Electronic Arts' Origin has played second fiddle to Valve's Steam since it opened last year, with an audience of just 11 million members compared to 35 million. The publisher got an unexpected PR windfall over the weekend when it accidentally gave away unlimited free credit.
Origin, Electronic Arts’ digital distribution service on PC, isn’t the failure some expected it to be when EA opened it for business in 2011. As of May the service had 11 million registered users. It’s not quite up to the standard of its primary competitor, Valve’s Steam, which enjoys a community of more than 35 million users, but it’s growing.
EA did wonders for the service’s public recently, though, when it began giving out unlimited credit to users that participated in simple survey. Of course, it was an accident that Electronic Arts gave away games for free for days in a row.
As reported by Edge, EA ran a promotion wherein users who filled out a survey received a coupon giving $20 in Origin credit. The problem was that the coupon code didn’t expire after it was used in Origin, meaning that many users simply kept downloading as many games as they could. Electronic Arts didn’t shut it down until Sunday. “The coupon code is now expired; we’ll honor all sales made with the coupon code over the weekend,” said EA community manager Sam Houston in the publisher’s official forums.
Valve has lured in thousands of gamers with its short-lived huge discount sales. EA may have bested them at their own game, but aren’t businesses still supposed to make money?
Source : digitaltrends[dot]com
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