PhoenixRogue

Join Date 06/2008

Shocked by TOTAL LACK OF SUPPORT by Stardock

Company does not seem to honour it's undertakings

Dear Stardock Staff

While I'm instinctually drawn to plaster this all over the internet and more regular media, I want to post this on your own forum first in the hope that my experience is simply an oversight rather than purposeful actions on the part of Stardock. I hope this proves to be true, as I for years advocated Stardock games wide and sundry and especially recommended support for really great games and a copy-protection system that doesn't punish legitimate buyers of the software.

Let me start with an introduction: A read a post on Notebookreviews.com, where a Stardock employee asked why people have a problem with your activation system. I might be able to shed some light on that here: It's because it apprantly doesn't work! I have been attempting to activate for about a week now. I have e-mailed support@stardock.com - no response almost a week later. I have e-mailed sales@Act - no response almost a week later. I have tried to activate by e-mail twice - no response a week later. This left me with a game that I bought and cannot play at all. This also cost me the few days of leave I had.

Longer version of the story: I bought GalCiv2 in a store few years ago, played it, enjoyed it, went on with life. Built new PC recently, re-installed game, game crashes A LOT, registered game, downloaded patch 1.2, game required activation. Now you have to realize that getting access to an internet connection on your home PC can be quite a problem here. Normally, activation can still be done by phone or e-mail, so it doesn't present a problem. Your system in fact also indicated that I could activate by e-mail. So I dutifully copy all the details I'm supposed to and off I go to an internet cafe to send the e-mail and activate my game. How long should this take? The site indicates 16 hours tops, but mostly almost instantaneous. I wonder now if I read wrong and the site in fact indicated 16 days? Anyway, I also saw that there were 2 expansions available that will apparently now be available on CD. So I have a look at reviews, everything looks great. I contact a friend living in a different town (who is lucky enough to have proper internet access) and ask her to buy and download the expansion bundle for me after I pay the money into her credit card. Everything sorted, I happily go home expecting to spend my few days off playing my game again. I am later told that you have to download a boatload of other software to be able to eventually download your game. Also, while the knowledgebase indicated that software can be downloaded and "archived" to move to different PC, my friend was now requered to use a program called impulse - with no indication as to whether such "download and archive" option exists.

When I got no response at all on my activation request, I dutifully e-mailed support, requesting assistance and also some advice on the download of my expansions. This was 2am on the 24th of June 2008. No response even to date. I then also sent the e-mail to sales, considering that some of the questions might fall better into their area of expertise - I also included the "ticket" numbers etc. of my mail to support. To date, they didn't answer either and, in fact, their ticket seems to be gone from my profile.

Eventually, I carted my full tower case over 1 km by foot to be able to activate my game electronically. I almost got mugged. Thanks for that, by the way. I still don't have any answers regarding my expansion packs and I fear I will again run into a total lack of support or working infrastructure on Stardock's part when I try to activate my expansions. By holiday is over. My games are overwhelmingly tainted by this extremely poor experience. I live in Africa, where service is apparently notoriously bad compared to the west - my experience of your (lack of) service is some of the worst service I have ever come across.

Please assist me with the following:

1.) Was I doing something wrong? Should I have sent the e-mails elsewhere, or understood that 48 hours actually means at least one week?

2.) Is this common practice - to take people's money immediately and then ignore them?

3.) Could you kindly indicate what I'm to do about the expansions?

4.) Do you intend to do anything to ensure such things won't happen again?

5.) Is it still unclear why people have a problem with your activation system? (because I could explain much more if needed)

6.) What do you propose to fix this problem (by which I don't merely mean suddenly starting to do your work - which is stopping the problem from getting worse but not fixing it - but how you are going to fix the taint that this experience left for me on your games)

7.) I buy all my software. So do my friends. That is not as common as you might think where I am from. I get mocked a lot - especially about how pirated software often works better than the bought stuff. In principle, I oppose piracy. I certainly oppose being treated like a criminal when I legitimately buy software. How do you propose I answer to those people saying "if you simply bought flea market version of the game (at 1/10 the price) you would have been happily playing a fully working game over your holiday - but you, being a stubborn idiot, still go on buying all your games properly, so don't come complaining with us". The reason I'm asking you to give me an answer, is that with this experience you have given them ammunition to use against me.

