'Bring Down the Sky' DLC Troubleshooting Guide

A proven way to install the 'Bring Down the Sky' free DLC for Mass Effect. It works 100% of the times and doesn't need registration with BioWare or downloading EA's Origin platform.

DLC Troubleshooting Guide

I got this brilliant game on sale (I think I invested over 120 hours in it initially, on the XBOX when it came out) and I encountered some difficulties when installing the Bring Down the Sky free DLC. I know that there are some other guides about this particular topic but I wanted to unify all the troubleshooting issues into one, easy tutorial for easy access.
Now, to clarify a few things:
- You don’t need an Origin account to download and install the DLC;
- Bring Down the Sky can be installed before or after having installed the Pinnacle Station DLC;
- You can access the DLC at any point after becoming a Spectre and before finishing the game.
So here it goes:

1. Install Mass Effect and run the game at least once. If you have trouble running the game, go to Steam\steamapps\common\Mass Effect, right-click on the Mass Effect Launcher and go to Properties[/i], the Compatibility tab and then tick the Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3) and the Run this program as an administrator boxes. Do it for both Launchers.



2. Download the DLC from here: https://help.ea.com/article/mass-effect-bring-down-the-sky-dlc-redemption and save it on the Desktop. Don’t run it yet.



3. In your Steam Library, right-click on Mass Effect and choose Properties. Click on the LOCAL FILES tab and then click the VERIFY THE INTEGRITY OF THE GAME CACHE button. Wait for Steam to verify the game files.



4. Run the Bring Down the Sky installer from the Desktop and install the DLC.



5. Start Mass Effect and enjoy the free DLC (it’s OK, I guess).

[Dram Springfeald]

Bit late to the party, but use an online key gen for it. worked just fine.

[vali]

I used to have same issue (Mass Effect is not found
Please reinstall the game from the original source and try again.)
But then I launched the game one time and it all worked then.

[Snepril]

To the people in the future trying to install this DLC:

You can find a link to download Bring Down the Sky here . EA likes to change the help page on a regular basis, but this one works right now.

[seangibbz]

After scouring countless guides, help topics, and forum posts for the "Mass Effect not found" error, I want to make one very important addition to this post:

After verifying the cache, Steam treats the installation like new.
So, after verifying, you must run the game at least once.
After running it, close out of it and run the installer. The installer should then detect the game and run fine.

[thanxalot]

This guide worked for me. Thanks, Argileye. I was trying to install the DLC, but kept getting an error message telling me to start the game via Steam at least once...even though I'd played for dozens of hours at that point. Doing "VERIFY THE INTEGRITY OF THE GAME CACHE" seems to be what worked for me. I got another error message at first--Mass Effect refused to run--but everything worked out after I restarted Steam, and could run the DLC installer.

Argileye's link is now broken (thanks, EA), so use the one provided by Velken Iakov, which doesn't require a CD Key. That's the installer I used.
http://lvlt.bioware.cdn.ea.com/bioware/u/f/eagames/bioware/masseffect/dlc/MassEffect_BDtS_EFIGS.exe

[Velken Iakov]

Found a fix, this file doesn't check for the CD key: http://lvlt.bioware.cdn.ea.com/bioware/u/f/eagames/bioware/masseffect/dlc/MassEffect_BDtS_EFIGS.exe

[Velken Iakov]

Same here

[Dror]

Dude fuck!... It says mass effect CD key not detected please help

[Cancerous Ordo]

DLC link is broken. Can't proceed. Onto another thread.

[Shcheef]

Nope, I didn't have that DLC installed but that's not an issue for me anymore (should've typed it sooner but I forgot about it) because I decided to install ME on Origin and now both DLCs work as they should.