EA App - Installing Games to Network Drives

[nmck16]

Currently, the EA App does not allow any games to be installed to a network drive (e.g. SMB share), either via locating an already-installed game, or downloading fresh.

This wasn't a big deal before the recent announcement of the EA App's eventual replacement of Origin.

With Origin, you can install games to network drives, though it takes a couple of tweaks to the Registry and Windows Services.

But this is not currently possible with the EA App. I've tried every possible thing I can think of: changing default install location in EA App, making the installation path on the network drive symlinked to a local drive, disabling the EA Background Service, installing EA App to network drive (doesn't work).

Nothing works.

Game installs are only getting bigger. Please allow us to easily install our games to network drives!

[192julian · Accepted solution]

But I managed to do it with the following Post:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/182750/map-a-network-drive-to-be-used-by-a-service

[russticles5]

@nmck16 Yeah EA Play sucks because of this, I'm unable to access my Origin game library nor can I install any new games with this launcher to a network SMB share. Epic, Steam and Ubi don't restrict what location I can install/run from, why is EAs launcher restrictive??

[mikekolesnik]

Goddamn EA, with all their money can;t even get this simple use case right..

That's why you should stick with the major stores - steam and epic, not that theyre perfect, but at least they seem to be fixing such nonsense

[Mr_Afgan33]

EA uses a Background service called "EABackgroundService" - This is run as a System service, and not the logged-in user

As the default user creation of network files are only accessible via the user who generated the Mapping - EA's background service cannot see your mapped drive

I have managed to overcome this by removing the Mapped network drive, and re-creating when running command prompt as admin.. See below

Example Deleting and Re-Mapping Z Drive to my Nas:

within Command Prompt (As Administrator):

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net use Z: /Delete

net use Z: \\MYNASHOSTNAME\Games /Global /Persistent:yes /SaveCred

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the Mapped Drive will now be accessible to Every user on the Computer

Note: Windows Explorer can only Partly see this new mapping until the service is restarted, or the user has logged out / Logged in again

To Restart the Explorer (THE BELOW CANCELS ANY ACTIVE COPY OPERATION, and will close all Explorer windows)

within Command Prompt (As Administrator):

--------------

taskkill -f -im explorer.exe

explorer.exe

--------------

Saving the Credentials of a user with Write Permissions will permit the EA app to access the Mapped Drive

[Ballerfreund]

@Mr_Afgan33 Thank you very much, that helped :D
also worked for Ubisoft Connect

[192julian]

Option /Global unknown

[192julian · Accepted solution]

But I managed to do it with the following Post:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/182750/map-a-network-drive-to-be-used-by-a-service

[nmck16]

Holy crap, this actually worked!

Thank you @192julian !!!

Never heard of SysInternals Suite, but wow it finally made this work!

[nmck16]

@nmck16I will say, however, that due to the Mapped Drive being owned by the `LOCALSYSTEM`, or `NT-AUTHORITY\SYSTEM` user, it throws a wrench into 3rd-party tools/launchers like Playnite, which cannot launch EA games now due to permissions issues I suspect.

So this is great for people who are comfortable just using the EA App to launch their games.