I was gifted Black Ops Cold War on release day a few weeks back. I was able to install it and play it perfectly fine until last Tuesday.
After an update, the ‘Play’ Button in the battle.net app was greyed out and a message appeared, which stated ‘You cannot play this game yet’. I ignored it and thought it would eventually fix itself. I tried every fix i could from clearing my cache to resetting my wifi router.
After 2 days it had not fixed itself and so I decided that I would uninstall the game, only to discover that I was unable to install it as the ‘install’ button was now greyed out.
Upon switching on my PC the next day, the game did not even show up in my library, it simply said ‘Buy Now’ in the battle.net app. Although i checked my blizzard account on the website and it showed up as being owned by me.
I am extremely stumped as both activision and blizzard have so far ignored me and I cannot think of any more I can do except ask my friend to gift me the game again.
Thanks for any help that you can give.
From what you describe the game key was removed from your account. Where did your friend get the game key from? There are two or three scenarios here:
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Your friend bought the game key from Blizzard and due to a transaction failure, chargeback, or refund request, they got the money restored to their card/payment method.
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Your friend got the key from a grey market website that re-sells keys. Those are often purchased using stolen credit cards or other fraudulent means. Once the card is reported stolen the bank will notify any merchant with fraudulent charges to invalidate them. That includes removing game keys grated by a stolen card purchase.
You can put in a ticket to ask if the game key was really removed, or if it is a display error. It sounds though like you checked the website Bnet account yourself though and the key is no longer there. Billing can’t see more than that.
The person who made the purchase is ultimately the one who needs to follow up on it. If they bought it through a third party site that scammed them into buying a fraudulent key, they need to try to get their money back from that site.
We have seen quite a few gamekeys lately for various games get invalidated because of third party site scams. It is always best to get the key straight from Blizzard. That way any issues can be sorted with Blizzard directly by the purchaser.
I have the same problem did you manage to fix it ? i am pretty sure my friend gifted me the game through battle.net directly
Howdy FozexD,
If it was gifted, there should’ve been a notification in the Blizzard app you can click to claim the key. If not, get the CD key from your friend and manually claim the key on your account by going here.
If you still need help, then please create a support ticket and include that CD key.