Sounds like your friend needs to buy the game. Then he can update.
he bought the game, but he is no fan of any portals like steam and impulse, which is nothing more like an online drm. i dont like those platforms too, but i was so dumb and registered my game 
hmm, relice-net (company of heroes for example) at least provides you the downloaded files and not like impulse which downloads the files and pathes the game in one run.
i liked sins very much coz of the none-existing drm stuff, but impulse is the worst kind of drm. there is no diff between secue-rom and the other online drms, but a community network sounds much better but is exactly the same.