Installing EA App

Gaming
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Context in case it's helpful: I have my laptop dual-booted with Windows 11 and Zorin OS Core 17. I just dual-booted it about a week ago, so I'm very much still new to Linux. My goal is to figure out how to get all the things I normally do on my computer to work on Linux so that eventually I can fully make the switch. Right now I'm trying to get the EA App working.

I have tried to install the EA App into Lutris (using the tutorial on the Zorin OS site) and Bottles, and while I was able to install the app both times, it wouldn't launch.

Most recently I tried to follow this tutorial to install the EA App into Steam, also to no avail. I successfully installed it (or so it seemed), but when I clicked Play in my Steam library, the play button turned blue for a few seconds and then went back to green, and nothing else happened. It's worth noting that the version of Proton the tutorial told me to pick wasn't one of the available options, so maybe that's why? I tried every version of Proton on the list, as well as every version of Runtime, and none of them worked.

I've read that the EA App is notoriously bad at playing nicely with Linux, but I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. Is there a way to troubleshoot the methods I've tried, or is there maybe a method I haven't tried yet? I'd really like to be able to keep playing Dragon Age after I make the switch.

Thanks in advance!

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You can try launching the app with the flag --no-sandbox by adding the flag to the Exec= command, in the applications .desktop file (Usually located in /usr/share/apps or ~/.local/share/apps)

Ensure that winetricks corefonts vcrun2015 dxvk are all installed.

You may need Glorious Eggroll:

Do Not use the Flatpak Steam or Flatpak Lutris; their additional sandboxing and notorious permissions issues make any hope for the EA app impossible.

Much of the above is a series of novice suggestions... I have never installed the EA app; instead I installed Heroic games launcher.

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Thank you for the response! I did end up getting the app to launch late last night, but I was too tired to write an update. I got it to launch using Bottles by running the app updater before the app launcher, and when I was unable to type my email address into the text field to log in, I got around the issue by clicking the "log in with Steam" button and connecting the two accounts on the Steam website.

However, when I install Dragon Age, I end up with a Dragon Age Origins folder that seems to be missing a lot of files. It isn't completely empty, but it doesn't even seem to have the main .exe file. I'm guessing this means something is wrong with the EA App. Is it possible that adding the --no-sandbox flag like you mentioned could help, or does that only help with the launching part of the process?

I just double-checked my Steam and Lutris versions, and it looks like I have the Zorin OS version of Steam (installed using the installer from the Software store) but the Flatpak version of Lutris, so maybe that's why trying to install the game through Lutris didn't work, either. I can try uninstalling Lutris and then installing the non-Flatpak version. Is there a good rule of thumb for when the Flatpak version of an app will or won't work, or is it more of a case-by-case thing?

I've heard of the Heroic Games launcher but have never used it. If it can run EA games, I can give it a try as well. It doesn't really matter to me which app I use; I just want to be able to play my games. I thought going through the app on which I purchased each game would be the simplest way, but maybe not. :slight_smile:

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You are right; that only can help with launching the .exe

If the executable is missing... I am kind of at a loss.
Perhaps the "seems to be" is a relevant statement - could the executable be in a different folder?

Sadly, the rule of thumb is vague: If an application will need permission to access files in your ~Home directory or system files outside of its own dependencies, a Flatpak version will invariably have trouble. Some of this can be worked around by installing Flatseal to assign permissions, sometimes tediously or one by one... It's really just easier to install the stable .deb package.

It is worth trying... Really, our biggest hurdle is game developers anti-cheat which is built in such a way to block users on GnuLinux, with the maintainers directly expressing they do not care to fix that.

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Here's a rough guide for Heroic that I just tested. Had a few free minutes so took a shot. Seems to work, but ymmv. I am currently running the flatpak version of Heroic.

Download the exe for EA App
In Heroic, download a current version of proton:

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Click Add Game in the library view of Heroic

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Here I've called the game "EA App". Once entered, Heroic automatically finds "box art" and enters it:

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Select your wine version (I recommend the GE version) and executable location (the file we downloaded at the start).
Select Finish, then click Play on the newly created entry in the Heroic library.
EA App should pop up:
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Go through install
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Once this login screen opens, CLOSE the program (stop it in Heroic if once you close it, it still says it's playing)

Now we want to change the file path for this to where it just installed itself.
Click the entry to view more details
Top right of that window, should be three verticle dots. Click those, then "Edit App/Game"
Should bring you here:

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For executable, your path should be something like:
/home/YourNameHere/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/EA App/drive_c/Program Files/Electronic Arts/EA Desktop/EA Desktop/EALauncher.exe
Once done, click Finish
Run App again, sign in as you would normally do
Download and test whatever games you want.
Currently everything on my version appears to be functioning correctly. I was able to download, install and run Dungeon Keeper (every other game was over 80 gigs, I'm not waiting on that right now lol).

