Last time I loaded BFD3 in a Cubase 11 project (Win10), it was de-authorized and so were some of the expansions. This time, I loaded up the license manager to register BFD Percussion, and 2 more packs have randomly become de-authorized. Nothing on the system has changed. It’s totally random, but is becoming very frustrating.
This has only been happening since the latest version.
2 Likes
I have a similar issue.
Yeah, this happens for me, too. I generally feel that onerous copy protection is only potentially a problem for those of us who actually pay for the software, and I’m beginning to think someone on your software team is trying to drive that point home.
2 Likes
Or just plain and simple drive us mad.
Neil.
1 Like
I should probably also mention that it’s not immediately obvious that expansion packs have de-authorized themselves. When using the plugin, some presets quietly fail to load. That’s it. Just quiet failure. It’s only when I start up the License Manager that I find out why the presets failed to load.
1 Like
I found that under normal operation, BFD doesn’t even refer to the license manager files. I don’t know what it’s looking at, but it’s not them. It seems more like the random deauthorization is related to whatever caching mechanism they’re using, and people having random de-authorization issues are experiencing something related to that.
Kit piece loading issues seem to be somewhat different. I ran into it only when I had duplicate BFD2 versions of BFD3 presets. I think it gets confused when there are both types of the same preset. As soon as I deleted the BFD2 presets, the issue went away. It doesn’t help that some expansions install both types by default.
It’s possible that these are somehow related. FWIW, I’m really not running into any of these problems at all on MacOS. However, I’ve probably put more effort into manually organizing my libraries than most. It’s possible that there’s some conflict related to scanning that I’ve just incidentally avoided.
I got this today in Cubase. In a freshly saved project, I hit play and the drummer’s gone to take a piss.
Open BFD, it says I don’t have a license. I launch the manager, try to rescan my products, can’t connect to server. Tried 2-3 times more, then logged out. Opened the browser, logged in to inmusic, launched license manager again. Now it sees my products. Great!
Open saved project again, drummer still not there. I open BFD, he’s shown up at the gig without a kit! Alright, let’s see if a previous saved project has retained the kit.
Open previous version of project, kit is thankfully there. Save kit as… (For good measure and knocking on wood). Open current project, load kit, all done!
See? Easy! 
Joking aside, is this caused by the whole authorization process? I’m most worried about kits in projects getting lost than anything else. Should I start saving the kits of each project to be safe?
Hi @soapmak3r ,
Thank you for the report, we shall investigate and be in touch should we require further information.
Kind regards,
Clive
2 Likes
Hey, @BFD_Drew … This UNDER REVIEW heading really helps, me at least. Makes it feel like the issues have been noted and are being looked into. Great addition to thread titling.
2 Likes
Finally got hit with it. I was beginning to wonder.
And, after I re-auth, everything works again. Everything was de-auth’d in the LM, including BFD3.
Still, if I’m facing a deadline, I would need to know ahead of time. My LM has been on recently. It should state that a re-auth is needed in x number of days, and give me an opportunity to forcebly re-auth, so it can be done on my schedule.
Or better yet, just don’t do that at all.
Is this on standalone? I see the kit is still there in the background. For me (windows), when BFD is used as a plug-in, the kit in the project is trashed(!) and woe be unto me if I haven’t saved the kit manually!
I can see from the keys in the com.inmusicbrands.softwareunlock directory that everything re-authed today, except the exact three expansions that required re-auth on July 1 (i.e. London, Eldorado, Platinum Samples’ BFCWK).
So, it would seem that those 3 are on a different re-auth cycle than the rest, which is no good! They all have to be the same!
Yes, standalone, although I’d be surprised if that were a factor.
I don’t think so either, I’m just relieved to see the kit survive in the back. 
I think that just means the scanning cache still works. I didn’t need to rescan. I only had to re-auth.
I still don’t know how to force the issue. At one point I tried modifying the file mtime way back, and that didn’t force it. I should delete all of those temp keys and see what happens.
Since my original post, they have all stayed authorized. This issue now is that if I intend to use BFD3 in a project, or load a project that has BFD3 in it, I need to remember to open license manager and check to make sure the authorizations have not self destructed.
This in turn, creates trust issues in regards to the reliability of the software, which is never good.
Loading up projects to see that the kit configuration that you had loaded is just gone, is simply not acceptable.
The key here is that any software protection should provide a better experience than the pirates are providing, but this is clearly not the case.
If botched releases continue, you could actually drive legitimate users to download a cracked version, just so that they can use the software they bought, which is absurd.
4 Likes
This, sadly, is not an unusual situation. There are apparently a lot of .nfo files saying ‘no copy protection means this works better than the manufacturer version’.
I really dont want this to be the situation for BFD. Its too much of an amazing app to have this happen to it.
3 Likes
Confirming this as well (Win10).
This is how I always use BFD, but I still havent put the latest version into any projects, or onto my main DAW machine. I’m going to check this now.
This would make BFD unusable for me tbh.
EDIT: FFS. Everything just got disabled AGAIN.
@BFD_Drew When is the next update coming out, and what is the progress on resolving this?
EDIT 2: I’ve finally reached a point of being fucking annoyed by this. This has happened EXACTLY 30 days after the last time it happened. This is clearly down the insistence on the LM having to check I’m a legit user EVERY SINGLE MONTH. Judging by last time this happened, I’m going to have to go thru this again in four days time. Does this also mean I’m going to have to go thru it a third time when the percussion set I bought needs renewing. This 30 day thing is dumb, and it means I STILL havent got BFD on my main DAW machine.
At what point will the system accept that I’ve bought BFD? Why do I have to prove myself every month? What is the reasoning behind this?
EDIT 3: As per the thread title, “BFD3 and expansions becoming de-authorized randomly”, this isnt random. Its clearly the 30 day LM check. There is no way I can risk BFD on the machine I was going to take on holiday/tour next month. The whole point of this tour is remote working. No internet. I am miffed. I’ll take the tiny drum machines I’ve got instead. This means I STILL cant use the latest BFD in ANY projects other than ones where I’m doing one take recording straight to audio, thats if it loads. I’m not even going to bother loading the LM and re authorizing everything until the next version comes out.
EDIT 4: I apologise for venting my frustration like that, but still… This is such a flawed concept.
2 Likes
When this (kit issue) happened, I tried to save the kit within the problematic project. When the file browser window popped up (so that I can “save as…”), I saw that a “Some_Numbers.tmp” file was already present in the name field. Now, I don’t know if that was supposed to be the (now defunct) kit in the project or the previously present and working correct kit, but I didn’t press save. Rather I opened up a previous project version and saved it from there, where I found it intact (after the whole authorization procedure).
So… I don’t know, I’m just speculating here, if there’s a cache(?), maybe it should be loaded even without permissions regardless of authorization. Refusing to play is one thing, there’s no harm done in that, but thrashing the kit is a different thing entirely.
Probably yes. And you see why people think it’s “random”. Depending on when they authorized a product, they might need to authorize single expansions every X days, on a monthly period. Tragic irony is: the more you support BFD, the more expansions you own, the worst you’re hit by this. If you’re in possession of 8 expansions, bought at 3, 6, 12, 15, 22, 25 of some month, you’ll have to reauthorize each every 3rd, 6th, 12th, 15th, 22nd and 25th of each month.
In my opinion this is obviously an oversight. There is no sane person that would maintain that this is smooth user experience. Keep in mind we are still discussing about 1 computer. Imagine having to manage authorization on two or three (the fxpansion era maximum) computers. You’d need to get one of those pill cases that have 30 compartments and put token pills in there to know what computer/expansion you should authorize that day.
2 Likes