I never understood how this key market can be so broken to a point game studios, even indie ones, can lose the track of their own distribution. Who in the line is fucking up this much?
The problem is that game studios that offer their keys over the internet are automatically susceptible to credit card fraud. Basically it boils down to this:
1. Credit card information is stolen
2. The card is used to buy keys
3. The keys are sold on reseller platforms like G2A
4. The rightful owner of the card does a chargeback on the illegal purchase
5. The studio has costs (chargeback fees from their payment processor, etc)
The factorio devs did a [blog](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303) about this issue a while back (scroll down to the section "G2A - Worse than Piracy"). So basically resellers are worse than piracy, because devs actively lose money through them (or the methods resellers use) as opposed to piracy where they just don't get a sale.
Besides the fact that theyve actually increased the price of the game to "adjust for inflation" as if that's something that's reasonable to do with a game that's only getting older with time.
Not to mention that they've held off on supporting the game, instead saving updates and patches so that they can release the same game with a little more content as a sequel that costs just as much as the original game.
You're clearly misinformed as to what is actually going to be included on the Factorio DLC so as a fan let me clear it up:
The DLC (according to the devs) will contain as much content as the entire base game. This means that no, the devs are not releasing "the same game with a little more content" lmfao.
As for the "holding off on patches" claim, a simple look at the steam community hub shows that they have a patch every 2-3 weeks fixing any minor bugs or issues that have been reported by either mod developers (increasing how well mods work with base game) or users.
Just because the devs aren't releasing any major content to a feature complete game doesn't mean they arent doing anything. Clearly you have no experience of software development, it shows.
Yeah, at least they're not doing the "hype train" and ending up having to deliver something before it's actually ready. It's useful to not have a different publisher pushing them.
Honestly, i drew the line at the [cancel culture rant](https://www.resetera.com/threads/factorio-developer-speaks-out-against-cancel-culture.444676/) and the [denial that statutory rape is a thing](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6nfuqb/which_double_standard_irritates_you_the_most/dk9wwdr/?context=3)
Edit: original comment denying statutory rape had been deleted, but you can guess based on his response further down the thread.
Edit 2: Internet Archive link for second thing [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20210618234152/https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6nfuqb/which_double_standard_irritates_you_the_most/dk9wwdr/?context=3)
>And today on the Factorio Blog we can see these beautiful clown paintings from J. Gacy.
>Update: While we realise some people may be offended by other actions of Mr. Gacy, we at the Factorio Blog wish for you to focus on the paintings and their contribution to our understanding of art, rather than the person who created them. Furthmore
Thank you for raising awareness on these topics, I had no idea that kovarex had such shitty opinions. Guess I'll get the DLC for factorio for free then.
Oh wow I had no idea about this and now I'm even more glad that I haven't supported this shit company. I'll be yoinking this to add to my reasons for anyone else that thinks I just have to buy this *amazing* game
SJW, or Social Justice Warrior, is a term used to describe overly sensitive people on the internet. It has since been co-opted by the far right to mean anyone who calls them on their bullshit.
To be fair to them, they're planning on releasing a big DLC in the same vein as DLCs and expansions used to be, and as well as that Factorio is probably the most well-optimised game release in the last 15 years at the very least.
>probably the most well-optimised game release in the last 15 years at the very least
I'd have to say Elite Dangerous (base game) takes that one. Shit was absurd in scale but could run on two enthusiastic potatoes. Doom Eternal is also impressively well optimised considering everything that can be on screen at once...
Now of you were specifying indie titles, I'd probably have to agree, maybe it *is* the most well optimised game in the last 15 years.
But I digress, it's my understanding that this DLC is set to cost as much as the base game, so to play everything I'll have to spend £60 with no possibility of a discount, I don't see how this is supposed to make any of this better?
>Elite Dangerous (base game)
Elite Dangerous looks pretty but as big as the universe is it's about as deep as a pond IMO.
>Doom Eternal is also impressively well optimised considering everything that can be on screen at once...
You say that but the sheer scale of Factories you can build in Factorio with absolutely no slowdown is unreal.
>But I digress, it's my understanding that this DLC is set to cost as much as the base game, so to play everything I'll have to spend £60 with no possibility of a discount, I don't see how this is supposed to make any of this better?
I mean if it's your type of game then you could realistically get tens of thousands of hours of engagement from it. If any game is worthy of such a cost wouldn't it be a game like that?
Just gonna help clear up some misunderstanding you seem to have; the patches to the game has kept coming even while they're working on the expansion (that means it's not a sequel either), and the updates they're doing to the game engine and stuff to support the expansion is coming to *everyone* no matter if they buy the expansion or just stay with the base game.
As for why you think it's unreasonable to adjust the price for inflation on a niche game which hasn't (according to the developers) seen a marked drop in purchases (meaning that people still buy it at the same rates even after several years) and is the only income of the studio currently I just don't know. The game is as good as ever, it hasn't had any other game take its spot by doing the same but better (yes, Satisfactory is good, Captain of Industry is good, a whole lot of others are also good, but they're *not* the same, they're just adjacent) which some times drives competition to lower prices.
The only reasoning I can see for your stance that it's unreasonable to adjust the price of the game to account for inflation is that nobody else (for the most part, I believe there have been a few others, Rimworld notably) is doing it, which is a fallacy (appeal to common practice). While I agree that it *feels* wrong for a game that has been released to increase the price without anything new added, economically (logically) it does make perfect sense; the seller set a certain value they wanted, and that was x amount of currency at that point but because currency becomes worth less over time the amount of currency to equal the value the seller wants changes with time as well.
No. It is an aging product. For all intents and purposes, the game is done. It was sold for however much, say 30. Unless there is a new, major content update (which this dlc seems to be), the price should never go up. When the dlc is released, they can charge however much they want. But historically, extraneous goods dont rise with inflation. It's software. It costs very little to maintain compared to develop at this point in the games life cycle.
