p0358
April 17th, 2025. Last day we can use Origin. Servers will shut down
Checklist
- [x] I ensured I'm running the latest version of the patch, and that the issue is present in it if applicable
- [x] I have read the entirety of the FAQ section in the readme, and my question was not answered there, or was not answered sufficiently
- [x] I have ran general troubleshooting steps (if applicable), such as restarting the PC/reinstalling Origin/whatever else is described in the FAQ, and they didn't help
- [x] I have checked existing issues (including closed ones), and there wasn't an existing issue pertaining to my problem (with possible solutions in the comments)
Your issue
sad times
Here's the full email
Hopefully a workaround is found because EA can't make their app function.
We need to start using Wireshark and record the network traffic whilst using Origin compared to EA App. Then someone can write a wrapper.
The worst company of gaming ever seen. It forces you to install their shit. This time they are shutting it down, so that nobody can use it. This is unbelievable.
Honestly it worked for long since their desire to get literally everyone off the app already, they have kept the Origin APIs alive for pretty much two more years, even fixing/maintaining some of the endpoints after breakage, which looked like they accepted how many more people wanted to keep using Origin and game them some more time and themselves to improve EA App more maybe just a bit. I'd wager the patch has probably contributed to their approach and extension of life support for Origin, of which I'm probably a bit proud if so, sometimes you have make some difference in the world with your own bare hands, and in my case I was just pissed off at the forced migration welcoming me to an app that at the time refused to even install itself and kept throwing some obscure errors. So I had no choice but to do a little bit of reversing and then play a short cat and mouse game with EA on removing the notice and bypassing their migration thingie until they eventually gave up and just let it be.
With that said, all good things have eventually come to an end, and I fully suspected this can't last for just too long. The patch relied on the fact that Origin APIs and login were kept all operational, and EA's migration push was mostly a cosmetic final layer on top of the whole system. But once they shut down that core, it's all over. As far as I know (but might check out of curiosity), the APIs for EA App are entirely different from what Origin uses, nobody sane (and don't expect me to be that insane) would put in any amount of work trying to re-map them and keep Origin on life support in such a situation, since Origin itself after all wasn't that great and loved either to begin with. It's just that in the paling comparing with EA App, Origin suddenly looked much better in comparison. Truly doing a thing where people would actively want Origin back was definitely an accomplishment.
So yeah, once they shut down all the APIs down, it's going to be over for this, been a good ride, I'll probably archive the repository some time after that happens. And thanks for all the support and vouches for the patch, it was putting a smile on my face to see it.
But as for whether we have no choice but to migrate to EA App? I know there is actually a project in the works for quite some time for an alternative launcher for EA games, being worked on as part of Kyber V2 game revival project, and written in Rust, would offer similar experience to Legendary launcher for Epic Games Store, and probably be integrated into the graphical frontend Heroic Launcher as well. I don't know too much about it and the progress there, other than the suspicion that with the release of their V2, it will probably also be released at the same time. I'll definitely want to give them some shout-out and redirect people there if and when that happens and it works, so stay on the lookout.
wouldn't this kill all support for the SteamDeck?
SteamDeck (Linux) relies 100% on Origin, AFAIK
Has EA given up on the Deck?
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/2/2b/Soldier_HatOverHeartTaunt06.wav
:saluting_face:
wouldn't this kill all support for the SteamDeck?
SteamDeck (Linux) relies 100% on Origin, AFAIK
Has EA given up on the Deck?
EA App works fine? No issues with the few NFS titles I have on Steam.
yeah, I've been told that's not the case anymore, Linux can use the EA app now, thankfully.
I tried a couple games with the EA app (as non-Steam game) and the Steam Controller doesn't hook anymore. Which means, you need to use 3rd party solutions to use the Steam Controller or buy the game AGAIN on Steam. Origin worked fine. Mods will probably stop hooking too if you don't use Steam.
End of an era.
Yeah I just fresh installed NFS HP 2012 from within Steam, did the EA app install automatically, and was able to put in my SMS 2FA code.
Sorry to hear it's still iffy for non-Steam games.
@p0358 Whoever wrote that email on EA's behalf is a lying sack of bovine excrement when they claim with straight face that everything works in the EA App now.
