Battlefield 3 Cracked To Run Without Origin, EA Sheds A Tear

[Reacon]

The problem is that your "evidence" is opinion. No one can answer how they will update their game, how they will receive DLC ect.... All I get is assumptions. No one has released the patch for the release day patch yet?????

They could just as easily integrate a patcher in the Battlelog plugin. Once again, there is no point to Origin.

And since we're forced to use Origin in the first place to activate, there's little reason in uninstalling it. It's not like it allows you to remove Origin completely from your computer. Patches are still distributed through it. It's just something that eases the process of launching the game.

[Rooster69]

They could just as easily integrate a patcher in the Battlelog plugin. Once again, there is no point to Origin.

And since we're forced to use Origin in the first place to activate, there's little reason in uninstalling it. It's not like it allows you to remove Origin completely from your computer. Patches are still distributed through it. It's just something that eases the process of launching the game.

My point. Assumptions. Right now, if I went and purchased the game from Walmart, loaded it, cracked it to eliminate Origin, I could not get the release day patch, therefore I could not play. All this to save a few cycles and a 1/2 a meg of ram, well worth it. My whole point is not to defend Origin or EA but to make sure people understand the big picture here, the fact that you could very well be left out to dry in a few weeks when EA needs to make a patch, or worse, get your CD Key banned and you just lost $60. Spreading FUD that Origin is a virus, or a Trojan or sucks up so many resources that your computer drags to a crawl are downright false! Am I unhappy I have to install yet another piece of software, yes but the game is so magnificent it is well worth it. Plus, to defend Origin a little bit, it restored two games that I lost the CD keys too in my move, BF2142 and BFBC2. That was cool.

[Windows7even]

Umm let's see..trust ea and origin....multibillion dollar company who has some form of accountability/security...or trust a group of hackers living out of their grandmas basement who create a piece of spyware/Trojan/virus laden piece of software that does god know what in the background of my computer..think I will stick with ea and origin

[ThePitt]

think again

[Reacon]

the fact that you could very well be left out to dry in a few weeks when EA needs to make a patch, or worse, get your CD Key banned and you just lost $60.

I've stated that I do not mind losing 50$, since it's not really a loss to me in the state that the game is in right now. When the game is patched up and released independently, I will simply buy that version of it. Once again, also. This patch is to solve the problem of having to constantly run Origin to play the game. It doesn't completely get around the Origin dependency. The next time I need to update, I will replace the .exe with the old, and fire up Origin again to do so. This is exactly what Origin should be - a patch manager.

Plus, to defend Origin a little bit, it restored two games that I lost the CD keys too in my move, BF2142 and BFBC2. That was cool.

I don't understand how it managed to recover CD keys for you, but good for you. Origin has its uses, but none of them justify the need to constantly have it running while playing BF3. Even the majority of the non-Steamworks games bought on Steam allow me to launch without steam running. I need only execute the .exe lying in the steamapps\common\ folder.

Spreading FUD that Origin is a virus, or a Trojan or sucks up so many resources that your computer drags to a crawl are downright false! Am I unhappy I have to install yet another piece of software, yes but the game is so magnificent it is well worth it.

Quote me where I claimed that Origin is a resource hog. And certainly I do care that it takes information without my permission (something that steam asks for), but I do not necessarily care about the information being taken. It's more about the intent than the crime.

My entire argument has revolved around Origin being useless, and I do not think I should be forced to use something to play a game, where it offers me little in advantage, and quite frankly causes more problems than it's worth. Battlefield games since BF2 have always been a hassle to actually get into servers, but wonderful once you're in.

I'm sure the core gameplay will improve over the months, but I'd honestly rather BC2's system over a process of: Launching Origin (20-30 sec), launching and loading Battlelog (20-30 sec depending on how my connection is feeling), then loading the game for another minute and a half. Let's take a look at Call of Duty 4 as a quick example on how it SHOULD be done. You can change your name, adjust your loadout, attain ranks, and go from your desktop, to loading a server in less than 30 seconds. There's no reason a triple-a developer 4 years later cannot do this.

[Belazor]

Launching Origin (20-30 sec), launching and loading Battlelog (20-30 sec depending on how my connection is feeling), then loading the game for another minute and a half.

Since you ignored my answer to this in my previous post: Please explain to me how the Origin integration takes 20-30 seconds.

