Hello, I work at Radio Shack in northern Canada (not to be specific), and we received a shipment of SOF2, about 8 boxes, in the new small case size (I miss the big boxes). Anyway, I had sold one to a customer and he brought it back the same day, saying there was no CD Key. Curious as I am, I looked at the CD case, and sure enough, there was no CD Key. I tried installing the game, and it asked for the CD Key, so I tried rummaging through everything... the case, the CD, the manual, the other documentation, and even the box itself. I thought it might have been that one copy, so I opened a new box (with permission, of course) and found the same problem - no CD Key! We're now stuck with a couple of opened SOF2's in the stock room and can't sell them (but we've already sent the rest back to the warehouse). Is there such a thing as some copies of SOF2 being shipped without CD Keys? Thanks for any kind of input.

There were isolated instances of this happening before, but I don't think I'd heard any reports of entire shipments going out without keys.  Most of the times I've heard that it happened, the user brought the game back to the store and got another copy (and opened it in the store to check) and it would have a key in it.

It's strange, isn't it? Don't these CD's go through a printing press or something? You would think that everything would be slapped uniformly with a CD Key. This is the first time I've ever seen a CD Key missing at all, so it deeply disturbs me how the game labels and such are printed...

Well, the CD-Key is supposed to be on a sticker underneath the second CD (the case flips outward)...so were the stickers there but blank, or were the stickers just missing altogether?

I could see how the process could fail at various steps and produce both outcomes, but it doesn't seem like it's a very common problem.
And can you not return those copies of the game to your distributor, since they were delivered in an incomplete state?

i had bought a copy of return to castle wolfenstien that had the cd key missing, so yeah, i took it back and got a new one...

besides that maybe the cd's missed the cycle where they get stamped, i mean, that sounds unlikely but..maybe one of the factory workers got bored or tired and somehow forgot..

my best suggestion would be to tell your store manager to see if he can return that shipment, (i would check the other cases as well, maybe 2 random  copies out of each box), because, for all intesive purposes, your dealer..or whomever provided you with your shipment of sof2 software, sent you damage goods. i equate the fact that the cd is unusable without a cd key to it just being the same as having 8 boxes of cracked cd fragments

i believe they also should accept the others that you opened, because they are damaged as well...but thats my 2 cents

as i like to say corporate reality and how things really work are two COMPLETELY different things

It's not always under the 2nd cd, when it comes in a DVD box the cd-key is on the sticker at the back of the booklet. Of course the topic starter already had a look there twice already...

every sof 2 game i have seen has had it behind the second disk.

Sounds FISHY to me!!!

haxors!