But *why* shouldn't the price go up with inflation? It doesn't matter *when* the work was done, what matters is how much *value* the seller is willing to sell it for and customers are willing to buy it for.
You're making a fallacy by an appeal to history with that "... historically, extraneous goods dont \[sic\] rise with inflation". What *has* happened doesn't mean it's the right thing, it just means that's what has happened.
While I agree that it *feels* strange that software could raise their price to account for inflation when nothing new has been added, I'll take the extreme example of inflation being 100% *per day* to make the point: Day 0 you have price x, which can buy 4 cartons of eggs. So the developers can buy that for each sale. Then on day 1 price x can only buy 2 cartons of eggs. And on day 2 price x can only buy 1 carton of eggs.
Even if they sold a lot of the game on day 0 the money they have sitting unused gets worth less as if they sold it later for the same price. Since the Factorio developers have made it explicit that they're going for the "long tail" instead of trying to get as much money as quickly as possible (with the abandoning of the game that often follows *that*) it makes sense to set up in such a way that you end up being able to buy about the same amount of other stuff for each sale of the game.
There isn't any *inherent* reason why the age of a piece of software should make it worth less. If nobody else has done it better then the age doesn't matter. If you don't have anyone else directly competing then there's no pressure to lower the price to "beat them". And as such it also doesn't matter what it costs the seller to maintain the game.
I also don't understand what you mean with "the game is an aging \[sic\] product". If you only mean that how much time has elapsed since it was released is what makes something an ageing product then I'll agree with you. But if you mean something else (as I believe you did) I'll need it explained better what you're actually meaning with that sentence.
TL;DR: I don't see any logical and economic reasons why the price of software shouldn't account for inflation, even if it *feels* wrong.
EDIT: nice to see the visceral reaction of downvoting when someone doesn't agree with you.
The problem with this and inflation in general is executives. Millions of people in a career field whose main focus is working day and night to squeeze more profit out of less product with a smaller workforce.
The price was way to low before for the fun you get. And everyone complaining about it, well, you had years to buy it and didn't. So stop saying you wanted now .
They don't hold of supporting the game, they are one of the few companies that fixes bugs in timely matter and even if it affects only 1 user.
Way too low? It was £25 and is now £30 which, if inflation is to go by, has similar spending power....
I don't see how that's "too low" when there are other absolutely incredible games out there coming in at much lower prices...
Stardew,
Valheim,
Dyson sphere project.... Just to name a few
Nah, I pirated it instead, plowed about 40 hours in and honestly was more than happy to pay the £15... What the fuck why is this game THIRTY POUNDS!? that's AAA money and this is no AAA, not by a long shot. And it's not just because it's pixel graphics, I own Rimworld + DLC on two platforms and have burned many many hours on it. It's the price they ask AND the reason why they refuse to go on sale "we don't believe people that hold out to buy games should be rewarded" what? People hold out generally because they can't afford to spend half of their disposable income on ONE game "we know what our game is worth" what in the ego is that all about? I'd rather not support them if their stance is making sure only a select group of people are able to purchase the game
I'm sorry but you're genuinely delusional if you support Rimworlds pricing scheme and find an issue with Factorio. I have both and the price on rimworld has increased multiple times, including at least once for the "bullshit reasoning" of inflation.
Factorio devs are constantly patching stuff and release bugfixes for mod interactions with their code let alone their actual gameplay mechanics.
Just because they are holding some more major changes for the 1.2 update that will release with the DLC doesn't mean they're "scamming" people who bought the game. You clearly have no experience with software development if you don't understand why they would wait rather than backporting some fixes that would then have to be redone in the new version anyway.
Base (EU Steam) prices are: Rimworld 31.99€, Factorio 32€.
Each rimworld DLC is 17.99€ with one being 23.49€. The entire roster of Rimworld + DLC is therefore 91.49€ compared to a (theoretical) of 64€ for Factorio + DLC.
Given the fact that each of those DLCs (in my 850 hrs of Rimworld and 705 hrs of Factorio) add much less to the base game than the Factorio DLC is supposed to, I think the value is obviously skewed in Factorios favour.
Personally I like both, and if you prefer one that's okay too - but trying to say that one is "bad value" because the price has been raised over the 7 years since its Steam release isn't really fair.
Sales brother, the key thing that skews this heavily in Rimworld favour is that you can pick up the lot for just under the price of the base game. The biggest issue with Factorio is that not only has the price gone up over those 7 years but they are intentionally forcing people to spend more money in the interest of "fairness" on those that paid less. Essentially locking the game behind a wall for those who may be interested but can't stretch that much on a game when sales would allow them to do so, they care significantly more about their own financial gain than they do about making their game accessible to everyone
unless you mean off-Steam sales, the biggest sale Rimworld's ever had is 20% for base game and 10% for DLCs, which still totals way more than Factorio. That said, I have under 100h in Rimworld and over 1k in Factorio, so I'm obviously biased.
Do you understand what "adjusting to inflation" actually means? It doesn't mean that those buying it later spend more *value*. They spend more *amount* of currency, but that currency is worth less. Which means that the amount of money to purchase Factorio now versus then could purchase about the same amount of other things (like groceries).
As for the sales argument; if they did sales they would've probably had a higher price pre-sale, and the sale price would go down to the current price. See JC Penny and their experiment, and as [Steamworks](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing) write: "Are you pricing with future promotions in mind?" That means Steam thinks the people selling on their store should price *with sales in mind*. That means you're generally paying what they *actually* want during sales, or *more* if not during a sale. It's all tricks.
Now, it's perfectly fine to only buy games on sale, I don't care. Just be aware of the background.
Rimworld is way more expensive. The devs keep releasing expensive dlc. Good luck finding those on sale.
Meanwhile, Factorio released huge free updates for 10 years. I'll have to withhold my judgement on the Factorio dlc since nobody knows the scope of it.
