Migrating Your EA Games from Steam or Retail to Origin

EA’s digital gaming platform, Origin, received a major boost to its user base in late 2011 thanks to the release of Battlefield 3. At the time, fans of the series weren’t pleased. In effect, EA was forcing them into using a gaming platform which, let’s face it, was lackluster when compared to the competition (in this case, Valve’s Steam).

A lot of gamers don’t even care for Steam, or game launchers in general. But if you’re going to be forced into using one, wouldn’t it be nice if it delivered on modern expectations? Well, since its release, Origin has gotten a lot better, but compared to Steam, many would argue that it still has a lot of catching up to do (come on, EA, at least let us make simple backups of our games!).

There is one way to improve your Origin experience just a wee bit, though: Importing EA games you’ve either bought at retail or on Steam. Granted, this is going to have limited appeal, but there are a couple of perks. Own a game that supports co-op or multiplayer, but doesn’t require online access? Do I need to say more? Or, it could simply be that you need or want to install a game out of Steam for any other reason. Fortunately, if it’s an EA title, chances are good that you’ll be able to activate it on Origin and treat it as if you purchased it there.

Inside of Origin’s main menu, an option named “Redeem Product Code” can be found. As alluded to above, if you own an EA game on disc, the code found inside the packaging could be used (or rather, tried) here. Likewise, if Steam offers you the ability to snag your CD key for a given game, you can try that as well. This is a nice perk that EA offers here, but it’s worth pointing out that Valve offers much of the same thing – there, though, non-Valve developers can get in on the action if they choose to.

While Valve offers a list of games that can be imported into Steam this way, EA leaves the bulk of the guesswork up to you – or us, which is the purpose of this article. 

But first – how to acquire a CD key from Steam? If the game supports it, a “View CD key” option will be found when right-clicking it. In the example below, we can see that Crysis 2: Maximum Edition is one such title that does.

Unfortunately, not all EA titles in Steam will offer a CD key, but a lot do. In the event that a game doesn’t, I believe the prospect of registering that game at Origin is a lost cause. Also, some games might offer more than one key; either two codes that do the same thing but are available in two formats, or extra codes for DLC. If a game is registered on Origin, it’s wise to test out the DLC code as well if one is available.

After putting a code into Origin that it accepts, you’ll receive a prompt like this:

The choice here shouldn’t be made in haste, because as far as I can tell, there’s no going back. For some games, even if the code isn’t accepted, there might be a workaround. For games released in 2008 or earlier, another website (referenced below) might be required for registration. There, you simply put in your CD key and account credentials, and if all goes well, the site will confirm the title to be added to the account. If for some reason this gets you nowhere, contact Origin customer support (and good luck).

Here is a list of EA games / DLC and their confirmed status:

Is there a chance that non-EA games can be carried over from Steam? To test, we cross-checked our available games on Steam with those available on Origin, aaaaand, the outlook is not so good:

This is unfortunate, and something that EA should consider fixing. It could be assumed that it’s just not possible for EA to add support for games that it doesn’t own the rights to, but remember that Steam link from earlier? If Valve can do it, we’d imagine EA should be able to, too. In fact, there are some games that are available on both services, but only Steam allows you to activate them even though they were purchased elsewhere. Age of Empires III, Darksiders, and F.E.A.R. 3 are a couple of examples.

If people could activate more of their games on Origin, we’d have to imagine that it would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

Because the Techgage team doesn’t own every EA game available on Origin, we welcome a heads-up. Own a game we don’t? Test out the import and let us know if it works!

Article originally published on September 30, 2011. Last updated on October 25, 2013.