Hey guys, sorry for the trouble!
Our current operating theory is that this is Windows 8 or Win 8 upgrade related.
We've done tests and haven't reproduced it yet on Windows 8 (even with the preview before it was officially released). We are assuming right now that it is somehow account/folder related, and that the license has gone sideways as a result.
Normally you shouldn't have to do ANYTHING really for reactivation to work - it just does it on the next restart.
From the screenshot, it looks like you're Win8 too.
The support team is going back through the tickets now looking for any that are overlooked or dangling related to this.
For anybody stuck while we try to figure out what's going on, we should be able to give you a Steam key so you can keep playing in the interim.
Again, very sorry for the difficulty. We'll do our best to figure it out quickly.
Thanks Travis for jumping on AnandTech and welcome to our humble abode. We love you here (which is why I personally haven't raised holy hell - I know you guys are going to work on it, and in fact I finally got a reply from Ben on my ticket so thanks).
But one thing - and I hope you guys keep an eye on this thread - as my original post mentions, my issue has NOTHING to do with Windows 8. I run Windows 7. My issues happened after a motherboard/CPU upgrade on the same existing OS.
I am more than happy to help you guys iron this one out. Feel free to use me as a guinea pig.
I have a hypothesis, given you have a tool to "clean" the license on the machine and it's not working. Given I am responsible for software licensing for the company I work for, I'm thinking you might be doing something similar to what we do. But anyway... like I said, you guys are more than welcome to use me as a test bed should you see fit.
This would go a long way to mending fences for me, even though I haven't purchased TL2 (yet?).
However, we have no way of knowing if you actually work for Runic. Is there an official announcement on Runic's site you can reference? How should affected players go about obtaining said steam key?
Good enough for me. Pretty sure random people won't go signing up pretending to be Travis Baldree and telling people Runic will be happy to offer up a free steam key for Torchlight 2 to get people up and running for "in the meantime".