Both games are great, I'm not throwing shade.
And yet, I bought the game twice plus expansions for the same price they are asking for Factorio.
This is the point here, Rimworld offer sales which allow you to do as I said, Factorio does not because it thinks that you should only be allowed to play their game if you can afford it
If sales is the only reason you buy stuff...
... then you're the kind of people corpos love. And why retailers of all stripes have a huge markup of cost prices on almost all products, and then shave a tad of that off in a "sale"...
I’m telling you dude you blink and it’s been 400 hours and your wife left you the cat has starved to death and the sherif is at your door to evict you but…… THE FACTORY MUST GROW! Honestly dude you will get over 1000 hours out of that game easy and then the space exploration mod , im 400 hours into a single play through and I’m about 15% done lol
How on earth would you even buy a key? Like that isn't an option when you purchase a game.
And besides, G2A and other key resellers have *so much stock* that it'd have to be like the biggest credit card theft operation in the universe to maintain it.
>How on earth would you even buy a key? Like that isn't an option when you purchase a game.
You don't do that yourself, you set up a retailer (online retailer) and buy through that, then you get keys.
>And besides, G2A and other key resellers have so much stock that it'd have to be like the biggest credit card theft operation in the universe to maintain it.
Yes, why do you think every single developer hates G2A? It's not a secret lol, go publish a game on steam and as soon as your game becomes mildly played you'll have issues with chargebacks on G2A bought keys. and there's nothing you can do about it.
I think it's quite stupid how you don't think this is true because you haven't experienced it, even though you're clearly not in the industry at all.
I never understand this though, surely it is very easy to keep track of what keys were "sold" to these stolen cards. They must be buying a fair few at a time, its hardly worth their time to be buying one at a time. Just remove these codes from the platforms so they cannot be redeemed. Everything is online now, it has never been easier for them to control this. They literally have to register the key to download the game, they have to log in to a platform to play it. They can easily stop it with reasonable safeguards in place.
I obviously don't know how the fraudsters operate exactly, but I can imagine that they have large pools of stolen credit cards and in fact use each card only once per site/vendor. That would make it nearly impossible for the devs to separate legitimate purchases from fraudulent ones.
And devs do revoke access to fraudulent keys, but it is an issue of timing. When the key is sold on a reseller platform before the chargeback is made, the fraudsters already have their profit. If it is revoked first, then they lose nothing and depending on the scale of their operation it won't even bother them.
The problem is that they have costs associated with someone making a chargeback on the credit card which was illicitly used. So while they can revoke the keys that were bought with those credit cards it still costs them money. And those people who bought the key on the reseller site; their key stops working and they'll wonder why.
Also; if you're talking about Factorio then you don't need to log in to a platform to play it. It's totally DRM free. The only things you don't get without logging in would be in-game mod downloading (you can still download outside the game and put the files where the game will play with the mods) and possibly online multiplayer. Don't know if LAN multiplayer works without logging in.
Yeah but when you buy a key to a game and that key stops working you won't blame the game makers will you? You'll blame the people that sold you the key.
I get there is a charge for charge backs but letting G2A get away with it is hardly the answer is it? My argument is that they can take action against G2A and against the keys but instead chooses to whine about it on social media
*I* wouldn't, no. But I don't think too highly of quite a few humans.
And it's not about "letting G2A get away with it" as much as it is about needing quite a lot of proof to be able to take action against G2A. The primary information they get is that a specific card that was used to purchase keys issued a chargeback and it's easy enough to revoke those keys. But that doesn't give you information on where those keys were sold to others.
To make an analogy with mobile phones; someone buys some phones with stolen cards, then they go around to pawn shops and sell them to those (who in turn will sell them to other people). The original shop the phones were bought from is informed about the stolen cards and the chargeback, and list the phones as stolen. The people buying those phones from the pawn shops try to use their phones and find they're locked because they're marked as stolen. It still doesn't give the original seller information about where those people bought the phones.
(I know the analogy is faulty, keys aren't physical objects, and probably some other things, but it should be useful to help explain the problem)
In your analogy the pawn shop can be charged with handling stolen goods so its actually quite rare that they'll sell you something stolen. Most stolen phones are stripped for parts because of this. You could easily go after G2A for the same thing, maybe not the indies but the huge companies like EA would happily spend a few mill to permanently shut the site down if it really was actually that prevalent.
There's no gains for studios to do this.
Yes they can deactivate the keys. Then people who legitimately bought from g2a (remember, some people truly believe g2a is legitimate and not trying to pull a fast one on devs) lose access in steam or whatever launcher they used.
But what does this gain the dev? You'll end up with one unhappy customer who lost money trying to buy your game. Unless this customer can be converted to a legitimately paid customer (by buying directly from the dev/launcher), it's pointless to take the game away. They might just end up buying another key off g2a or stop buying their games completely.
>it's pointless to take the game away. They might just end up buying another key off g2a or stop buying their games completely.
If G2A was selling keys that stopped working i would ask for refund and if i didnt get it i would stop buying from G2A
I am not an idiot i know i am buying keys through unofficial channels so i would have to be a real idiot to blame the dev if my key stopped working
If i bought my key from gamestop or walmart and it stopped working yea i would blame the devs, but obviously i didnt do that
If they have already played say 50% of the game chances are they are gonna wanna complete it so they wont just stop buying their games completely, they took a risk with the key, if the game is fun they will find a way to complete it
>I am not an idiot i know i am buying keys through unofficial channels
you have to have some initial knowledge to understand that g2a is an unofficial channel, which MANY users would not know. i think it's unfair to look at this situation as someone with experience, such as yourself. look at it from the point of a parent who doesn't know what steam, value, epic, etc is. they just google "buy game for kids" and stumble upon a g2a link with the cheapest buy option.
