An Open Letter to Lone Wolf Development Regarding DRM

[hamer2fall]

Hello.

I've been a customer and hero lab user for several years now. Occasionally, I have to upgrade devices. When I do, the transition can either go smoothly or be an exhaustively obtuse ritual that can result in waiting days... DAYS just to access a product that I PAID FOR, and just wanting to walk away from the product altogether.

This was a draconian and atrocious system in 2008, and the fact that I'm still dealing with licence activation timers and limited device access in 2016 is hilariously outdated and embarrassing to Lone Wolf Development.

We live in an age where people use multiple devices and should be able to access their paid services on those devices at any time.

I understand piracy is a problem, but DRM that forces the user into restrictive policies, jump through obtuse hoops, and can result in DAYS before service, is UNACCEPTABLE.

Can we all agree that access to a TABLETOP SPREADSHEET SOFTWARE should NOT require more security measures than a major banking institution?

It's time to stop treating your customer base like criminals under house arrest for just wanting to play their campaigns on a new device. Take off the plastic gloves, put down the metal detectors, stop the pat-downs and find a better way.

I'm sure I'll get my licensing situation sorted out, but by that time, I'm not sure If I'm still going to want to even deal with it anymore.

[liz]

@hamer2fall, I definitely get why you're frustrated. The licensing system works for the vast majority of our users, but people will run into problems if they mix up their license numbers. This was the case with your devices. As I just replied to your license reassignment request, once you have a separate license number of each device, you shouldn't run into any more issues moving forward.

If you ever forget which device each number is assigned to, you can review your linked license numbers on www.lonewolfdevel.com.

We developed this licensing technology over a decade ago, and it works extremely well. Every year, there are a couple of users who take exception to it vociferously because it becomes an issue at an inconvenient moment. However, there are tens of thousands of gamers actively using Hero Lab at their regular gaming sessions every week. So the overall incidence level of problems is comparatively TINY, and users are typically back up and running significantly faster than lots of large companies even provide a coherent (let alone competent) reply. We continue to make small improvements to this system over time, but we have no plans for an overhaul at this time. Why? We have yet to think of or find a licensing system that results in well upwards of 99% customer satisfaction while still providing excellent security against hackers. That's what we have today, and any proposal has to yield at least comparable results.

As to our estimated response time of 1-3 business days, we're a small company (we have only one full time technical support employee) and cannot have support staff working 24/7. Given our limited resources, I'm quite proud that we often respond within 24 hours.