EA tries to clone Steam, but fails miserably

IT LOOKS LIKE EA is trying to pull a Valve and clone Steam. While it sounds like a good thing, the current iteration is so buggy that it just doesn't work, and the EULAs are scary. I would heartily recommend avoiding it until they get it working and respect privacy. That said, it is a good idea, and has some nice touches, where it works.

The service is called EA Link, a newer version of the EA Downloader. If you are a fan of frustration, you can get the 12MB installer here, but like I said, wait a bit, V2.0 is where you probably want to start. The point of it is to allow you to purchase, download and install games without leaving the comfort of your couch, the great American way.

The first problem came when I tried to install it. It wasn't exactly quick on the A64/3000 machine I am testing this on, and with every newly opened window, it lost about 90 per cent of the little speed it had. When it indicated I didn't have enough space on my C drive for the cache, I hit browse and waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, the browser window came up, and I typed in the path D:EAcache, and waited and waited and waited. Eventually, I gave up and hit cancel. Five minutes later, I had to kill the task, it was stuck. Reinstalling had the same effect.

After a reboot it installed correctly but was just glacially slow. It should not take the better part of a minute to pick a directory. In any case, it went in, and nothing truly horrible happened. So far so slightly below average.

During this process it popped up a EULA. Seeing ass I am already in pain after a weekend accident that left me without large portions of my skin, I decided to read it. The pain wasn't much worse than sliding across a sidewalk on your face, and I didn't see anything truly objectionable. I am not a lawyer, so don't take this as a definitive all clear, but there isn't anything obvious about souls, puppy strangling and chunks of flesh.

Back to the program. The initial screen was about what you would expect, lots of things to buy, and an options menu on the left. The trailers were the first thing I checked, and that is where I encountered my first problem, if you click on a .wmv, it downloads it, .qt, it opens IE to a blank page. First problem, it opens IE forcibly, never mind that all my browser preferences are Firefox. Then it gives a blank white page and hangs. So far, 0 for 2.

The things that did work came down at a good clip, but the low rez clips looked terrible on a 1600*1200 screen, if that is what I was going to base my purchase on, well, I would look elsewhere. The one high rez clip they had was in Quicktime, and it looked awfully white. And it hung. Whoopee!

I clicked on the My Stuff option, and was presented with My Games, Demos and Wallpapers, all of which needed an account. In a fit of masochistic pique I decided to try it, mainly to see how much personal info they required.

To EAs credit, it asked for nothing more than a username, password and email address, so well done there. They had the usual 'type in a number for verification' before you can continue, but this is where the showstopper problem hit, it looked like this.

Try as I might, I could not get it to work, so there went any chance of me signing up for it to report on. Ah well, win some lose some. To bide my time, I read the second EULA they presented, and this one is much darker and less user friendly than the last. I got about a third into it before I decided that the terms were unacceptable, basically they could use my personal info and share it around.

Unless there is a clear, 100 per cent ironclad policy option to have your info completely kept private, I won't sign up for a service. There was none that I could see, but a lot of weasel words about how they could do it even if you asked them not to. One good opt-out is that if you are under 18 years old, they have to keep it private, so I would recommend that you claim to be about 10 years old on signup.

Overall, the EA Link idea is a good one, but for now, it simply doesn't work. If they can't make the basic functionality work right, you have to wonder about them keeping your credit card safe. If that hurdle is overcome, then there is the privacy issue(s) which are another dealbreaker for me. I find this sad, mainly because I like Steam so much, and this has a really good chance of cloning that magic. Ah well, maybe in six months when they get it closer to right and realise that some of us don't like intrusive advertisers. µ