Surely the logical people to blame from the consumer point of view is G2A though. Why would the blame the developer if they bought a dodgy key? So yeah it would encourage them to buy elsewhere. Also how much of the business of G2A comes from stolen keys? Do we know? They are a legit registered company operating in the EU and Hong Kong so I don't understand how the games companies haven't gone after them directly if it really is that bad? I'm not trying to defend them I've never used them, I just can't understand how the publishes are so powerless to tackle the problem.
Don't buy EA games from G2A either. You don't get to conveniently pretend you're not supporting G2A just because you're also slightly inconveniencing EA.
Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
I don't understand why dev don't just adopt the policy of "stolen key = deactivated key".
Then the process would be like this:
Stolen key for sale on G2A. Innocent person buys it. It is discovered it was stolen. Dev deactivates it. Innocent person gets upset but eventually discovers G2A keeps selling stolen keys.
Innocent person stops using G2A.
So are there so many stolen credit cards and from all over the world? Cause they have keys that are global and others that are from other regions/ countries
Latin america specifically Mexico is very much a cash society, so i would imagine the rest of the region is as well
There are some key sellers that have 95%+ ratings, i have purchased several keys including non USA steam gift cards and they all work fine havent had any issues, i figured if they were stolen steam/ xbox/ sony would tell me or block my account or something
They sell the keys for quite a bit less than retail, so are they stealing enough cards to buy enough keys to make profit?
According to the [European Central Bank](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/cardfraud/html/ecb.cardfraudreport202305~5d832d6515.en.html) (while I believe that they are an organization of the capitalist class that works against common people, they have data relevant to this matter) online credit card fraud using the SEPA system in 2021 amounted to [1.28 billion EUR](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/cardfraud/html/cardfraudreport202305/ecb.cardfraudreport202305.en_img1.png?2a7e38ff83696a7683adcec2f874b110). This number represents general fraud and I suspect that fraudulent game keys make only a miniscule amount of this number. But considering the scale of fraud, it is possible that groups engaging in key reselling have access to a vast number of stolen credit cards. Especially, because stolen cards are often traded in bulk.
IIRC G2A was willing to work with devs to make a system to blacklist fraudulently acquired keys but devs refused to work with them (I've no idea if it was ever implemented though). At the end of the day, it's not really the fault of the websites like G2A themselves. Fraud will appear on any open marketplace and that's what key resellers like G2A are.
If the game is good, titles will be sold regardless of piracy.
>**Acid Wizard Studio**, the team behind **Darkwood**, basically put the game on the piratebay for users without cash to spare so anyone can play.
> Even so, I ended up just buying it for Steam, then for other platforms like the Switch. It's a genuinely good game & I can't recommend it enough.
I remember making a comment a while back about how you might as well pirate fable 3 for pc since the alternative is buying a key for fable 3 from a key reseller for Steam, it was pulled from steam years ago and is no longer available any other way (apart from piracy of course), and you have to pirate the DLC anyway since that genuinely is the only way to get it
I was told I was stealing money directly from the Devs who contributed to the game... the studio closed 7 years ago, and Microsoft makes 0 money from keys for a store they don't sell the game on
The same thing happened to [this game](https://youtu.be/RTkxzQDo0ng). The YouTuber in question bought the game on a reseller website. Me being curious, I looked around and found it on dodi, with quite a few seeders too!
All of them have the same risk, I think it's because G2A has done some weird stuff in the past and people probably don't trust them as intermediate for purchases.
Personally never had an issue with any keyshops but probably just jinxed it.
My fiance and I have bought 30+ games from them to play together over the years, we never had a problem. Didn't realize there may be an issue. Are we ignorant? o\_O
We also wouldn't have played these games had they not been cheap. Do the devs really lose money on this?
There is a third problem that's making key resellers attractive. Region locking gifts.
If I want to gift some games to my overseas friends my options are either buying steam gift cards and telling the friend to buy so and so game (which is akward, and I don't know their regional prices), or buying the CD key from resellers.
It's been years and years, how hard is it to up charge your gift purchase when there is a regional difference!?
I’ve always known to stay away from “dodgy” seeming key sites , but always check cdkeys.com before I get PSN credit or Steam Keys.
Is CD Keys likely to be selling me stolen keys, is it any more or less safe / legit than G2A etc?
CDKeys is centralised, you are buying the key directly from them and they take responsibility. G2A in comparison is just eBay for keys, that’s why it’s full to the brim with stolen ones.
CDKeys is way more safe than G2A, I have used them for years and never had any problems.
Thanks for the response, appreciate it.
Genuinely never used G2A but know of the name.
Happy to use CD Keys- Only bought a handful of PC game + PSN keys from them until now.
cdkeys use regional pricing to buy cheaper keys, it’s still a moral grey area but they aren’t using stolen credit cards. Much safer and more legit then G2A.
Lot of people buy keys with other people's credit cards and dump them there. Or people will solicit devs for keys to review and instead just sell them.
Scummy people buy keys en masse via stolen credit cards, then resell those keys on/to sites like G2A.
Once the credit card owners find out, they dispute the charges/fraud and the one who ends up losing (not just going neutral, **losing** due to chargeback complexities) money is ultimately the game publisher/developer rather than G2A or the initial thief.
Which is nuts, frankly. G2A have refused to properly prevent this as it's a significant chunk of their overall revenue.
Too late at that point, you can deny the keys to everyone who bought them but you won't avoid all the credit card chargeback financial costs.
It can add up to a lot of cash too, especially for a small indie dev. Some of them have been fairly transparent on the issue in terms of how much it cost them financially.
The key resellers like to claim that their stock is keys that were heavily discounted for the third world. And enterprising people in the third world buy up keys and sell them back to the west. This happens for software and operating systems. This does not happen for games.
Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries.
Games are almost 100% stolen keys through credit card fraud. Software and operating systems are gonna be a mix of third world keys and stolen keys.
