Taldrenites > Starfleet Command CD Key Issues

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Part Two

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cherokee158:
I paid fifty dollars for SFCIII, a great game by a great developer, which I enjoyed immensely. I then managed to lose the jewel case and it's all important CD-key, either through my own carelessness, or because one of my kids scampered off with it. So I did what any self-respecting consumer who abused their product would do...I called the company for help. What did I get?

The most fascinating and irritating game of toll-call phone button roulette I have ever had to play(and I am a pro). After a long and expensive round of twenty questions with a voice-activated computer who made the AI in SFC look like Hal9000, I finally managed to reach a live human being, who cheerfully explained to me that I was, quite frankly, screwed. They cannot give me a new key. If I send in my CD, they will replace it... but they will not replace the jewel case, unless I send in the old one. (If I had the jewel case, I would not be calling, would I? And what good is a new CD without the jewel case?)

So now I am ten dollars poorer on a long distance call, and I still HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM.

Y'know, as much as I would like to support Taldren by giving them another fifty bucks, I have a real ethical problem with supporting a company(Activision) that has so little regard for their paying customers. I will never buy another Activision product, I will tell all of my friends never to buy an Activision product, and when the jack-booted soldiers of the DMCA come to my house wanting to know why I downloaded a bootleg copy of SFCIII from the net, I will punch the Activision representative with them in the mouth. (before I get hauled away for twenty to life for circumventing a copyright device on a fifty dollar piece of plastic...ah, Amerika.)

Sorry, Taldren, I love your stuff, and you guys deserve my money. But Activision doesn't.

BTW, the guy on the phone says it happens a lot. (He seemed to feel genuinely bad about telling me to go jump off a bridge) Maybe it would be a good idea to rethink the CD-key thing? Isn't requiring the CD to play the game enough? Even Microsoft isn't that paranoid about piracy. At the very least, a small sticker on the CD with the serial number on it would have saved me no end of grief.

I am, at times, apalled at how quickly we consumers have come to accept these daily insults to our integrity and intelligence. It takes me twenty minutes just to OPEN a CD, after peeling off the multiple little pieces of tape designed to disintegrate instantly when they come into contact with human flesh and painstakingly removing the multiple layers of heat-sealed plastic wrap. I used to be able to open an LP with my thumbnail in seconds. It takes a half hour with bleeding knuckles and a screwdriver to remove an overpriced  diecast "collectable" from the multi-tentacled grip of it's box nowadays, when less than ten years ago you could find a toy truck floating around loose in your box of wheaties. And my twenty year old copy of Monopoly STILL works, even after upgrading my kitchen table three times. And yet we all buy and buy again. It's a truly amazing(and disturbing) triumph of marketing over common sense.

Well, I'm done paying for this abuse. I'm not buying from any company that is staffed by people who cannot treat a fellow human being with sympathy and respect. My next gaming dollar will likely go to funagain.com, a marvelous and very aptly-named board game store I just discovered on the web.

If I lose my dice, I can always replace them for about 98 cents.  

Cleeve:
I am touched by your story sir.

Authentic or not, I've bought it. Drop me a line by e-mail and I will give you my CD-Key. (soulwolf@escape.ca)

I'm so damn busy lately I don't really have time to play SFC3 anymore, so someone might as well get some enjoyment out of it...

 

cherokee158:
A most noble offer! It is refreshing to see that the entire human race has not been assimilated. As tempting as your offer is, I must decline...I would be forever tormented by the thought that you may someday wish to play again, and would not wish to unwittingly implicate you in some obscure shrinkwrap license violation. I WILL be contacting you by e-mail, however, not to accept your generosity, but simply to meet the man who was kind enough to offer.  Thank you.  

**DONOTDELETE**:
I purchased SFC3 as soon as it was available in my area
I played my copy of SFC3 for three days. That was it.

I have not returned to it since (been a few months now...)
I'm quite sure I will not be using my copy. I could send you
my CD key and you need not fear that I will want to use it.

101 uses for SFC3......

Just let me know.  

dgray:
I have the game but have no intension of playing it online, I only have a diap up modem and I dont use the internet enough to warrent broadband (which is heavily overpriced and overated in the uk) so you can have my cd key, although i'm not sure if it would work on a US version

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