Do you tab out of BF3, close Origin, tab back in, play, then quit, then 10 minutes later find you want to play again?

I'm not even trying to argue anymore, I'm just curious why you list it as 20-30 seconds.

[Jamushroom Veteran]

Seriously guys, just agree to disagree :/ Why keep on arguing about it when all of you no it's useless.

[Argi]

[Pupik]

Just tried to join 2 servers and look.

Noticed you don't have any browser open. How exactly did you join those 2 servers, without battlelog being open?

[sagum]

Hey look at me, I hate Origin so much that I will install, without question, this "patch" from a known cracker/hacker group, down with Origin!!!!

I'm sure a lot of people will trust Razor1911 more then they can throw EA. Razor1911 and the other high profile cracking groups work on trust, and seem to have better ethics then EA have to its own paying customers.

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber²]

I'm sure a lot of people will trust Razor1911 more then they can throw EA. Razor1911 and the other high profile cracking groups work on trust, and seem to have better ethics then EA have to its own paying customers.

Apart from being thieves, you mean?

Yes, very ethical bunch of guys... :rolleyes:

[Reacon]

Since you ignored my answer to this in my previous post: Please explain to me how the Origin integration takes 20-30 seconds.

Do you tab out of BF3, close Origin, tab back in, play, then quit, then 10 minutes later find you want to play again?

I'm not even trying to argue anymore, I'm just curious why you list it as 20-30 seconds.

On a Q8200 overclocked to 3.2 GHz, it takes a full 20 seconds to get to a state where it is responsive and logged in. I would take a video, but that's too much effort to prove a simple point that you should be able to take my word on. It certainly does not start up instantly no matter how good a computer you have. Are you sure that's not just your SSD deluding you?

[Regenerati0n]

EA's Origin is spying on you.

Some people claim this video is fake, but I ran Process Monitor and got the same results myself.

[TheLegendOfMart]

It takes 10 seconds on my i5 2400, 4gb ram, SSD to load.

[Pupik]

EA's Origin is spying on you.

Some people claim this video is fake, but I ran Process Monitor and got the same results myself.

It's not fake. It's just isn't very accurate on the description. To the point where's it's just blatant lies: http://www.neowin.ne...t__p__594423921

[Belazor]

On a Q8200 overclocked to 3.2 GHz, it takes a full 20 seconds to get to a state where it is responsive and logged in. I would take a video, but that's too much effort to prove a simple point that you should be able to take my word on. It certainly does not start up instantly no matter how good a computer you have. Are you sure that's not just your SSD deluding you?

Origin isn't installed on my SSD, but on my Hitachi DeskStar SATA6G drive. I assumed that, like Steam, it would install games to the same directory it was installed in, and I just haven't been bothered moving it :p

I just counted how long Origin took to launch for me, 11 seconds until everything (including the chat) had loaded, i7-2600k @ 3.4 GHz.

In either case, this doesn't explain why you have to endure the 20 seconds every time. From your posts you made it sound like every time you closed BF3, the next time you wanted to play you had to wait for that all over again, which would only be true if you closed Origin between each sesh, which is sort of silly (considering you say it's not about resources). That's what I found curious, you brought it up among a list of things you do have to wait for on every game launch.

Inb4 "Yeah I could leave it open but I don't want Origin!" :p

[Reacon]

Origin isn't installed on my SSD, but on my Hitachi DeskStar SATA6G drive. I assumed that, like Steam, it would install games to the same directory it was installed in, and I just haven't been bothered moving it :p

I just counted how long Origin took to launch for me, 11 seconds until everything (including the chat) had loaded, i7-2600k @ 3.4 GHz.

In either case, this doesn't explain why you have to endure the 20 seconds every time. From your posts you made it sound like every time you closed BF3, the next time you wanted to play you had to wait for that all over again, which would only be true if you closed Origin between each sesh, which is sort of silly (considering you say it's not about resources). That's what I found curious, you brought it up among a list of things you do have to wait for on every game launch.

Inb4 "Yeah I could leave it open but I don't want Origin!" :p

Simply put: I do not like running programs that I'm not using. I do not run Origin when I do not need it. Thus, every time I boot BF3, that 20-30 second start up time gets in my way (of course, this is no longer the case with the Razor1911 patch). It's not like I would restart it every time I entered a server tho.