8.) Please prove that you are the company that I for years used as an example of a great company that treats legitiamte clients properly and that deserves every penny they get. Please prove that the above was an unfortunate event rather than standard operating procedures

Regards

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Wow you are like a customer from hell... I worked for an online game company and I would have just given you a free copy just to get rid of you. lol

I purchased and downloaded with Stardock, no problems. Updated with Impulse, no problems. True I didn't buy the game with a friend's credit card in Africa, nor did I try to transfer the game from one computer to another, nor did I get mugged on the way to the internet cafe in Nigeria.

Makes me glad I don't work for Stardock customer support.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

1.) Was I doing something wrong? Should I have sent the e-mails elsewhere, or understood that 48 hours actually means at least one week?

We don't ignore customers. The simplest explanation is that your ISP or mail provider is filtering out any mail from us as spam (Hotmail, in particular has been known to do this, as well as a few ISPs).

You should, at a bare minimum, get an auto-response immediately upon receipt of your email to support@stardock.com. If you don't even get that (as your comments seem to imply), then the message was fitlered one way or another, or there was a delivery failure.

In light of that, you can try contacting support via a different email account, or call 734-927-0677 / join our IRC server during weekday business hours. If none of those is an option for you, one of our support people can help via PM on the forums as well, though that's not preferred.

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Eventually, I carted my full tower case over 1 km by foot to be able to activate my game electronically. I almost got mugged. Thanks for that, by the way.

You typically need access to the internet for updates and expansions that you want, so next time, take a different route.

However, you can also purchase expansions with a CD via their website.

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Kryo: If what you are saying is true, please allow me to promptly and publicly appologize. I am using gmail - don't know if they will filter out. Also, I did receive the "tickets", and if I follow the links, it indicates status as "raised" (I have no idea what that means).

Anyway, again, I hope you will accept my apology if I blamed you for what might turn out to be a problem with the ISP.

On a more practical note - I can access e-mail pretty much any time - IRC probably not at all. My GalCiv 2 is now activated and I understand my expansions have been downloaded, but are in some weird file format - will apparently need software from Stardock to install, and I understand this has been downloaded for me as well. I see that GalCiv 2 and DA needs to be updated fully before installing TA. I bought the DA/TA bundle from your site - could you indicate what updates (what versions exactly etc.) I will have to download, as I will have to do so soon before I leave town where friend's town and go back home.

Also, can I install and test the game with expansions, then uninstall and install at my own PC? Is there any way to prove (if needed) that it was uninstalled from test-PC - just so you have the peace of mind that I am not in fact trying to run the game on 2 PCs, merely wanting to make sure it will work on my own PC? Also, please feel free to contact me on my e-mail (especially if we will need to correspond for activation of my software) as I assume it would not be a good idea to be posting serial keys etc. on the forums.

Thanks and kind regards

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Msdorom: There are no real alternatives available - otherwise I certainly would have preferred to get the CD to downloading, all things considered. This is the second product I purchased this way - the first was a mapping tool called "Fractal Mapper" from a different company - I was sent a link that allowed a one-time download of the software and I was e-mailed a serial key to unlock said software. Didn't present any problems at all.

Thanks for the advice, though. As long as I can do the download via internet cafe, (and activate, if needed, through e-mail), everything should be OK.

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Manbear: I didn't mean to come across as a customer from hell, but put yourself in my position and consider the options I had open - activation didn't seem to work, and e-mailing the company didn't seem to work. I still went the way of posting on the companies own forum (where they have the power to delete the comments or respond to it, depending on their level of integrity - where I am glad to say Stardock publicly answered to the post rather than simply deleting it).

Also, I giving me a free copy would be pointless - I have already bought all the games in question

I also didn't mean to imply that I want a free copy of anything, but I did need some kind of explanation, some kind of reassurance that the expansions I paid for would be usable by me, and some kind of indication that this sort of thing wouldn't happen again.

As for transferring the game - it hasn't been transferred yet - that is part of what I required support with, as the knowledgebase indicated that this could be done (otherwise I would not have attempted to buy it in this fashion) but then the software to be used changed. Also, all indications were that updates etc. could be done without a direct connection to the internet.

I am not from Nigeria, I am from South Africa - credit cards are fine here (for now, anyway), but legal action in the States would be prohibitively expensive, so the most sensible recourse one has is the media. I am principled in the way that I am (almost) as vocal in praising good things as I am in berating bad things. For years, I have been very actively telling people all sorts of nice things about Stardock and GalCiv. My experience really shocked me, made me look the fool for being such an advocate and was even more frustrating in the sense that I didn't get any reply.

