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Katherine Stark157 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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hechelion157 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 Stark156 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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hechelion156 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 Stark156 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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