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It’s not all that surprising that an EA game will require an EA service to play, but it’s still pretty annoying. Both physical and digital copies of Mass Effect 3 will require “a one-time, single authorization for the single-player game” according to a forum post by Chris Priestly of BioWare. On the upside, however, there is no limit to the number of installs you may have. On the other hand, “Playing Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer will require a constant connection.” That’s fine for online multiplayer, obviously, but for local multiplayer, that seems a little excessive. 
Priestly also defended Origin against claims that it was Spyware. “Users will be allowed to opt-out of Mass Effect 3 data collection from inside the game,” he said. “Origin is not spyware, and does not use or install spyware on users’ machines. In order to allow Origin to install games and their patches for everyone to use, Origin implements a permission change that results in Windows, not Origin, reviewing the filenames in the ProgramData/Origin folder. This is an ordinary Windows function, not an information-gathering process.” By Angelo M. D’Argenio |