EA clarifies Origin’s auto-add feature

EA has responded to reports that its digital distribution service Origin has been auto-adding games purchased from competitors such as Steam.

A few of you noticed some of your older EA games showing up in your Origin My Games library over the past few weeks and I wanted to clear up any confusion," an EA rep said in a clarifying statement. "We tested a feature that in some cases made your older games show up in your Origin My Games Library. At no time was any information on your computer accessed, all of this information was obtained directly from our game registration records."

The test taking place without warning caused a bit of a stir yesterday, when it was generally assumed EA was accessing the necessary information by scanning each user’s PC.

"Hopefully we didn’t cause too much confusion for anyone. We’ll be sure to come back and share more information about this feature as soon as we can."

The statement goes on to offer instructions for users interested in activating and downloading older EA titles to their Origin library.

Meanwhile, if you do want to activate and download older EA games to your library, we have a tool that allows you to do this. Just go [here] and enter your registration code. Not all games are supported at this point, but we’re continually working to make older titles available. For more information on this service, as well as a list of games that are currently available for activation, [go here]”