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In a nutshell this February I upgraded to the newest version of Army Builder and get the license for auto updates to support the product. In doing so I renewed the license for one year. A month later the updater tells me it expired so I email customer service asking why. The reply was they do licensing on a yearly basis based off the date you originally activated the license and what I should have done was pay $25.00 (USD) for a 2 year subscription to get 13 months of service because, in my case, I originally purchased AB in March (even though it was years ago). I upgraded in February and paid for the year license. Now had I waited until March the same amount of money would have been good for a 12 month license.

Is this an asinine way to do business or am I wrong in thinking if I pay for 12 months of service I should get 12 months not one?


I know I can get the updates from the site but I am one of those folks that actually wanted to support the product I use and help them pay the rent.

Whilst I don't use Army Builder personally this isn't the first time I've heard of this happening. Their licensing practices are a bit boneheaded and lack a lot of common sense.

That's really unacceptable. I would tell them that you are going to your credit card company to get your money back, because they really are not being fair with that.

I'm not spending another dollar with them.

I have multiple PCs (part of how I work) and they refuse to allow me to have more than two licences without paying more for the same software that I'm only using one at a time. Since their software uses a phone-home authentication system, it would be possible for them to acknowledge that it's still just one person using it and enable on as many machines as possible (like Steam), but they won't.

Then, they insist that we keep paying, year after year, to benefit from the work of volunteers providing updates. They go out of their way to point out how they're not in violation of any copyright issues because the datafiles are provided for free, by volunteers. So, if the only thing I'm getting on a continuing basis is provided free by volunteers, why should I keep paying their rather high licence fees, year after year?

On top of that, because of GWs crackdown, the updates provided by these volunteers are of less value than they had been in the past. I can no longer mouse-over options for a summary, instead, all I get is a page reference. I realize that's a result of whatever compromise exists between GW and the 40k dev team, but it makes the end product less useful to me.

I find their entire business model distasteful, and have walked away. There are other options out there. Check out this thread for what looks like a promising new tool.

I never really understood why Army Builder became so popular, since it seems to be a substantial overcharge for a program with a 1990s-era interface where most of the substantive work is not actually done by Lone Wolf but rather by the file maintainers. Also, its output is cluttered and bad-looking. Unfortunately, some events actually mandate the use of this application!

 Kingsley wrote:
I never really understood why Army Builder became so popular, since it seems to be a substantial overcharge for a program with a 1990s-era interface where most of the substantive work is not actually done by Lone Wolf but rather by the file maintainers. Also, its output is cluttered and bad-looking. Unfortunately, some events actually mandate the use of this application!

well, to be fair, didn't it start in the late 90's? Basically it was the only dog in the fight for a long time and no one has come up with something that has caught on to overtake it. It is just the defacto army program, as bad as it is.

ive had the same problem and is the reason i stopped supporting them. Its a stupid policy and I feel no guilt when I download the update files for free

 pretre wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
I never really understood why Army Builder became so popular, since it seems to be a substantial overcharge for a program with a 1990s-era interface where most of the substantive work is not actually done by Lone Wolf but rather by the file maintainers. Also, its output is cluttered and bad-looking. Unfortunately, some events actually mandate the use of this application!

well, to be fair, didn't it start in the late 90's? Basically it was the only dog in the fight for a long time and no one has come up with something that has caught on to overtake it. It is just the defacto army program, as bad as it is.

Certainly it did, but if I'm paying a subscription fee instead of a one-time purchase, I expect that that fee means that I am paying for constant development and a cutting-edge project.

I just downloaded Battlescribe. Going to give it a whirl.

Boss GreenNutz wrote:
I just downloaded Battlescribe. Going to give it a whirl.

I use it on my PC an iphone, it's really great and easy to use. The new WoC army book was out for it within a week of release.