EA Recommends Hilarious Work-Around For RA3 CD-Key 301
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No longer true (Score:5, Funny)
What if the phone number in the manual is only 9 characters instead of 10?
Re:No longer true (Score:5, Funny)
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...."
HOT sexy women (Score:5, Funny)
They would probably be more helpful...
Re:HOT sexy women (Score:5, Funny)
Well, their job is all about service mind.
Re:HOT sexy women (Score:5, Funny)
"Sorry sir, this is not not a domination and submissive line. We do not do Command & Conquer"
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OTOH (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe they're into Redtube Alert?
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Because you can call the phone company and have a block placed on your account to prevent calls to 900 numbers from your number being completed. They're trying to reach an untapped market of frustrated married men with suspicious wives and no cell phones, I guess.
Re:No longer true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Here's a neat idea (Score:4, Funny)
Here's an idea: have a steamy hot sexy female voice say, to those who aren't allowed X-rated content,
For X-rated content, dial back with your credit card
and continue the call as normally.
On the other hand, I must admit that I do like the idea of gnawing on melons while my new greasemonkey friend works on my gear shift while oiling up before taking a joyride. Nothing like fresh fruit when you're fixing cars with friends.
I must confess, though, that I've always wondered why women are so impressed with my ABS and the size of my drive shaft :-?
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HAHAHAHA. For about a year, the fedex number on packages, and the 1-800-go-fedex were off by one. So, if you called go-fedex, you got customer service, but if you called the actual number listed, you got *CUSTOMER SERVICE*. When fedex found out, they tried to buy the number from the *CUSTOMER SERVICE* place. Unfortunately, that guy found out who wanted the number, and charged them a pretty penny for it.
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You wardail it.
Re:No longer true (Score:4, Funny)
warfail?
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warfial
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John Whorfin?
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Re:No longer true (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Don't worry, I think RA3 uses securom as well.
They'll learn, someday, but remember! they'll use less DRM just like the last DRM they used! /sarcasm
Re:No longer true (Score:5, Funny)
>>>EA will learn, someday
I'm sure they will eventually stop using DRM, but corporations are a lot like women. Reluctant.
At first.
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>>>Falco, is that you?
No.
Re:No longer true (Score:4, Insightful)
the problem is they took westwood studios and turned them into festering crap.
I so wish EA would go away. They keep consuming game companies that are good and turning them into poo...
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the problem only affects SOME, not all, units.
well lets ask /. ... anyone get C&C with the full 20?
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Re:No longer true (Score:5, Funny)
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The copy I downloaded from usenet had a working key. Phew!
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Electronic Asshats (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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>>>you get more points from actually smelling and withstanding more and more disgusting customers.
I used to be a shoe salesman in college. Contrary to the post above, you actually get to meet lots of young high-school or college-aged women who are often very beautiful (being young), and often dress with low necklines. When they bend over, they expose all their "charms" to the salesman's eye.
Best. Damn. Job. Ever.
For a college student anyway. ;-) The pay was decent too because I averaged $15 a
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Why the hell do you think Al Bundy took the job in the first place?
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Guessing 36 combinations doesn't seem like a big hassle to me? And you have a 50-50 chance of getting the right combination in just 18 tries.
Depending on how deep into the install wizard the code input is, it could be a very big hassle.
Also, if the input box doesn't allow pasting from the clipboard, you'd have to manually enter every digit every time. So, this could take 2-3 minutes per try. With 15 tries, that's nearly an hour to spend failing to install the game. I don't mind if software takes an hour to install, as long as the interactive part in the install only takes a minute or two, and happens entirely at the beginning.
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>>>>>You, sir, do not belong on Slashdot.
Why ya say dat?
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Re:Electronic Asshats (Score:5, Funny)
"People who work putting shoes on fat women who wear dresses should not have 20/20 vision."
"Let me explain. It's just like an elevator. There's a 2 ton weight limit on those shoes..."
"Sure selling shoes is fun. But behind the glamour, it's like any other minimum wage slow death."
- Al Bundy
Circumvention? (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly they didn't just post details of how to circumvent a copy protection measure, right?
Re:Circumvention? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they didn't. Are you circumventing the copy protection when you enter the CD-Key that they give you? Of course not, so how are you circumventing it when the company itself tells you how to register its own product?
Re:Circumvention? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Circumvention? (Score:5, Funny)
UHV2 MCHT IMON YURH NDS
"without the authority of the copyright owner" (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Circumvention? (Yes it is) (Score:5, Insightful)
It is circumventing. The protection/DRM is designed to require a whole "CD-Key" and lock out anyone who does not have it.
