EA WRC not starting after 1.9 patch

Product: EA SPORTS™ WRC
Platform:Steam-PC
Summarize your bug Can't Launch Game Since 1.9.0 Update.
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? No clue, you tell me.
What happens when the bug occurs? Launch from Steam, I see the EA WRC splash screen, has a white bar appear across it's bottom, splash screen goes away, Steam thinks game is no longer running (back to green play button instead of "launching")... nothing else happens after that. No questions if I want VR or Not, nada.
What do you expect to see? The game to work.

‌

My Specs:

• Windows 10 Home 64-Bit (22H2)
• Intel i5-8600k
• Nvidia RTX 3070 10 GB
• 32 GB RAM
• Lots of storage (all NVME or SSD)

I have completed the following steps while attempting to play:

• Verify files via Steam (said 3 had to be replaced)
  • Didn't fix it
• Complete uninstall/reinstall via Steam
  • Including turning off Steam Cloud saving and trying to locate/delete all user save data (my documents, appdata, etc)
  • Didn't fix it
• Manually uninstalling/reinstalling specifically the EA AntiCheat (the garbage you forced upon us even though I only play this as a single player experience)
  • Didn't fix it
• Tried loading and updating the EA App (game doesn't appear there since I never bought it in your store, but via Steam)
  • With or without it running in the background (after updating), it doesn't matter, still didn't fix it.
• Tried setting both wrc.exe, EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe and EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe to automatically run as admin
  • And then uninstalled/reinstalled EAAntiCheat again.... obviously, still no fix.
• Tried running with my VR HMD (not using for this game, because even with a 3070 I can't get a decent framerate without it looking like a PS1 experience, unacceptable for VR)
• Tried running without my Sim Racing equipment hooked up (wheel, pedals, etc)
• Tried running without even an Xbox controller hooked up

What's next? Any files I can submit for you? Here's only relevant event I found in my Windows Event Viewer...

The description for Event ID 1 from source Application cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event: 

EAAntiCheatService
Failed to obtain Origin directory


The message resource is present but the message was not found in the message table

Is this because I have a slightly different than expected install path, because my Steam directory isn't in C:?  My path is E:\SteamLibrary2\SteamApps\common\EA SPORTS WRC\

Get to the fixing plz.