'Too Many Activation Attempts'

[Crocalu]

So my Dark Souls 2 collector's edition arrived. I tried entering the code that came with it into Steam before putting the CD in. Apparently I was SUPPOSED to put the CD in first and then enter the code instead of just downloading the game from the Steam servers.
Now the code thingy says that my account has made too many failed activation attempts. I've waited over 30 minutes now, still it says it. I don't know if trying to enter the code resets the cooldown timer? I don't even know how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long I'm supposed to wait. This is ridiculous.

[ciyrose]

I haven't been able to find any mention of it either and was really confused when it happened to me, since I only had 1 failure and no duplicates that I know of. If I had known I needed to only do a select group of keys and then wait awhile I would have done the ones I really wanted to be able to play, and not the ones that I was adding because they came with the bundle. It's not like I don't have choices, but it's a bit irritating with no warning, or documentation about it.

Publicado originalmente por shinmai:

Yeah, around an hour. It's not optimal if you have a bunch of keys, but not a huge issue and the limit is actually pretty reasonable.
I just wish Steam would explain about the limit in a clear manner when activating products, so users wouldn't have to search the forums for answers when they hit the limit. But currently there's no mention of it when activating.
(Well, it could technically be part of the 7k+ word subscriber agreement one has to accept on every single activation, but a cursory search for "activation", "retail", "hour" and "minute" sure didn't find any mention of any activation rate limits)

[Player Review]

Publicado originalmente por Colossus:

I believe there has always been a limit of 25 "Unsuccessful" attempts when attempting to activate cd keys, but i believe what is happening here might actually be a bug with the newest steam version. I believe steam might be reading every key you type in as counting toward your "Unsuccessful" attempt count, and once you hit that 25 mark, it locks you out. I don't believe that they intentionally are locking you out from too many successful attempts because of the way the error message is worded. 'tis but a bug.

Agreed. This is a bug, and I hope development has it on their list of implementations.

[RazingHel]

I'm having the same problem after trying to activate 3 game bundles I bought from BundleStars.

Maybe the 25 game activation limit made sense back when Steam only had Valve titles and a handful of 3rd party ones but now with the thousands of games on Steam that are very low priced (not to mention bundles) it's very likely honest paying players are going to start running up against the 25 game activation limit more frequently.

[Jonas]

There is nothing reasonable about blocking activation uness you've tried
1) invalid codes
2) codes previously activated by other accounts

[Austen™ Colossus™√]

Publicado originalmente por Dekay:

I'm having the same problem after trying to activate 3 game bundles I bought from BundleStars.

Maybe the 25 game activation limit made sense back when Steam only had Valve titles and a handful of 3rd party ones but now with the thousands of games on Steam that are very low priced (not to mention bundles) it's very likely honest paying players are going to start running up against the 25 game activation limit more frequently.

Again, to repeat what has already been said in this thread, this is a new thing with the last official steam release and as i said, is almost certainly unintentional. I am 95% positive that this is a bug that counts all successful activation attempts as unsuccessful ones. Until they do something to patch it, you'll just have to deal with it. It's not really all that big of a deal. it lets you enter more codes after an hour, and you won't get penalized or banned or anything for hitting the limit too many times. I have hit the limit probably 30-40 times and i have had no action taken against me. Just wait out until the fix the issue, and next time read all the responses as well, and you'd have gotten your answer as to what was going on before you posted :P

[vdmjohan]

can't believe this is still an issue. Steam really should fix it, I just hit the limit and most keys worked, had 2 duplicates.

[smartiie]

... have to wait for an hour..

[^1K^7r3m]

Yeah I reported it as a bug myself. The gist of the response that I received was that Valve sucks at organizing their own codebase and incorporating a simple switch statement to return various error messages ranging from differentiating between games already owned to bad cd key requests is beyond their willingness and/or financial means to do. In other words, my 1,445 game collection must constantly be searched because the money I've spent investing on said games couldn't pay a programmer much less experienced than me for an hour of their time.

[Rawrlex]

got the same problem after activating 25 keys.

copied&pasted them all, so there was no "wrong attempt"...

thats a little annoying to be honest.

[TirithRR]

Publicado originalmente por MEATMONSTER:

got the same problem after activating 25 keys.

copied&pasted them all, so there was no "wrong attempt"...

thats a little annoying to be honest.

It triggers on overall activations as well. There is no danger in triggering it. And it's just a 45 minute wait.

Don't buy your key bundles all at once...

[wuddih]

Publicado originalmente por MEATMONSTER:

got the same problem after activating 25 keys.

copied&pasted them all, so there was no "wrong attempt"...

thats a little annoying to be honest.

there is a limit on activations, even if they are correct. just wait some hours and continue.

[Аптекарь]

/

[Austen™ Colossus™√]

Publicado originalmente por MEATMONSTER:

got the same problem after activating 25 keys.

copied&pasted them all, so there was no "wrong attempt"...

thats a little annoying to be honest.

Read back to what i said a few messages above your post. I feel like what i said is more than likely the correct explanation

[IM HAVIJNG A STROLE]

9 hours later i still cant redeem anything...

[Vicxx]

First time I got this problem, so no fix for that yet?