Whether you are missing one letter or 15, you are employing a Brute force attack to circumvent the system that requires a whole key.
Whether it is endorsed or not does not change what it is.
An Aside - I would not call this DRM Copy Protection. It does not prevent copying the DVD, just using it. (minor quibble, but that is another topic)
Re:Circumvention? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Circumvention? (Score:5, Insightful)
That was my thought as well...guessing one digit is OK, but guessing all nineteen is a brute force attack? How many digits can I guess before I am in violation of the DMCA?
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In courts, they call this "Precident."
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The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above. Suggestions for precident: 1. president 2. precedent 3. presidents 4. Presidents' 5. prescient 6. precisest 7. precedents 8. presidency 9. precedence 10. persisted 11. precedency 12. presided 13. preexisted 14. persistence 15. preexistent 16. press agent 17. parasitoid 18. persistent 19. press-agent 20. presider
Re:Circumvention? (Score:4, Funny)
That was my thought as well...guessing one digit is OK, but guessing all nineteen is a brute force attack? How many digits can I guess before I am in violation of the DMCA?
Feel free to guess them all. Failure to circumvent copy protection is perfectly legal.
Another helpful hint (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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.
What's the "opposite" of seven?
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Rotating the 7 character 180 degrees will give you an L.
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-7
For the FAIL!*7
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So ... 0405 ?
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It's 2
0 1 2 3 4|5 6 7 8 9
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Tuvok.
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Re:Another helpful hint (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Are you retarded??
Of course it will be the last letter you try.. Why on earth would you keep guessing after you have got the correct character??
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Re:Another helpful hint (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure how that helps. *shrugs* But okay.
Re:Another helpful hint (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, your post was like lemon juice on a wound.
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the principle of it? When I was a kid i'd keep looking after I found things just to make my parents wrong.
Re:Another helpful hint (Score:5, Funny)
Think the joke went so far over your head it managed to achieve static orbit.
The point is, even though you mathematically should get the right one in half of the key space, in practice it will always be at the very end - thus if you considered starting at A, reverse and go with Z.
Of course as we know this wont work since that would mean the key would be at A anyways.
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Sorry, but that may or may not be true. The original poster however made only completely true assertions.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Why? We all know that both the worst and the average case of sequential search are of O(N), so your algorithm doesn't make a difference ;-P
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Statistically you should be able to guess the right letter/number in half the keyspace.
What if there is more than one right character and the one you chose matches someone else's code that wasn't cut off? You'll have stolen someone else's key. A fair brute-force search would start with the widest characters first (more likely to be missing due to (I assume) non-monospaced string length).
That could be a reason why they pulled the brute-force solution from their site.
Or you can presumably download it from Piratebay.. (Score:5, Insightful)
.. and just copy/paste the serial from the .nfo-file once.
Not that I care about this game or am planning to buy, download or otherwise even look at it, but it's just another hilarious instance where the pirated version wins hands-down in the convenience department: apart from not needing the DVD to play the game, you don't even have to type the serial, never mind guessing what might be the last character because EA screwed up.
And even after such a major fuckup EA can't even be bothered to release a "no-serial" executable/installer themselves. Who cares, the customer^Wconsumer already paid for it anyway, what are they going to do about it?
RA3 Doesn't Require the DVD to Play (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Or you can presumably download it from Pirateba (Score:2)
Ban you from their forums?
Bruteforce is... (Score:5, Funny)
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...like violence; if a little doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Also like a certain tagging language that everyone here loves.
they don't realize the danger... (Score:5, Funny)
Eh, the game sucked (Score:5, Informative)
But then I felt let down, it was kinda a waste of time/money...
Maybe I'm too used to command and conquer 3 and generals (zero hour), but I just cannot get used to the new computer players. I feel like defenses are severly limited in this game, and nothing is sacred. Turtling is not an option for this game. There is only one gameplay- fast, furious attacks. Don't even bother securing resources- you can't. You can't secure anything. Your job is to be the first to build a small army, and bomb the crap out of the other guys. Build resource gatherers later if you need them.
The resources usually run out just before the game gets good, and you're off to a really slow boring ending where nobody has anything left, and you're pretty much throwing sticks at eachother.
But back on the fact that you can't secure anything. They've made if very difficult to be secure. They have a few defenses- but they're typically as useful as if you weren't using them. Expect to rebuild almost every building in your base a few times- if you still need them.
I will repeat, this game is not the long drawn out strategic game as CNC, it is an abridged, attention deficit, ADHD game for those who get bored easily and don't care about building up. Hell, there aren't that many upgrades- so building up and teching up is useless anyway.
*I will admit, I wasn't an avid RA2 fan either.