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If I get more free time at some point, I could do more testing. I don't own Origins on EA App, just on steam. I own a newer Dragon Age game (apparently) that I could test, but like I said, I'm not waiting forever for this brief test.

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Okay, so I was a little mixed up. When I tried to install DAO through the EA App (which I had installed through Bottles), I couldn't find the game's directory at all, and the install location listed in the game properties was a Windows filepath, complete with backslashes. When I clicked "Browse Files" to try to find it, the file browser also had the Windows structure and therefore didn't match my actual file structure. The C: drive was the right size to be my Zorin OS partition (which is much smaller than my Windows partition), so I don't think the EA App managed to find DAO on my Windows partition (I didn't think that was possible anyway, but I've been wrong before :slightly_smiling_face:).

When I tried to install DAO through Lutris, I ended up with a DAO directory that didn't actually have any of the game's files in it, but I think I know why. It looks like the version of DAO I picked (I have the Ultimate Edition, so there was only one choice anyway) installs not DAO itself but rather a copy of the EA App, and I was supposed to use that copy to install DAO. Unfortunately, that didn't work, either.

Since it seemed like the EA App wasn't going to work correctly the way I had it installed, I tried installing the .deb version of Lutris and installing the EA App through it. I had to go through a process similar to the one applecheeks37 describes above: The first installation didn't completely install the EA App, so I had to change the .exe to be the installer and run it that way. I was only able to do the second phase of the installation by changing the Wine version to GE-Proton. Then I changed the .exe to be the launcher, and the only way I could get it to run was by switching back to Wine-GE (anything else either gave me an error message or didn't do anything). Unfortunately, the EA App always crashes before I can finish putting in my 2FA code, so I can't install DAO or any other game.

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Thank you for the guide! I was able to install the EA App this way, but only by switching to Proton-GE for the second phase of the install. Unfortunately, the app doesn't launch, whether I use Proton-GE or Wine-GE. The Play button turns into a Stop button, as expected, but the app doesn't actually launch. If I'm using Proton-GE, I get a black rectangle in the middle of my screen that's roughly the size of the EA App login screen; if I'm using Wine-GE, nothing happens.

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Have you switched from Wayland to X? You can do so at the login screen when you're typing in your password (bottom right corner, cog wheel). I'm always defaulting to X org, so I didn't have time to test if it was working with Wayland.

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Sorry, which app are you talking about? The only app in which I'm prompted to enter a password is the EA App (through Lutris), but I don't see a cog in the bottom-right corner.

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This is referring to your Log In Screen on Zorin OS, when you boot up the computer.

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That's my bad, I could've definitely instructed that better lol. Aravisian is correct in what I actually meant.

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That makes sense. I switched the cog setting from Zorin Desktop to Zorin Desktop on Xorg (I hope that was what you meant, because those were the only two options available). Now I can get to the EA App login screen using Wine, Wine-GE, or Proton-GE on either Lutris or Heroic, but in every case the app still crashes before I can enter my 2FA code.

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I do not presently have 2fa on my EA account (to be frank, I had to reset the password to even log in to it again, haven't been in it in years). I could try adding 2fa later today if I get some free time and see if the same crash occurs or not.

You could temporarily go to EAs site and remove 2fa to see if that is indeed causing the crash or it's something else.

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Without 2FA, I can log into the EA App, but it still crashes after a couple seconds, before I have a chance to click on anything.

Here's a question: Is it possible that my working directory or my Wine prefix is set to the wrong folder? Like maybe it's too few folders down in the file path or something? Or would the app not be able to launch in the first place in that case?

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I was able to get Dragon's Age Origins working start to finish via the EA app using these (not terribly detailed, but I'll expand if needed) steps.

