Ok this is silly. You guys need to fix this authorization mess. I commented on March 13 in another thread about not using BFD3 in a couple months. When I opened the LM, I was all authorized and it refreshed my licenses with a fresh 90 day counter. I have been using BFD3 fine since then and even yesterday I had it loaded up in Pro Tools.
Just now, I needed to open it to make some tweaks and re-print my drums for a project and I got the dreaded disabled screen. It’s been two weeks since my counter was reset to 90 days. No hardware changes, or OS updates. This is clearly not working and it needs to be sorted. I had no issue authorizing again, but there is always the chance that it could be my unlucky day with the servers not responding, as has happened in the past.
On top of that, once BFD3 was up and running again, I had to revert to an older session save state because the kit isn’t loaded when it comes back online and I wasn’t certain if I had saved my preset recently in the project.
For the love of God, please ditch this online authorization. There’s been enough users in the past 3 years that have been pulling their hair out with this and as a result, leaving/selling BFD3 altogether… some very faithful and longtime users of the products. Do you really want that? Do us a favor and just use the machine authorization file scheme that Fxpansion used. We rarely had issues with that.
Not used my copy for a couple of weeks either so thought i’d see what would happen if i were to do the same as yourself… same experience here.
Last time i authorised here was a couple of weeks ago too.
This is ULTRA CRAPPY!!!
THIS is why people get hold of software ‘via other means’, because of inmusic’s paranoia and lack of software development.
Hello!
I’m a newbie, I just bought BFD3 and after some successful tests… I have the same problem
Is this some major failure?
Do I need to authorize again? Maybe you have to wait a while and the authorization will fix itself?
Please advise!
The issue is, the timer isn’t working as it was intended… users are getting deauthorized with weeks/months still available on the counter, as was my recent case. It’s arbitrarily de-authorizing. It’s clearly broken, or there is a bug somewhere triggering it to do so when it shouldn’t.
The counter idea was a bandaid-solution for inMusic to be able to continue with this intrusive authorizing scheme and try and calm down frustrated users, but it hasn’t really worked.
This happened to me just a few minutes ago. I used to love BFD3. It was my go to drum software. Now I use Addictive Drums 2, Komplete’s Kits & Battery 4 because they are what BFD3 isn’t… Reliable!
At this point I just have fun with it, I got approval for the very last track still using BFD3 and with that it’s the end of that run (at least for work).
Whatever improvements come I’ll buy, use and appreciate but I see no way for inMusic to do anything but press on with worse and worse anti-consumer practices (as nearly everyone else is doing also). And finding myself NOT recommending BFD to people has felt pretty shitty but I realize that’s my nostalgia still hanging on.
Having said all that I’m absolutely sure there will be a great turnaround with a BFD4 that’s snappy and responsive and modern and all that wonderful stuff, but I hold no hope for the DRM keeping it reliable during crunch time, where hilariously enough current BFD3 has failed me the most.
#metoo. had been doing my best to remain positive and objective but 3 strikes and i’m out. really wanted to dig into Dark Farm, but getting de-authorized every 10-14 days killed that dead. just bought SD3 and 3x expansion packs to give them a thorough workout before the rest of our team invests in it. so far so good, at least with the latest expansions. and i’ve been made aware of at least one potential alternative being developed.
perhaps they’ll turn up in a business case on how to antagonize and alienate a long time customer base.
The thing that BFD4 has going for it is that it won’t be using the current LM, which is causing the issues. The problem, is we have to wait a year and pay for a possibly more reliable experience.
The ongoing LM issues are especially demoralizing when we see InMusic working on BFD Player. Clearly they have developer resources; they’ve just chosen to ignore existing customers and put those resources toward a new product rather than support an existing product that, once upon a time, was something customers applauded enough to give “BFD” a good name.
Yeah I’m impressed with BFD Player, I’m just using this thread to vent frustration. I wouldn’t expect inMusic to put that many resources into such an old product, and the fact it still works at all after all these years says a lot (as does the fact that we’re still on software THAT old, but it is what it is).
I see BFD Player and the new Alesis edrums as proof that BFD is being taken serious by inMusic and that gives me hope.
Yup, BFD3 is now completely unusable for me. It simply doesn’t work on Mac Sonoma. And as someone here previously mentioned, the BFD Player is absolutely fine. And I’ve been with BFD since day 1 and I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to see that InMusic has zero interest in supporting professional users. Superior Drums here I come.
Yesterday I opened license manager to find BFD3 and all my packs had to be re authorised.
After re authorising, that took only seconds, everything ok again and back to 90 days. However, I can guarantee that within a few days I’ll have to do it again. Hope I’ve not spoken too soon.
It’s annoying. But I have to say, for me, it’s been quick and painless. But for a lot of users it, the licensing issue, is causing a very big problem that doesn’t seem, on the surface, to be being addressed.
Same thing happened to me yesterday. I strongly believe the auth system needs to die but I’ll still mention exactly what happened in case it helps support (or other people):
I have two versions of Cubase on my system (12 & 13). I’m currently working on a project that I started in C12 and don’t want to transfer over to C13. But Windows has associated .cpr files with C13 and I accidentally double-clicked one and opened it in C13. No big deal, it happens, I immediately closed it and opened it in C12. Started playing the project and lo and behold: no drums!
Opened the BFD3 instance to be greeted by the authorization prompt…
As the OP mentions, authorizing does not get you to a working and loaded instance to BFD3 so you need to reload the project. This, depending on the project, may take a lot of time, and it feels much longer (and a lot more awkward) if a client is sitting next to you…
If you guys don’t want to ditch this stupid system you need to at least give users the benefit of a doubt. Instead of essentially disabling the software you should assume that the user has a legit copy and for some reason didn’t refresh their 90-day-period. Once the software becomes unauthorized (for reasons than are more often than not purely random) BFD needs to still load properly with a popup warning that on the NEXT load it will be disabled, and prompt you to authorize.
At the very least assume that the majority of the users are legit, and pretend that you make software to be used by professionals…
For the record, I used to recommend BFD3 literally all the time, but I can’t do it anymore… It still is my favorite drum engine though, despite your continuous efforts to destroy it.
