CMBN 2.0 - are you kidding me?

[Yskonyn]

I didn't think there was a way to unlicense the CMBN or CMFI like you can with CMSF.  I think it's crap that the customer cannot unlicense the game on an old rig before installing on a new one.  I've never had an issue with CMSF or CMA, but I'll be damned if I didn't have to contact them when I wanted to install CMBN and CMFI on my new desktop.  If you are going to go the licensing route fine, but there needs to be a means to unlicense the game too.  That is just poor planning.  No way around it.  And yes I like Battlefront's games and no the $10 engine upgrade doesn't bother me at all.

pretty much where I stand.

[ArizonaTank]

I didn't think there was a way to unlicense the CMBN or CMFI like you can with CMSF.  I think it's crap that the customer cannot unlicense the game on an old rig before installing on a new one.  I've never had an issue with CMSF or CMA, but I'll be damned if I didn't have to contact them when I wanted to install CMBN and CMFI on my new desktop.  If you are going to go the licensing route fine, but there needs to be a means to unlicense the game too.  That is just poor planning.  No way around it.  And yes I like Battlefront's games and no the $10 engine upgrade doesn't bother me at all.

Wow...thanks, wasn't aware of this.   What about multiple installs on your home network.  I believe CMSF supported a few activations. 

[Bison]

I've got it installe on my laptop and desktop.  I had issues when I got a new desktop, installed the games, and attempted to activate them.  The part that got me mad with CMFI is I didn't use all of my alotted activations.  Anyway here is the explanation that I got from Battlefront customer service.


Typically each 'Online Activation System' game will have 4 activations that initially come with the game. In the past you could add an activation yourself to these games once every 365 days after purchase. However the web interface for doing that does NOT work with CMFI and future games. The programming support (from our DRM vendor) to allow for that isn't available and we don't know when or if it will be available in the future. So for now with CMFI you will have to request activations from the Helpdesk (as you're doing). With CMBN and Commonwealth and other 'Online Activation System' games you can most likely add an activation yourself by now. If not, let us know the license keys and we can add one for you.

With eLicense games you get two concurrent activations and the ability to UNLICENSE installations. If you need to run the game on a third computer, then you will need to deactivate the game/module on one of the two previous computers it was installed on.


The problem with CMBN is there is no way to deactivate the license.  If you look at your CMSF game install, there is an unlicense option.  That is not the case with CMBN or CMFI.  Additionally if you look at the license self help you can only add 1 license install every 365 days and this option is limited to CMBN .  You can have the game concurrently installed on 2 computers, so if you had a third computer for whatever reason you'd have to unlicense on one of the computers.  However see point one for the obvious issue with this scenario.  I think you can request Battlefront unlicense one of them, but of that I'm not sure I think they give you a new license number (another seperate issue).  Regardless it's a poorly designed system if the customer is not allowed to unlicense the product.  I don't know about the details of the vendor issue described but is a poor publishing choice anyway you look at it.  I will give Battlefront credit for be very responsive, but again if you require a license to run the program and require unlicensing to install on a new/different computer then the implied freaking task is that the customer can unlicense your product from their end.

[Nefaro]

This is not the first eLicense issue I've seen in the past year or two. 

They evidentally went completely AWOL on the Solecismic guy (Front Office Football 2k7 text manager game) for a stretch of time, when he was asking for help resolving issues.  I got the impression that they can be spotty when it comes to support.  Ridiculous.  These DRM companies wouldn't earn one red cent if I had my way.