I think it was on Alekseys discord, but it has been a while.
If you look at the previous build, you'll quickly notice , that Eric is "there", but he has no effect on most story arcs.
He's supposed to cause trouble in later events, long after he was kicked from the house (also on "friendship" path), but so far there is no information, how that's supposed to work.
I don't think that Eric can be stopped from the beginning. At least that was not possible in the previous build. Max caught him with his new girlfriend and that triggered some story events. My best guess is, that there's an option to not see it. But then again, Aleksey already changed the story flow, the path is now chosen even before anything happens so ... who knows.