I'm sure you will, although having to wait up to two days for something as basic as getting your serial number recognized so you can update and play this pretty much multiplayer only game online with your friends who were able to register is pretty ridiculous. Do you have any information on why this problem is happening to so many of us? THanks in advance.

If this is happening to you can you indicate if you bought teh game at retail or on-line?  And if on-line, ifyou used paypal or direct credit?  If at retail, where?

I'm one of the people "Outside the thread" who is having the 204 invalid serial issue, its a retail completly factory sealed box I bought at target today. It's quite upsetting because I *NEVER* Would have spent a penny on this game, let alone 40$ if it weren't for the online multiplayer feature and I'm sure I'm not alone... I just hope this gets resolved fast because it feels like I flushed my money down the toliet at the moment

I bought a boxed copy at Best Buy.

I understand that the majority of people are not having this issue, but this isn't the only forum where I saw it mentioned, and usually the people talking about a problem are only a fraction of those experiencing it. I just wondered if you guys had any idea why it might be happening. I guess...no? That's a little depressing. I didn't include my serial number in my original email to support (out of a too-paranoid distrust of clear text email), so now I"m thinking it'll take even longer to get me up and running.

Well, I thought I would post that I got a reply from Stardock. They are requesting pictures of:

-the game box
-the game disc
-the inside of the game disc case
-the back of the game manual
-a receipt for the game

Wish I had thought to bring all that with me to work...along with my camera. Oh, well, another day goes by, I suppose.

?!!!  I sincerely hope that you are joking/exagerating!!!! If this company is going to make paying customers jump thru such ludicrous hoops to fix a problem that should not exist in the first place, then I will seriously re-think having anything else to do with them. There are enough GREAT games out there that we players should not even CONSIDER putting up with this crap...

It seems to me that the codes included with [many of] the retail boxed copies of the game do NOT work for some reason.

Question: Has ANYONE with a retail boxed only copy of the game successfully registered it?  Or are all the successful regs been with downloaded copies???

[dup post - sry]

Nope, not joking. The email said there have been reports of duplicate keys. Presumably they want to ascertain that I am a legitimate customer and not some filthy pirate, and then they will issue me a new key.

Well, if his serial id has already been registred by another person, Stardock needs to be sure that he is a rightful owner of that serial id.

Unfortunately this is the only way we have of verifying retail serial numbers.  So far there have been more reports than normal about serials already being registered (errors so far have been due to duplicate serials, not misprinted/wrong ones) so we are looking into it with our retail copy producers.

If you have a better way of having people verify the serial number they received, by all means we are open to hearing it.

Exactly, and we hate doing it.  But unfortunately, if word got out that we just assigned serials to anyone who e-mailed in with issues, it would take even longer to resolve because of the influx of pirates writing in.

Ah crap, do they really need ALL of those? I got an email asking for just my serial code so I sent my serial code plus added only two pictures since i figured they'd need clarification, one of the code on the booklet and one of the reciept, but I did not send a picture of the box or disc figuring they wouldnt need those... hopefully I dont need to wait longer due to that.

It said the more I send the better (and I will be sending them all). I don't know what threshold you would need to pass in terms of weight of evidence before they will judge in your favor.

Sorry... have no better suggestion...

But isn't it kinda odd that a game JUST RELEASED has SO MANY serial numbers previously regged???  Is it POSSIBLE that registration is simply not recognizing serials shipped with boxed copies?  Or that serials being given out with downloads are duplicates of those ALREADY in boxes???

Anyway, exactly WHAT do I have to do to get this issue resolved for MY copy of the game?

And the more data we have the sooner we can deal with that.