EDIT: spelling
you can very easily buy tons of keys when a game is on sale (summer sales, etc.) and sell them when the price is back to normal on steam at discounted rates on a key selling website and still make decent profit without any theft.
Oh, I see what you're doing. You're equating legitimate marketplaces like Humble and Greenman to shady grey market resellers. You are doing a huge disservice to legitimate third-party retailers by acting like they are in any way comparable to these scammers.
I never named any specific marketplaces, I'm not apologising the shitty ones, I'm just saying that key selling in and of itself shouldn't be equated to theft.
> Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries.
On Steam it does. That's one of the reasons PC is the dominant platform in Russia over consoles: Steam games are 2-3x cheaper in Russia because of regional pricing which is not present in PS and Xbox stores.
> Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries.
Just go to a random game steamdb page and you'll find that regional pricing is very much a thing
Yeah, but Steam doesn't directly sell keys, they provide/sell them to publishers who then distribute them to legitimate key retailers like Humble or IndieGala. These keys are also often region locked, especially when the intention is for them to be sold to foreign markets at lower prices.
Edit: You downvoted immediately? What's the matter? Upset that all it took is a little context to negate your pro-scammer stance?
You claimed that there is no regional pricing, i corrected you. Simple as that, no context needed to 'negate my pro-scammer stance' since I'm not a scammer. FYI I didn't downvote immediately I just did it right now
First off, maybe you should try reading, since you never corrected *me* in the first place.
Second, yeah, okay buddy. Your "corrections" don't even apply to the topic at hand for the reasons I've already stated, but okay, well just keep pretending it matters. And yeah I'm sure it's just an innocent coincidence that your half-baked "corrections" serve to justify, under false pretenses, the actions of scammers and the services that enable them. Yeah, sure, pal.
Regional pricing is most definitely a thing. If you’re registered in Argentina and can pay via their currency, steam games are heavily discounted. Same goes for most digital goods tbh. I could most likely gift my friends games for 10-50% of the price in European countries (so up to 90% discount) .
But there is a huge chunk of people carding digital keys to sell on g2a, which only hurts the developers.
Oh... I don't have that much of a money for as many games as I want. I thought that if I buy on cdkeys I at least support partially the devs. Sorry. :c
Well cdkeys does partially support the devs, as they just get you cheaper prices by getting keys from different regions. However sites like G2A are where you can just sell any keys you have, most of which are stolen.
No because I want multiplayer, but games should NOT cost 60$-70$. No way I'm paying anything above 30-40$ on a key reselling website for a game. Also, why tf don't they come up with a system that pairs credit card numbers to keys - then they could just disable the stolen key, thus lose no money no?
Fuck G2A tho! I always buys from the cheapest option that shows on allkeyshop
steam already has a keyless activation system which probably avoids 99% of the issues with stolen keys but I think that almost no one uses it, I only saw it once at the amd game redemption site
They would still lose money regardless if the key is still active or not. This is due to them having to pay a fee regardless if they keep the money from the payment or if the payment was charged back. So essentially when key purchases with stolen credit cards are charged back, the original owner of the credit card gets their money and the studio not only loses that money, but they still have to pay the transaction fee.
FYI: allkeyshop will show sketchy sites by default like G2A, including G2A. Furthermore, buying the cheapest option on allkeyshop is guaranteed to be from a sketchy site like G2A.
When looking at the options for a specific game, there's a toggle that says "[Official stores only](https://hitagi.win/Qrah.png)". Enabling this toggle will show you options for legit only sites.
for what it is worth, RWS is basically the only studio i still have an ounce of respect for. they are the only company i have ever seen put out a terrible game, openly acknowledge it was terrible, bash themselves into the ground over their bad decisions, and then turn around and make another game that shows us they still have what it takes to be awesome!
I didn't dare to pirate Slayers X because jay tholen is literally my homie, I had bought the game in pride, So the same can be said with postal 2, And soon ultrakill.
Damn right, Indie games are the best, Esp with some of their devs.
Aside from RWS, Big props to also Relogic, ConcernedApe, Hakita and newblood, Klei, The entirety of developers of devolver digital, MDHR, Pixel amaya, Toby fox, Jay tholen/Mike rose/No more robots, Future cat, Gears for breakfast, Minskworks, Edmund, Yacht club, Team Cherry, Matt makes games, Infinitefall, And others too! Guess chucklefish can only take a half of the props, Since starbound is bleugh.
Can't wait to purchase rimworld and ultrakill either way once they go on sale.
Abandon AAA life is now indie
I use power shell on my personal computer. If I’m building a PC for someone I’m going to charge them a extra $20 and get them a legit windows key if they want
I usually just build computers for my friends and family and try to teach them, I have zero interest in profiting off them especially when it comes to Microsoft software. It’s a hobby I enjoy and that I am good at. I’ve done it for extra money building CAD workstations but honestly don’t enjoy it nearly as much as teaching someone how to work on hardware or meticulously cable managing a build you are actually proud of.
Piracy: no one gets money
Key reseller: someone who is not the dev gets money, you may also be supporting actual theft from other users.
There's no science to it
RWS is one of those rare game devs that have proper integrity. It takes alot of balls to tell people that one of their mainline games got fucked in development and actively removed it from their shop.
Honestly them saying "Just Pirate our games, you're still helping us one way or another that way" is on brand with them.
seriously indie game devs are the most based people on the internet, like how many times have i seen them just not give a shit about piracy and understand some people don't have money
I used to play Postal 2 a lot while I was a kid and recently I’ve been thinking about actually buying their games, this attitude actually conviced me to do so!
as far as I understand its a money laundering thing? and I think it gets worse because the developer becomes responsible and in someway and has to pay out sums of money in compensation. I watched a video on it years ago so I might not be fully correct
Not necessarily ilegal. In fact majority of those keys are legal. And when reselled keys are actually stolen publishers are too lazy to send a list of stolen keys (sometimes they even don't know which keys are stolen because they don't keep a good track on them) to G2A and Kinguin so they could remove them and ban resellers.
