Those who bought Red Alert 3 during Steam’s holiday sale are finding themselves with a partially useless game purchased at a fairly low price. Steam users report that the downloaded copies of Red Alert 3 don’t include serial numbers, which the game requires for online play.

A similar issue occurred recently through Steam with the digital sale of Spore. That problem seems to have been resolved, and at least one Red Alert 3 player has been able to rectify the current error, though the solution required the game to be re-downloaded directly from EA (complete with SecuROM DRM).

Still, EA’s eventual intervention in Steam’s Spore issue is a possible sign that these Red Alert 3 owners will get their fix as fast as possible.

Update:

EA today confirmed to Joystiq via Twitter that the issue had been "quickly resolved," further adding that "all is well back in Steam land."