eLicence

[BillyR]

I presume you wouldn't like me posting this here....but I feel other people should be aware of this.

I'm not trying to affect your sales. I am not trying to show your company in a negative light...I simply want the community to know that whilst they (at present) may not experience issues with your eLicence software, the chance may come when they will and they would be better off, as a consumer, without it.

I recently had a problem with Battlefronts eLicence software in that my computer would not allow the eLicence software to execute.

Yeah...sure ...it was my computers fault. Something somewhere wasn't allowing it to fire up. That said, had their eLicence software NOT been a requirement, I would've been playing the game as opposed to trying to resolve issues with the game running....something I spent over a month trying to resolve, with NO GAMING TIME whatsoever.

To be fair to Battlefront, whomever I was liaising with had pretty much pulled out all the stops with a clear install, software install etc to try and resolve it....so I am in no way saying they ran away from their duties as a developer and provider of software...on the contrary, they were very helpful...

BUT

and this is the point...wtf am I doing contacting technical support for to get my game to work when you and I BOTH know the pirates are operating your game perfectly fine?? I BOUGHT your software. I am a legitimate customer. Why the hell am I being treated like the theif when u and I both KNOW the pirates are running your software without the problems I've been having?

Please - for the love of god and for the saviour of a GREAT engine - drop this crappy DRM ****. I want you to protect your software....but NOT by making me jump through hoops to get your software to work.

Below is my final response to the issues I was having.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I have CMSF, Marines and British modules working on my system now.

I have no idea what's changed on my system since I logged the call, nor have I any idea what I did differently this time round. So many things have been tried that I am left with no idea what fixed it.

For the record - you have a great game system in CMSF - but I'll be bowing out of buying your games from now on. I just don't think it's right that the consumer has to suffer these types of problems - problems which we all know the thief is able to avoid with ease on (most likely) day one of release...it's simply not fair.

When I want to play one of my games that I've purchased legitimately, I like to click the icon and fire it up.

I know there are people who have not had issues with your licensing system - but here are the two reasons why it causes me a headache...

1. I seldom play the same game for any length of time. I regularly play different games and therefore there are longer periods of time between me playing CMSF - and with that longer period of time comes more changes to my system - making it harder for me to find the problem - it's possible people who don't suffer issues like this are generally playing your game system day to day and therefore know what might have caused the problem.

2. I am a forgetful person. I have (and will in the future) make big hardware changes, reinstall my OS or remove games from my harddrive - and being forgetful, I forget to unlicence these games. Again, probably because I do not play them day to day. I've had the same problem with OOTP which is why I will not buy their products either.

I realise you have to protect your investment in some way - but punishing your customers is not the answer.

I'm sad about my decision, as I LOVE CMSF and the Marines and Brits add ons...and I was very much looking forward to the NATO expansion - but I simply can't support a system that punishes me as a legitimate purchaser of your software - sorry.

[Moon]

Hi BillyR,

sorry to hear that you had problems with eLicense. Most people do not, but some people do.

And it is understandable that if you do run into problems with it, you don't like it. As a customer, I have the same reaction. I have run into problems with myself with various other DRMs, including the market leaders, and don't like most of them.

I wish we wouldn't have to use DRM, but we do. We know that we do and we have the numbers that prove that we do.

When we selected a DRM system, we have chosen eLicense after very involved market research. What we like about eLicense is that it is not easily cracked by hackers, and that it is transparent. Unlike most systems out there, there is no 'calling home' and no other sneaky business behind your back.

Where there are pro's, there are also con's. Many of them are identical to any other (effective) DRM out there (such as if your forget or lose your license key, the DRM will prevent you from playing, as it should), and some are specific to eLicense. One of the latter is that because of the lack of backdoors in eLicense, you, the customer, have to assume bigger responsibility for 'managing' your license (e.g. by unlicensing). On the other hand, eLicense allows for this 'mobile license transfer', whereas many other DRMs do not.

To address your specific points... you raise two.

I have to admit that I do not understand your first point. Probably because I am not aware of your previous history/problem. But in general, it doesn't matter if you play a game often or rarely... usually you only need to activate your eLicense one time, and that's it. In some cases, if you make major modifications, you may need to relicense, or we may even have to reset your license, but it doesn't take months to solve this. One support ticket to our helpdesk will get the issue fixed within 24 hours, and often much sooner.

As for your second point... well, not sure what to tell you, because blaming eLicense for your forgetfulness doesn't sound like a major issue with eLicense to me. Especially because we do have our support set up to deal efficiently and quickly with forgetful customer We reset licenses for customers who forgot to unlicense all the time. Unless you are EXTREMELY forgetful AND reconfigure your PC every day, you will not run into any problems with getting a key reactivated.

I would like to point out a couple of things myself:

Yeah...sure ...it was my computers fault. Something somewhere wasn't allowing it to fire up. That said, had their eLicence software NOT been a requirement, I would've been playing the game as opposed to trying to resolve issues with the game running....

Your argument doesn't make much sense. It's like blaming CMSF for any problems with Windows you may have because CMSF requires a PC to run on. eLicense may highlight a problem with your PC that is preventing the game to run, but it is not the root of the problem. Why your reaction is to not play the game because of eLicense instead of posting a lengthy complaint to the people where your problem originated from, I do not understand.

I just don't think it's right that the consumer has to suffer these types of problems - problems which we all know the thief is able to avoid with ease on (most likely) day one of release...it's simply not fair.

You are jumping to some very premature conclusions based on mere assumptions. There are in fact massive problems that people are having that are using hacked versions (based on retail versions of our games, not the originals by the way) as we can attest from our daily interaction on the helpdesk, and in fact none of our games has ever been available from pirates on day of release (or any time until much later when we release through third parties).

But I do agree on one point:

I want you to protect your software....but NOT by making me jump through hoops to get your software to work.

We want the EXACT SAME THING. In fact, we would even prefer not having to protect our software at all! But unfortunately in this imperfect world at this moment we have to find an imperfect solution to a problem that is otherwise threatening our existance (and hence the existance of the games you seem like).

Obviously, your choice to not purchase would lead to the same threat, if it was repeated by the majority of our customers. Right now, however, our numbers suggest that the vast majority of the people has no problem with the DRM we are using, and from those few that do, 99.99% are not having the same massive problems you appear to have run into. The bottom line for us is that until someone invents a better system that is transparent, effective and fair, we are going to stick to what we have, even if it means losing you as a customer, no matter how illogical that reaction may be.