Last week EA confirmed that its Star Wars themed MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would be a digital exclusive to the Origin store. However, that does not mean that Origin will be required to install and play a retail version of the game.
Players will not require Origin to patch or play the game, said Bioware community manager Stephen Reid.
“You won’t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you’ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that,” said Reid.
Reid also points out that even if you buy the game digitally through Origin, you will not need to launch Origin to play the game.
“Furthermore, buying a game in the Origin shop does not require you to download and install the Origin desktop application. As you can see if you visit Origin today, purchasing a title there doesn’t require you to download the Origin desktop application,” making Origin quite different to Steam.
Discuss the Origin store in the forums