Real smooth, EA. Some copies of Red Alert 3 appear to be missing characters in their installation codes, meaning of course that you can't install the game you just bought. While this could be potentially frustrating, Electronic Arts has come up with an absolutely ingenious workaround -- guess the missing character.
"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. 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."
Wow. Just basically guess. I really wish I could add to that with sarcasm, but I think nobody could send that up better than the way it's written. So, let us just sit back and marvel at it, shall we?
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Contest:
8:01 AM on 11.04.2008
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Or ask your friendly neighbourhood pirate. You've paid for the game, you may as well get to enjoy it free of DRM.
Is this what gaming has seriously come to? Are Red Alert fans really going to put up with this? Are they willing to let themselves be jerked around this badly?
DRM? EA says deal with it. Incomplete serial? EA says deal with it. Shitty customer service? EA says deal with it.
I can't believe a company would be so cavalier, so dismissive, so damn cocky as to tell customers to do this.
Its a sad, sad day when gamers are willing to put up with shit like this.
If this is indicative as to how publishers are willing to treat customers, it may be time for me to find a new hobby.
EA can deal with that.
I wonder how close they would be to banning your game account for saying that on EA's forums...
Also, cocks.
Smooth move, guys. Classy. *thumbs up*
FAIL
Take that shyt back to the store you bought it from. It's a crappy game anyhow.
I'd go so far as to say that I respect EA more for biting the bullet and saying it's not pretty, but here's the quickest way to get what you want if you don't want to wait for us to figure this out.
Sure, guessing 1 out of 36 isn't bad (imagine if 2 digits were missing) but still, a stupid solution.
luckily my copy had all 20 parts of the key, BUT i had problems running the game (would crash on splash screen) for the first 3 patches... figured that out, (with no help from support, hah) and now i can play single player... however, if i try to play online... i'll just leave it at that. i have yet to play a game online, and i bought the damn thing for coop."
Hey morkuma wondering how you fixed the splash screen problem. I have the same problem just so frustrating.
EA should've made a server to authenticate/provide the complete serial, this was a bad move, also there have been many problems with the game on release, RA3 forums shows lot of posts about problems.