As I said, I would certainly have been willing to loud as loudly as I possibly can about bad service - but I also have the philosophy that one should always at least try to hear the other side first. After e-mails, Stardock's forum was the most Stardock-friendly place I could think of to do that. You will also note that I have apologized if the mistake has not been Stardock's.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read the post (presumably in an attempt to assist). I hope you understand my motive.

Kind regards

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

My GalCiv 2 is now activated and I understand my expansions have been downloaded, but are in some weird file format - will apparently need software from Stardock to install, and I understand this has been downloaded for me as well. I see that GalCiv 2 and DA needs to be updated fully before installing TA. I bought the DA/TA bundle from your site - could you indicate what updates (what versions exactly etc.)

As to versions, simply downloading the current version from SDC/Impulse will do. Only the latest versions are offered there.

From your later comments re knowledgebase, I'd surmise you're using Impulse rather than SDC. In double-checking to make a walkthrough for you though it seems that the new Impulse system's offline install functionality isn't quite right just yet (It works in offline mode, but wants to connect when restoring an archive, which shouldn't be needed). SDC should still work fine though, so we'll do that instead.

1) Get the SDC installer; install SDC on the machine to be used for downloading, and keep the installer handy (you'll need to install it on your machine to unpack the games). Log into SDC with your Stardock.net account (same as for the forums and which you bought the games with).

2) In the My Games section, right click on GalCiv2 and choose Archive->Download and Archive. You should be prompted if you'd like to also get the various modules, click yes. If you don't have a 1gb+ USB drive or DVD-R available for the transfer to your machine, you'll want to click no here instead, and download+archive each module separately so you can distribute them across CDs for transport.

3) Copy the resulting .sdc file(s) from C:\Program Files\Stardock\Stardock Central\BACKUP along with the SDc installer over to your machine by whatever means are available.

4) Install SDC on your machine, then double-click the archive files in explorer to have it unpack them.

5) Finally, run the game and each expansion. The game should not require reactivation, but each expansion will need to be activated. Do so, and you're all set.

Alternately, if you still have your machine at the internet-connected location, just install Impulse directly on your machine and you can use it to grab all three games very simply. In that case, activation and such is handled transparently during install.

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Dear Kryo

My machine is not at the location with internet - I am with 250gb external hdd. Impulse files have been downloaded (takes a long time and costs a lot). Are the files for impulse and sdc different, or could I use sdc to open impulse files? SDC didn't work for downloading (kept crashing) and e-mail directed friend directly to impulse each time. Download was about 1.4gb, so I assume all patches (also for Galciv2?) included.

As internet in this country caps at 3gb, multiple downloads will be almost impossible and very expensive if possible at all. It would cost at least a third of the games' price (merely to re-download). Please advise.

Kind regards

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Dear Kryo
I MIGHT also be able to establish a very brief bluetooth link between a borrowed cellphone and pc. Never proved reliable in the past; how much communication will need to happen between impulse and internet in offline mode? Had trouble activating this way in past, so not holding my breath, but if only few kb's might work.

Kind regards

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Download was about 1.4gb, so I assume all patches (also for Galciv2?) included.

That is the entire latest version of the base game; the expansions are about 300mb and 400mb (respectively) in addition (in Impulse, they are separate downloads).

If redownloading is not an option for you, Impulse is being worked on constantly to resolve the issues that have appeared since its release last week. I just tried to restore an archive via Impulse even online, and that fails as well, so hopefully this can be sorted in an update of Impulse this week. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you, and again, hopefully we'll have a resolution soon since not being able to restore archives *at all* is a pretty severe issue.

Once this is sorted and the archives can be used, the cell internet should work to at least activate the games, as that doesn't take very much at all to do.

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Thanks. If 700mb is all that needed for expansions, might still have enough bandwidth to download. Will this include the patches for base game (or is there something else I will need to download before installing expansions?) I know impulse download is then everything, but while it's not working, that won't help me.

Kind regards

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

The 1.4gb download you already have already includes all the patches and updates for the base game; downloading those other packages of the expansions will get the latest versions of each of them as well.

For the moment though I'd advise holding off on downloading any more until we can get Impulse properly restoring archives, just in case there is some issue with the archive format, since you're on a download quota.

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OK. I have also found another problem (which is apparently why the base game was downloaded rather than the expansions): Friend bought game on different e-mail adres than the one on which I registered game. She used work e-mail (not ideal) while I registered via gmail (which forwards to my work e-mail - long story). Anyway, I will need to get the two accounts merged. I will send mail to support@stardock.com, but am afraid that same problem might occur. Can I please PM you the details so you can see when the support people are back that this gets done? Thanks

Regards

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Most likely your Gmail account is blocking email from Stardock support. I have even had this problem with my mail provider that is $50/year and an excellent email service. Not with Stardock but with another game company.

