Code6226

Join Date 02/2009

Entrenchment Activation/DRM?

Please clarify why the game freezes in-game to confront you with activation

So I bought the bundle of Sins of a Solar Empire last weekend, and I want to do some LAN Play with a friend who didn't buy it. Somewhat sketchy, sure, but I remember Stardock from such stances as saying in the Demigod manual ~"Want to play this with your friends on a LAN with just a single copy of the game? Go ahead!"

This is a large part of why I decided to buy this game. So I could effortlessly do LAN Play with my friends who are unable to afford nearly anything.

So why is it that the game freezes for them about 1 minute into the LAN game session, and then pops up with a window asking them to Activate? That sounds like DRM. It sounds a lot like the DRM that companies like EA have been receiving a lot of negative feedback for from the legitimate consumers. It does NOT sound like a Stardock published game; but it is.

It's very backhanded as well:
1) I don't see any mention about the fact that DRM/Activation is included/required on the store page at: http://www.impulsedriven.com/products/ESD-TGN-W302
2) This DRM kills your game mid-game. If are going to included DRM, at least let gamers deal with the pain before they start a game, without completely stopping the action right in the middle of it. Imagine the impression my friend got when I tried to explain to him how to play this game: He was starting to enjoy it, and BAM: Frozen game! Not until he Alt-Tabbed did he realize that the game froze by design.

I want to know why this is even in a Stardock game, first of all. I hope you guys never require per-PC activation again, at least once you are done with your new system of injecting the buyer's contact info into their game files or what-not.

Secondly, I want to know where to find more info about the current implementation. How many times can I activate the game? On how many PCs? This info should be easy to find: It should be linked to right from the store page. I tried my google-fu, but I was unable to find any information about the activation scheme from Stardock.

What I did find, and quite readily, was users complaining about the DRM preventing them from playing, and the google search "sins of a solar empire entrenchment activation", which I searched for in the hope of hearing an official statement from Stardock about this non-sense instead resulted in readily available cracked Entrenchment exes.

So yeah, the pirates don't have to put up with this. In fact, I downloaded the pre-cracked archive of the game I just paid for, which offers a better value than what you get through Impulse, because the pirated version allows LAN Play out of the box, without the feature of crashing the game randomly to enforce DRM. But I get the feeling you already agree with me: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/sins_of_a_solar_empire/

Please explain, and get rid of this non-sense DRM in the next patch to Entrenchment. I should not have to go to download a cracked game EXE to enable non-crash LAN Play on a Stardock game that I paid for.

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Just activate it, its not hard. Its different than EA's DRM because it only has to be activated once and after that its all good. There are essentially no activation limits - unless you do somethign stupid like offer your serial on a torrent site in which case things are not going to fly. But yes you should never ever run into the activation limit.

I haven't activated a star dock game in a long time but I think all you need to do is enter the serial (you can check this on Impulse if you bought by digital download) and the email of the account it is registered to.

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If it is indeed happening mid-game, then there is some sort of bug involved; activation on downloaded titles is normally performed by Impulse at install, but even if you've manually copied the game, it should occur at first run on that machine (before the game starts). Please contact support@stardock.com about this so they can investigate the issue.

As noted by Hyrim though, there is no fixed limit so there is no reason not to activate.

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Normally the Activation process is a background task. Edit: Gah. They're back just before me. It's a conspiracy.

Anyways, I think there should be an SDActivate.exe in the install folder that will open that up outside of the game.

Last I heard SD talk about the limit, it's something like 50 to 100 times within an hour.

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Last I heard SD talk about the limit, it's something like 50 to 100 times within an hour.

That is WAY too restrictive!!! I have, like 40,000 machines sitting around here, and I was hoping to install Sins on all of them in half a work day (I move fast). Stardock should increase the limit to at least 10,000 an hour, or I'll never buy any of their games again!!!1!111

On a serious note: let us know if you're still having troubles. Though I'd bet support will solve your issues quite quickly.

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And lighten up, Francis! //Sgt Hulka

That is a weird one. You didn't happen to patch your game while the installation on the other PC isn't patched, by any chance? I would think the different versions trying to work together could cause something like that, but I don't know - just taking a stab in the dark.

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Alrighty, 50 activations per hour seems like a very reasonable policy ideed. It's not quite DRM-free, but I'll take it.

I still think it should be much easier to access this information. I still feel this should be clearly stated on the game's store page. If the official policy is indeed 50 activations per hour limit, then why wouldn't you want to be up front with potential customer's about this? It would have saved me from having to make this post.

And yes, I did copy the game directory to my buddy's PC via SMB directly. I tried this again on another of my own PCs, and I always seem to get the same result:

If you run the ...Entrenchment.exe directly, without running the activation tool first, you will be asked to activated mid-game.

I'm about to try playing a LAN game with another friend right now. If all works well, I'm out. Thanks for the helpful replies!

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