f13.net

I got the Deluxe Edition, which supposedly includes Northern Strike. Except it doesn't; you actually have to download it.

To download it, you have to register your copy.

The registration code printed on my manual "does not appear to be for that game."

It's EA, dude.  Ask the overlords of your overlords.

In a similar vein, I bought BF2142 from EA's online store and cannot play it now.  It simply won't start upon redownloading it.  It sucks, but I started playing TF2 again, so it's all good.

Direct2Drive has let me down, too.  I wanted to reinstall Oblivion but apparently you can only use their authenticator 5 times before it denies you.  Had to download a crack to get it running.  Well, fuck that service, I'll stick with Steam and GOG from now on.

God I can't wait for GOG to go live.

GamersGate (http://www.gamersgate.com/) are good people too. Once you purchase, you can download forever. The DRM checks when you install and the first time you run it, then goes away.

My copy of the deluxe edition worked fine. The authentication process was a bit wonky, but I got it working.

Been a lot of cheating going on with the game since they released the latest patch. I think EA is abandoning fixing any of that, so you probably aren't missing a lot.

EA's Download Manager DRM is so screwed up, I had to un-install it before the Spore Creature Creator would work.  It crashed out without any explanation until I tried that.  And I'll be skipping Spore itself because I'm not letting SecureROM anywhere near my system.

Between indy games infested with malware and major publisher DRM so like it that it's mostly a matter of opinion, I'm having to use Sandboxie and paranoid-setting firewalls for everything these days.

--Dave

I can't even get it to install on Vista 64. But yea - the cheating in all the BF games really has gotten bad.

http://www.fpscheats.com/ (http://www.fpscheats.com/)
http://www.mdk-enterprises.com/ (http://www.mdk-enterprises.com/)

Doesn't seem like Punkbuster is really working now days.

I gave up on online shooters after BF2. So much potential, utterly ruined by the douchebags playing it.

I imagine league play is still phenomenal, but who has that kind of time?

I have never, ever played a shooter online. LAN games at work are the most fun for me.

Stormwaltz, in a thread about online shooters, doing it wrong.

Clue: Am I doin it rite?

I tried to re-install by BF2 Deluxe discs on my new computer a couple months ago, it did not work well at all.  I googled and found many, many people having the exact same problem but not a single one had a solution that worked.  EA never bothered to fix it either.