Origin passes 40m member milestone

EA’s digital download service Origin has now attracted over 40m members, the publisher has confirmed.

That’s up from the 39m it had at the end of last year, GameSpot reports, with the jump likely due to the recent release of SimCity which requires Origin membership to play.

To celebrate the success EA has announced The Origin Player Appreciation Sale that sees some decent discounts on a range of software. We just picked up Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for 2.49.

Valve’s rival Steam service logged its 50 millionth user in September of last year, meaning EA is really not that far behind – although of course the disparity between active users on both services is likely to be huge.

EA revealed earlier this week that SimCity sales had passed 1.1m units, helping Origin to its highest ever concurrent user number – 1.3m. By comparison Steam’s concurrent user record stands at 5.7m, with between 4-5m typically logged into the service at any one time.