EA is trying to compete with Steam by releasing their own game download manager, Origin. They probably think they’ll suddenly have customers swarming from Steam to their service because of Battlefield 3? Seems like they’ve tried this several times in recent years. Their previous efforts were all horrible:
EA Downloader was launched in late 2005. It was replaced by EA Link in November 2006. In September 2007, it was once again replaced by the combination of EA Store and EA Download Manager, abbreviated EADM.
I don’t look forward to a future where my system tray is filled with EA, Steam, BattleNet, UbiSoft, and other download manager icons running all the time.