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Lancer Download Key Incorrectly Claimed

A topic by Katherine Stark created Aug 11, 2024 Views: 427 Replies: 13

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The new physical reprint of the Lancer core rulebook has a QR code inside the book that leads to an itch.io key for a digital download. Unfortunately it appears that the key was claimed by an account, which (apparently) should not be possible, meaning that nobody can download the content.

(It's my understanding per the tweet above that Massif sent in a support request about this issue at the end of last month; meanwhile a lot of people in the community are waiting on an update and the community discord is having to field a lot of questions from confused customers.)

The first and most obvious issue is that the key has been claimed but shouldn't be - but perhaps more important in the long-term is that this key being claimable is unintended and suggests a possible bug. After asking around I've heard a couple of stories from different creators about keys being claimed incorrectly, so I figured I'd flag it up as a potential issue.

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prudentia350107 days ago(+1)

As a bump this is *still* not fixed and is getting absolutely embarrassing that itch is not capable of fixing this over 2 weeks later. I would very much like to download the content that was paid for and that the developer intended me and everyone else who paid for it to have.

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hechelion107 days ago

Greetings, this forum is usually answered by the Itch community and not by the staff.

Personally, I think it's more likely that the developer didn't check the appropriate option when creating the URL.

But if you need urgent help, it's best to talk to the developer instead of asking for help here, indicating that if he needs urgent attention from the staff, the quickest way is to try to contact him on discord indicating the support ticket number for his case.

You could also try your luck here, since sometimes the administrator checks this forum, but again, it must be the developer and also indicate the support ticket number, as mentioned in the rules above.

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redonihunter107 days ago

Is there even an appropriate option to use?

I just read https://itch.io/docs/creators/download-keys and nowhere is it stated that unclaimable keys are a thing.

If only one key was used to be printed as a qr code, how should this even work? Not by keys to my reading of the faq.

A download key’s URL is unique and should not be shared.

I would imagine the developer wanted to share a link to a restricted page or something like that. This would be possible with one qr code for all.

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hechelion107 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

When you create a download key in the Itch dashboard, at the bottom you have an option that allows you to indicate whether the key can be claimed by an Itch account or not.

Download key can be claimed — Enables anyone with an itch.io account to take ownership of the download key, preventing anyone else from using it.

It is implicitly understood that if the option is NOT checked, the key could NOT be claimed and could be used by anyone who has the URL and I assume that was the author's intention (I have no additional information other than what is written here).

I don't know if this is something allowed by Itch (the download key generation rules don't explain it anywhere). But if it were prohibited, it would be expected that this option would not exist and it would be mandatory to redeem the key.

I don't know if this is a bug of the original author or if it is indeed a bug of Itch, but since it seems to be something that is affecting several people, it is best to point them in the direction where they could get help.

Edit:
Personally, I think the best option would have been to create one key per game, have a set of stickers printed (many printing companies do this) and thus have only one download key per game. But this is just a personal opinion.

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redonihunter107 days ago

Sounds like the faq could use some work.

Something like non-claimable keys are not mentioned there. Explanation of such a use case is what I would expect from the faq, as it is bound to create confusion.

If it previously worked, maybe the key was flagged for "supicous" behaviour...

The faq is not very clear if keys are supposed to be share-able. What with the bulk keys, it rather reads like they are not share-able and the dev can even manually revoke them, if used for downloading too often.

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prudentia350107 days ago

I would recommend reading the OP and especially paying attention to the linked tweet by the developer where they directly state that they contacted itch support at the start of august, with nothing having happened yet. So it wasn't even 2 weeks, it was 4 weeks with no answer from itch.

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prudentia350107 days ago

Also off note that the Book was officially released on 09.07 and the download link worked just fine with the UI not offering any possibility to claim the page anywhere for 3 weeks until it was suddenly claimed by a user. This absolutely was a key that was set to be not claimable that itch somehow messed up and is not being responsive to fix.

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hechelion107 days ago

With all due respect, I'm not interested in reading any of those links, I'm not trying to argue or attack or defend anyone, I'm simply trying to point out the quickest way for someone on staff to help them.

If you simply want to complain because a developer other than you hasn't received a response to a support ticket, you can do so, I'm not going to criticize or censure you, but in my experience over several years on Itch, these types of posts don't usually speed up the process because, again, this forum is not answered by the staff.

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Katherine Stark107 days ago (2 edits)

I have personally received responses from leafo on this forum before and I know he does read and respond to messages here. I don't expect a response to the actual problem, partly because this isn't a formal support channel but mostly because I'm not the developer in question, I'm just someone who bought the book and can't claim it.

It's frustrating that the issue hasn't been resolved, but the real reason to post here is to highlight what might be a broader issue: from personal discussions with other creators it seems like this is not an isolated incident. It's possible that this is a UI issue, but equally it might be some kind of deeper backend problem, and either way it's worth bringing to itch's attention in a place that does periodically get some acknowledgement.

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hechelion107 days ago

I understand you and agree with what you say. I hope they can solve the problem.

If you allow me, since you mention that this affects several developers, I would like to comment that the concept of delivering a single common key does not seem like a good choice to me, because it has many risks, regardless of the possible error on the Itch website.

There are many printing companies that allow you to send them lists of URLs or codes and they generate the QR codes from those lists.

If you do it at home, with your own printer, there are several websites and applications that allow the same thing.

It is a little more work, but delivering a different key for each product is much safer and I think it would be good to mention it to the developers when they do new projects.

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Katherine Stark107 days ago (3 edits)

So I don't know if you've done printing before but I'm assuming not, because if you had you'd know that having print runs allow for unique keys (i.e. a unique page for every single copy) causes a huge number of practical problems depending on how it's implemented, ranging from significantly increased printing expenses through to skyrocketing labour costs. For large print runs like the Lancer core rulebook this is simply not a practical proposition.

In any case I am not here to argue the toss as to whether Massif should have taken a different strategy. For one, it is remarkably condescending for anyone to use hindsight to say "you should have done it differently" without understanding the constraints they were under or the practicalities of the printing process. For two, it's unproductive to say "you should have done it differently", because this is how they did it and it worked up until encountering the problem (which it's itch's fault, and needs to be resolved by itch). If the solution you're proposing is "don't use itch's services because they're unreliable and don't function as you would expect" that is certainly a solution, but not a good one from the perspective of itch or the creators who publish here.

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hechelion107 days ago (2 edits)

You assume wrong, I have had to work with hundreds of thousands of individual labels and also with their transferability.

As you say, there are associated problems, but since it is relatively common, there are many solutions available, including renting automatic labeling machines depending on the product format and volume. But in tests of a few thousand, we have had to label manually or outsource warehouse.

Anyway, my intention was to show alternatives that would help you, not to argue.

You are the ones who have been unable to redeem your game for a month and that is why I try to offer alternatives, but if you prefer to wait for someone solve the problem, that's fine, as you say it is your decision and from what I see, any comment is causing more irritation than helping, so I leave my part here.

EDIT:

By the way, my intention is not to have you change your system, but to consider alternatives when you see the problems that may exist.

If Leafo answers you and fixes the problem with the keys, it will obviously be the simplest and most effective solution, but because of my job, I always try to think of alternative solutions, especially when "plan A" does not depend on my resources.

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Katherine Stark106 days ago

I'll be real I'm trying to be polite here but I've said several times that I'm not Massif Press, so coming up with "alternative solutions" to a problem I don't have is incredibly unhelpful and unwanted. Please stop!

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