I purchased It Takes Two for some $12 or something during a Steam sale. I was disappointingly surprised when I discovered it was an EA published game and on their launcher, even through Steam. I wasn’t happy about it, but I shrugged; I have an origin account from back in the SW:ToR days, so I’ll just log in.

I punch in my info, correctly remembering both my email and old password, and am met with a 2FA screen. No problem, I have access to the email, so I load it up, wait a couple minutes, and nothing comes in. I press “resend authentication” just in case, stand up, get a drink, use the washroom, sit down, nothing. I hit resend again, start googling the status of the 2FA servers and see some complaints about the time it takes to get a 2FA from them in old forum posts. 30 minutes later, nothing.

I load up a torrent client, find a repack of the game, begin torrenting it, finish it, install it and start playing. Half of the time my girlfriend and I had to enjoy the game right now is gone, but we played and enjoyed it none the less. I refund the game on Steam. We finish, head out to supper since we agreed earlier to meet some friends, and I’m sitting at the table when my phone buzzes. I’ve received an email providing me my 2FA key for the EA launcher, 4 hours after originally requested. In this time I was easily able to pirate, install, play and finish a session of the game I was logging in to play, and as a kicker, refund the original purchase through Steam.

Piracy is a symptom, not a cause, and these garbage clients are just another facet of the infection.