Activation in multiple PCs

[ariel__s]

Hi.

I'm planning to buy CloD and use it in two different computers (one mine, the other belongs to my brother)
Do I need two copies of CloD?
In case it is possible with a single copy, can I play online simultaneously with both PCs?
I don't know if it's relevant, but we have different IPs.


Thanks


EDIT: This should be in the Activation Threat, my bad :S

[pupo162]

Do I need two copies of CloD? yes

In case it is possible with a single copy, can I play online simultaneously with both PCs? NO


I don't know if it's relevant, but we have different IPs. ITs not.

i feel your pain. i loved to trow lan partys with IL2 and some other games in my house back in the day........ it helped selling copies to.

[ariel__s]

Painfull, indeed.

Thanks for the quick reply.

[Blackdog_kt]

You can use it on two PCs if you just want to run it from different locations (for example, having one installation in your city home and one in your parent's house in the village or country/summer home for when you're away from your main residence), you will just have to log in from your steam account and any games that have been purchased under that account will be eligible for download, installation and playing regardless of your PC, location or IP.

There is a steam feature against account theft, if you have it enabled you might need to log into your email, open an email from steam and click on an automated link or something before it allows you to access your account from a different PC, but overall it's possible to run one account (and any games under it) from multiple locations/PCs as long as it's not simultaneous.

However, you can't use both of them at the same time in a way of setting up a lan party or something similar with a single activation code. This would mean registering the same code on two steam accounts (which is impossible as you get a message that the code is already in use on another account) or running simultaneous logins on the same steam account from two different PCs, which i guess is also filtered by steam as an account theft attempt.

In other words, don't try any funny stuff or you may risk getting your account suspended (and losing access to the game along with it) and it might be a tedious process meddling with tech support to get it reinstated and prove that you are the rightful account owner.

On one hand i can understand that making say, 5 people able to play the game with one copy is cutting into their profits, on the other one there are simpler ways to prevent this and have been used in the past by other games in ways that won't have you risking your ability to even access the game if you screw up. For example, just checking cd-keys for duplicate logins when you entered the multiplayer lobby was what most games used in the past, if more than one instance was found then one of the two was booted from the lobby, but it didn't leave the player with an unusable game after that.

This meant that you could share a game with friends/family as long as you didn't all go online at the same time and to be honest, if someone cared enough about the game to want to engage in competitive multiplayer he was very likely to end up buying it after sampling the goods. It's like giving players the ability to advertise the game to their friends, getting them hooked and then having them pay to unlock the ability to play with/against the person that introduced them to the game. Sadly, nowadays things like that are way complicated to do, due to the fact that many games are tied to accounts and all sorts of personal information that goes along with them.

Not an ideal situation i know, just thought i'd elaborate on it a bit to save you any potential trouble, cheers