The only reason I use Steam is because it's my central hub for friends in place of social networks. I use Trillian to idle in Neowin's IRC as well as Skype, so I use it on a regular basis. Music is always played in my background, so foobar is always running in the tray. I even have adobe, google, and other updaters set to run on a schedule in task host instead of in the background.

I do not take kindly to applications that simply run in the background, especially if they have tray icons. I don't have mine set to autohide, so I'm constantly reminded of their presence since it's pretty much my base for all major activities (have an icon for Trillian, foobar, Live Mail, Steam, and MSE).

To give a reason other than personal preference, Origin cannot collect data if it is not running.

[Astra.Xtreme]

To give a reason other than personal preference, Origin cannot collect data if it is not running.

FYI, Origin doesn't collect data.

I agree with the rest of your post though.

[ShiFteDReaLitY]

Has anyone been getting Origin app crashes? it does it to me quite a bit especially after the last update. But anyways, the biggest complaint about Origin is you cant upload a custom avatar (unless i missed something) and the friends limit is 100. /lame

[Belazor]

Simply put: I do not like running programs that I'm not using. I do not run Origin when I do not need it. Thus, every time I boot BF3, that 20-30 second start up time gets in my way (of course, this is no longer the case with the Razor1911 patch). It's not like I would restart it every time I entered a server tho.

While I can see and respect your opinion, I believe it is fallacious to lament the startup time when it is you and only you that is the cause of the startup time. This is furthered by the fact that you are still harping on the data collection point which has been solidly refuted, making you come off like you are uninformed (either by choice or by lack of reading the provided links in this thread) and just complaining for the sake of complaining.

In case you didn't click the Reddit link; Yes it's true that Origin scans your entire HDD, but it does so entirely to pick up any games that it can add to its library that exists in its database, for games whom Origin took over patching duties when it was released. It has been proved (via Microsoft's own API documentation) that the APIs you see in the video do not read the contents of the file, it simply reads the file attributes like date created, date modified, file size.

This is required information to determine whether the file belongs to a game that Origin can add to its library.

In addition, it has also been proved that absolutely no information whatsoever regarding your files, not even a single date stamp is sent back to EA's servers.

Now that being said, I bet you are going to say that "Oh well Origin shouldn't do that without my consent, because I like manually downloading patches etc" or something to that effect, which is fair enough. I'm merely pointing out that your data collection claim is 100% FUD and incorrect. Please stop repeating it. The fewer people repeating it, the more intelligent the discussion becomes :)

If you doubt anything I've said, my source is here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/lsoj6/still_thinking_eas_origin_is_harmless/c2vbjty

Pay specific attention to the post by swebonny, s/he is pointing out that this is the API call they are querying: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff545762%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

As you can see, there's nothing malicious or invasive about the information returned :)

[Scorbing]

Well I finally gave in and tried it. The patch is not a program or anything. All it is is a modified BF3 executable that allows the game to run without Origin. I will tell you my experience with this patched executable:

Before using this, every time...and I mean, every time...I launched BF3 for the first time, the game would simply crash so I had to close it and restart it again. I have always said that the crashing is being caused by the Origin client and i think this patched BF3 file proves my point.

I backed up my original BF3 executable then I replaced it with the patched BF3.exe. I have been playing online for 2 hours now, no issues and the most amazing thing:

BF3 did not crash when I opened it to play it. Every time I run it to play it does not crash like it did before with the original BF3.exe that automatically runs Origin.

I have always said it and I stand by this: Origin is making BF3 crash.

[Jack 0Neill]

FYI, Origin doesn't collect data.

I agree with the rest of your post though.

This is completely false and has been proven so all over the Internet.

Simply Googling brings back tons of results. Two such examples:

http://www.google.com/search?q=origin+programdata

http://www.google.com/search?q=origin+collects+data

[LOC Veteran]

So, has anyone actually been banned for using this little trick yet (or at all)?

I'd love to use it, but since my friend bought me the game, I'd feel really poopy if I got the game banned and all :(

[Scorbing]

So, has anyone actually been banned for using this little trick yet (or at all)?

I'd love to use it, but since my friend bought me the game, I'd feel really poopy if I got the game banned and all :(

Been using it for a couple of days now, no issues as of yet.

[syobon999]

booooo i'm so ashamed of myself