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EA Recommends Hilarious Work-Around For RA3 CD-Key
sunderbear noted that EAs Command & Conquer 3 shipped missing the last digit of the CD Key. He writes "EA's brightest minds have put their synapses into overdrive in order to whip up a comical work-around. 'There is currently a work-around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try guessing the last character,' said a note on EA's customer support site. Yes, they're serious. 'To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game.'" It appears that the helpful hint has been purged.
.. and just copy/paste the serial from the .nfo-file once.
Not that I care about this game or am planning to buy, download or otherwise even look at it, but it's just another hilarious instance where the pirated version wins hands-down in the convenience department: apart from not needing the DVD to play the game, you don't even have to type the serial, never mind guessing what might be the last character because EA screwed up.
And even after such a major fuckup EA can't even be bothered to release a "no-serial" executable/installer themselves. Who cares, the customer^Wconsumer already paid for it anyway, what are they going to do about it?
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
No, they didn't. Are you circumventing the copy protection when you enter the CD-Key that they give you? Of course not, so how are you circumventing it when the company itself tells you how to register its own product?
I'm not sure why this is such a big deal.
People are laughing at it because it's just another example of copyright "protections" only inconveniencing paying customers. Pirates just run a key gen or download a serial online or run a crack.
So what do you want them to do?
Make it so I can put the disk in, click install, and play.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
the problem only affects SOME, not all, units.
Yes, and we trust EA on that one, right?
Yet another reason not to buy anything published by EA.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Statistically you should be able to guess the right letter/number in half the keyspace. But in practice, it will always be the very last character you need to try.
Are you retarded??
Of course it will be the last letter you try.. Why on earth would you keep guessing after you have got the correct character??
That's the greatest idea ever! I'm going to save time by buying RA3 with my credit card and let EA guess the account number. Thanks EA!
I would return the game to wherever I purchased it and ask for a replacement since the product is defective. I would open the package at the store to make sure I had a copy with the correct number of characters in the serial key. If the second copy was also defective I would continue to go through all the copies they had in the store until I either had a valid license key or until they ran out of copies. At that point I would then ask for my money back since all copies in the store are defective and I don't want the product at this point. The store should be able to return to EA for a full refund since they did ship faulty mechandise.
Man, out of all of the epic sequels released recently, it's been a giant litany of failure. Far Cry 2 with it's myriad of crashing issues, not to mention all of the instances where enemies / allies just don't appear as they are supposed to, forcing you to reload an earlier game and pray it's a one time bug. (And also the fact that it doesn't feature deformable terrain like they bragged about in interviews.) Fallout 3, with even more crashing issues, including a huge number of people who crash after the intro movie. In a move deemed "hilarious" the pirates have a patch out already that fixes Fallout 3, but Bethesda still does not. It fixes it by deleting the corrupted sound files so you miss some spoken dialog and have to see it on the closed caption instead, but at least you can play the game now. And now RA3 doesn't come with a valid CD key! At this rate the next PC release will give you cancer. And they'll still blame piracy for people not buying their "99% A+++++++ BUY OR DIE" games (according to the reviewers they own).
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
So what do you want them to do? Be psychic and send you the code before you even know you need it?
No, that's what a quality assurance department is for - at least in any company that cares about the products it sells.
Yes, it would be best if there was no problem, but mistakes happen.
Saying "mistakes happen" and leaving it at that, with no consequences, means the company is either too arrogant to admit that they are far from perfect and yet do nothing to "catch" these mistakes when they happen; or the company thinks saving $200k or so a year for a few QA people is far more important than inconveniencing their customers. Mistakes happen SO DO SOMETHING TO PREVENT THEM.
I'd love to be able to get away with "mistakes happen" with my patients. "You didn't need that leg anyway".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, that's the whole point. They HAVEN'T given you a CD-Key. If they did, you wouldn't need to guess. What they have given you is a unique hint at a CD-Key. Guessing the remainder of the CD-Key is circumvention.
That was my thought as well...guessing one digit is OK, but guessing all nineteen is a brute force attack? How many digits can I guess before I am in violation of the DMCA?
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
It is circumventing. The protection/DRM is designed to require a whole "CD-Key" and lock out anyone who does not have it.
Whether you are missing one letter or 15, you are employing a Brute force attack to circumvent the system that requires a whole key.
Whether it is endorsed or not does not change what it is.
An Aside - I would not call this DRM Copy Protection. It does not prevent copying the DVD, just using it. (minor quibble, but that is another topic)
It actually is one of the few relatively solid forms of copy protection, provided a large(-ish) part of your game is only meaningful online, preferably hosted by yourself. You just make sure you can only have one instance of the key logged in to the game. Of course, "non-official" servers ruin the deal, but not even the Battle.net emulators ever got all that far in popularity, AFAICT.
the problem is they took westwood studios and turned them into festering crap.
I so wish EA would go away. They keep consuming game companies that are good and turning them into poo...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Guessing the remainder of the CD-Key is circumvention.
But because the copyright owner (EA) has authorized this circumvention, it doesn't violate USA anti-circumvention law. From 17 USC 1201(a)(3), with my emphasis: "to 'circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner".