I’m sick of typing in product keys using a console gamepad, sick to the back teeth of it. Fumbling about with some arcane consonant usage for five minutes, only to find you transposed a Q and a W in the first quintet of alpha numeric pain.

The now ubiquitous “online pass” means that when I sit down on my couch, excited about experiencing the newest, flashiest, shiniest piece of electronic entertainment that the world of game development has to offer I’m confronted with a wild text box, and it’s super effective at puncturing any sense of excitement! I would love to meet whoever designed the algorithm for product key generation. I’m convinced it’s a star trek fan trying to impose Klingon onto the unwitting masses. Either that or Cthulu.

So while walking home one afternoon, I happened to see an advertisement on a bus stop that was offering mobile phone users a free ringtone. All they had to do was take a photo of a small square barcode and then SMS it to the designated number.  “What a brilliant idea” I thought, and then it hit me.

Why don’t we use a similar system for product codes?

Imagine that instead of just having a product key, printed on the rear of the manual, there’s also a small QR (