Risen - Steam Runs Out of Keys After Sale

skavenhorde

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Due to an unforseen demand for Risen after it went on sale Steam has run out of activation keys. Daniel, Senior Brand Manager, says they have sent over a whole batch of freshly baked activation keys for Steam and the issue should be solved shortly. Here is the announcement at Deep Silver's forums:

Dear Risen fans/buyers,
As you're fully aware, the server ran out of activation keys for Risen over the weekend. It is not because an Ogre broke into the offices of Valve and stole them but because of an unexpected "tsunami of orders" which nobody could anticipate in such a magnitude.
On the one hand we're very happy that you decided to buy the game since this shows us that Piranha Bytes and we did the right thing by investing a lot of time to get a fantastic game.
On the other hand it forces me to beg you for your patience until we finished the "quest for the missing keys". While our support is also around for you on weekends, feeding the server with activation keys is not a trivial task so we'll have to wait for the experts to arrive in the office on Monday. The keys will then be passed to Valve and every legitimate buyer should get his key to play the game as it worked before. After all we didn't have any issues before.
Please bear with us until we sortet out the issue and although I know that we caused a lot of distress and anger I'm pretty confident that that everyone of you will be able to enjoy the game shortly.

Stay tuned for further news in this thread.
best rgds,
Daniel
Senior Brand Manager @ Deep Silver
P.s. In the meantime please don't try to circumvent the copy protection since this might be a violation of the TOS of Steam and could endager your Steam account.

[UPDATE]
I just got notice that a big set of keys were sent from us over the big pond to Valve. Not sure how long it will take Valve to put them into their system but you should give them some hours to wake up, drink some coffee and get to work. After all we're again dealing with different timezones, but this time the other way round
For the last stage, I'm going to need your help. Please give me a shout here in the forum if you got your key from Steam so we can report a "Mission Accomplished" to everybody.
More information.
 
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nice, still it seems a lot of people were waiting for the price to drop.
I was one of them but still couldn't wait so i bought it 2 months ago at full price. didn't manage to play it more than a few hours to this day :/
 
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Impressive.

Perhaps GOG should sell it, too, then ? :D
 
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Apparently there was a lot of anger on the Steam forums over it.

It does happen. It's happened before (Happened to me with FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage) and I've no doubt it'll happen again. I do think Steam/Valve should notify you if a key is unavailable at the time of purchase because it can be quite frustrating to download a game and then as soon as you try to launch it, you find you've got no key.
 
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Yet another example of why double-dipping DRM on Steam is a really stupid idea. It's not even stopping piracy--the pirates simply went with the weaker retail version instead (which has just a simple offline disc check). If their response to this disaster had been to strip down the DRM to the level of the retail release they would have been showered in praise (not to mention money from those currently feeling wary because of this mess).
 
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Yet another example of why double-dipping DRM on Steam is a really stupid idea. It's not even stopping piracy—the pirates simply went with the weaker retail version instead (which has just a simple offline disc check). If their response to this disaster had been to strip down the DRM to the level of the retail release they would have been showered in praise (not to mention money from those currently feeling wary because of this mess).

Question: What?
 
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doesnt surprise me. Risen is a fantastic game. It didnt dissapoint like Arcania or even Two Worlds 2.

Im now looking forward to Witcher 2, Eldar Scrolls V, and whatever is next for the Risen series.
 
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this is the second time in probably 2 months (maybe a hair longer) that I've heard of Steam running out of keys.

i wouldn't be too bothered because they usually sort it out pretty quickly.


i remember buying the gold version of neverwinter nights (at retail) and neither of the printed keys worked so i just cracked it after installing. ha. this was many years ago and i couldn't be bothered dealing with the retail staff when it was just as easy for me to do it like that.

that said, having steam would make it far more bothersome to crack a game whose keys didn't work for you.



and just back on topic, how much was it on sale for (USD?)
 
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(which has just a simple offline disc check)

There was a time when a disk check was all copy protection [that was] needed, you know ?
 
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Well, it's unfortunate that they ran out of keys…DRM is just this, an inconvenience for paying customers and no inconvenience at all to the pirates.

Anyway, as a fan of Piranha Bytes' games, it is good to hear Risen is selling well. It is a great RPG which deserves it. I bet they still have plenty of keys left for Arcania, though. :p

Jowood should be feeling a bit silly for throwing out Piranha Bytes by now. As I wrote at World of Gothic:
The Metacritic score for Arcania is now below that of Gothic 3. Gothic 3 has 63 points, while Arcania gets 62. The difference in user score is even better though: Gothic 3 gets 7.6, while Arcania get 5.6.

Oh, and Risen gets 77 from critics and 8.6 from users. That's what you could have had, JoWood, if you had shown some respect for the original developer. Instead, you threw out the people who made the Gothic series what it was, and announced a sequel without having anything resembling creative vision for the game, and before you even had a developer.

Kay
 
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Well, it's unfortunate that they ran out of keys…DRM is just this, an inconvenience for paying customers and no inconvenience at all to the pirates.
Except, in this case, it's absolutely nothing to do with DRM (Or at least Steam as a form of DRM). It could happen to Direct2Drive or GamersGate, and I'm sure it's happened to D2D a few times in the past.

Heck, even Gog succumbed to it with NWN - It doesn't come with CD keys (Last I heard, could have rectified it since then) and you have to/had to request them from Gog in order to use the multiplayer.
 
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Except, in this case, it's absolutely nothing to do with DRM (Or at least Steam as a form of DRM). It could happen to Direct2Drive or GamersGate, and I'm sure it's happened to D2D a few times in the past.

Well, I wasn't complaining about Steam in particular, and I disagree that this has nothing to do with DRM. There are "keys" because there is a "lock". Activation keys may be a very mild form of DRM compared to most others these days, but it is still DRM. What other purpose do you think activation keys serve?

Kay
 
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I wonder if it's too optimistic to hope for an English/localised release of the Collectors Edition, based on these successful sales?
I'd really like to show my appreciation for this game in the best way possible. :)
 
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Well, I wasn't complaining about Steam in particular, and I disagree that this has nothing to do with DRM. There are "keys" because there is a "lock". Activation keys may be a very mild form of DRM compared to most others these days, but it is still DRM. What other purpose do you think activation keys serve?
I don't see activation keys on the same level as SecuROM, TAGES, Impulse, Steam etc. If you notice, I half-corrected myself by stating "at least nothing to do with Steam as DRM".
 
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Yeah, I was one of the 'lucky' ones who bought it, and then was confronted with the fact that I couldn't play it.

Normally I'm quite relaxed when things like this happen, but this irritated me a bit. Imagine this: my girlfriend away for the weekend, no appointments in my agenda and some cold beer in my fridge. Me all set to enjoy a weekend worth of semi-oldskool RPG-ishness. I click on the game's icon and… ERROR. I click on it again and… SAME ERROR. Visualize the onset of bulging veins near one's temples...
 
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Well, I wasn't complaining about Steam in particular, and I disagree that this has nothing to do with DRM. There are "keys" because there is a "lock". Activation keys may be a very mild form of DRM compared to most others these days, but it is still DRM. What other purpose do you think activation keys serve?

Kay
dude, seriously...
are you gonna give out years of your work and life vision so that anyone can use it without any effort to avoid paying you?
 
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