Well this fucking sucks.
Apparently Digital River - the company that handled HeR Interactive's digital games sales closed. HeR no longer has access to those sale records and basically can't do anything about sales beyond 5 years ago.
So I'm shit out of luck. I had the bonus edition of all the games I'm missing - you get to collect phone charms in the game and you get an award for getting them all, you got the bonus edition with pre-orders.
So looks like my collection is no longer complete and I need 3 more games. I've got them on my steam wishlist so I'll wait and see if they go on sale.
I mean it's kind of my own fault for not realizing I had to save more than the download manager. Basically for games 28 onward when you download your game from the server you download an download manager exe, which then downloads the actual install files (previous digital games had downloaded a zip file). With the servers offline those download manager files no longer work. And I didn't save the install files. I can't remember if they warn you of that or not. If not they should.
Thankfully the download managers for MID and KEY still work. I'm going to make sure the install files are uploaded to my external where I keep the ND games. Starting to think I should go back to buying physical copies of stuff tbh.
All the articles online are only talking about the company's bankruptcy (which is understandable), but in terms of what HeR has to say about it, all I could find is an article from 2012. This honestly sucks for any ND fans out there who relied on the digital purchases. I'm reblogging just as a heads-up to anyone out there for whom this may apply to (and trying to see if there are any potential solutions as well).
Just an FYI you can still access the bonus versions from any copy of the game (I have all the bonus versions as physical copies but I rebought the series on steam a couple of years ago for convenience and you can pry the bonus versions from my cold dead hands)
Here’s what you do:
Press ctrl+shift+tab+c and a box shows up. Go to either ‘Flags’ or ‘Logic’ depending on the game and search for ‘Bonus’. Check the box next to the bonus version flag, they’re named different things in different games but it should be obvious. If you want the phone games do the same thing searching for ‘games’ or ‘phone’ or whatever. Check that box too and hit save. Now you once again have the bonus version that you bought and paid for!
!!! yes!!!! Oh I love you random internet stranger. Just tried it on Ghost of Thornton Hall and it worked great. So that's one bright spot anyway!
Woooooo!! Happy to help, fellow internet stranger! Happy sleuthing :)

















