That wonderful (sarcasm) A-10C DRM

Any reason why the copy protection for A-10C should suddenly decide to pop up a dialog box out of the blue today asking me to put in my serial key on starting DCS, when I have already installed it with the correct key a long time ago?

Did you guys make some changes, is something weird going on with my system, or is this a known issue? Thanks. Let me know if you need more info.

Doesn't seem to be a general change, because I have no problems starting the A-10C module.

... , is something weird going on with my system...

Maybe you did a recent change on your PC, like adding more RAM, reinstalling Windows, changing the hard drive ? .. any of these changes can trigger the copy protection.

Where is the problem, you have to do a little research:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/activation/

Had this twice in the last weeks too and a friend of mine told me had also experienced it lately. Happened on the Ka-50 and the A-10C for me, being asked to activate but when hitting "enter serial" i was getting the message it is activated already and DCS started normally with the modules working just fine. No hardware changes or similar.

Don't even get me started on how much I hate DCS' copy protection.

For such a niche sim that no one wants to steal, I don't know why the INTENSE copy protection.

Niche? A great deal of piracy comes out of Russia as well and this is a Russian designed product. As for no one wanting to steal? For a time, before ED switched to the new activation system both A-10 and BS were available on piracy websites to download. If you look for them today, you'll find there hasn't been a leak of anything else since. I'm usually anti-protection measures as well, but EDs is functional, low maintenance, and shouldn't be too big a deal unless you're reinstalling DCS every ten minutes.

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When any key on the keyboard is pressed during DCS startup (past the login dialog, prior to the "Loading..." screen), this tends to bring up the activation window for any module that still uses the old activation system.

If that happens, you can simply cancel/close the activation window and all will be fine.

Just happened again, FC3 this time. No changes to the PC at all.

The bottom left option should be "I already have an Activation Code"

Eventually the plan is to move all modules to keyless.

Which happened today with the OpenBeta release of 2.5.6. Hooray! :)

Shouldn't be long until the same applies to the Stable.

please contact support directly.

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/

 

thanks

Nah the modules work fine if you just click out of it. I'm guessing it's more a StarForce thing than an ED thing. Let's all take a moment to reflect on how much we love StarForce (yeah yeah I know, 12 years ago things were different) :)

I'm getting nervous because I am about to reinstall windows and will have to therefore reinstall or reactivate everything else as well. My C drive SSD is throwing a wobbler - 1st reason to reinstall, plus I am upgrading my CPU and motherboard - either of which requires reactivations.

A while ago I had the same issue as the OP with A-10C requesting activations out of the blue - repeatedly, every time I started the sim despite having been activated the previous time I started it. From having a number left I have gone to zero activations left. I did contact support via the website but got the usual "whats the worry? It will all be replaced soon" number.

Now the system has not been replaced and I will have to reactivate. If anything goes wrong anywhere I'm left up the creek with the A-10C (yeah, come on - "what''s the worry? You just have to wait a month...!". Do me a favour - it isn't acceptable.

Apart from this, when attempting to deactivate both BS and FC3 a few minutes ago, I was told it was not possible. Possible reason given that I had run out of activations - which I struggle to believe as I note down how many activations and deactivations are left whenever I perform it, and the only module with zero is that A-10C due to aforementioned bug (which is what it has to be).

This archaic and over-zealous system should have been ditched years ago. I'm really sick of so-called anti-piracy systems screwing me around - in all of my flight sims, not just this one, whilst the skull and crossbones crowd just laugh.

As you can tell, this a sore point. Yes - for years I had zero issues until 2019 and the above shenanigins. It was one of many events over the years that made me close to ditching the whole thing (which may yet happen - despite the silly amount I've spent on it, which is why I haven't done so up to now).

Nothing more to say.

..

Nothing more to say.

If you are a user of the Openbeta branch, the latest Update to 2.5.6 finally completed the transition to key-less protection ... no more StarForce :D

From the Change log:

 

A-10C, FC3 and BS2 modules migrated to ED DRM protection

I've not been using it, no - but I was wondering if its impending change was the reason I coudn't deactivate - so that is probably it. Thanks for that - a bit of relief. My A-10C activating issues were about a year ago.

I do still use the standalone A-10C and Ka-50 1 & 2 purely for fun, to fly the many community-made missions I downloaded and never flew. It's still worth doing them for a change. I considered buying a second A-10C during one of the sales just to top up my activations, but since the sale prices are no longer the drop they once were it was no longer attractive for this purpose, and I decided against it.