I bring out the big guns - third party software to try and remove every remotely EA-related thing from my computer. So, installation failed, repair failed, delete failed. It plays that stupid progress animation, goes away and it never uninstalls anything. So I decide to just uninstall whatever it tried to install before and start clean. Nevermind that I'm trying to repair a broken installation here.

The unexpected kind, which tells you fuck all about what went wrong.

Installation screen again, progress animation again, then an error. So I just download the installer from EA's website and tell it to repair. I figured obviously something happened when it crashed and now I can't normally install it. Same screen telling me it's installing, progress animation plays for about a minute, screen goes away, nothing happens. The same message appears telling me I need to install EA Desktop. I go back to the Xbox app and click download, imagining it will just fire up EA Desktop again. A screen tells me it's installing, it goes away, I log in, EA Desktop shows its interface for a brief second and immediately proceeds to crash. So, okay, the Xbox app tells me I need to download the EA Desktop app. I thought it would be simple as clicking download and go. Since EA Play's library on the Xbox is absolutely tepid - less games and no DLC for any of them - I opted to use it on PC.

I have it because I have a GPU subscription.

Download ea launcher