EA has been increasingly terrible to its consumers of late, with horrible DRM and such, but with Red alert3, they took DRM to a whole new level. Apparently a large percentage of games shipped with an incomplete cd key. only 19 of 20 characters were present. on the customer support site, they added a hotfix.

"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."

seriously.

im never buying anything from EA.

im only buying EA games for now on.

hahahhaha. that's fucked up. its not like the people at the end of the line would be like wait i overheard in the break room from a programmer that there were 20 #'s in the key stop everything!! not a very big deal until someone bombs ea for a typo. I have to go off on this. ya spend wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more time getting other games to work on your pc after pirating them, than you would trying to solve a one letter puzzle. not to mention their games don't do things like oblivion does when you have to reinstall completely and hope you still have your jillion hours of stuff. lastly, Teh_Meetch, left4dead is an ea game you hippopotacrit. ur msn name is Left4Dead.. FUCK YEAH. you are forced to buy ea and like it. I mean they make soooo many games they just run smaller groups out of business so ppl bitch, but they usually just give them a job under the name of ea as their own studio. if they dont, the lack of releasing any games would ever change my life for the worse. theres always something else to waste pieces of your life meaninglessly playing, which are what video games are for. in conclusion, EA rocks at wasting our lives all the same. Did anyone see banjo kazooie for 360? now that is completely ridiculous.. and if you don't like that.. i've got fudge! i hate ea i just like to hear myself talk

can you turn my microphone down a bit? take ur head..things off.. theres some chatter on the radio. no, chatter, not cheddar.... is there cheddar?

EA is only involved in the distribution of the 360 version of Left 4 Dead. i bought the steam version, which gives EA exactly 0$ profit.

EA fuckes up the key and thats a reason to never buy from them again? If you did that with everything you wouldn't have a car. any game system, TV the list goes on. Every company fucks up at some point. Plus EA has been getting better and better in recent years.

my christmas card from my aunt had my name spelled wrong. i'm never eating her potato salad again!!

wow
shame on them for promptly offering a solution!
btw they distributed all formats of l4d not just 360.. must be nice having an uber-nerd way to evolve beyond the need of hard copies.

how many people even know who took part in a game until they play it? unless they've played a previous game of the series or its gotten a crap load of advertising, or happen to lack a life.

Is this thread promoting piracy?

they distrubute all HARD copies of l4d. not steam copies. and either way this is just one problem in a long line of major EA fuck ups.

no one cares mitch

everyone knows if EA made a game that was a goty material you would eat it up like super buttery popcorn

i really do not give a shit what EA is doing. if i can buy their game, put it in a game system, then play it. thats all i need.

alright, well anyways mitch.. remember the broken DS shoulder button problem and how i thought i fixed it? well it seems that just blowing on it from the side makes it good for an hour or so. wierd.

Steam is the solution to your gaming woes eh? Steam is just the ultimate in tracking purchases and play time of users. You talk of DRM steam is the wost offender. I just want to be able to install the game and play it with out it having to go through another program.