November 2020
I truly need help because EA is useless at this point. I have Sims 3 Pets bought through a 3rd party and installed through Origin. I activated the code and it worked. Game is in my library. I have successfully played it in the past but now it just will not play. When I say it won't play, I mean that Sims 3 plays, but Sims 3 Pets is installed but not showing in the launcher now in game. When I go to the settings in game and go to the last option, Pets is greyed out for the check mark and it tells me to install the product once I hover over it.
Things I have tried:
Repair
Clean Install of entire game and EP's
Back Up
Installing it on another PC
Uninstalling just Pets and reinstalling
Uninstalling just Pets and reinstalling on secondary computer
Contacting the 3rd party where it was purchased
Chatting EA (three times)
I've dug through every forum and tried all the recommend steps. Any advice? I have all EP's. This is the only one with an issue.
Solved! Go to Solution.
November 2020
@ashleymary22 It sounds like you received a bad product key for Pets, and while it worked initially, EA eventually blocked it. This kind of thing can happen when buying from an unautorlized third-party seller: the key might have been originally stolen or otherwise fraudulently obtained (probably long before it ended up on the key seller website), but EA only later does an accounting and flags the keys for which it was never paid.
Point is, you'll need to contact support, again, and ask specifically about the status of the product key for Pets. It's not enough that it's still in your Origin account; you need to convince the support rep to check whether it's active or not. If it's blocked, the support rep will need to remove it from your account before you can buy a new copy, if that's what you want to do.
November 2020
@ashleymary22 It sounds like you received a bad product key for Pets, and while it worked initially, EA eventually blocked it. This kind of thing can happen when buying from an unautorlized third-party seller: the key might have been originally stolen or otherwise fraudulently obtained (probably long before it ended up on the key seller website), but EA only later does an accounting and flags the keys for which it was never paid.
Point is, you'll need to contact support, again, and ask specifically about the status of the product key for Pets. It's not enough that it's still in your Origin account; you need to convince the support rep to check whether it's active or not. If it's blocked, the support rep will need to remove it from your account before you can buy a new copy, if that's what you want to do.
November 2020 - last edited November 2020
The very first rep did mention that there was fraud on the entitlement but I haven't been able to get another rep to look but I will try again and update! I definitely think what you're saying is what happened to me (even if EA doesn't want to see it).
Edit: EA confirmed my key has been disabled. I am happy that I have the issue. Now to go get the resolution (hopefully)