I have this too. Affecting Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1 and 2042. Most through the Steam / EA links.
Tried all of the fixes suggested. Changing directories, reinstalling, running various apps. Messing with permissions etc etc. Some of which should not be something that novices mess with IMO.
Oddly my default install for EA Desktop doesn't match those mentioned in the thread. Seems whoever coded the awful software thought that "C:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/EA Desktop/EA Desktop/ Was a good thing to do. (Yes it is duplicating folder structure)
Did more digging and the Steam part runs for about 2 seconds then looking at services and the EA background services seems to pick up and do stuff. (I say stuff very loosely as nothing happens but CPU and RAM usage goes up)
Then EA App launches then throws an error after about 1 minute.
Nothing in Event viewer related to software / application etc.
So I looked at the C:/Program Data/EA Desktop (Yes they installed a second folder in another place for some other reason, which the coder probably thought was a great idea like double the naming convention noted above)
Looking at the log folders in the above folder and it does declare that Errors have occurred for the EA background services.
This is one of them
15 [2023-05-02T20:55:41.785Z] PID: 18024 TID: 2432 ERROR (eax:😕ervices::localStorage::logOnError) Operation [reading]: Could not find file or could not create containing folder for category "IS", file path [C:\ProgramData\EA Desktop
The problem does seem to be that EA can't code properly, the "Link2EA" pop up seems to be when Steam gives up trying to play the game and whatever happens in the background either can't see EA or fails in some other way at their end.
As one fix suggested is to install Origin offline access it would look to be EA can't authenticate and as its Steam I think the coder forgot the bit where it needs to authenticate and also look at Steam credentials?
Given I have done a complete reinstall of all related applications I can only assume it is just bad code that has somehow got through whatever passes as Change management and QA at EA (I use the term very loosely)
But the fact it works for some, the fact I have a different install folder and the fact that it doesn't affect all games. Suggests I am not sure EA have a clue what they do when they install this. Maybe because it has various sources like Steam, in game and EA itself. Did different departments work on this at the same time with no overarching project lead?
I am not convinced EA will fix it as a few of these forums have very little EA input. It did annoy me that at least twice through this it put up an advert wanting me to subscribe and pay for EA monthly. The cynic in me thinks that might their tactic. "All games work under EA play. 🙂"
Bring back Origin at least that worked.
