Need to be online to be able to play offline?

It turns out the work around by @dcwestby is working for me. It appears starting up the EA app, shutting down the EA background manager and the restarting the EA app is the standard way to get this program to work. This work around is needed every time in online and offline mode.

Why is it impossible to start up the EA app while my computer is offline? The entire point of an offline mode is to be able to play without internet.

When I use my pc without an internet connection, I get a message in the EA app that it needs to be online. Why can't I just tell the EA app to be offline and start up my games (FİFA 25 ). This game has no multiplayer mode and only needs internet for the gallery which we can play without.

I have internet at home most of the time. But occasionally I need to start up my game without a connection.

Origin handled this perfectly fine. Please allow the EA app to function like origin in regards to starting up offline.

This error ISN'T FIXED AT ALL.
Here my post
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/EA-app-Error-Code-EC-204-AGAIN/td-p/14225702

Still waiting for this error to be fixed, since 2023!

• When was the last time you successfully connected to the EA app with an internet connection? (Please provide a date in the format like Oct. 8, 2024, or Sept. 21, 2024.): October 18, 2024
  
  
• Which game(s) are you trying to launch? The Sims 4 (my current game version is 1.108.349.1020)
  
  
• Are you playing on PC or Mac? PC
  
  
• What is your currently installed version of the EA app? 13.329.0.5842 (90068-166e8d66fb)
  
  
• What version of Windows or macOS are you using? Windows 10
  
  
• Please generate and share your EA app Error Reporter ID, and include it in your (new) post on this thread. a6c99137-e81c-45a9-96da-ff166b29afa4
  
  
• When does this error occur? Is it when you manually set the EA app to offline mode and then try to launch an offline-play-supported game? Or does it happen when your machine has already lost internet connection and you attempt to launch a game? Everytime I try to launch the game in OFFLINE MODE the EC:204 error shows up. I don't have any internet connection issue, just the EA app doesn't let me play in OFFLINE MODE.

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@GiardiniDiMarzo wrote:
@MoskikatI think the problem is that your current version of The Sims is too old to run offline. Back in summer, the sims team said all the users needed to update the game at least once (i don't remember exactly when sorry) to be able to continue playing (even in offline mode).

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This means I'll always be forced to update the game, even if I don't want to (because of the many bugs/glitches/etc of every single new patch). And this sucks. I pay for this game and I should be free to play whenever I want, online or offline. And this EC:204 it's "new" because I was used to play in offline mode basically always.

This is ruining everything.

So I don't really know what they fixed last month? Because they flagged another topic as "resolved" but here I am, still with this error.

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@GiardiniDiMarzo wrote:
@MoskikatI tried to play offline today and I hadn't had any problems... I'll try to search that post where they said to update the game.

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This is the most recent post about the same issue, flagged as resolved
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEW-Oct-2024-EA-app-and-Error-Code-EC-204/m-p/14126582#M56676

but some people still has the error

Here