Beware of Bad Mojo: Redux from Got Game Entertainment

Executive summary: beware of Got Game Entertainment‘s downloadable games. Bad Mojo: Redux‘s DRM locked me out, despite the fact that I bought it legimately. Their tech support was slow and couldn’t fix the problem, so I eventually fixed it myself. To their credit, they offered me a refund and a couple free games, but still…

I love old-school, point-and-click, Kings Quest style adventure games. Sadly, they’re not mainstream any more, but there are a few smaller, less established publishers that still specialize in them. Got Game Entertainment is one of them.

Got Game has a wide selection of adventure games for the PC, Mac, and PSP. What’s better, they sell many of them online as direct downloads, including Bad Mojo: Redux, which I’d been looking for for a while. As soon as I saw it, I plunked down my prepaid credit card, downloaded it, fired it up, and played it happily for an hour or so.

When I came back a couple days later, it complained “Bad Mojo CD not present in drive C” and refused to start. I searched Google and found other people with the same problem, but no solution.

I emailed Got Game’s tech support, and over a week and a couple follow-up emails later, they finally responded. They asked a few basic questions, over the course of a couple more weeks, and finally told me that they didn’t know what the problem was! Disappointed, I asked for a refund, since I couldn’t play the game. They finally agreed, but it took them a while.

I don’t like bad-mouthing Got Game publicly. I’d much prefer to support and encourage companies that sell adventure games. It’s clear that Got Game is a small, independent outfit, and founder Howard Horowitz is well-intentioned and passionate about adventure games. I can’t help being a little disgruntled, though.

Anyway, here’s the fix. Bad Mojo uses the badmojo.ini file to determine where it’s installed. By default, it looks for the file in its own directory, e.g. C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\. However, if a badmojo.ini file exists in C:\Windows\, it uses that instead.

In my case, the Bad Mojo installer put an incomplete badmojo.ini file into C:\Windows\. It had only these lines:

[badmojo]
Preferences=1111110
[SoundMix]
SoundOn=1
DumbSound=0

I copied these lines from C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\badmojo.ini into it, and voila, no more error!

[BOOGER]
BACKGROUND=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\OVER;C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\BACKGND
TOPO=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\TOPO
BTC=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\BTC
PALETTE=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\PALETTE
SCRIBBLE=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\OVER;C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\SCRIBBLE
CEL=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\OVER;C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\CEL
SCRIPT=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\SCRIPT
ROACH=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\ROACHD
MOVIE=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\OVER;C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\MOVIE
MASH=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\OVER;C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\MASH
SOUND=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\SOUND
SAVE=C:\Program Files\Bad Mojo\SAVE
USER=Ryan

Alternatively, deleting C:\Windows\badmojo.ini also fixes the problem.