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Mgamerz's avatar
Mgamerz
3 years ago

EA App cloud sync enumerating save directory of games thousands of times

Product: The EA app
Platform:PC
Error Report ID (learn how to create an Error Report ID in the sticky post) 436d04a7-19a7-449f-a57e-98cdf6898538
Which client functionality are you experiencing this bug with? Launch Game
When did this happen? (dd.mm.yy hh:mm) 01.26.22 12:00
Summarize your bug (This is tested against Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Legendary Edition). The EA app has forced cloud sync which has terrible performance when a large number (1000+) of save files are encountered - far worse than it should. When looking at the application behavior in ProcMon it is apparent that a huge amount of time is being wasted enumerating the save directory hundreds of thousands of times. Games take so long to run that it appears like the game will never actually launch. With the new forced EA-app that came into effect today, I have seen many of my mod developers (I head the ME scene) seemingly be unable to run their game.
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Add a lot of save files to the Mass Effect Legendary Edition saves folder: For example in the modding scene we use this set of save files for each game, labeled (internally) for us to jump to any point in the game. In total this has hundreds of saves. https://me3tweaks.com/permanent/LEDebugSaves.7z These are extracted to: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Save - with each archive being extracted into the respective game. The game must have been run at least once.
What happens when the bug occurs? The EA app enumerates the save directory for this game hundreds of thousands of times - essentially running in O(N^2). It takes literally - I'm not even kidding - 5 minutes and 32 seconds for me to run the game. I don't know why it is constantly enumerating the folder list when it seems like it just needs to get a list of files and then cache that into a variable. This current implementation is extremely slow - on the levels of GTA 5 buggy login slow. It is faster when it doesn't have to do a full sync - we're still talking like a minute to launch - but when a save sync occurs (e.g. my other computer generates a new save) it's back to the 5 minutes to run thing again. It really wastes a lot of time, especially for my developers who constantly restart the game.
What do you expect to see? I expect better performance. I don't expect miracles but I also don't expect it to take 6 minutes to compare a local and cloud version of a folder that is not more than a couple of megabytes. At the least, I'd want to see one of three things (preferably all of them): 1. Better performance for sync. Do not enumerate this directory hundreds of thousands of times. 2. Show something to the user that something is happening. The app currently gives you zero indication it's doing anything. 3. Give me the option to turn off cloud sync like we could in Origin. That's why this was never a problem before (it was still a pain in Origin but could be easily circumvented).

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Using ProcMon I was able to filter it to all activity by EADesktop.exe. When cloud sync occurs on game launch, you can see it querying the same directory thousands of times for some reason. I know a lot of this internal methods, but this seems far too excessive to be optimal behavior.

bug
mac
pc

16 Replies

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  • LieutenantAlenk's avatar
    LieutenantAlenk
    2 years ago

    It's honestly baffling how the EA App is so terrible at Cloud Saves, a feature which has been around for years at this point and has been successfully executed by Valve. The EA App's forced Cloud Syncing deleted my saves and almost cost me several hours of progress until I downloaded Origin and used the cloud save restore feature (a feature which is inexplicably absent in the EA App).

    At the very least, allow me to take advantage of Steam's objectively better cloud saves for EA games that I bought through Valve's platform.

  • SpaceD0lphin's avatar
    SpaceD0lphin
    2 years ago
    Yeah, as someone actively working on these games, I'm baffled as to why the EA App is struggling with stuff like this. Origin handled this just fine. Every time I need to test an iteration, it takes me about ten minutes to load the game, and I need to do this constantly. Please optimise this, or let me turn it off as I could in Origin.
  • REDKnighthawk18's avatar
    REDKnighthawk18
    2 years ago

    I really do not understand why EA insisted on this buggy asinine switch. I was pushing it off for as long as possible but now here we are. Origin has softlocked me and is refusing to let me do anything until I install this app. So since I'm finally being forced into line, I'm going to add my voice to this issue. There is no excuse for cloud sync taking this long. If it didn't take this long on Origin, then you fixed something that wasn't broken. Write something that doesn't iterate over the same data thousands of times for no reason. Or at the very least, allow us to turn it off.

  • lythacor3's avatar
    lythacor3
    2 years ago

    This has already cost me several hours of gameplay and frankly, if this isn't changed, I'm never buying from EA directly again.

  • mindspirail's avatar
    mindspirail
    2 years ago

    Just Let me be in control of cloud saves and LET ME TURN IT OFF Please How can i enjoy Games if my progress gets wiped so often.

  • DJ_dog210's avatar
    DJ_dog210
    2 years ago

    EA, you want people to buy and play your games. Right now, we can't do that. So stop breaking what works and step up to do what's right.

  • FenoriaBrave's avatar
    FenoriaBrave
    2 years ago

    I am also having this problem and it also doesn't want to acknowledge hand achievements and puts Steam out of sync with Achievements.

    Why can't we take advantage of the Stream platform for those of us who bought the game through Stream? This is for Mass Effect Legendary Edition and also ME Andromeda. For Cloud saves and other features of Steam.

    Another thing is ME  Andromeda, I run a mod to make the font bigger and easier to read and I can't apparently use that once the EA App was forced to be installed.

    I tried installing the Origin app again and that's been working, but now we're forced to use EA App and it is full of bugs it seems.

    Please help us. Thank you and we appreciate your attention to this matter.

  • 1wlbhcmgrp5x's avatar
    1wlbhcmgrp5x
    2 years ago

    Danm the games are so good such a shame the EA launcher are too annoying and Terrible  that's takes like 10mins to actually launch  a game would just remove the EA launcher or make the cloud saves optional let us manage our saves  completely regret buying From  EA  

  • sc_neo1984's avatar
    sc_neo1984
    2 years ago

    I`d give the new EA App a chance, but not unless i have a choice to disable cloud saves. I don't ever use this feature with any other gaming client, not with steam, uplay or GOG. I did not use it with EA Origin before. I really don't want my saves being uploaded to the cloud, even if this worked flawlessly.

    So please give us a simple checkbox to opt-in/out of cloud saves, thx!

  • reciprocity82's avatar
    reciprocity82
    Seasoned Novice
    2 years ago

    Hi,

    I am encountering this issue as well. My games take forever to launch, and 9 times out of 10, force me to hit play 3 or more times just to get it to launch. Please let us just use the platform we prefer and fix this issue.

    Thank you

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