EA is shutting down Origin in April, players will need to use EA App to access their games

by Danny Craig  · 
EA is shutting down Origin in April, players will need to use EA App to access their games
Electronic Arts

EA has announced that it will discontinue its Origin platform later this year in favor of the newer EA App, marking the end of the highly disliked service after 14 years.

The details:

  • As announced on EA's support site, starting April 17, both Mac and Windows users will need to download the EA App to access their game libraries. All games, accounts, cloud saves, and even playtime will be moved to the EA App. However, all manual saves must be manually transferred to the appropriate file locations.

  • With the change, those with older 32-bit systems will be unable to play any old EA titles as the EA App only supports 64-bit operating systems. Modern computers are unlikely to exclusively run 32-bit architecture, with MacOS Catalina in 2019 marking the end of support for Mac users and Microsoft dropping support in later versions of Windows 10 and all versions of 11. However, it is worth noting that some players may be using older systems in order to use period-accurate hardware for old games.

  • Origin has earned a bad reputation since its 2011 release for causing a variety of launcher-related and even in-game issues for its users, eventually leading to the creation of the more modern EA App. Despite this, the EA App has a similar image, with even less official troubleshooting support and sometimes even uninstalling itself.

  • Fans are now hoping that EA may eventually move away from its own launchers, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was released in October, debuted on Steam without the need for players to install any EA software to play.

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