Friend no longer owns the game I gifted to him?

[IndyBender]

Greetings, fellow Vintagers,

When I purchased VS I went ahead and ordered the bundle where I could share 3 copies with other people. So far, I've shared two, and one of those friends suddenly found himself no longer owning the game? I don't remember the exact details, but if I remember right one day the two of us hopped on the game and logged in, although my friend was having trouble doing so. I believe he went to try and reinstall the game, and upon logging in to the website found he no longer had the game, or something to that effect. I'm just wondering if I'll have to buy the game for him again, or if there may be a way to 'recover' his ownership of Vintage Story.

Thanks for any help!

[Rudometkin]

7 minutes ago, IndyBender said:

Greetings, fellow Vintagers,

When I purchased VS I went ahead and ordered the bundle where I could share 3 copies with other people. So far, I've shared two, and one of those friends suddenly found himself no longer owning the game? I don't remember the exact details, but if I remember right one day the two of us hopped on the game and logged in, although my friend was having trouble doing so. I believe he went to try and reinstall the game, and upon logging in to the website found he no longer had the game, or something to that effect. I'm just wondering if I'll have to buy the game for him again, or if there may be a way to 'recover' his ownership of Vintage Story.

Thanks for any help!

Don't buy the game again, unless you just want to help support the devs more for their fine work on this masterpiece of a game. You are entitled to what you paid for. Have you written a support ticket to Anego studios yet? That's what I would do, unless anyone here has any better solutions first.

I think I should check with my friends to make sure their copies are working now.

Edited July 2, 2025 by Rudometkin

[IndyBender]

14 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

Don't buy the game again, unless you just want to help support the devs more for their fine work on this masterpiece of a game. You are entitled to what you paid for. Have you written a support ticket to Anego studios yet? That's what I would do, unless anyone here has any better solutions first.

I think I should check with my friends to make sure their copies are working now.

I think I will write a support ticket, I saw that I could after I wrote this post but was debating on whether to wait for my buddy to get off work to write a ticket himself. It is strange, considering we'd played the game no problem for like months, but scheduling became an issue and so we hadn't played for a while. Seeing the news about Hytale and stuff recently has kinda motivated me to actually try and resolve the matter, so hopefully things can get cleared up.

I'll have to ask my friend if he remembers more about what happened that day, my memory ain't so good.

[Enjen]

1 minute ago, IndyBender said:

I think I will write a support ticket, I saw that I could after I wrote this post but was debating on whether to wait for my buddy to get off work to write a ticket himself. It is strange, considering we'd played the game no problem for like months, but scheduling became an issue and so we hadn't played for a while. Seeing the news about Hytale and stuff recently has kinda motivated me to actually try and resolve the matter, so hopefully things can get cleared up.

I'll have to ask my friend if he remembers more about what happened that day, my memory ain't so good.

I would suggest your friend creating the ticket! Simply because it's his account that's having the issue. if the staff need any info there is no problem with Sharing his info with anyone other than your friend. 

Also Welcome to the Forum! I don't think i've ever seen anyone use the term 'Vintager' hahaha gave me a chuckle because it sounds like 'Integer'. I hope you enjoy your stay and your friend's issue gets resolved!

[7embre]

21 minutes ago, IndyBender said:

I think I will write a support ticket, I saw that I could after I wrote this post but was debating on whether to wait for my buddy to get off work to write a ticket himself. It is strange, considering we'd played the game no problem for like months, but scheduling became an issue and so we hadn't played for a while. Seeing the news about Hytale and stuff recently has kinda motivated me to actually try and resolve the matter, so hopefully things can get cleared up.

I'll have to ask my friend if he remembers more about what happened that day, my memory ain't so good.

Yeah, write a support ticket. What I can also suggest is to try looking for help in discord, maybe you'd get it resolved sooner, as support might be pretty busy right now, given all that Hytale stuff happening.

[Thorfinn]

Unless maybe his key was found on the dark web or something, your buddy still owns it. Probably even then, assuming he can explain it.

Most likely, though, you guys tried one evening when the authentication servers were having troubles, and he interpreted being unable to log is as he no longer owned a copy.

Make sure he's installing properly. You have to have .NET7 in the stable release (1.20) , and .NET8 if you want to try the pre-release (1.21). Use the links from VS downloads page. Some people end up on the wrong landing page at MS now that it's been officially retired.

[IndyBender]

27 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Unless maybe his key was found on the dark web or something, your buddy still owns it. Probably even then, assuming he can explain it.

Most likely, though, you guys tried one evening when the authentication servers were having troubles, and he interpreted being unable to log is as he no longer owned a copy.

Make sure he's installing properly. You have to have .NET7 in the stable release (1.20) , and .NET8 if you want to try the pre-release (1.21). Use the links from VS downloads page. Some people end up on the wrong landing page at MS now that it's been officially retired.

As I understand it, if my memory serves correctly, it doesn't even say he owns the game on the website anymore. He did manage to log in, I think he'd forgotten his password on the game itself and went to the website or something along those lines. I'll check in with him as soon as he's available to confirm that though.

[Thorfinn]

That's not a problem (most likely) unless he's also changed emails. They will transfer it for you, but if your friend no longer uses that old email, and has forgotten his PW? Above my pay grade, for sure. Or possibly he never got it properly registered in the first place. Then it probably doesn't matter. I still have unused keys I give away from time to time, and they still work fine last I tried.

But if it says it's an invalid key or something, it's definitely support ticket time. I've never seen a message like that.

[Rudometkin]

Maybe your friend's copy fell into a rift portal.

Was he near a rift the last time he logged out?

Edited July 2, 2025 by Rudometkin

[IndyBender]

Well, to update now that I've had time to contact my friend:

He's just an idiot. I think that he presumed that his account was gone when he tried to log in via the Anego Studios page here? I say that because he didn't have an account here but did on the actual Vintage Story stuff, so just a minute ago I told him to go to the downloads section in the Client Area tab and tried to see if he actually still had the game available to him. Long story short, the way I figured out he was mistaken was when he reset his password on this page, and then had to do so again when trying to log in on the Downloads page.

He downloaded and logged into the game just fine afterwards. I may just throttle him through the monitor...

Thanks for the help and replies, fellow Vintagers, I cannot believe what just happened.

[IndyBender]

9 hours ago, Enjen said:

I would suggest your friend creating the ticket! Simply because it's his account that's having the issue. if the staff need any info there is no problem with Sharing his info with anyone other than your friend. 

Also Welcome to the Forum! I don't think i've ever seen anyone use the term 'Vintager' hahaha gave me a chuckle because it sounds like 'Integer'. I hope you enjoy your stay and your friend's issue gets resolved!

At least 1 of the 2 things I set out to do with this post worked out, I'm glad 'Vintager' was to your liking!

[Rudometkin]

23 minutes ago, IndyBender said:

Well, to update now that I've had time to contact my friend:

He's just an idiot. I think that he presumed that his account was gone when he tried to log in via the Anego Studios page here? I say that because he didn't have an account here but did on the actual Vintage Story stuff, so just a minute ago I told him to go to the downloads section in the Client Area tab and tried to see if he actually still had the game available to him. Long story short, the way I figured out he was mistaken was when he reset his password on this page, and then had to do so again when trying to log in on the Downloads page.

He downloaded and logged into the game just fine afterwards. I may just throttle him through the monitor...

Thanks for the help and replies, fellow Vintagers, I cannot believe what just happened.

It's alright, sometimes computers are super confusing. Thanks for the update, I'm happy to hear it went well.