EA’s Origin Adds 11 More Publishers

Sure, the only real reasons to bother with an Origin account are Battlefield 3 and the upcoming Mass Effect 3, but what else is on the service? Well other than activating older EA games you already bought on Steam.

Origin has announced that it is adding 11 new publishers to the service. Still not the end-all, be-all of PC gaming that Steam has been for the past few years, but Steam started life as a front end for patching Counter-Strike, so who knows where Origin will end up.

This batch isn’t really made up of the biggest names in the business though. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great games here, but if 1up hadn’t already done the background work for me on this post I wouldn’t have known who eight of the 11 were. I actually thought one of these companies was a headset manufacturer. Anyway, here’s the list, along with what you might know them from.

• Trion Worlds – Rift
• Robot Entertainment – Orcs Must Die
• CD Projekt Red – The Witcher 2
• Freebird Games – To the Moon
• Recoil Games – Rochard
• Autumn Games – Jimmie Johnson’s Anything with an Engine
• 1C Company – IL-2 Sturmovik
• inXile Entertainment – Choplifter HD
• Paradox Interactive – Magicka
• Core Learning, Ltd. – Various education software (!?)
• N3V Games – Arcania: Gothic 4

I still don’t see Origin being a real threat to Steam any time soon, but at least some smaller publishers are getting another place to promote and sell their games.