HLC Licensing vs Windows 10 Updates
 

Please update the licensing to allow for Windows updates. Being forced to wait for LW support to respond sucks when you want to use the program you purchased after updating your Windows 10.

Concur!

At this point, I would just like to see them get rid of the restrictive licensing policy they have. It made sense when HLC was their big product, but now that it's being referred as 'classic' and development is being focused on online, the original licensing model doesn't make sense anymore. Let a paying customer activate the software on as many PCs as they own. The user still needs a valid key and email, just get rid of the janky licensing that restricts users from doing things like OS reinstalls and upgrades. No reason for it anymore.

HLC is virtually abandonware now. There are datafiles that people paid for that they can't use fully because of errors (Savage Worlds Adventure Edition) or bundles that never got all the content promised (Shadowrun 5 Bundle #4 which still needs 2 products promised).

Yeah, they had a sale on some data sets this past weekend and I was tempted, but only for about 10 seconds because I don't want to put more money into it. Regardless of any speeches made at the beginning of the HLO project, reality has set in and HLC is effectively dead.

It's a shame. I really like using the iPad version and I would've considered buying the 5e stuff for it. (The desktop version is just weird, with the inability to copy/paste text, all of the modal dialogs, and so on. It is usable (mostly) but not a pleasant experience.)

Hey all,

I just wanted to pop in here and address the topic because well, trust me when I say that we feel the pain as well. The fact that OS, Driver, Hardware, and sometimes even other smaller updates and tweaks can disrupt the Hero Lab Classic Keyfile association and identity is a frustrating situation, that much is for certain, but to be quite honest about it all, it's not something that can fundamentally be changed, updated, or fixed.

The reason for this boils down to the way that all of our partnerships and licenses over the years specifically hinge upon this protection mechanism and the way that it works. Clearly, the years haven't been too kind to the functional identification of a given computer by the licensing server, after all it was over fifteen years ago when that system of identifying a computer and Keyfile was created, and in essence, set in stone. Any meaningful changes, updates to, or replacement of the way it works could represent us altering/breaking the terms of the many partnership agreements we have made over the years and while SOME of these partners can still be contacted about the subject and surely would be more than happy to deal with us and continue/renew the partnership under updated terms that is, sadly, not possible in all instances and RPG systems that we've supported over the years. The net result of this would almost certainly end up being that we would have to just completely drop support for multiple RPG systems and pull the content we made for those games despite the fact that users who paid for it couldn't ever update their software again without losing access to what they purchased.

Some of the companies we partnered with no longer offer any licenses for the game(s) we support from them at all and they'd have to be dropped while other games have simply had their publisher sell the rights to the IP and their publisher has folded since we negotiated the rights to their game(s).

Many here have spoken with me personally when there is one issue or another over the years, but as you here know very well, getting approval for Reactivation or Reassignment of a Classic License is far and away the most common issue, and while I would be materially grateful for this kind of thing to function more intelligently and in an automated manner just for my own selfish reasons, it's really just not a viable option.

The best option among those that are left fall to us, and myself to be sure to try and review the situation for each user when it arises and ensure that things can get approved in the established manner that has been passed down over the years. It isn't perfect, and admittedly it can indeed be aggravating these days when even smaller updates (comparative to current standards, that is, even smaller background downloads/updates are 10-100x larger than they were back around 2006 and they occur at a MUCH more frequent rate than then as well) can trigger the system to go into Demo mode. All we can really do is try to put in the elbow grease to get this approved when it occurs so whenever there might be an issue just please send us an email and we'll do whatever possible to try and get it worked out speedily.

I hope this helps provide a bit of context on why things work the way they do. Thanks!

--
Ryan Furnas
Customer/Technical Support
<support@wolflair.com>