Have they dropped their obnoxious DRM yet?
Yes.
The new offender in this is Ubisoft, which requires always online connection even for completely single player games (Assassins Creed, Silent Hunter etc).
To an extend Activision Blizzard too, which built their latest game (Diablo 3) around online DRM.
What's the point of Origin? Why not just set up a shopping cart on your website and offer direct downloads?
Same as with Steam. You get patches, you get the community, you get in-game browser, cloud savegames, and other features and achievements etc. You can also easily see what your friends are playing and join them. You may not care about them all, but these things are really great, especially if you play with friends.
Fargo would know better than to get into bed with EA.
Actually, I think you're just talking about the 2003-2005 era EA when they just put out new Sims expansions and their yearly sports games.
In recent years I've seen a complete change in EA's business practices. For me it started around when they released Mirrors Edge and started putting out experimental games again, and of course taking risks with those. Since then there have been great games released by EA, and companies like Activision and Ubisoft have been the ones abusing customers.
On top of that, it seems like EA actually takes their customer service seriously. So much that they rather give out "free" games when you complain to their support personal. It's widely known in gaming circles that you can get all kinds of freebies from EA's support by lying to them, which is kind of sad in my opinion. People are clearly abusing that good support service. Nevertheless, EA actually seems to try to do good for it's customers.
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor. - Fred Brooks, Jr.