First, EA App is doing data collection and sharing it with third parties (the wording doesn't reflect sharing with 3rd parties at all but they do it):
The above switch is on by default and by the time you get to disable it they have already shared stuff about you with ad networks, Google, Adobe, etc. I know because I did a capture of communications from app launch until after login using Fiddler and used this information to lodge a complaint to EA Data Protection Officer and my threat to push the issue with GDPR compliance is why you even have that switch there to begin with (whether it really changes something is another issue).
Second, there are a couple of missing features in the EA App:
- It does not have an option to invite friends to your game from either friends list or chat window -- this forces you to use IGO (In-Game Overlay) which I absolutely hate. I can see them using it as another ad/upsell surface once they get us into the situation that we can't disable it if we want to play with friends. Also, having overlay DLLs (from both Origin and Steam) injected into older 32-bit game processes like Mass Effect 3 takes away from their already limited address space and makes them more prone to crashing.
- It does not have an option to let friends join your game without invite. I could understand why you might not want someone joining (streaming, etc), but that should be my choice to allow or not either globally (let friends join my games - always / never), or per game (let friends join this game (always / never / selected friends only).
- It does not have an option to disable cloud saves globally or per game. Not to mention pathetic 1 GB per game cloud capacity which means that whenever I start Mass Effect Andromeda I get told to delete some of my saves and try again or proceed without cloud saves and have to click through a maze of buttons to launch it.
If those 3 issues were fixed I would personally be OK with them killing Origin.
YMMV, as you might have your own issues like games that won't work in EA App (I am not aware of that since my EA game catalog is purposefully small).
Lol I mean Windows 11 has no 32-bit OS version, but all Windowses will continue running 32-bit apps forever. But I guess Origin's 32-bitness is annoying and not needed when 99.9% of people have a 64-bit OS nowadays. But the fact it's not everyone definitely was the second argument for keeping it around a bit longer. And 32-bit apps are indeed less secure in some ways, but it's still possible to improve their security by enabling various security mitigations in WinAPI where possible. But it's not like 32-bit didn't default to using ASLR either, so most of it is superficial as long as there weren't any serious bugs in Origin itself, that could happen in 64-bit just as well.
But of course they wouldn't ever refactor the old app to 64-bit. But afaik interestingly they didn't update to Qt6 and drop Windows 7/8/8.1 support in EA App either (not yet anyway...). And those systems are generally way more insecure compared to simply using a 32-bit app lol
And tbh EA App was such a wasted opportunity to apply its admittedly nice design, but build it as actual Qt component, making it lightweight, snappy, just like Origin 9.x. But no, it uses CEF and is heavy shit like any other game launcher nowadays, sadge
I'm genuinely so curious as to the REAL reason they want everyone off Origin, according to @levicki it's so that they can sell our data, which checks out lol. then again surely they could have done that with origin too...
@Pierreluc19 okay that's definitely enough, you're getting banned from here for this notification spam
I'm genuinely so curious as to the REAL reason they want everyone off Origin, according to @levicki it's so that they can sell our data, which checks out lol. then again surely they could have done that with origin too...
It's just a matter of re-branding and then refactoring and getting rid of some technical debt, then it makes no sense to maintain two at once financially, there isn't really any conspiracy here. It's just that the new app was junk at first and it still is quite bad in many ways, with missing features and some neat things of Origin being gone, which is why people really didn't like it much, where they didn't like Origin too much already to begin with, but at least it worked for its basic features for the most part.
And nowadays all other stores have their main brand name in the app name, so EA figured they want to be known as "EA" everywhere instead of having a separate Origin sub-brand, because no company can be unique anymore in absolutely any little thing nowadays apparently lol
Hi. Is there a script or .dll files to put EA App into permanent offline mode when the internet is enabled on PC? In the Origin client it was enough to write in the properties of the Origin client shortcut "/StartOffline" for offline mode.
There might be a way if someone can figure out how to create a patch so that Origin stays in offline mode and doesn't try to reconnect at the next launch. But I guess that's more of a dream than a reality x)
wouldn't this kill all support for the SteamDeck?
SteamDeck (Linux) relies 100% on Origin, AFAIK
Has EA given up on the Deck?
Also for Mac playing ea games. we could play ea games only through origin. ea app couldn't use at all. BF1 and BFV was playable before until EAAC was attached. Now after origin shutdown I won't play BF4 anymore...SAD
I'm genuinely so curious as to the REAL reason they want everyone off Origin, according to @levicki it's so that they can sell our data, which checks out lol. then again surely they could have done that with origin too...