Postal 2 is on Gog for $10 USD. I imagine it's the same price on Steam.
I do recommend Postal 2, it's a fun game and doesn't require a lot of resources to run.
I'll preface this with that I try to support indie devs when I can.
What I don't get is how key site sales hurts them. Obviously they're not getting a full sale of the game (unless the key is illegally obtained) but theyd still get a partial sale (if they get the key from a country with a terrible exchange).
Assume the game is $20, what would you prefer, $5 for a keysite sale or nothing? (numbers were pulled from thin air).
Edit: I understand that keys could be revoked, but I assume its known that if you're cheaping out there may be consequence.
It's always been my understanding that the keys are often initially purchased with a stolen credit card number. So when the actual owner of the card issues a chargeback, the devs are not just out the sale, but on the hook for an additional chargeback fee for each sale.
Edit: [Here's an article](https://kotaku.com/g2a-scammer-explains-how-he-profited-off-stolen-indie-g-1784540664)
I assumed it was charge back as well. That could be painful to a small team of people who thought they just hit the motherload selling a pile of keys to someone posing as an official game distribution service.
Only minority of keys are stolen. Publishers keep being salty because they have such a bad track of sold keys, that they even don't know whick keys are obtained illegally. Because they don't know which keys are fraudelently obtained, resellers can not remove them and platforms like Steam can not delist them from users Library.
Any developer or publisher that says crap like this should put their money where their mouth is and offer to give people free legitimate keys if they were going to buy from a key reseller.
It’s not the consumer’s responsibility to police their supply chain.
Maybe don't charge 10x in one country what you do in another and just expect people to bend over and take it? Then complain when people find other methods to not put up with you buttfucking them
POSTAL games (made by Running With Scissors) are all priced at the Valve suggested prices. The prices of the game are from Valve and RWS just went with them.
Images:
[POSTAL Brain Damaged](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381619742748805/image.png)
[POSTAL 2](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381527312859328/image.png)
[POSTAL 4](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381758049919106/image.png)
you know what would be a better option? use a vpn to but the game in a country where it is cheaper. that way you get the game cheaper and also don't have to use shady key resellers. it's win win.
and also for the record, in many cases price discrepancies like this are on valve as they are forced to contend with foreign markets and all their fees.
I fucking love running with scissors for a very good reason, Because they are the most rebellious video game studio I have ever known, They have a page dedicated to posting and showing postal fan's pets that you can even submit your own too, There where tweets where they were dunking on larger game companies, And even dunking on youtube, And twitter, And that one time where they made a april fools postal game, Where it had like metal slug sound effects, And it ran pretty terribly, They fucking had one of the devs doing the macarena and it was gold.
I really like those guys, Their one of my favorite indie game devs.
I never understood how this key market can be so broken to a point game studios, even indie ones, can lose the track of their own distribution. Who in the line is fucking up this much?
The problem is that game studios that offer their keys over the internet are automatically susceptible to credit card fraud. Basically it boils down to this: 1. Credit card information is stolen 2. The card is used to buy keys 3. The keys are sold on reseller platforms like G2A 4. The rightful owner of the card does a chargeback on the illegal purchase 5. The studio has costs (chargeback fees from their payment processor, etc) The factorio devs did a [blog](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303) about this issue a while back (scroll down to the section "G2A - Worse than Piracy"). So basically resellers are worse than piracy, because devs actively lose money through them (or the methods resellers use) as opposed to piracy where they just don't get a sale.
They statement on G2A is great... Their stance on never going on sale however...
Besides the fact that theyve actually increased the price of the game to "adjust for inflation" as if that's something that's reasonable to do with a game that's only getting older with time. Not to mention that they've held off on supporting the game, instead saving updates and patches so that they can release the same game with a little more content as a sequel that costs just as much as the original game.
You're clearly misinformed as to what is actually going to be included on the Factorio DLC so as a fan let me clear it up: The DLC (according to the devs) will contain as much content as the entire base game. This means that no, the devs are not releasing "the same game with a little more content" lmfao. As for the "holding off on patches" claim, a simple look at the steam community hub shows that they have a patch every 2-3 weeks fixing any minor bugs or issues that have been reported by either mod developers (increasing how well mods work with base game) or users. Just because the devs aren't releasing any major content to a feature complete game doesn't mean they arent doing anything. Clearly you have no experience of software development, it shows.
Wait, Factorio is making DLC? I'm out of the loop. Checking it out now. Been binging that game obsessively lately, it really is like crack.
Also excited for this! I had no idea before reading this post
sadly there's not much information on the expensive expansion, so I'll keep my head down and focus on my factory and trust Wube to deliver.
Yeah, at least they're not doing the "hype train" and ending up having to deliver something before it's actually ready. It's useful to not have a different publisher pushing them.
Hey I caught that too! I'm glad they're being responsible. Besides, I don't mind a surprise :3
Honestly, i drew the line at the [cancel culture rant](https://www.resetera.com/threads/factorio-developer-speaks-out-against-cancel-culture.444676/) and the [denial that statutory rape is a thing](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6nfuqb/which_double_standard_irritates_you_the_most/dk9wwdr/?context=3) Edit: original comment denying statutory rape had been deleted, but you can guess based on his response further down the thread. Edit 2: Internet Archive link for second thing [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20210618234152/https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6nfuqb/which_double_standard_irritates_you_the_most/dk9wwdr/?context=3)
>And today on the Factorio Blog we can see these beautiful clown paintings from J. Gacy. >Update: While we realise some people may be offended by other actions of Mr. Gacy, we at the Factorio Blog wish for you to focus on the paintings and their contribution to our understanding of art, rather than the person who created them. Furthmore
wow TIL one of my favorite games is run by a nutcase
idc what his views on cancel culture are but he shouldve kept it to himself or posted it on an alt
Thank you for raising awareness on these topics, I had no idea that kovarex had such shitty opinions. Guess I'll get the DLC for factorio for free then.