Does your Gmail account have a SPAM folder? Have you looked in there for support emails? If your email provider considers Stardock a Spammer even if they are not, they will block the email without you knowing.

You also have to realise that your situation is very unusual and Kyro is bending over backwards here to help you. Remember Microsoft customer support charges $5 per minute. Stardock customer support is included for no extra charge.

I am sure it will work out if you keep a coolhead.

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Manbear:
Even though my position is still the same, it is also completely different, as I now have someone communicating with me and looking for a solution. I realize that Kryo is bending over backwards to help me and I do appreciate that - and now that I don't feel as though I am being ignored, I am very willing to work with Stardock towards a solution.

Gmail has nothing in Spam folder. The confirmation of receipt with ticket numbers from Stardock did arrive in my inbox. If I use the ticket number to log in on Stardock to see the status of my "query", it indicates "raised". In any event, it seems that we accidentally complicated things ourselves by working with 2 different e-mail acounts (which Kryo kindly sorted out for me) and it also now seems that Impulse has a problem - probably nobody tried to download and install yet rather than simply downloading, so Stardock could not know about it.

Which brings up the point that my situation is unique - this is true, and I appreciate that. What frustrates me to no end is that my situation is unique not because it is really as unique as you might think, but because I am in my current circumstances and then I make myself unique by trying to support the creators of the software by legally buying it. One can very easily buy games here (if you would be bothered to buy at all rather than just copy) that apparently come from China, and business software that apprently comes from the Middle East. Some of it is clearly legal, some of it clearly pirated, some of it impossible to tell. Yes, download software like Dark Avatar is available too. Yes, XBox 360, Playstation 3 etc. too. Even 'treat your client like a super-criminal' games like half-life 2. I am not aware of any form of copy-protection that has not been overcome before the release date of the game in this country in any event. Which is partly why I love Stardock - I buy all my software, and like to at least not have to go through more trouble to get my legal software working than other have to go to get their illegal software working.

Now, clearly none of this is Stardock's fault, and they are in fact the champions of my cause. I realize this too. So, I appreciate all your comments and I apologize if I came across badly - the most frustrating thing was the (perceived) total lack of ability to communicate with Stardock - even through a customer service line. This has, as stated, all changed now that I have found a venue of communication.

Thank you for your input and kind regards

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So, I appreciate all your comments and I apologize if I came across badly

At risk of butting in a conversation between two others - you didnt, at least not from where I sit.

I believe most of us have been there with Stardock, I have been many years ago, no one is a paragon of vertue. Certainly watching the mega-yelling posts that turn up from time to time, nearly all quickly subside into a different perspective.

I believe this is at the Core of why Stardock is successful and growing steadily. Too many Companies view Customer Service as an "expense", when its quite the reverse. If a customer is a happy bunny they will come back, and refer you to other people, you dont have to spend mega-bucks marketing, you get the latter for free. Sure it lakes longer, but ultimately it builds a far more solid profitable organisation - and its profit that matters not revenue. People want Value, not low price, and there is a massive difference between the two.

If whilst pursuing that strategy you get happy bunnies as customers, hell why not, its Win-Win. Trouble is, there are so many Vendors out there ignoring Customer Service, its hard - if not impossible - to believe we found a good one, and initial reactions/approaches match that impression, its human nature.

Anyway, enough rambling .... I'll get back in me box

Regards
Zy

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Eventually, I carted my full tower case over 1 km by foot to be able to activate my game electronically. I almost got mugged. Thanks for that, by the way.

This isn't Stardock's fault. Its the mother %%@% that tried to mug you's fault. This is why I am against any form of gun control. People kill people not guns. If everyone at VA tech had been packing, I doubt Cho Sung We or however the F you spell that twisted guy's name would have masacred so many, but I digress.

When is it ever the actual criminal's fault?

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Wow, props on the pointless, tangential, ignorant rant, Stanley. Way to give people a good impression of your country.

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While I believe in gun rights too, that has nothing any vaguely to do with this topic. That rant indicates that you're the type of person I tend to avoid.

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Dear All

I want to inform all reading this thread that I have now received an e-mail from technical support, so all should be well and work out fine. Thanks.

Kind regards

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I want to inform all reading this thread that I have now received an e-mail from technical support, so all should be well and work out fine. Thanks.

Glad to hear it.

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