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This is the red alert style of gameplay and has always been(or well, I have some vague memory of RA1 supporting turtling more).
Anyhow, so far in the campaign atleast (Finnished soviet and done half of allies) I havn't had any problem doing my usual turtling and then assaulting with a silly amount of aircraft.
I have to say they could work a bit more on the AI, seriously trying to counter massive air forces with heavy tanks is a bit silly.
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Red Alert: Winter War ?-)
Re:Eh, the game sucked (Score:5, Informative)
That's why a bunch of us still play Total Annihilation, either straight or with a patch called TAWP.
That game allows extreme porc, octopus, rush, or hidden infiltrators. TAWP has some rather nasty vehicles (one being a bertha-car that fires 20+ screens in length). Add that to 1000 units per player for stable play, or 5k for unstable play :P
And it runs on damn near every computer since '98.
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Actually, I was quite surprised to find that I like the game. I really, really hated Red Alert 2. If I were to list the 10 worst games I've ever paid money for, Red Alert 2 would certainly be on the list. It represented the absolute nadir of the Command & Conquer series before, to my surprise, it was rescued by EA. I honestly couldn't believe it had been put out as it was after Total Annihilation and Starcraft had turned the RTS genre on its head and C&C2 had been near-universally slated.
However, I'
i always try to guess at least one key character (Score:5, Funny)
Great idea!! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the greatest idea ever! I'm going to save time by buying RA3 with my credit card and let EA guess the account number. Thanks EA!
More Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
A Better Approach (Score:2)
If Hollywood films about 'hackers' have taught us anything, it's that a teenage hacker with a laptop can insert a handwired card into any slot and generate random characters until the proper password is found. I suggest a similar automated approach to this problem.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
DMCA anyone? (Score:2)
Oh no wait, the DMCA is sooo 20th century. They'll probably file terrorism charges instead.
Hilarious? (Score:2)
I know this is getting slammed because it involves both EA and DRM, but the response itself is possibly the best one. I don't ha
Ehh.. (Score:2)
So, I understand that it's not the best public relations move, but consider the alternatives:
1. Call in to EA, wait in the call queue, then scan or fax your current product code, then have EA figure out what the right last character is (or just send you a new one), then enter in the new one. Total elapsed time: 30 minutes, if you're lucky.
2. Try all 36 combinations, presuming that it doesn't make you retype your entire code each time. Total elapsed time: 3 minutes.
If it were me, I would have taken optio
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It's a Feature! (Score:3, Funny)
Robo-DRM (Score:3, Funny)
ED-209: [menacingly] Please guess the last number of the CD Key.You have 20 seconds to comply.
ED-209: You now have 15 seconds to comply. ...
Simple (possibly) Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not put up a Web page that will 'generate' the last character, given the first 19? This of course assumes that it can be determined from the first 19, or it could possibly look up the first 19 in a database?
No biggie, ESA already did that first (Score:2)
I reference an old slashdot article:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/05/1353249 [slashdot.org]
"ESA proposes reentry module."
I guess EA is trying to do reentry x 36, to prove they're better at it.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia, key generator gives you whole key.
Again, DRM screws the paying customers.
Re:Why is this a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You're exactly right though. This is what most people do. PC games already have a big hurdle in that they all run on Windows, require new graphics cards, and have a slew of other hardware and software related hurdles to overcome.
Throwing in DRM that prevents you from playing your own game on top of that?
PC game publishers are the ones killing the PC gaming industry. Microsoft could have already killed the PC by including a large hard drive in all 360s and making online play free. The fact that they cont
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So what do you want them to do?
Correctly print the code in the first place?
Not require a code since it's not an effective form of protection?
Re:Why is this a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I think it's just made the rounds on the news sites over the past few days because EA actually suggested guessing the last digit. It's an oddly human response from a large corporate entity. I might return it, but honestly, it'd be quicker to just guess the number rather than driving all the way back to the store, arguing with the manager over the "no software returns" policy, marveling at the fact
Re:Why is this a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
So what do you want them to do? Be psychic and send you the code before you even know you need it?
No, that's what a quality assurance department is for - at least in any company that cares about the products it sells.
Yes, it would be best if there was no problem, but mistakes happen.
Saying "mistakes happen" and leaving it at that, with no consequences, means the company is either too arrogant to admit that they are far from perfect and yet do nothing to "catch" these mistakes when they happen; or the company thinks saving $200k or so a year for a few QA people is far more important than inconveniencing their customers. Mistakes happen SO DO SOMETHING TO PREVENT THEM.
I'd love to be able to get away with "mistakes happen" with my patients. "You didn't need that leg anyway".