Games not launching

I have two EA games I purchased via Steam, been playing them nicely for months, than all of a sudden they started refusing to launch 3 weeks ago (which makes me suspect of an automatic update of the EA software having been pushed somewhere near middle to end of March?).

Symptom: when I click "Play" on Steam app or EA app, it says it is launching it for a couple of seconds, and then I'm back to the "Play" button -- with no error message whatsoever.

I'v been investigating and found out that my C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive directory is filled with subdirectories named "AppCrash_Link2EA.exe_someRandomCode". WER stands for Windows Error Reporting I believe. Basically, there is one such directory for every time I've started to launch any of these two EA games. Log dumped in each folder does not seem super helpful to me, but some EA tech guy could have a look maybe? I'm attaching one of the  logs as an example.

Tried

• uninstall / reinstall EA Desktop
• uninstall / reinstall Steam
• clean EA Desktop cache
• clean Steam cache
• "clean boot" (no extra services, no start-up apps) in Windows
• run Link2EA.exe and EADesktop.exe as admin
• you name it

Weird pattern worth being noted: if I uninstall EA Desktop and then try to launch the games from within Steam, Steam installs EA Desktop and in this scenario it is EADesktop.exe itself which is crashing (according to WER): indeed, the EA app won't launch if I try to start it manually. On the contrary, if I uninstall EA Desktop and reinstall it myself, at least I can launch EADesktop.exe (the EA app), and then it is Link2EA.exe which is crashing when I try to fire up games.

Online support was... well, you know. It was like going to ER with a broken leg and being adviced to take blood tests to check what is the issue.

It is a shame that I cannot use the products I have paid for due to what clearly is a bug in the software of the vendor. And it is a shame that we are left with posting on forums instead of receiving real support.

 Of course I will never buy again from EA if this issue is not fixed really soon.