Revocation limit reached (WHAT?), nearly used up my remaining activations. HELP!

[devsfan1830]

(I know its long, please bear with me as proper background is needed to understand the problem)

Back when AC released, I was apprehensive about getting it because of the Securom, but soon saw that there was a deactivation method so I went ahead an bought it. I have other EA titles with Securom, and I have no problem with it since there is a revoke tool of some form. Even though its a small pain when the method varies from game to game. Even when I hit an activation limit and couldn't revoke, EA quickly gave me a limit increase.

Ac is the first game I have ever bought with an activation requirement that has the balls to enforce and UNDISCLOSED DEactivation limit. As a somewhat more advanced PC owner, I constantly upgrade and tweak my PC and generally format my system every few months to clear out crapware (Nvidia beta drivers especially recently). Each time I deactivated AC, it told me it did so successfully but NEVER indicated there was a limit until one day it failed to deactivate, telling me it had been done too many times. After lengthy google and forum searches, a post on Steam forums reveals there is a hard limit of 5 deactivations. This is absurd! I can see if this was a time based limit, since recent and repeated deactivations indicates moving from PC to PC, but a HARD limit makes it now impossible to reclaim my activations.

Furthermore, the tweaking and formatting has triggered securom to generate new hardware IDS, thus using up nearly every one of my "unique PCs" limits. At some point in the near future, this game will be entirely useless if I ever want to play it again or do some challenge maps or get achievements.

Can ANYONE (Sarah?) put me in contact with someone who can assist in resetting or revoking my keys? I reached out to suppor@wbgames.com and they told me to talk to Steam support. HOW is this helpful when the DRM is publisher enforced? Its not that my initial key was bad, its that the DRM scheme is entirely unreasonable to the end user.

[Annihilated]

Wow, it's been 5 days and no one's helped you? That is NOT cool. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do about it, but if what you're saying is true, it's definitely illegal on WB's part and you should file a complaint to the FTC right away. You can go here and let them know about what WB is trying to pull without our knowledge, and when asked for help, they try to ignore the problem entirely. Just remember you can't report user specific cases.

[rojimboo]

This is quite interesting. Trying to find out more information regarding the limits, but the official position seems to be not provide any information, which is annoying.

Are you saying reformatting your pc and reinstalling windows uses up an activation, when the hardware has not changed?

Because, it should not:

https://support.securom.com/faq_pa.html

Also, people keep changing the number of times you can revoke. You are saying 5, people on Steam are saying only 2.

My biggest question is, if you(I) have an unrevoked, activated game, does it use up more than activation if you change your hardware more than once? That is, whilst Securom hash certainly changes with each hardware change (though apparently at its default at 60% changes, whatever that means) do you only use up an activation, when you launch the game and it contacts the Securom activation servers?

If not, then this mean, like you believe, that if you just had your Batman sitting around for 2 years on your HDD, then after each hardware change not only would the offline Securom hash change, but an actual machine limit activation would be used up.

The 5 machine limits would thus quickly disappear for most people, like me, constantly and mucking about with watercooling for example.

If that is the case, it is atrocious, but I actually think this is not the case. I think you only use up an activation when you launch the game and the Securom authentication server hash is different than the one it compares it to, irregardless of how many times it changed since the last different hash value.

[JRA]

I can say that it's the truth on the limit with certainty. I've only had this game barely a month and I encountered a major pc glitch recently that forced me to reinstall windows 3-5 times in just a few days time before I was finally able to completely eradicate the pc error. But every time I reinstalled BAC, it gave me a countdown...(it doesn't appear to be doing so anymore and hopefully I won't have to reinstall it again)

[rojimboo]

I can say that it's the truth on the limit with certainty. I've only had this game barely a month and I encountered a major pc glitch recently that forced me to reinstall windows 3-5 times in just a few days time before I was finally able to completely eradicate the pc error. But every time I reinstalled BAC, it gave me a countdown...(it doesn't appear to be doing so anymore and hopefully I won't have to reinstall it again)

Mmm. What.

Did the machine limit go down, or the installation limit? Because it tells you. The install limit (10 per machine) will go down with an OS reinstall, but the machine limit shouldn't go down.