Dear EA, This Why People Hate You.

If you listened to this week’s podcast, you’ve heard us talking about the Humble Bundle, currently (as of this post) featuring a slew of games from EA at a potentially ridiculously low price.

However, you may have also heard me blasting the fact that some of these games would have to be redeemed through EA’s much-maligned Origin digital retail service instead of Valve’s Steam, a service clearly preferred by most savvy PC game enthusiasts.  Perhaps you noticed my use of the word “purge” when describing what I’d done regarding Origin and its former place on my own PC.

But this particular iteration of the Humble Bundle could not be missed. Sure, I’ve already had my time with Mirror’s Edge long ago, and Dead Space has never much interested me. But Medal of Honor and Battlefield 3 were both on my pile of games I’d like to get around to playing, in addition to Crysis 2 and Burnout Paradise, even if I’d already played the latter on 360 long ago.  I quickly forked over five dollars, cast most of it to charity and flipped a buck to Humble Bundle folks as a tip. It was an easy decision to make for all that content.

I activated what I could through Steam (several titles provided codes for both Steam and Origin), and the rest through Origin.  But this where things get tricky.  Although several games were included that I probably won’t play, I’m not about to not redeem something that I’ve technically paid for. Who knows if something will drive me back to them, even if only as a curiosity?  Therefore, I redeemed everything, including games I’d bought long ago on disc and games I never even had any interest in playing.

Steam was a breeze. No hiccups there whatsoever. I simply copy/pasted the codes as they were revealed to me on the Humble Bundle website. The one hang-up I’ve always had with Steam purchases or code redemptions is that they make me sit there and watch a progress bar as some kind of initial installation or something takes place before it let’s me click finish and go back to using their service while it downloads countless gigabytes in the background. But I know that Steam is a quality service and almost never fails me, so I’m fine giving pause for a bit.

However, I expected Origin to be a nightmare. . .  It was not.

Origin has gone a long way to cleaning itself up over the last year. It now runs as an appropriately-sized app with a non-resource-intensive interface.  I copy/pasted codes and redeemed them even more quickly than in Steam, whereupon large box-art icons appeared in my games collection almost immediately.  I was impressed.

Then it came down to redeeming the Sims 3. This is, simply, where everything came spinning apart in a thousand directions in true EA fashion.  I shall walk you through my story in pictures.

First off, I tried redeeming the Sims 3 code the same way I’d been redeeming other codes in Origin, but was met with the following. . .

As you can see, Origin knows exactly what game the code is for, as evident by the fact that it tells me exactly where to go to redeem the code and install the game, but it doesn’t want to redeem the code here. No, EA wants me to go to a Sims 3 website to redeem this code, as if anyone has ever needed to visit a game’s actual website for anything other than troubleshooting.  So I did what I was told.

I went to the Sims 3 page and logged in using the exact same ID and password I use for Origin. . . because it’s all connected. . . even though it’s apparently not. . .  In fact, the Sims 3 website asked me to pick a “persona,” whereupon it seemed to know all the gamertags or “handles” I’ve used in games for the last ten years, including ones it wouldn’t let me pick as my ID for my actual Origin account. This gave me the creeps, but I picked my usual and shrugged it off.

So I found the “redeem a code” option on my Sims 3 account (a thing I’d never thought I’d have, by the way), and clicked on it. It took me to the general account page, and after wondering for a moment what on earth had happened, I found the “Redeem a Code” subtab collapsed on that screen. . . for some reason. . . so I clicked on that one and hoped for better fare than I received when I clicked on the other.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Yeap. You don’t click on “Redeem a Code” or even the second “Redeem a Code” when you need to redeem a code. That would be ridiculous, after all. No, in EA’s world, you click on “Register a Game.”

. . . ::shrug::  Okay.

I then registered the Sims 3, and guess where it appeared immediately thereafter!

That’s right. It shows up right back on my Origin account. That is, after all, how I’ll download and install the game. . . even though EA refused to redeem the game there, but instead wanted me logging into their wannabe social store at the Sims 3 website for no reason that is anything but antagonizing and inconvenient to me.  But you know what? That’s fine. I got this game for pretty much nothing, so let’s forge on.

Time to start registering the expansion backs. I go back and started to click on “Redeem a Code,” thinking that expansions would certainly work that way, but noticed that I had more characters in my code than their system would allow me to input, and quickly went right back to “Register a Game,” which felt disingenuous.

What I got was this. . .

Sweet.

So after a reload, I was able to get the game registration window up and enter my code.  That’s when the following happened. . .

Well, huh.

I guess. . . I guess I should try again? I closed the error message and reloaded the page.

But. . . I was. . . And you promised to remember me!

So I logged in and got back to the game register page, and then this happened. . .

I. . . uhh. . . Why am I still on the Sims 3 website, and what does this mean for the value of my eternal soul?

I tried one of the other included expansions instead, and it appeared to work just fine.

Hooray–I guess.

I then went to redeem the code for my last expansion, but I realized it was too small to use the Register a Game link on the Sims 3 website.  So what was I supposed to do?

YES!

After all was said and done, it looked like the game and two expansions installed fine, as evident that they showed up in my Origin account (including the one that appeared to fail completely), which is where all of this should have gone down anyway.  The third expansion, which was apparently a “code” and not a “game,” does not show up in my Origin account, but is somehow tied to my Sims 3 account or something. I don’t know.

I need a Tylenol.