EA has given their final warning about the end of their defunct client, Origin.
On their official support site, they shared this statement:
“On April 17, 2025, Origin will shut down, as Microsoft has stopped supporting 32-bit software.
If you use Origin, you need to upgrade to the EA app, which requires a 64-bit version of Windows.”
Fortunately, EA went on to explain that your Origin account will work on the EA App for Windows. So there is no risk of losing your account and games. This advisory is simply to warn customers that the Origin app will no longer work in a few months’ time.
Subsequently, if you go through the process of installing and replacing the Origin app with the EA app, you won’t have to redownload your games. However, because EA doesn’t have control over any mods you may have applied to your games, they can’t guarantee that they will continue to work. So you’ll have to check with the mod creators on this.
EA has been messing with game clients since 2005 with EA Downloader, shortly after Valve decided to open up Steam’s storefront to third-party games. However, the Origin client was launched in 2011, and was in use for over a decade.
EA’s attempt to launch their own storefront and client is mostly seen as an inconvenience to gamers, who were happy with getting their games on one platform on PC, namely Steam. But theoretically, the proliferation of multiple storefronts should make the industry better. This is a similar situation to how most consumers were happy with doing all their streaming on Netflix.
Now, Steam has not quite burned bridges with their customers the way Netflix has, but we should also be skeptical of the companies we like. Last year, we reported on a class-action lawsuit alleging that Valve is coercing developers to make their lowest sales of games on their platform. If it’s proven true, that means Valve secretly made games more expensive for everyone to their benefit for years.
We reported that Origin was being replaced by the EA app all the way back in 2022. Now, we’re at a crossroads of sorts even if PC gamers may not like it. There’s definitely a place for x86 PC games in retro gaming, but Microsoft is nudging everyone along to upgrade to x64 for current generation gaming.
And that’s clearly being generous, as other companies have already been pushing PC gamers towards upgrading. Games now require HDDs are replaced with SSDs, new hardware capable of path tracing, etc. You can certainly hold onto x86 hardware in the same way you may have held onto an OG Amiga, but here’s one more reason you need to level up that tech to play new games.
