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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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This new sub-game called "CIA unlock" puts you in the shoes of a CIA agent attempting to gain access to a secure terrorist computer subsystem. The first 19 characters are given to you, but you need to randomly crack the last digit before the timer runs out and the game deletes your hard drive. If you win the game, you get to play again by pressing a reset button.
Rumors are circling from insiders at EA, that the next amazing title from EA will enable players to enter the shoes of Joe a shoe salesman from Kentucky. Joe has a problem. He can't find the right shoe for his fat smelly customer. Players will only be able to play if they purchase and install the F.O.U.L. hardware (FOUL stands for Fresh Olfactory Universal Layer.), and you get more points from actually smelling and withstanding more and more disgusting customers. The final boss of the game is a 700 pound woman that has never bathed, and who has developed nearly every possible degenerative skin condition. The game fills your house with something totally unbearable and if you can find her a pair of good shoes after she tries on about twenty or so different ones and tells you about her whole life history, then you get to have an achievement added to your online profile, aptly named the Bundy award, named after Married With Children's Al Bundy, a reputed shoe salesman with class and pinache. Pre-orders start tomorrow and EA expects massive sales on this amazing title, that is loaded with DRM that actually forces customers to perform lude acts with garden utensils for the purpose of cultivating data necessary for visual biometrics to prove the copy of the game is legit. EA denies that anyone who cracks the game will not be able to play, and a spokesperson from EA that shall remain nameless, went on record saying that customers would never play without FOUL hardware because they wouldn't have the benefit of the use of the FOUL hardware, which is revolutionary and next generation by design.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Certainly they didn't just post details of how to circumvent a copy protection measure, right?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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.
So take the character that you were going to start with, and take the very opposite character in order to improve your chances of getting the correct entry faster.
...like violence; if a little doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What if the phone number in the manual is only 9 characters instead of 10?
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.
now that they've revealed how their copy-protection scheme works, what's to stop the heinous pirates from using this advanced work around for the rest of the digits? The entire industry will crumble!
It keeps my skillz l33t, yo.
Anything you say will be held against you.
What if the phone number in the manual is only 9 characters instead of 10?
Well, you guess. In this case guessing might be a lot more fun.
You: "Huh? Only 9 digits...let's try lucky 7 for the last number."
Phone: *ring*
Phone: "Helllloooo. You've reached the HOT line, where sexy women are waiting to hear from you. Please press 1 nowwww...."
My blog
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
>>>EA will learn, someday
I'm sure they will eventually stop using DRM, but corporations are a lot like women. Reluctant.
At first.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Well, their job is all about service mind.
"Sorry sir, this is not not a domination and submissive line. We do not do Command & Conquer"
No good deed goes unpunished.
What if I paid with only the first 15 digits of my credit card?
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".
In the US, local governments are allowed to place restrictions on 1-900-based sex lines (I know someone who worked at one). The caller-id info from the incoming call is checked against a database, to see if the 'actor' must limit their conversation to: 'G', 'PG', 'R', or 'X' content. I assume that this is a "local standards of decency" argument, that does not apply if a non-toll line is used (if a toll-line is used, then the business that is charging you (the phone company) is necessarily within your jurisdiction; if you use a credit-card then it is "interstate trade". IANAL).
If you ever call such a service, and the actor speaks in euphamisms ("I love to lick lollipops, stick to tip, for hours"), then you probably live in a restrictive jurisdiction. The service usually won't tell you about the restriction (or how to get around it by using a credit card), because they want to keep you on the line. And no, that doesn't make sense to me either; they should be able to reap higher revenues by having you call back with a credit card to get what you really want.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain