How do I redownload a game I already have?

Did you download the Origin client yet ? The game should be in myGames if you've registered the game on the website. If not, you should be able to redeem your serial code. If that doesn't work either, contact customer support

They can be found here: https://help.ea.com/contact-us/ask

Choose a category, a game and a platform for the contact options to show up.

If live chat is gray, change your country to US and make sure you're on US Business hours. It might also gray because they're very busy. Try later.

See this post if you have trouble with the site: http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2012/10/how-to-contact-ea.html

Thanks for the reply.

And yes, I have the Origin client. All my games are already registered, and I can launch them from within the Origin client. But I still can't play them, because the game still wants me to insert the disc:

Disk Authentication Failure

No game disc found! Please insert The Sims 3 Late Night game disc before proceeding.

I have the disc, which I bought years ago when the game first came out, but I no longer have a disc drive. I downloaded Origin with the understanding that I can redownload the game and avoid the need to insert the disc to play the game. Can I in fact do that, or does my lack of a disc drive mean I can no longer play the game at all?

Did you uninstall the disc version (you should not need the disc) ? If there are traces of the disc version left on the computer, the game is still looking for it. You need to completely rid your computer of the disc version, then download and install the download one and you then should no longer need a disc.

Thanks much for the advice.

After deleting the exiting version of the game from my hard drive, I finally got the option in the Origin client to download the game. Took all day, and as I installed first the base game, then the expansions, I was warned that the previous installation is more recent than expected, and that the expansion about to be installed might be incompatible.

When I finished installing all the expansions and launched the game, a window came up and said an update was available. I clicked OK, and when the download finished, I got another window advising me that "an unknown error occurred". That's as far as I've been able to get. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

I think I fixed the problem; I deleted the Sims preferences from the Library/Preferences folder, then launched the base game from within Origin. This time, it was the Sims launcher that came up and offered an update instead of a generic dialog box. Took hours, but I was able to launch the game afterwards.

Nicer still, many of the bugs that had been making the game unplayable before (neighbors not tending to their own needs or going to work, everyone stopping what they're doing to freak out at robots, et al.) seem to have been cleared up — although the game did unexpectedly quit later on. I had the cheat code active when it did, so hopefully that didn't screw up the game.

Anyway, thanks again for the advice.