but shouldnt stardock be able to provide me with a new cdkey ? I even took a photo of my receipt with the retail box, manual and cd all showing and included it in my email to them. It seems extremely unreasonable that they wont help me. I was polite and everything
Well, that's kinda hard to ask of them. First, it isn't Stardock that published the boxed retail version that you bought from EB Games. All that was handled by a third-party publisher and distributor. Stardock could only coordinate with the distributor, but they can't intervene.
Problem is, Stardock knows they provided a CD-key with each copy they've licensed to the folks distributing the boxed versions, so they don't have any fault. The actual fault - well, it probably happened somewhere between the publisher and EB Games.
Where I live, we only have one game retail chain (not surprising, since piracy is large here). Luckily, the retail support do everything in their power to assure each game purchased can be played out of the box.
They assure "100% Genuine" games and so they try to live up to that. I had a similar problem like yours, and they worked closely with me and Valve to get a Collectors Edition CD-key recovered.
So keep nailing their support, and if you can, even print out the email that Stardock support sent you. Anything mildly official could tip the balance in your favor.
