English | 中文
EA has officially shut down Origin in April 2025, leaving that app non-functioning, killing off most API endpoints, and then proceeding to refactor their backend with EA App being the only remaining available option. That means that this project is NOT working anymore.
Thank you for all the support and kind words, nothing good can last forever though. I am glad to have helped this many people keep on playing their games where EA has failed them, I've never expected the project to blow up this much and get so popular.
Not all hope is lost though! Eventually Maxima should be released – an open-source replacement launcher for EA games made by the authors of Kyber, with native Windows and Linux support, written in Rust, faster and more lightweight, etc. Follow them around on GitHub, crates.io and Twitter. I'm sure they'll release it eventually, any day now...
A small project to patch the EA Origin app and keep it running, avoiding the nags to upgrade to the new EA App.
If you start up Origin app and see a prompt telling you to install EA App, you've come to the right place.
What works (as of 2025-05):
- ❌ NOTHING — the Origin app was shut down by EA in April 2025
✔️ login✔️ main page✔️ game startup✔️ game downloads✔️ friends section✔️ Steam games✔️ searching for people (fixed recently)
You need to have Origin already installed before continuing with installing the patch.
Download the installer and run it!
Alternatively, if you don't want to use the installer above:
- Go into Releases section and grab the latest
version.dllfile - Drop it into your Origin installation folder, by default
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin - Restart Origin
Note: you can also compile the DLL manually, instructions are at the bottom of this file.
We're not ones wanting to step on EA's toes, however their new app just does not work properly for many users. The issues they experience are countless, ranging from small annoyances to outright being unable to use the EA App or launch the games at all. This project exists to let people keep using Origin for as long as it's possible, at least until EA App is significantly improved, as currently Origin is the superior solution...
Remember to leave a star and follow if it helped you ;)
Use this link: https://download.dm.origin.com/origin/live/OriginSetup.exe
No, it should work fine with both the latest 10.5.122.52971 and with the older 10.5.119.52718 or earlier (if you used the downgrade method before and disabled updates).
You don't need to either add or remove anything from that file anymore when using this project, conveniently.
Our custom DLL (named version.dll) is loaded by Origin during its startup, after you insert it under its installation directory. It conducts function hooks and patches that prevent the upgrade notice from appearing. You can study the code for more details.
Yes, it should be fine. Origin in its newer versions is prepared to handle that gracefully. Both programs should also see games installed by each other.
EA games on Steam contain installer script, which instructs the Steam to check whether EA App is already installed by checking the system registry for key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Electronic Arts\EA Desktop\InstallSuccessful with the string value of true, skipping the launch of the installer if it's present. So ticking the checkbox simply creates that key and fulfills that condition. There's no harm done if you have actually installed the EA App already and accidentally checked it either.
Given they already broke the older workarounds before a few times, probably not forever. In any case, follow this repository for updates (star the project ;)) -- if the workaround stops working, I will probably try to update it to work again in the future -- contributions are also welcome.
Just close the installer, and Origin should then still start up. If it does not, look at the question below. You can avoid the EA App installer running up by selecting the option "Pretend EA App is installed" in the patch's installer.
You probably installed/updated EA App after installing Origin, and as such EA App was associated to the link2ea:// protocol instead of Origin. To fix this, run through the Origin installer again. If you get an error that no application is assigned to the protocol, that means you probably uninstalled EA App without running the Origin installer afterwards again.
If I try to launch Steam games, the error "The game X does not appear to be installed. Please install it or try relaunching the game." comes up?
Open up C:\ProgramData\Origin\LocalContent folder and ensure your game has a subdirectory in there. If not, repair the game files on Steam. Remember that you need to press Play afterwards for the aforementioned files to appear. If they're still not there, browse local game files, open up installScript.vdf in Notepad, and search for "LocFiles" to figure out which files to copy and where manually...
Check out this issue for current status and directions: #3
In short, you will need to override the setting for version DLL to run as native, then built-in, which can be accomplished through winecfg or the config of the particular tool you use (like Bottles), or by using the environment variable WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b". Note that currently not everything seems to fully work...
On Steam, enter this in launch options field: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%
My currently recommended method is to open the file at C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin\EACore.ini and insert the following inside it:
[Bootstrap]
EnableUpdating=false
This method will not slow down startup time, unlike the older local.xml method that I've shared. Note that as a side effect it'll enable "R&D mode" in the app.
Yeah, the thing is open-sourced, and the actual DLL and installer in Releases section is built by GitHub Actions CI. You can always compile it yourself too if so you wish...
- Clone the repository with git
- Run
generate.bat - Open the .sln file from
buildfolder in Visual Studio 2022 - Compile the solution
- Copy
version.dllfrom.\build\bin\Win32-Release\intoC:\Program Files (x86)\Origin
- minhook (fork)
- silver-bun
If you want to: https://www.paypal.me/p0358donate ¯\(ツ)/¯