Alpha Protocol....Activation Retardation

[Sulaco]

Ugh.

So I got Alpha Protocol as a gift for Christmas, and it has been sitting on my shelf, brand new and in shrink wrap, until last night when I decided to try it.

So I install it, and upon completing installation it takes me to the menu for the game that attempts to activate the game online.

This fails. It says this:

...even though my firewall CLEARLY is allowing the game through. I even disabled my firewall temporarily, to no avail. It still says I have no internet connection.

My next option is to "Upload an activation request" to their servers. OK...

...but upon following that link, the site is dead or won't load. Here is what happens each time:

Here's the link to the website, if anyone would like to see if it loads or displays for them:

http://www.alphaprotocol.com/activation/us/activate.html


So essentially, I'm fucked. I have a perfectly legal, brand new copy of the game that I can't play because A) it doesn't believe I have a connection to the internet, and B) When I try to use their alternative method, their own site won't load properly!

Does anyone have any suggestions or encountered this before? SEGA "Support" seems to be nothing more than knowledge base info, which is of course, worthless. No way to contact a live human being that I can find. I might end up having to call their 800 number and see if that does anything.

Fuck you, Sega.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Yeah that link is broken for me as well.

I played AP for about an hour but got annoyed with it. They've since released a patch so I will probably go back to it one day.

In fact, have you tried the patch?? I seem to remember the patch removes the DRM??

 

[mindcycle]

Yeah, that page times out for me as well. Sorry man. Yet another legit customer screwed by DRM that did nothing to stop piracy..

I'd honestly say download a crack somewhere and just bypass it.. You have every right to at this point IMO.

EDIT: StinkyPinky is right. The 1.10 patch removes the activation. Why they leave that broken page online and don't just link to the patch is beyond me..

http://www.shacknews.com/file/24585/alpha-protocol-patch-100-to-110-us-retail

 

[lupi]

Lol, got to love this crap. With so many products having these crappy drm schemes patched out after release you wonder why they even bother with them in the first place.

 

[mindcycle]

Lol, got to love this crap. With so many products having these crappy drm schemes patched out after release you wonder why they even bother with them in the first place.

Yeah, exactly man. And why would you leave up a broken activation page and not just link to the patch which fixes the issue? Pure stupidity.. but it's more likely that they don't even care since they already made their money and opened PC games can't be returned.

 

[shortylickens]

Activation is the wave of the future. Shit, its the wave of the past. MS did it with Windows XP. Many games require it now, why do you think Steam is so popular? Its all in one DRM and cloud checking of owned games.

 

[Sulaco]

Thanks so much for the heads-up on the patch guys. Hopefully that will turn out to be the answer.

However, it seems as though some higher power simply does not want me playing this game.
Upon trying to run the .exe for the patch, I get this message:

...
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game, I've reinstalled older Nvidia drivers, and then reinstalled the latest.
I'm starting to think its not even worth it for a game that received tepid reviews, but hey, I own it, I'd like to at least give it a try.

So can this .dll just be downloaded and put in some directory somewhere?

 

[GoodRevrnd]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html

??

 

[Sulaco]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html

??

Tried that, thanks, but it says the current installed drivers are more recent than the linked drivers, and aborts installation.

 

[Powermoloch]

damn drm like that sucks

 

[DeathReborn]

Thanks so much for the heads-up on the patch guys. Hopefully that will turn out to be the answer.

However, it seems as though some higher power simply does not want me playing this game.
Upon trying to run the .exe for the patch, I get this message:



...
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game, I've reinstalled older Nvidia drivers, and then reinstalled the latest.
I'm starting to think its not even worth it for a game that received tepid reviews, but hey, I own it, I'd like to at least give it a try.

So can this .dll just be downloaded and put in some directory somewhere?

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/330642.page

You may have to manually register the .dll file but that should resolve that particular file missing issue. You can do that with pretty much any missing dll file (not all though) and it's never as good as a proper install.

The game is alright actually, not perfect but then nothing is.

 

[mindcycle]

What a waste of time just to get a video game you bought to work.. DRM like this will hopefully not be coming back anytime soon.