"Error: Sorry, but your Download has expired"

[Morildar]

My hard drive recently died and I was forced to install a clean one. This, of course, meant that I had to reinstall all the games that I had purchased as digital downloads on my new hard disk.

I had zero trouble replacing all the games I had purchased off Steam, I simply logged in and there were all my games ready for download.

I had zero trouble replacing all the games I had purchased off GamersGate, I simply logged in and there were all my games ready to download.

I had zero trouble replacing all the games I had purchased off Impulse, I simply logged in and there were all my games ready to download.

I had zero trouble replacing all the games I had purchased off Direct2Drive, I simply logged in and there were all my games ready to download.

I then decide that I want to reinstall "Theatre of War," a game that I had purchased from Battlefront.com as a digital download about 18 months ago. After retrieving my password and username, I logged in and found a record of all my previous battlefront purchases. The record included a license key as well as a link to download the game files. I copied my license key and clicked the download link. After entering the key in the correct space and clicking the "begin download" button, I was greeted by a message stating "Error: Sorry, but your Download has expired."

This message baffled me at first, but after a bit of digging it seems that, for no reason imaginable, Battlefront does not allow you to re-download the game files after an arbitrary period of time has elapsed. Even though I could prove I purchased the game, even though I had a license key, even though Battlefront has a record of my purchase and provided me with the license key, for some reason it wont give me the blasted game files.

Am I the only person who finds this policy completely unacceptable? What reason could there possibly be for limiting a paying customer's downloads? To save a little bandwidth? If this is how Battlefront insists on treating it's paying customers, I'm afraid this will be the absolute last time that they ever see so much as a penny from me.

PS: sorry for the ranting tone of this post, but I'm really steamed about this

[Elmar Bijlsma]

While I commiserate, there are a few things you may wish to consider.

Downloading stuff costs money. It sometimes feels like it doesn't with all the "free" services offered, but the bandwith for such things are either paid for with advertising or you the customer somewhere else down the line. BFC cut their overhead, and costs to us, by limiting this DL availability to something which should be sufficient for the customer 99% of the time.

BFC did tell you in advance the download expires after a year. It's now more noticeable, as you aren't the first.

However, in cases where you purchase software it's still recommended you burn a disc of your own unless you are absolutely sure it offers a STEAM equivalent service. That's was the norm prior to STEAM< and it's the smart thing post STEAM too.

They now offer a service where you can extend the DL time, which I think is also offered retroactively, for a small fee. So all is not lost.

[Morildar]

yes, after a little more digging it seems that for a 5 dollar fee you can get an additional year of download availability. It's less than ideal, but acceptable. I had thought that I had basically been cheated out of my purchase, and my initial expense in buying the game would be effectively wasted.

Still, with Steam and Steam-like services setting the standard, it's generally bad business practice and bad customer service to use an archaic system like this. The bandwidth cost would be negligible, and allowing your customers to re-download their purchased files whenever they like would engender goodwill among their customers, as well as motivate them to purchase further products through this website.

[hoolaman]

I think the analogy posted last time someone answered this question is this:

You buy a hard copy game from a store, and two years later you sit on the disc and snap it in half. Do you go back to the store and demand they give you a new copy?

There is a cost involved for both digital downloads and hard goods, an order of magnitude different, but still a cost. You got what you paid for (a copy of the game and a license to use it) and failed to back it up to a hard copy.

That is the reason behind the policy anyway, and I have seen it elsewhere, where you get eg. three downloads and no more. The three downloads policy is probably a better approach thatn an arbitrary expiration date though.

[Morildar]

Actually, in most cases, if you can prove your purchased the game, most publishers will send you a replacement disk for a small fee. It's the GAME you are buying with the initial cost, not the disk. The fee the publisher charges is just to cover the cost of printing a new disk and shipping it out to you. That appears to be more-or-less the case here as well.

On another note, Battlefront does indeed have a download limit, you can only download the game 10 times and it will expire after the 10th download. The download will also expire in 365 days, regardless of the number of downloads(even if it's zero). So it's basically 10 downloads or 365 days, whichever comes first. The download limit, if bandwidth cost is really a concern, isn't that unreasonable. The arbitrary time limit on your download, however, is utterly absurd and COMPLETELY unreasonable. As I said earlier, though, I can download the game again for a 5 dollar fee.

Still a bit of a pain, but no longer an outrage.

[Moon]

Morildar,

your comparison between Battlefront and the other services is comparing apples and oranges. The other services are digital download storefronts. They do nothing else but sell you games via download. They are online services and nothing else. As such, it would be weird if they didn't offer "digital storage" for your games. (Having said that, are you sure that the downloads are infinite? Have you bought the other games you mention 18 months ago as well or later?)

We are a games developer and publisher. You buy the game from us, we deliver it via download, and that's where the purchase contract ends. We do not offer digital storage for your games. Perhaps we will do at some point in the future, but we do not do it now.

The download limit is not unreasonable at all. If you compare us to the other apples out there, not the oranges, you will see that in fact our download limit is very liberal. There are publishers out there that allow you one or two downloads and that's it. Or that have a download limit of one month or even just 24 hours.

You also have to keep in mind that some of the companies that offer digital storage have their games locked in a way that you cannot copy them. Ours are freely copyable, so really, the extra downloads are an EXTRA if something goes wrong. Normally, you do not need more than one download at all, even if you want to install on several PCs. If your download is corrupt, or if you forget to make a backup and go back half a year later to redownload, that's what the extras are intended for.

The download will also expire in 365 days, regardless of the number of downloads(even if it's zero).

No. This is incorrect. Your download period of 365 days starts with your first download. If your download count is zero, then your download will not expire in 365 days at all. You are getting worked up about something you do not seem to understand, and make incorrect assumptions about. There is nothing utterly absurd or unreasonable about it.

The $5 re-download offer is a ONE TIME remedy if you forgot to make a local backup, burn to disc, or if you lost your backup. We also do make exceptions in special cases were we simply extend the download, e.g. if it expired just a week or so ago, or if your house burned down or whatever. The $5 is not a SERVICE. It's an exception to the rule. We do not offer digital storage, and the $5 is not something that we want to make a business out of. But we do want to help customers that otherwise would be stuck.

The reason why we do not offer digital storage is the cost associated with it. Bandwidth is not free. You may not be paying for it directly these days in many cases, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't cost anything, rather that someone else is paying for it. In order to allow people to download games of often well over 1 GB in size at will we would need to invest in infrastructure to make this possible at a reasonable cost. As it is, the cost for one download per game is roughly $1 for us!

One of the reasons for this is Battlefront's size. We're too small to simply set up our own server park. We are not a storefront re-selling 2000 game titles. On the other hand, we're too big for the various "cheap bandwidth hosting" solutions out there. Our monthly bandwidth is in the Terrabytes range. At the same time we're delivering games to customers worldwide and we have huge peaks after releases (such as this month for example). All of this requires way more in infrastructure than a free Mediafire account Or even just one dedicated server.

We may offer digital storage at some point. Other things that services such as the ones you mentioned do are not lost on us, most of all the digital matchmaking/community part. In addition to making games we do work on some solutions to this regard, and once we introduce them, unlimited downloads would have to be part of the package naturally. The investment and the effort needed to implement something like this anytime soon however is beyond our current resources as a small team.

Martin