Bought CoH retail, can't activate through steam

Hello, I bought Company of Heroes: Gold Edition at Bestbuy. I just tried to activate it through steam because my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive, and it said that this key is invalid.

Fortunately, I have a desktop near me that has a DVD drive and I was thinking of using the DVD to download it on that computer, then adding it on my steam account through the "Add a non-steam game to my library" option. then I would go on my steam account on my laptop and download it through there. Would it work?

 

to activate a game through steam, it must either:

1. be a steam-only game (Valve games, Modern Warfare 2)

2. be purchased through steam

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Adding a non-steam game just allows you to take advantage of steam's community features and the steam overlay while running non-steam games and applications. You can add any program to steam using that method, but it won't help you install the application, it just lets you run the application with the steam overlay.

Basically, steam is not a tool that is going to help you install non-steam games on your laptop without a DVD drive. You will need to find some other creative solution to that problem, it is possible someone from here can help you with that.

 

Ahhh, thanks for the reply. Can anyone help me? I want to play this game really bad lol

 

You missed one.

If the publisher has an agreement for their retailer product to activate via Steam then that's a third option. I purchased a retail copy of Football Manager 2009 and it allowed for telephone, internet or Steam Activation. I activated my game which I purchased via Amazon.com an activated on Steam.

 

You are going to need to find a way to transfar the content of the disc to your computers hard drive, an external dvd drive will probably be the easiest way. Even then you are likely to need to get around the need to have the disc in the drive, which will involve some work that I do not believe is legal and therefore can not be expanded upon.

 

install into ur desktop then copy the files with usb stick...

??

 

that would work?

 

It may, but generally game installs put in quite a few registry settings. Honestly, I'd just go back to Best Buy and get a USB DVD drive for $50. I can't tell you where or how, but I hear there are ways to run games without the disc in the drive, or a drive connected.

 

ahh, If i borrow one, can I just download it and add it to my game library in steam?

 

ok then, here's a way that deffo will work if your willing to put half hour into it (and save $ on external disc drive, and can be done repeatedly so you don't have to borrow disc drives).

rip an .ISO of the disc on your desktop and transfer it to your laptop, get Daemon Tools Lite and install on your laptop.
use daemon tools to create a virtual disc drive on your laptop (this will show up in my computer as an actual drive as if it were plugged in and existing) and mount the disc image into it. install it as if it were in a disc drive

VOILA
any help needed on this, PM me, i'll be happy to help.

 

Somehow it'll pick up the missing CoH Disc and won't run the game if you just mount the iso on Daemon Tools. Only way he can play it is to get an external disc drive ._.

You can try emailing Relic or Steam and ask them about this case? Maybe ask them to swap the cd key that you own with one that works on steam or something

 

Relic has one of the wackiest or shall I say dumbest approach to installing a PC game i've seen in a long time. I gave up trying to install from disc CoH and Opposing Fronts on the same drive. It just doesn't work.

Part of the problem that i've read is that they include all previous material on their expansions which explains why CoH was a 3GB game and the last expansion which I didn't get is around six or seven GBs. And their patch system is just as bad and confusing until you realize the above.

 

CoH is City of Heroes. Get it right, noob.

 

I'm pretty sure he's referring to Company of Heroes, an RTS game that's available both via Steam and retail.

 

LOL, how does that shoe taste?

 

I don't know where the confusion came about as the OP made it pretty clear it was Company of Heroes !

Quote: "Hello, I bought Company of Heroes: Gold Edition at Bestbuy. I just tried to activate it through steam because my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive, and it said that this key is invalid."

 

i would just borrow the drve install it then crack it

job done

isnt against the law, nothing they can do about it. Cracking the software isnt an offence, he has brought a license to play the game if thats the way he needs to play it then so be it

 

Morally it is fine as no theft is done, yet it is not legal.

 

i checked at BestBuy, they have external dvd/cd writers, but on the tag it says it can read dvd's. are those the right one's?

 

Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts not working - THE DAEMON TOOLS FORUM

does work, just some versions of DTL are funny with it.

 

If it's a program specific problem, another program you could use would be PowerISO.