Are you one of the dozens thousands who picked up Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for your handy dandy PC? If you have, you may be one of the truly lucky people who can’t install it. That’s because it is missing some characters in their CD Keys. But not to fear, as Electronic Arts was quick to address this issue and have told frustrated gamers how to fix this frustrating issue:

Guess!

There is currently a work around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try “guessing” the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination and be able to play the game.

…that’s beautiful. Really.

It should be noted that since this story was first reported by 1UP, EA has changed their help page. It now reads:

If you are trying to install Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 and the code is only 19 characters long, then it is missing the last letter or number. This was due to a misprint on a small number of manuals and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

In order to get a replacement code, please click the “Contact Us” link on the left side of the page to send an e-mail to our team.

I guess somebody over there saw that and went “Aww, shit.” Either way, to suggest that we guess, rather than give people an honest to God answer… oi, man. Oi.

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