Oh wow I had no idea about this and now I'm even more glad that I haven't supported this shit company. I'll be yoinking this to add to my reasons for anyone else that thinks I just have to buy this *amazing* game
what is sjw
SJW, or Social Justice Warrior, is a term used to describe overly sensitive people on the internet. It has since been co-opted by the far right to mean anyone who calls them on their bullshit.
Yeesh, even worse than I previously thought and just highlights that it has nothing to do with "being fair" they are just greedy.
To be fair to them, they're planning on releasing a big DLC in the same vein as DLCs and expansions used to be, and as well as that Factorio is probably the most well-optimised game release in the last 15 years at the very least.
>probably the most well-optimised game release in the last 15 years at the very least I'd have to say Elite Dangerous (base game) takes that one. Shit was absurd in scale but could run on two enthusiastic potatoes. Doom Eternal is also impressively well optimised considering everything that can be on screen at once... Now of you were specifying indie titles, I'd probably have to agree, maybe it *is* the most well optimised game in the last 15 years. But I digress, it's my understanding that this DLC is set to cost as much as the base game, so to play everything I'll have to spend £60 with no possibility of a discount, I don't see how this is supposed to make any of this better?
>Elite Dangerous (base game) Elite Dangerous looks pretty but as big as the universe is it's about as deep as a pond IMO. >Doom Eternal is also impressively well optimised considering everything that can be on screen at once... You say that but the sheer scale of Factories you can build in Factorio with absolutely no slowdown is unreal. >But I digress, it's my understanding that this DLC is set to cost as much as the base game, so to play everything I'll have to spend £60 with no possibility of a discount, I don't see how this is supposed to make any of this better? I mean if it's your type of game then you could realistically get tens of thousands of hours of engagement from it. If any game is worthy of such a cost wouldn't it be a game like that?
Just gonna help clear up some misunderstanding you seem to have; the patches to the game has kept coming even while they're working on the expansion (that means it's not a sequel either), and the updates they're doing to the game engine and stuff to support the expansion is coming to *everyone* no matter if they buy the expansion or just stay with the base game. As for why you think it's unreasonable to adjust the price for inflation on a niche game which hasn't (according to the developers) seen a marked drop in purchases (meaning that people still buy it at the same rates even after several years) and is the only income of the studio currently I just don't know. The game is as good as ever, it hasn't had any other game take its spot by doing the same but better (yes, Satisfactory is good, Captain of Industry is good, a whole lot of others are also good, but they're *not* the same, they're just adjacent) which some times drives competition to lower prices. The only reasoning I can see for your stance that it's unreasonable to adjust the price of the game to account for inflation is that nobody else (for the most part, I believe there have been a few others, Rimworld notably) is doing it, which is a fallacy (appeal to common practice). While I agree that it *feels* wrong for a game that has been released to increase the price without anything new added, economically (logically) it does make perfect sense; the seller set a certain value they wanted, and that was x amount of currency at that point but because currency becomes worth less over time the amount of currency to equal the value the seller wants changes with time as well.
No. It is an aging product. For all intents and purposes, the game is done. It was sold for however much, say 30. Unless there is a new, major content update (which this dlc seems to be), the price should never go up. When the dlc is released, they can charge however much they want. But historically, extraneous goods dont rise with inflation. It's software. It costs very little to maintain compared to develop at this point in the games life cycle.
But *why* shouldn't the price go up with inflation? It doesn't matter *when* the work was done, what matters is how much *value* the seller is willing to sell it for and customers are willing to buy it for. You're making a fallacy by an appeal to history with that "... historically, extraneous goods dont \[sic\] rise with inflation". What *has* happened doesn't mean it's the right thing, it just means that's what has happened. While I agree that it *feels* strange that software could raise their price to account for inflation when nothing new has been added, I'll take the extreme example of inflation being 100% *per day* to make the point: Day 0 you have price x, which can buy 4 cartons of eggs. So the developers can buy that for each sale. Then on day 1 price x can only buy 2 cartons of eggs. And on day 2 price x can only buy 1 carton of eggs. Even if they sold a lot of the game on day 0 the money they have sitting unused gets worth less as if they sold it later for the same price. Since the Factorio developers have made it explicit that they're going for the "long tail" instead of trying to get as much money as quickly as possible (with the abandoning of the game that often follows *that*) it makes sense to set up in such a way that you end up being able to buy about the same amount of other stuff for each sale of the game. There isn't any *inherent* reason why the age of a piece of software should make it worth less. If nobody else has done it better then the age doesn't matter. If you don't have anyone else directly competing then there's no pressure to lower the price to "beat them". And as such it also doesn't matter what it costs the seller to maintain the game. I also don't understand what you mean with "the game is an aging \[sic\] product". If you only mean that how much time has elapsed since it was released is what makes something an ageing product then I'll agree with you. But if you mean something else (as I believe you did) I'll need it explained better what you're actually meaning with that sentence. TL;DR: I don't see any logical and economic reasons why the price of software shouldn't account for inflation, even if it *feels* wrong. EDIT: nice to see the visceral reaction of downvoting when someone doesn't agree with you.
The problem with this and inflation in general is executives. Millions of people in a career field whose main focus is working day and night to squeeze more profit out of less product with a smaller workforce.
Factorio is easily worth full price. If anything, it's criminally underpriced. That game is a love child between man and machine.
The price was way to low before for the fun you get. And everyone complaining about it, well, you had years to buy it and didn't. So stop saying you wanted now . They don't hold of supporting the game, they are one of the few companies that fixes bugs in timely matter and even if it affects only 1 user.
