Earth 2160 Product Activation

How to potentially activate Earth 2160 for those that are having issues with the Internet and Phone activation process.

Product Activation Prologue

Its not 2160 yet but its been a good 18 years since this game released in 2006.

Unfortunately it uses one of the worst DRMs they decided to use back then to protect their game from piracy.

The product activation gives you two options:

• Activate via Internet
  
• Activate by Phone

Connecting to the Internet isnt really anything insane by todays standards if it would work.
It did not work for me.
So I scoured the available resources on the internet to figure out if there was a way to solve this.
I came across the official website of the game and it had a few FAQs about the game activation as well as Steam related issues listed.

• Earth 2160 Activation FAQ[www.earth2160.com]
  
• Earth 2160 Steam related[www.earth2160.com]

None of this was very helpful to myself and I sure as hell am not going to fumble around with my router settings in the vain hope of it actually working.

The only thing left was to try the phone activation where you are supposed to call a number and give them a 16-digit code by pressing the numbers during the call.
Welcome to the stone age of product verification.

With little choice left I of course called the number that was shown to me, only to be told that the number I had called wasnt in use anymore.
An 18 year old phone number not working anymore? Truly shocking.

Product Activation Solution

So what do you do when both activation methods dont work for you?

Thats right, you hit up the Steam Support page for Earth 2160.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGameTechnicalIssue?appid=1900

The Customer Support Website is what we looked at already so that isnt going to help us.
The Developer Website is defunct and might link to god knows what in the future.

It does however provide you with an E-mail address for support.
Since I was left with no other option I just decided to send them a message. Maybe they would respond and even if they wouldnt, I gave it a try at the very least.



Yeah, thats right. I messaged them on a Saturday morning at 4:33am.

What happened next was something I truly didnt expect.
Not even 6 hours later I already received a reply. On a weekend no less.



So, to the absolute unit of Customer Support that responded faster than in my wildest dreams.
Thank you for keeping this game playable.

...But wouldnt it be easier to just get rid of this outdated DRM in the first place?

[Archorion]

funny thing i noticed if you tipe 3-5 keys really fast it registers the last one used, that way i could imput my key