This activation thing is not unique. Even the company that put out Trackmania United has this crap now. You just get 3 activations, period! It is ridiculous if you ask me. A friend of mine bought a copy of TMU for me and my wife so we could join him playing the game online. I already had it activated on my pc using my wifes copy which only allowed me to play on her account. (you cant have multiple profiles on the game with a single cd-key) When he bought the copy for me to play I just used the cd-key to set up a profile. Since I have re-installed XP a couple times and upgraded my pc. I cannot use the cd-key and serial no. he supplied me because starforce says that the numbers aren't on their server list! So I have a cd-key and serila no. that are useless. Fifty bucks wasted!