Purchased SCORM Content Disabled by Developer

Jan 16, 2023

Hello, this is just a question, as I have never seen this happen. We purchased a library of content, and it looks like it was a subscription, not the content itself. So now the subscription with the provider expired, and we were not planning on renewing it. How can SCORM content living inside a secure system be disabled? Is it possible for published content to check with the provider if a subscription is still valid when it was published as SCORM content inside an LMS?

4 Replies
Christy Tucker

SCORM Cloud Dispatch works this way. The provider creates the SCORM files and uploads them. Then, they create a dispatch file, which is a small SCORM file that you as a customer can use in your LMS. That SCORM file doesn't really contain the content though--it just calls back to the server where the provider has the content. That provides a way for the provider to check if the subscription is still valid and disable your content if you quit paying. It's a good way for providers to manage subscriptions, plus it lets them update content without even needing to send customers new files.

https://rusticisoftware.com/products/scorm-cloud/dispatch/

You can see for yourself if the SCORM files you have actually contain content. If the zip files are tiny, they probably don't. If you open up the zip files and see lots of audio, images, etc., then the content is there, and it's probably a date control like Phil suggested.