I've experienced this error message and inability to play my games as well.
I managed to solve it (for now at least) by going into the app installation location on my machine and running the updater.exe file that is in there. There was an update available that the app was not downloading on its own. Once the update was installed I gained access to my games again.
I don't know why there isn't an option to tell the app to check for updates manually since it clearly doesn't seem to be able to do it correctly on its own.
Thank you for posting this work around. I was experiencing the same problem and couldn't start my sims 4 game.
I start my pc, start the EA app, my games are not available. There is a grey clock icon instead of a blue play butten. I restart the PC and everything is fine. But the next day I have the same problem again and need to restart a second time. Running the updater.exe from the installation files seems to have helped.
Edit: it seemed to have been a one time solution.
On my next try I had to restart my pc a second time to load the game, just like every time I wanted to play for the last two weeks or so.
Mine is doing the same thing and I have to restart my PC to be able to play.
Thank you so much, nothing better even after recovering EA app and restarting the app, but when I restarted my computer, everthing worked !! Wow !! Thank you !! ^^
Absolutly NO fix. YOU must restart your PC in order to work. Most patetic EA management, huge insult to the people that pay you. Error is for 2 years already, still no FIX. Not to mention the rest of it.
