November 2025 Updated the link to EA's official DLC download portal.

June 2023: Tidying this guide a bit, as EA have made some major changes.

There are now 2 versions of Mass Effect 2 on Steam (excluding the Legendary Edition):

- Mass Effect 2 (2010)
- Mass Effect 2 (2010) Edition

The first one, Mass Effect 2 (2010), is the version that all us owned for many years. It's the version that this guide was created for. It has now been removed from sale and afaik can no longer be purchased on any storefront (except maybe 3rd-party / grey market keysellers, and those will only last until key stocks are depleted).

In its place is the second version, Mass Effect 2 (2010) Edition. This version includes all of the DLC, and downloads through Steam just like we wanted for so many years.
But but but...
While this second version downloads through Steam, it requires the sh*tty EA Play app.

If you own Mass Effect 2 (2010) on Steam, you got the newer Mass Effect 2 (2010) Edition for free.

But if you want to play Mass Effect 2 entirely through Steam and not have to bother with EA's "launcher", you'll have to use the original Mass Effect 2 (2010) version. If you have this original version of Mass Effect 2 (2010) in your Steam library but never purchased the DLC, you'll have to resort to sailing the high seas to get the DLC to work, as there is no longer a way to acquire additional DLC.

There are ways to sail the high seas that will make the DLC work. They exist. But I will not be detailing the methods here.

I will leave all download links available as long as they continue to work. (Drop a comment if you find any that don't work, and I'll remove the links). I will also leave my own Google Drive links up and intact.

3. Visit https://help.ea.com/en/articles/orders-and-rewards/dlc-for-classic-games/ to download the DLC that you own.

Edit, January 2021: Been getting some complaints & reports from people who are having trouble (browser permissions, anti-virus etc.) accessing the download links. As an alternative, I have backed up the DLC installation files to a cloud drive.

You can find all most of them here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xFzTv6Bo91bTDwjFwlKiGHqBOYPt9j4s

(December 2025) For some reason Google doesn't want to let me share the Arrival dlc anymore, so I have uploaded it here
https://drive.proton.me/urls/76Q25MG54G#Rn83aJ2dl9zq


These files are exactly as I downloaded them from EA's website.

Always scan any downloaded files with a good virus scanner!

4. Run Mass Effect 2 once into the menu. This lets the game create default configuration files. Then exit the game.

5. Install the DLC by double-clicking the installation files you downloaded. Your Mass Effect 2 installation should be automatically detected. The order of installation does not matter.

6. Play the game.

If you try to install DLC that is not registered to your EA account, you will receive an “unable to verify downloadable content” message (or similar) when attempting to play the game.

It is no longer possible to purchase additional DLC for this version of Mass Effect 2.