error message telling me to restart Origin all because my IP is from the middle east and not the US. To make matters worse I can't even view or edit my account on Origin from the site because of my IP.

Emailing customer service brought zero results as well. I explained I'm currently deployed and can't access my account or make any purchases not to mention being completely locked out of my content I've bought on Origin. Their reply was to use a friend's account who lives here and then active the games on my account via the activation code. I emailed them right back again explaining my situation and how I don't have friends who live here, I'm here in support of the war effort not to live here and mingle among the people.

The response I got back was to call them stateside which I would be charged an international rate because I'm out of the country. The result of that would be having the minutes on my calling card ate up three times as fast and I would have to sacrifice time on the phone with my family to deal with them.

I told them no dice.

EA then informs me there's nothing they can do for me and they are terribly sorry over this but will look earnestly into the issue.

The crazy thing here is that Steam works just fine, Amazon's digital service works just fine, GOG hasn't had any issues taking my money, so why Origin? When I first arrived I attempted to buy Sonic Generations on Steam and I found I couldn't complete a purchase via a message telling me to contact customer support. My account still worked, I could access all my content on Steam, download games, get updates, everything but make purchases. I shoot Valve an email and they inform me that my account had been blocked from purchasing due to the new IP accessing my account from out of the country. I verify that it is me and they unlock my account infoming me to make any future purchases through their website to avoid any issues.

Since then my experience with Steam has been flawless and I've bought multiple games while here, updated even more games, installed games, traded some content around with friends, and more.

The truly funny part is that EA pulled their games off Steam due to them being unable to properly deliver content to their customers via Steam. I'm a customer yet I'm getting zero content from EA because of this. I can't even make a basic pre-order through their site. How is this better than Steam because from my position Origin is the restrictive service here.

I've contacted EA via their Origin Twitter account and after sending several messages back and forth I've emailed them my Origin logs so they can review them but still no word on if I can make any purchases let alone access any of my content. The pre-order special on Mass Effect 3 has closed out as well so who knows if I'll get access to that as EA examines my logs to find what information I could not tell you.

This is annoying. Being deployed is hard enough without dealing with hurdles like these and the fact that having an IP address from outside the US would keep you locked out of Origin is ridiculous. I know of numerous people stationed overseas and I'm sure there are plenty of US citizens who travel the world or live in other countries and are now locked out of this content.

I just wanted to share this and get the word out there about Origins being an incredibly restrictive service. Also wanted to warn everyone that all it takes is them to decide your IP address isn't where you should be and you won't be able to touch anything on your account. You can access your basic EA accout which does nothing for me but anything Origin based is out of the question.

So how is this providing a better service than Steam EA?

Update:

EA finally got back to me via Twitter and explained a few things. First off they are now looking into their systems and working on a way to make it so you can access the correct store no matter where you are in the world.

Secondly the main reason I couldn't access Origin was due to my auto sign in information being expired and thus creating an error each time I booted up Origin.

Thirdly as an apology for the issues I had with Origin and missing out on the Battlefield 3 promo they gave me not only Battlefield 3 Limited Edition for free but tossed in Mass Effect 3 N7 Deluxe Edition for free as well. I have to say this floored me as I never expected them to go this far nor toss in the special editions for free. I was simply seeking to pay for a product I wanted and EA went above and beyond anything I had expected.

Though their customer service wasn't very helpful communicating with them via Twitter was extremely helpful getting me the answers I wanted and more. EA definitely made this up to me and then some. Just wanted to pass on the word to everyone here that maybe EA isn't quite as horrible as everyone thought. They definitely made a fan out of me today.

Update #2:

Logged on to Origin today and found that I was also given a free copy of Syndicate and Shank 2! EA has really surpassed what I expected here and I couldn't be happier right now.