For a long time, EA games could only be purchased, downloaded, and played digitally via EA Origin (at least on PCs).
The EA App is as clunky and frustrating as Origin ever was, a completely unnecessary obstacle between you and just double-clicking the icon for the game you want to play, but when you want to play ...
EA says it is shutting down the Origin PC client, forcing users to move to the EA App which doesn't support 32-bit Windows software.