Retail Battlefield 3 copies won't work without Origin

Now I'm sure you have all heard about EA's Origin, EA's Steam clone. I'm guessing for most of us that's pretty much a Bull idea because that's another proprietary service that you have to make an account for and manage etc. But if you're thinking of picking up a retail copy of Battlefield 3 and that you'll be able to bypass all that Origin stuff well then you are wrong. Physical copies of Battlefield 3 on PC will require Origin as a mandatory feature.

It has not yet been confirmed if you'll need Origin when downloading Battlefield 3 from another client such as Direct2Drive, but it's looking highly likely. This is in addition to requiring Battlelog in order to properly enjoy the game's online features. Welcome to the era of single games requiring multiple downloadable services.

Via [Destructoid]

Popcap gets acquired by EA

EA buys Popcap games for a value near 1 billion dollars (750 million). Popcap games is responsible for the smaller but wildly addicting games such as Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled.

What does this mean for us? Knowing EA, I think the word "free" will no longer exist with some of Popcap's games, especially with EA's new Steam clone called Origin. But this is good for Popcap. EA is a pretty large publishing company that do put out a lot of quality games and this means more exposure for the company and possibly even more games. Let's just hope EA doesn't be a big dick and exploit the success of Popcap's games too much.