This game requires administrative privileges

I have this issue, and I realized it's because my user account is a standard user. When I launch the game from an administrator user account, it works. Crucially, this isn't the "built-in" Administrator god mode account, just a secondary user with Administrator account type. Setting EADesktop.exe and SimCity.exe to run with admin privileges doesn't resolve this problem.

But I would really like to be able to launch and play this via my standard user account and not have to use an administrator account.

though i can get the game to run by enabling the windows built in 'administrator' account and logging in and playing from that account, if you like to play online in simcity, then it is super risky (imho). 

Since EA seems unwilling to fix or even acknowledge the issue that we are all having, i am at least willing to try and troubleshoot it with the community.
but before i did any further troubleshooting.... i disabled the built in administrator account once again. then i brought up the windows command prompt (powershell would proabably do as well, but i am a DOS man.) then i navigated to the games install directory and tried loading it using windows SUDO command. if the cause was really any sort of admin permission issues or anything like that, Sudo should have blown all that away and allowed the game to load. however..... IT DID NOT. (command used was 'sudo .\simcity.exe -e --inline' from 'c:\program files(x86)\origin games\SimCity\SimCity\')

NOTE

when i made the upgrade rom EA origina to EA desktop, my existing EA software library got imported over to EA desktop, but they still reside in the old EA Origin location over in program files(x86).

my next stop was to watch the taskmanager as it tried to load simcity. the first thing i noticed is that a process that gets opened when the game IS able to launch was opening for a split second then closing. this file was one of EA desktops files, called 'EAGEP.exe'

a google search did not turn up anything helpful about the file, so i dug into my system further. I went to 'C:\programdata\EA Desktop\Logs\' and found a bunch of log files. but the two i was most interested in were the files EAGEP.log and EAGEPVerbose.log. looking at the first log i found the exact moment when the issue seems to occur.

 22	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.742Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50188	WARN    	(eax::apps::GameElevationProxyCoordinator::FsmHost::doStartTimer::<lambda_1>::operator ())	Waited for a game launch request to come in for too long. Shutting down...
    23	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.746Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::apps::AppMain)	Closing app, starting teardown
    24	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.746Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 49344	INFO    	(eax::services::telemetry::TelemetryManagerV2::processEvent)	Telemetry Event [boot.sess.stop]: [{"appUptime":9.4418305,"authenticated":false,"criticalOffline":true,"criticality":false,"disableCulling":false,"enabled":true,"offline":false,"optional":false,"params":{"app":"EAGEP.exe"},"systemUptime":57910.666071,"taxonomy":"boot.sess.stop","throttleCount":0,"timestamp":17766427617465664,"weight":1.0}]
    25	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.805Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::services::ipc::IpcServerImpl::stop)	Server[gep] : Stopping
    26	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.807Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::services::telemetry::PinTelemetrySenderV2::flush)	PinV2 flushing requests
goodb

from the EAGEPVerbose.log i found this:

  72	[2026-04-19T23:52:38.731Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50188	INFO    	(eax::apps::GameElevationProxyCoordinator::FsmHost::doCreateProcessSuspended)	Process created suspended.
    73	[2026-04-19T23:52:38.731Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50188	DEBUG   	(eax::apps::GameElevationProxyCoordinator::FsmHost::doStartTimer)	Waiting [3000]ms for action
    74	[2026-04-19T23:52:38.731Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50188	DEBUG   	(eax::apps::GameElevationProxyCoordinator::init::<lambda_1>::operator ())	IPC server client connectivity changed isConnected[false]
    75	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.742Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50188	WARN    	(eax::apps::GameElevationProxyCoordinator::FsmHost::doStartTimer::<lambda_1>::operator ())	Waited for a game launch request to come in for too long. Shutting down...
    76	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.746Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::apps::AppMain)	Closing app, starting teardown
    77	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.746Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 49344	INFO    	(eax::services::telemetry::TelemetryManagerV2::processEvent)	Telemetry Event [boot.sess.stop]: [{"appUptime":9.4418305,"authenticated":false,"criticalOffline":true,"criticality":false,"disableCulling":false,"enabled":true,"offline":false,"optional":false,"params":{"app":"EAGEP.exe"},"systemUptime":57910.666071,"taxonomy":"boot.sess.stop","throttleCount":0,"timestamp":17766427617465664,"weight":1.0}]
    78	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.805Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::services::ipc::IpcServerImpl::stop)	Server[gep] : Stopping
    79	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.807Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	DEBUG   	(eax::services::telemetry::TelemetryManagerV2::~TelemetryManagerV2)	Shutting down telemetry
    80	[2026-04-19T23:52:41.807Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 46360	INFO    	(eax::services::telemetry::PinTelemetrySenderV2::flush)	PinV2 flushing requests
    81	[2026-04-19T23:52:42.133Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50464	DEBUG   	(eax::services::dirtyHttp::DirtyRequestHandler::readResponseHeaders)	conn[5e423130] req[5] Initial response received after 384ms
    82	[2026-04-19T23:52:42.134Z]	PID: 45816	TID: 50464	DEBUG   	(eax::services::dirtyHttp::DirtyRequestHandler::onResponseComplete)	conn[5e423130] req[5] HttpRequest completed: url[https://ratt.juno.ea.com/ratt/telm] status[200/200] error[00000000] totalBytes[41] bitrate[0.7Mbps]
goodbye

it seems that when we make a request to launch the game the EA app 'phones home' and the app sends back a 'go ahead' signal. but by the time the signal is received the EA desktop client has given up trying to launch simcity.

if i am reading the logs correctly, the EA desktop is waiting about 3 seconds (3000Ms) before giving up, during which we have to click the 'okay' button for allow the game to launch the game to launch with administrative permissions. no matter how fast you click, that is too little time to get through the process AND have the traffic go back and forth before the connection times out.

same issue. game ran just fine on jan. 18 2026, but now i am getting same errors

Personally, I bypassed the problem by launching the launcher and the game from my PC's admin account. Normally, you shouldn't have to launch a game from an administrator account, but it was the only way to play.

I have the same problem and unfortunately nothing form reddit or other forums worked . It's realy sad, i always loved the game. I was heart broken after they changed origin for this s#it with so many errors they call a launcher ever since i have problems ever so often with launching games changing my avatar and many more things. I hope some solution will be available soon.

Ditto ... (doesn't contribute to the solution, I know, but may keep the thread "alive" a bit more)

Does anyone have any updates?

I tried contacting EA via chat, but none of the suggested procedures resolved the issue...

I have the same problem. Is there any solution meanwhile? Also here the game worked fine before on the same computer (win 11 pro).