Why else do they ignore the myriad of complaints?...
You must remember why they took away the single, offline player mode, (the icon, double-click, play what you like system that was oh so simple) - because they can't monitor you!
There is not one good reason for using an overlay or play the game in a browser unless it benefits EA.
"It collates all your games and player stats in one place" they say, and so it does, but do they really think we're so stupid we can't do it for ourselves? It cost a lot of time and money to create this god awful Origin/EA Play, so there has to be a reason and a way it makes a return on their investment.
When the game is closed it leaves a little program still running in the background (check task manager), I'm assuming it's reporting back to EA what other games we play, when and for how long etc. a back door to see how their competitors are doing - if it doesn't, why is it still there? Why doesn't it close along with game? it serves no purpose unless it's doing something.
Does it scrape the hard drive for data, data that has a value, Information on the hard drive that tells them about your lifestyle, income, age and location etc. - gold dust to market researchers.
Is any of this true? I don't know, I failed the mind reading exam, but it makes a damn sight more sense than the crap EA come up with for forcing us online.
Thanks EA for allowing me to give you hundreds of dollars in exchange for games I can't now play the way I want. I hope your plans for subscription play is a miserable failure!
Oh and for the hard of thinking that tell me "just play online", you're missing the point.
You can also thank them for killing Bad Company, Battlefield 1943, and Bad Company 2, all of which would still be playable today if they had offline bot support (Yes, I'm aware the servers are still up, but they're going down in December, so my point still stands).
