The licensing scheme was borne of the fact that our previous product, Army
Builder, is experiencing roughly a 3:1 ratio of pirated copies to purchased
copies. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. It also makes it quite
difficult to grow a company, especially in a niche market. So we had to
take more drastic steps with CV.
That being said, the licensing mechanism is NOT intended to thwart honest
users. It's a checkpoint to curb piracy. You're not the only user that has
run into this, and we've been very happy to get folks up and running again
when the unexpected drive crash, virus infection, or whatever else rears
its ugly head. All users need to do is contact us and we can usually get
them running again in short order.
By imposing the limits, it makes it difficult for the unscrupulous consumer
to buy one copy and then give it to all of their gaming buddies to install.
That's the intended purpose. The limits allow us to monitor things and keep
it from getting out of control. And the official rules give us a fallback
position if someone really abuses our willingness to help out.
It's a no-win situation, where either the honest users are penalized or
piracy is made easy. Our goal with this solution is a minimum of
inconvenience to the honest users and a reasonably good solution against
piracy. As a tinkerer, you represent a tiny percentage of the target market
for Card Vault, and unfortunately, you're going to be the most impacted by
the mechanism. But there are some steps you can take to minimize problems
in the future, and we'll outline them for you if you contact technical
support for assistance. Please give us a chance to work with you as a
customer before declaring the mechanism a failure.
Please send an email to
support@wolflair.com with your license number and
an explanation about what's occurred. We should be able to get your license
operational again pretty quickly. And it sounds like the secondary license
suggestion from Ed has you running again already.
Hope this helps,
Rob
At 12:06 PM 2/24/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>The single most annoying aspect about this product, is it's licensing
>scheme, because it *depends*, for constant use of the program, on the
>stability of the operating system (we're talking about Windows here).
>I bought my copy on the 18th of December, and I had to format my PC
>(hard drive change) late January. Of course, I simply cannot use CV
>for 1 more month. But of course, in a way it's good, because
>apparently my installation went wrong somewhere and I *might* have to
>reinstall everything again. That's enough of a pain, but if I had
>purchased CV in, say, October instead of December, and thus had
>reassigned my license when I formatted the PC, I would have to
>guarantee my PC would keep the same installation for *six* months, or
>bye bye CV again.
>
>I'm a gamer, a tinkerer, and a bored IT worker. This is NOT a
>combination that tends to produce stable home machines
>This means I much choose between my regular computer use or the use
>of Card Vault.
>
>Hmm, I really loved your product for the whole month I could use it.
>I really did. Too bad I won't be able to use it anymore. Sporadic use
>is not worth the sheer work of putting my collection in it.
>
>Nevertheless, congratulations on a technically great product, I hope
>you somehow reach the conclusion that all the other companies with
>sane licensing schemes are also making money.
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Rob Bowes (rob@wolflair.com) (559) 658-6995
Lone Wolf Development
www.wolflair.com