Cannot Request Offline Developer License for Visual Studio 2012 Windows Store app by Lachlan01

We are very sorry about your dissatisfaction with licensing system within Windows 8. We understand that this is a pain point and we have forwarded your feedback to the Windows team.

Hi, I've reopened this issue, as it's something you're going to have to deal with at some point unless you want to completely alienate your governmental customers, such as my employer (a huge MS customer in NZ).

We have been discussing building a kiosk app which will be deployed on a Win 8 tablet, but we have no way to develop it as our dev machines absolutely cannot be internet connected.

The lesser issue of licenses suddenly expiring is also highly nauseating and needs fixing, it seems to be Murphy's law that when you are on holiday in the middle of nowhere your license will suddenly expire and you can't do any work. Who thinks of these things?

I don't know how many times I've had to reiterate on Connect WE ARE NOT ALL INTERNET CONNECTED ALL THE TIME.

Thanks

I don't think you understand. Unless you release Windows 9 very soon with a fix for this, we (the US gov't) are going to start looking for alternatives to Windows. If Apple has the consumer and the government (plus other organizations with similar requirements) is fleeing Windows for Linux, who exactly do you imagine is left?

There should be at least a grace period, that you can still continue to work at least a few days before you absolutely need to renew the license. This popping up in a airplane, or isolated customer premises like a mine, where you're debugging the problem really makes it more than a hassle, you're wasting working hours/days because of this.

I have to say that this is a bit surprising. I'm in a similar situation where we isolate internet access via GPO and Proxy for certain machines and would love to see some sort of a local activation for isolated machines so that I can at least follow along with the demos. At the very least I would love the option to export a dev license, sneaker-net it to my isolated dev machine and import it.

Surprisingly, when looking for what IPs or URLs should be allowed through a firewall so as to give our security group the warm fuzzy about enabling certain locations, I am unable to find any official microsoft documentation on what access should be opened up for acquiring a developer license.

We are very sorry about your dissatisfaction with licensing system within Windows 8. I will forward your feedback to the Windows team. Thank you for your understanding.

Just had a look again at those links below, and it appears all comments have been removed from the msdn page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh974578.aspx

Or perhaps it was another page where I saw a bunch of negative feedback to this massive oversight?

Sorry, I don't accept that lame fob-off, hence I've re-opened this item.

You are going to have to deal with this situation at some point, as this affects a vast number of your (somewhat loyal?) customers. i.e. those working for government departments with sensitive data.

Although, I suspect it won't be long before hackers rip Windows 8 wide open and remove the whole requirement to install via Windows Store (if history is anything to go by).

There are already many people complaining about this on the internet, and Win 8 hasn't even been released yet!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12666836/developing-windows-8-metro-apps-offline
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh974578.aspx
http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3165766-allow-development-of-windows-store-apps-offline-

Come on, stop making life hard for us PLEASE.

We agree that this is a valid customer scenario, but we unfortunately don’t support this in Windows 8. You’ll require an internet connection to acquire a developer license in order to be able to develop Windows Store apps.

Thanks for your feedback.

We are rerouting this issue to the appropriate group within the Visual Studio Product Team for triage and resolution. These specialized experts will follow-up with your issue.

Thank you for your feedback, we are currently reviewing the issue you have submitted. If this issue is urgent, please contact support directly(http://support.microsoft.com)