I really feel you. I didn't redeem the code of The Sims Medieval in Origin and now support says I should ask the retailer I bought it of like 13, 14 years ago but the retailer won't help me if I don't have a receipt... which I didn't keep until today. And how should they help me? As if they have a spare copy with a new code which I can redeem in EA app and play the game afterwards.
I can install the game using the DVD but if I do the game won't start although it even was able to download an update. So since the installation is working fine, I don't see how the retailer would fix the problem... either EA has to fix it so everybody can play the game they spent money on or we have to help ourselves by doing complicated things we may never heard of like writing scripts and find other workarounds.