Origin vs. Steam
Steam has been one of the best places to buy games for over a decade, but are they still the best? Origin has some pretty great sales, so we decided to look at them head-to-head to figure out whether the Valve-owned Steam is still the fairest of them all.
Sales
Steam is synonymous with sales at this point. The site has daily and weekly sales that pull a slow drip out of our wallet, but the major discounts occur during the summer and winter. They routinely cut prices on games by as much as 50%, and some games are as little as a dollar. In the past, Steam sales have even offered games for free like Left 4 Dead 2.
Origin also has sales daily and weekly throughout the year, but they don’t have a specific time of year that entices customers to save up and whip out their cards. Some of the most notable sales happen with the EA Games, which isn’t surprising, considering EA owns Origin.
One of the biggest advantages of having an Origin Access account is getting major titles for free. Well, we say “free.” You pay $4.99 per month for the Access account. That gives you…well, access, to download and play any and all of the games included without spending any extra money. There are several great titles on the list including Battlefield 4, Unravel, Crysis 3, Titanfall, and FIFA.
Game Options
Since Steam is one of the most well-known platforms to purchase games, it has more games than Origin. Tons of companies publish their games on Steam, and sometimes you can buy those games in early access form. This is a mixed bag for customers. On one hand, getting to play a game early and see it take shape is pretty cool. On the other hand, if you pay money for an alpha or beta version of a game, you’re basically buying an unfinished product. You will receive updates while bugs are fixed and the game is completed. But that’s assuming that the bugs are ever fixed and that the game is completed.
Origin doesn’t have the massive catalog Steam has, but it does have one leg up on its competition: exclusives. Anyone who plays games knows that EA produces some of the biggest titles in gaming, including Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The company uses this to its advantage and makes some games exclusive to Origin like Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Madden, Battlefield, and Titanfall.
Client
Both services offer a client that holds every game you purchase through the company. That client is pretty important. It’s where your game library will be stored and updated when you wish to play something. Steam may have a bigger library, but it also comes with a bigger client. That can weigh down on some computers – not every computer is equipped to run the client along with games and other applications. On the plus side, Steam focused on making their client as easy-to-use as possible. You can even add non-Steam games to your library.
Origin has a much smaller client with lower memory usage, but there are far fewer options for games. Origin also has fewer features when compared to the Steam client. For instance, the Steam client lets you embed your YouTube videos to your account so friends can watch while you play. The biggest benefit Origin offers is a refund for any EA game for 24 hours after you first play it – as long as you bought it in the last seven days. That gives you a full day to play with a game and see if you like it. Steam allows for a maximum of two hours of playtime within fourteen days if you want a refund on a game.