They could have, but it would have taken much more effort to code that in a Qt based application.
As CEF based app is just a glorified browser they can have this in javascript code which allows them to use the same SDKs for tracking, telemetry, etc which are already used on every website.
The only difference for us is that native application can be disassembled and patched, javascript code network requests running in regular browser can be filtered using uBlock Origin which can even monkey-patch the page javascript to prevent it from failing when request is blocked, and in CEF there's no way that I know of to stop that request short of knowing where they are connecting to and blocking that on the router / DNS level and hope it doesn't break the app.
there isn't really any conspiracy here.
Nobody claimed any conspiracy to begin with — if you don't believe what EA App does and where your data goes you can just check the list of whitelisted domains for CEF in the config that EA app fetches from their server (look under browser > allowedSites key):
https://desktop-config.juno.ea.com/globalConfig.json
Some of those are legitimately used for the service they provide, most of them are advertising, tracking, and telemetry.
Honestly it worked for long since their desire to get literally everyone off the app already, they have kept the Origin APIs alive for pretty much two more years, even fixing/maintaining some of the endpoints after breakage, which looked like they accepted how many more people wanted to keep using Origin and game them some more time and themselves to improve EA App more maybe just a bit. I'd wager the patch has probably contributed to their approach and extension of life support for Origin, of which I'm probably a bit proud if so, sometimes you have make some difference in the world with your own bare hands, and in my case I was just pissed off at the forced migration welcoming me to an app that at the time refused to even install itself and kept throwing some obscure errors. So I had no choice but to do a little bit of reversing and then play a short cat and mouse game with EA on removing the notice and bypassing their migration thingie until they eventually gave up and just let it be.
With that said, all good things have eventually come to an end, and I fully suspected this can't last for just too long. The patch relied on the fact that Origin APIs and login were kept all operational, and EA's migration push was mostly a cosmetic final layer on top of the whole system. But once they shut down that core, it's all over. As far as I know (but might check out of curiosity), the APIs for EA App are entirely different from what Origin uses, nobody sane (and don't expect me to be that insane) would put in any amount of work trying to re-map them and keep Origin on life support in such a situation, since Origin itself after all wasn't that great and loved either to begin with. It's just that in the paling comparing with EA App, Origin suddenly looked much better in comparison. Truly doing a thing where people would actively want Origin back was definitely an accomplishment.
So yeah, once they shut down all the APIs down, it's going to be over for this, been a good ride, I'll probably archive the repository some time after that happens. And thanks for all the support and vouches for the patch, it was putting a smile on my face to see it.
But as for whether we have no choice but to migrate to EA App? I know there is actually a project in the works for quite some time for an alternative launcher for EA games, being worked on as part of Kyber V2 game revival project, and written in Rust, would offer similar experience to Legendary launcher for Epic Games Store, and probably be integrated into the graphical frontend Heroic Launcher as well. I don't know too much about it and the progress there, other than the suspicion that with the release of their V2, it will probably also be released at the same time. I'll definitely want to give them some shout-out and redirect people there if and when that happens and it works, so stay on the lookout.
welp, it has been a good ride... but, thankfully, there's a alternative like EAappEmulater (https://github.com/CrazyZhang666/EAappEmulater?tab=readme-ov-file) currently, Chinese is only language, not all of games are supported, & offline still wip.
Huh interesting, and they started it 8 months ago. In any case, there's also supposed to be another unofficial EA App implementation coming out soon, so I guess there'd be two alternatives. Except the above one seems to be C# with WPF, so Windows-only and might be hard to run on Linux, which would put it at disadvantage probably...
There's zLOrigin, another emulator. Haven't tried it.
Just make sure you have 2-step authentication enabled. Then you can monitor all logged in sessions from the EA website.
If anything goes wrong just change your password. Preferably change password before using the emulator. (Though I wouldn't have thought we need to log in to the emulators)
(Though I wouldn't have thought we need to log in to the emulators)
ZLOrigin is an offline emulator (for piracy) afaik, that's a different category of software than alternative game clients to play the owned games and do so online. Calling the latter emulators might be less accurate I guess, since they don't emulate the whole service locally, but they implement the same interfaces for games and shim them back to the originals