  1. Ensure Bottles and any flatpak frameworks are up to date. Bottles is only officially distributed as flatpak and source, so you almost certainly have the flatpak, before anyone asks. To make certain, open a terminal window and run flatpak update.
  2. Ensure a recent GE-Proton is installed. I used GE-Proton 10-1. You can install GE-Proton easily using ProtonPlus or ProtonUp-Qt. In either case, make sure Bottles is installed, up to date, and not running before using a Proton installer, and make sure you select Bottles as your targeted tool when using said installer.
  3. Make a new bottle in Bottles, using the gaming preset.
  4. Open the bottle and enter its settings. Set GE-Proton 10-1, or experiment with others as you see fit, but I used 10-1.
  5. Go back to the main screen for your EA App bottle, and click "Install Programs..."
  6. Choose EA Launcher. Bottles has a premade install script for the EA App that covers dependencies. Let it do its thing.
  7. When the EA App launches, log in and install DA:O as normal. Run it.
  8. Celebrate, right up until it fails out due to a missing file.
  9. If you have an Nvidia GPU, go here to download a legacy PhysX driver. This is an official source: NVIDIA PhysX System Software 9.16.0318 If your GPU is AMD or Intel, use this link instead: NVIDIA PhysX System Software. Note that I have an Nvidia GPU and have not tested the AMD driver.
  10. In Bottles, once again get to the main screen of the EA app bottle, and click the three dots icon in the top right. Choose browse files. It'll open the C:\ drive folder for your bottle. Copy the driver installer you just downloaded into there.
  11. Back in bottles, click the big blue Run Executable button, and find the driver installer. Make sure you pick the one you copied to your C:\ drive, and not the original in a downloads folder or similar. Because of being in a "bottle" things work best when run from inside.
  12. Click through the PhysX installer.
  13. When it finishes, try running the EA app again, and launching DA:O once more. It may want you to log into your Origin account. That should be the same as your EA App account--it's an old name for EA's app.
  14. Celebrate for real as DA:O finally actually runs.

In my experience, that usually indicates the version of WINE/Proton is unsuited. Launchers can be real headaches here. Blizzard has broken Battle.net several times, requiring whole new versions of Proton to get them going again.

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Dude, this tutorial is awesome, I give you high marks, as this is what I like to see. You should post this as a tutorial in the gaming forum section as well.

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I'll probably make it its own post later, when I'm up in the middle of the night watching the kids on my shift lol. Would be good to add other launchers such as @Locklear93 has indicated.

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Thank you! I was able to follow steps 1­ through 6, but the app didn't launch. Instead, I got an error message saying the program had a serious problem and needed to close. When I clicked "show details" I got an overwhelming amount of text, most of it in what looks like hexadecimal, and I don't seem to be able to upload the text file I pasted it into as an attachment. It starts with:

Unhandled exception: 0x20474343 in 64-bit code (0x006fffffc0d107).

I don't know what to make of most of it, or which parts would be helpful to share, but at the end, under System information, it says my wine build is wine-10.0 (Staging). I set the bottle up with GE-Proton 10-1. Is it a problem that the System information in the file doesn't match the settings I chose?

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This is a straight up crash. In short, something happened in code for which there were was nothing that handled it--thus an "unhandled exception." It's the kind of thing programmers would generally need a stack trace or similar to find out what happened, so unless you also have errors that aren't in hexadecimal, that's probably not going to help you.

Where exactly do you see this system information, so I can check against it? If you set it properly on the bottle, your system's wine version shouldn't matter. Bottles are their own prefixes. (Effectively, the purpose of Bottles is to make managing prefixes easier and keep everything independent and isolated). I actually don't have WINE installed at all in the usual sense--I use it entirely through things like Bottles, Steam, or Heroic, so there's no "default" that might confuse anything.

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The huge wall of text I got contains a stack dump (entirely in hexadecimal) and a backtrace (mostly in hexadecimal), but no stack trace.

There's also a Modules section where each module has an address (hexadecimal), a name, and debug info. Most of the modules' debug info says "Deferred," but some entries are "--none--," "Export," or "COFF." Would any of that information be helpful?

The system information was at the bottom of the wall of text I got when I clicked the button to show more details on the error message. It says:

System information:
Wine build: wine-10.0 (Staging)
Platform: x86_64 (guest: i386)
Version: Windows 10
Host system: Linux
Host version: 6.8.0-60-generic

The fact that it mentions Windows 10 (the Windows version Bottles seems to use by default) made me think maybe this is supposed to be the bottle's information, but I set the bottle up to use GE-Proton 10-1, not Wine 10.0 (Staging). So I thought maybe the discrepancy was a clue to what was wrong.

I should probably mention that after I close the error message, it looks like the bottle contains the EA Launcher, Client, and Updater, but if I click on the Launcher or Client, I just get the same error message. (The updater seemed to work and then gave me the error message after it had updated the program.)