Confirmed: Looks like Digital Dream Labs botched their subscription system

A followup to my report about cloud service outages at Digital Dream Labs, that leads to Vectors no longer being able to react to voice commands.

At the time I write this text (monday, november 14th 2022, 16:00 MEST) there still is no official statement by DDL about this. Maybe because they are still asleep over in Pittsburgh. Anyway I would expect they do something about those service outages even on the weekend, since you paid not only for weekdays, but also for weekends.

Aside from that: I am getting multiple reports by users whose Vectors were on a lifetime from the Kickstarter campaign telling me that in stratus.ddl.io their robots status now is reported as “subscription expired”.

So it is as I already suspected: DDL did something wrong with these “three month free” licenses in their account system, leading to subscribed and lifetime robots no longer being subscribed.

What a mess.

I am now waiting for a denial statement about this, claiming everything is fine, in the vibe of DDL denying the overheating problems with firmware 2.0.

[Update:] One user with a Kickstarter lifetime got the following response from DDL via email:

Thank you for your email. You had a trial subscription for Vector that expired. As of October 1, 2020, Vector requires a subscription to access voice commands that start with “Hey Vector,” and to receive firmware updates. Without a subscription, you can still play with Vector but you will not be able to use “Hey Vector” voice commands. However, you will still be able to use Alexa commands.