Yeah it happend a couple of times with me too. Sometimes clicking on Refresh Games List in the menu is enough.

the downloader looks stable despite getting disconnected a lot of times, it resumes properly

Biggest problem is EA being a publisher which has always been a problem with attracting customers to DD store and part of the reason GamersGate split from Paradox. I can't imagine for a second any rivals like Ubisoft or THQ lining up to join EA. I can imagine Bobby Kotick would say something about his dead body.

I'm rather worried EA use this service to release their older games rather than signing up with GOG.

Well, Valve is pretty much the same thing, as is battle.net which supposedly is building up for 3rd parties.

You could be right though, EA is different in some respects.

Why the hell is their code running in Ring 0(hardware level)? Smells like rootkit to me.

Actually, you'll be amazed how much can be affected by an out-of-date bios. I had a couple of Steam games that didn't run prior to my update that now work without any problems whatsoever.

I can confirm that Shank (from Steam) is redeemable on EADM.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Steam) also activates fine with EADM.

I don't know about Shift or Undercover yet as Steam doesn't allow you to view the keys, so installing them at the moment to do the registry trick.

The only modern game from the last 5-7 years that I could not get running was fixed by updating my bios.

Hot Pursuit, Shift and Undercover can all be activated on EADM, so no more issues with Undercover's updates! :-)

Yes.

Tried, no dice.

Same result, nothing.

And now it's been a couple of days as well, so it should have had time to sync.

Try registering the game again, maybe it didn't go through. If you get a message saying that the key is already in use then it was registered to your account.
Also, logout and exit EADM, look for the download cache folder that you use for EADM (it's configured in settings), delete its contents, and login again.
If nothing works talk to EA support and they should be able to sort it out if you give them your CD key and account name.

It's listed on the EA account page, so it's definitely gone through that far. I'll check the other stuff.

how do you activate the steam undercover on eadm?

Install it through Steam, find the installation key in your registry (regedit) and use that key in EADM.

OmegaX posted detailed instructions for Dead Space here, which you can easily adapt for any other Steam based EA game (except Crysis).