Troubleshooting the Steam-Origin Conundrum: A Frustrating Gamer’s Dilemma

Hello, fellow gamers and tech enthusiasts!

Today, I find myself venting about a particularly frustrating experience I’ve had involving Steam and Origin, two giants in the gaming world. Let me preface this by saying that my intention isn’t to disparage any company; on the contrary, the support representatives I interacted with were cordial and well-meaning. However, despite their assistance, I have yet to resolve my issue, and I’m sure I’m not alone in facing this peculiar predicament.

To give you a brief overview, I recently purchased and installed three relatively new games through Steam, all of which my system meets the requirements for. Here’s where the complications began: EA, the publisher of these games, mandates that they be run via the Origin client. Consequently, attempting to launch a game through Steam redirects me to Origin. While this may seem like a minor inconvenience, it leads to a major hurdle: Origin refuses to recognize the games I have installed.

When I try to launch the game, Origin insists that I need to download it—despite it being clearly installed on my hard drive via Steam. This creates two frustrating scenarios:

1. If the game hasn’t been installed yet, Origin defaults to forcing the install process through Steam.
2. If the game is already installed, Origin simply displays an error claiming it couldn’t download the game.

As you can see, I’m caught in an unwinnable loop. I reached out to EA support, where I was taken through the usual uninstall and reinstall steps, yet this only compounded my frustrations, as I had to wait days for reinstallation on my sluggish Australian internet.

Finally, after multiple attempts, another EA rep offered slightly more promising advice to address issues from Steam’s side. I cleared my download cache and repaired my library folders in Steam, and to my delight, Origin finally acknowledged that the game was installed. However, the celebration was short-lived. When I attempted to launch the game, it wouldn’t start. Instead, it executed an initial setup process and then… would do nothing! The Origin client simply reset back to its home page.

As a last resort, I also contacted Steam support, only to be told they couldn’t assist and directed me back to EA for resolution. This left me feeling quite exasperated, especially given that I had previously been denied a refund due to my slow internet preventing me from finishing the download in time. It