It took me several times to understand what they meant by content.
Those are keys for reviewers and streamers. Companies steal and sell them, without giving anything to the developers. Now that makes sense.What do you mean “companies steal and sell them”. How? Like they are hacking into the email accounts of streamers and stealing and selling the key before the streamer can activate it?
Or they are stealing them from the developer directly somehow?
I don’t see how this would be feasible…
More likely that the streamer or reviewer receiving the free key is selling it on these marketplaces.
That’s one option. Or the sellers scam the keys posing as reviewers or streamers. Or a streamer shares them with friends, and they leak that way. Some combination I imagine.
I always assumed key sites were using stolen credit card numbers and acted like Karma was watching (as in, I don’t want my credit card stolen, so I won’t benefit from those of others).
Indie game devs are bombarded with free game requests.
I read about one indie dev who woke up to a dozen emails a day asking for a game key to “twitch stream” their game.
It becomes extremely exhausting to verify every single one, and so many just hand it off and hope that one emailer really is who they say they are and they suddenly get a shitton of sales.
Can confirm, I get emails daily.
To add to that, if they are using stolen payment info, then they’d probably have no qualms about stealing yours too
Crazy thing, but my credit card info was recently stolen and after closing it, making compensation claims for my bank and filing a offence report to the police I contacted the three different online store the card was used with.
The only one that responded was a key seller and they even refunded me the money.
Maybe they’re workinh in such a grey area that they want to avoid all possible legal trouble?
Factorio devs once put out a blog post about game key stores. Essentially, they were running into the issue of people buying factorio keys with stolen credit cards and then reselling them for cheap on G2A or whatever. Then the credit card would get identified as stolen, charge backs would be issued, and bank fraud departments would get involved. As a result, the factorio devs were actually losing money from stolen credit card sales.
Of course, factorio is in a somewhat unique position of never putting the game on sale, so if you’re getting it cheap it’s probably from some dude using a stolen CC.
as a teenager i did a lot of business with shady key resellers. now i’m missing an unknown number of games from my library as a result of chargebacks and fraud. i’m fine to buy them again, but i’m gutted that i lost all my playstats, achievements, cloud saves, screenshots, etc. i’m not even sure what all is missing :/
Wait, really? You lost your cloud data?
if its steam, none of the stats are lost, if they repurchased the game they would have it again. You just can’t buy a game you don’t know is missing. I don’t think cloud saves are ever deleted, I’ve had cloud saves be restored when I refunded and then humble choice provided me a key to the same game 4 years later.
Yeah, I thought that was the case. But there has to be a way to see what games you have previously played.
Depends a lot on the game company though. Sometimes I am willing to pay for the convenience while ensuring that I fuck over the publisher/developer. Sometimes you want to play a game developed by a company you dislike.
That doesn’t even make sense tho, why are they giving out 1000s of free keys?
Yeah, I’ve never bought this. “oh no, someone redeemed a code we gave away/already sold”
So if a person who received a key sells it to someone who might have bought it from the official channels then the devs do not receive that money but the so called “content creator” gets it. The content creator was supposed to make a video or whatever of the game in exchange for the key. It’s also a breach of trust. Basically “content creator” begs for a key and says it’s for video or a stream, but then sells it is just a dick move.
It was a gift, no?
Who are you to tell me what to do with a gift. Its mine after you give it.
Software industry understands neither property nor consent.
Okay but then you are still a liar if you pretend to be a content creator so you can source free keys to flip. Why is a dev not allowed to be upset when they got duped by a liar?
Also, like, lol… that’s entirely on the marketing people to do their job and vet.
I do not care, even in the slightest about a marketing departments “losses” from issuing CD keys.
Not even in the slightest. Its the cost of doing business.
No other industry, not even the software industry, gets to do this.
Unilever sends me some shit to review? They’re not allowed to be upset about the eventual fate of those things.
CD keys are property, and property is tradable.
Just because the original intent is X or Y, doesn’t mean dick for shit.
If they didn’t like it, maybe they shouldn’t issue so many free copies.
At some point they have to take responsibility for the keys they’re minting. They can always issue time-limited keys.
There’s so many technical solutions to it and so much crying over the resale that I just do not buy the story.
Because they should be angry at their incompetent marketing people who didn’t vet the keys they sent.
Each key they send has a cost, and this is part of it. There are technical solutions to their problems, in the form of running a beta for the streamers, and releasing beta-only keys
This is a fabricated story because the keys they’re complaining about have no reason to exist. Its pure incompetence on the manufacturers marketing teams part.
I think that’s stretching the definition of “gift” a bit far, no? A gift doesn’t come with strings attached (even if unenforceable).
If these streamers aren’t being contracted, then it is basically the same as a gift. Selling the key is still perhaps morally dubious if there was an expectation of promotion, but that’s as far as it goes.
These streamers are a business expense to drive their marketing department. They could time-limit the keys or limit them to a beta just for the streamers, but they just blindly issue fat tranches of keys and get upset when people use the copies of the game they minted.
The CD key is conceptually the same as a game cartridge. Why would I -not- give away my review copies of a Nintendo 64 title?
Ya’ll cooked if you can’t see it. You’re all jumping infront of the bullet for companies who’s purpose is to make money, like Apu.
If your justification is “it’s not a crime” you’re well aware it should be.
Why should it be a crime? Spell it out for us.
The property becomes mine, I resell it. Nothing here is illegal.
Then I don’t think you’ve ever received or given a gift? A Faustian bargain is not a gift.
So, what happend to evaluation keys, valid for 20 days after activation… Would solve a bunch of problems.
Some devs feel like it’s a dick move. If the content creator actually did stream or review it, it’s a bit of a slap in the face to then claw back the key.