Using single retail copy for a LAN game

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jdmwood
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Using single retail copy for a LAN game

Postby jdmwood » Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:51 pm

Hi,

I've bought and installed Multiwinia on Steam. I then installed it on two desktop PCs at home, both using the same steam account.

When I try to play a hosted game, I get the error "duplicate authorisation key".

From other threads (e.g. here and here it sounded like Introversion had allowed LAN users to use a single purchased copy of Multiwinia, right? In fact as I understand it, you can even use the demo version as long as the host has the retail version.

So, anyway I tried in Steam removing the retail version from one PC and reinstalling the demo version, but annoyingly I think it "remembered" the old details and so I got the same problem. I then tried installing the non Steam version (the downloadable demo). This then says I can't connect to the hosted version on the Steam PC because it's not compatible or something.

So, can someone clarify:

* Am I supposed to be able to play with multiple LAN pc's if only one is retail?
* Can anyone suggest a workaround?


Cheers,

John
RabidZombie
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Re: Using single retail copy for a LAN game

Postby RabidZombie » Sat Apr 18, 2009 11:20 pm

jdmwood wrote:Hi,

I've bought and installed Multiwinia on Steam. I then installed it on two desktop PCs at home, both using the same steam account.

When I try to play a hosted game, I get the error "duplicate authorisation key".

From other threads (e.g. here and here it sounded like Introversion had allowed LAN users to use a single purchased copy of Multiwinia, right? In fact as I understand it, you can even use the demo version as long as the host has the retail version.

So, anyway I tried in Steam removing the retail version from one PC and reinstalling the demo version, but annoyingly I think it "remembered" the old details and so I got the same problem. I then tried installing the non Steam version (the downloadable demo). This then says I can't connect to the hosted version on the Steam PC because it's not compatible or something.

So, can someone clarify:

* Am I supposed to be able to play with multiple LAN pc's if only one is retail?
* Can anyone suggest a workaround?


Cheers,

John


It's all rather complicated. The official method of playing LAN games with a single key is currently to have the host use the key and the clients on the LAN authenticate themselves as demos. You did well in downloading the demo off the website, but you stumbled across a bug. LAN games are not checked against the list of versions known to be compatible.

Download the game from the website on all PCs. Then, use the key given to you by Steam (you can find it in \Steam\steamapps\common\Multiwinia\authkey - open it with notepad) to authenticate the recently downloaded copy. Use this to host, and the demo versions to join. It should work, without throwing the incompatible error.
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NeatNit
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Postby NeatNit » Sun Apr 19, 2009 11:47 am

Or you can remove that authkey file from the PCs that were supposed to have demos - that file is exactly how it 'remembered' it.
RabidZombie
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Postby RabidZombie » Sun Apr 19, 2009 1:44 pm

NeatNit wrote:Or you can remove that authkey file from the PCs that were supposed to have demos - that file is exactly how it 'remembered' it.


That would work too, assuming the Steam version is on all the PCs.
jdmwood
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Postby jdmwood » Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:59 pm

Yep that worked! (manually copying the auth key into a clean non-steam install).

Cheers guys

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