This gives EA’s “partners” free rein to collect information on “IP addresses, usage data, software, equipment, software usage and existing hardware peripherals” for marketing purposes.
EA naturally refutes these claims, stating that Origin’s EULA is the industry standard.
In a statement from the publisher’s German division, the company states, “We have updated the End User License Agreement of Origin, in the interests of our players to create more clarity. Origin is not spyware. Neither do we use nor install spyware on the PCs of users.”
“We do not have access to information such as pictures, documents or personal data, which have nothing to do with the execution of the Origin program on the system of the player, neither will they be collected by us. EA takes the privacy of its users very seriously. We have taken every precaution to protect the personal and anonymous user data collected.”
Germany has some stringent privacy laws, so it’ll be interesting to see if the government takes an interest in Origin. Meanwhile, a hacker group has released a crack allowing Battlefield 3 players to go online without using Origin, calling it a ”trojan”.
It must be noted that the same accusations were leveled at Valve’s Steam service seven years ago, which proved to be groundless.
