EVERY file I try to download goes to the download "staging" page, then immediately to a page that says nothing but "file not found". I thought maybe the url's were somehow getting mangled, so I tried shortening them one file/folder name at a time until I got to "http://download.gamespotcdn.com" and *even that* short url gave me the "file not found" nonsense. Can anyone tell me what's going on?
EVERY file I try to download goes to the download "staging" page, then immediately to a page that says nothing but "file not found". I thought maybe the url's were somehow getting mangled, so I tried shortening them one file/folder name at a time until I got to "http://download.gamespotcdn.com" and *even that* short url gave me the "file not found" nonsense.
Can anyone tell me what's going on?DemoAddict
Yes, what I believe has happened is your account was just created today, and you're blocked from downloading due to your account being only Level 1. That would be my guess.
I just downloaded a demo here without any problems, so there must be a level requirement associated with downloading files.
I think topse has the right idea - it's probably the result of either being a level 1 user or the result of being a user that just registered minutes earlier. Historically, some of the restrictions related to level were not spelled out very well in obvious messages - things would just fail in odd ways. I thought a lot of that had been resolved, but it's been a long time since I did any testing with a new account. The other thing we would sometimes see reports of were strange things that would happen with accounts that had been registered just minutes earlier. Again, historically, it could take a new account 20+ minutes to "sink in" to the system. That's even harder to test. Just as an observation, download URLs are eccentric and may not take well to being edited. Either way it probably comes down to waiting. It looks like it has already been several hours since your post, so by the time you see this it might be worth trying again just to see if it was a brand-new-account issue. If the problem persists, it might actually be a level issue, and you could try again after reaching level 3, and maybe letting one more day pass after that. I think that can often be done in less than a week, perhaps as little as 4 days or so. Again though, I have not tested that recently.
URL shortening download links works fine as long as you do it properly, namely replacing all %2F with / and the %3A with : and using just the part after destURL=; really though, if the initial link doesn't work then it's likely that shortening it won't either, if the URL is just that top level part shown in the OP then it obviously isn't going to find the file. Typically the URL should be the top level, followed by a brief letter-number combo, then gsc, then the genre, and then the game/file name itself. If any part of the URL is missing a 404 is almost certainly going to appear. Just as a check it'd help if the OP posted a specific problem link, so we can confirm whether there's actually something wrong with the link or if it's just a low level/new account issue. This download appears to be broken (the URL is fine, the file just doesn't exist), I'm unaware of any others that are actually broken aside from the URLs themselves being wrong on hotspots though. I recall mentions of issues with PC downloads at one point though, so this may just be one of the problem downloads in relation to that.
Log in to comment