Yes but EA Origin was still very consumer friendly at that time. They were one of the only people offering digital refunds at the time. Being able to refund a game on origin then buying a different one on steam was definitely a peak in consumer gaming (that plus the humble bundle being good added to the feeling).
I agree with you about the consumer friendlyness at the time and honestly it was not bad at first, but the problems they had were way more technical with difficulties in buying and downloading and hell even just friending someone and jumping in. When it first came out I thought it was decent and improving but then it just....stopped. They could have competed with Valve but it really felt like they stopped caring one day
No matter how consumer friendly they were, nobody trusted them in the long term. Buying games on EA Origin meant giving them control over games' sales, and a EA monopoly in digital distribution was a nightmare scenario. Their bad PR at the time simply killed the platform, no matter how good or bad the product itself was at the time.