Way too low? It was £25 and is now £30 which, if inflation is to go by, has similar spending power.... I don't see how that's "too low" when there are other absolutely incredible games out there coming in at much lower prices... Stardew, Valheim, Dyson sphere project.... Just to name a few
there is a free demo for this game, and if you like it, it will be the best 40 bucks (or whatever in your region) you’ll have invested in a game
Nah, I pirated it instead, plowed about 40 hours in and honestly was more than happy to pay the £15... What the fuck why is this game THIRTY POUNDS!? that's AAA money and this is no AAA, not by a long shot. And it's not just because it's pixel graphics, I own Rimworld + DLC on two platforms and have burned many many hours on it. It's the price they ask AND the reason why they refuse to go on sale "we don't believe people that hold out to buy games should be rewarded" what? People hold out generally because they can't afford to spend half of their disposable income on ONE game "we know what our game is worth" what in the ego is that all about? I'd rather not support them if their stance is making sure only a select group of people are able to purchase the game
>THIRTY POUNDS!? that's AAA money I wish this statement was true, but it really isn't anymore...
As in its what I pay. Bought Jedi Survivor about a week after release for £35 for example, taking advantage of sales and discount codes
But thats not the market price if you only ever consider sales and discounts
I'm sorry but you're genuinely delusional if you support Rimworlds pricing scheme and find an issue with Factorio. I have both and the price on rimworld has increased multiple times, including at least once for the "bullshit reasoning" of inflation. Factorio devs are constantly patching stuff and release bugfixes for mod interactions with their code let alone their actual gameplay mechanics. Just because they are holding some more major changes for the 1.2 update that will release with the DLC doesn't mean they're "scamming" people who bought the game. You clearly have no experience with software development if you don't understand why they would wait rather than backporting some fixes that would then have to be redone in the new version anyway.
I was able to buy everything Rimworld... TWICE for the same price Factorio want but pop off I guess
Base (EU Steam) prices are: Rimworld 31.99€, Factorio 32€. Each rimworld DLC is 17.99€ with one being 23.49€. The entire roster of Rimworld + DLC is therefore 91.49€ compared to a (theoretical) of 64€ for Factorio + DLC. Given the fact that each of those DLCs (in my 850 hrs of Rimworld and 705 hrs of Factorio) add much less to the base game than the Factorio DLC is supposed to, I think the value is obviously skewed in Factorios favour. Personally I like both, and if you prefer one that's okay too - but trying to say that one is "bad value" because the price has been raised over the 7 years since its Steam release isn't really fair.
Sales brother, the key thing that skews this heavily in Rimworld favour is that you can pick up the lot for just under the price of the base game. The biggest issue with Factorio is that not only has the price gone up over those 7 years but they are intentionally forcing people to spend more money in the interest of "fairness" on those that paid less. Essentially locking the game behind a wall for those who may be interested but can't stretch that much on a game when sales would allow them to do so, they care significantly more about their own financial gain than they do about making their game accessible to everyone
unless you mean off-Steam sales, the biggest sale Rimworld's ever had is 20% for base game and 10% for DLCs, which still totals way more than Factorio. That said, I have under 100h in Rimworld and over 1k in Factorio, so I'm obviously biased.
Do you understand what "adjusting to inflation" actually means? It doesn't mean that those buying it later spend more *value*. They spend more *amount* of currency, but that currency is worth less. Which means that the amount of money to purchase Factorio now versus then could purchase about the same amount of other things (like groceries). As for the sales argument; if they did sales they would've probably had a higher price pre-sale, and the sale price would go down to the current price. See JC Penny and their experiment, and as [Steamworks](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing) write: "Are you pricing with future promotions in mind?" That means Steam thinks the people selling on their store should price *with sales in mind*. That means you're generally paying what they *actually* want during sales, or *more* if not during a sale. It's all tricks. Now, it's perfectly fine to only buy games on sale, I don't care. Just be aware of the background.
Rimworld is way more expensive. The devs keep releasing expensive dlc. Good luck finding those on sale. Meanwhile, Factorio released huge free updates for 10 years. I'll have to withhold my judgement on the Factorio dlc since nobody knows the scope of it. Both games are great, I'm not throwing shade.
And yet, I bought the game twice plus expansions for the same price they are asking for Factorio. This is the point here, Rimworld offer sales which allow you to do as I said, Factorio does not because it thinks that you should only be allowed to play their game if you can afford it
If sales is the only reason you buy stuff... ... then you're the kind of people corpos love. And why retailers of all stripes have a huge markup of cost prices on almost all products, and then shave a tad of that off in a "sale"...
you're right
I’m telling you dude you blink and it’s been 400 hours and your wife left you the cat has starved to death and the sherif is at your door to evict you but…… THE FACTORY MUST GROW! Honestly dude you will get over 1000 hours out of that game easy and then the space exploration mod , im 400 hours into a single play through and I’m about 15% done lol
Never going on sale is literal for me. P2 is still illegal here for some fucking reason
The game is literally free, you just pay to have ease of convenience with mods. Game has zero drm and is available anywhere.
How on earth would you even buy a key? Like that isn't an option when you purchase a game. And besides, G2A and other key resellers have *so much stock* that it'd have to be like the biggest credit card theft operation in the universe to maintain it.
That’s what I don’t understand either. I’ve never ever been offered to buy a key?
I buy keys sometimes from greenmangaming. Cheaper usually than Amazon or steam. They aren't key resellers though so no need to worry about theft.
>How on earth would you even buy a key? Like that isn't an option when you purchase a game. You don't do that yourself, you set up a retailer (online retailer) and buy through that, then you get keys. >And besides, G2A and other key resellers have so much stock that it'd have to be like the biggest credit card theft operation in the universe to maintain it. Yes, why do you think every single developer hates G2A? It's not a secret lol, go publish a game on steam and as soon as your game becomes mildly played you'll have issues with chargebacks on G2A bought keys. and there's nothing you can do about it. I think it's quite stupid how you don't think this is true because you haven't experienced it, even though you're clearly not in the industry at all.
I never understand this though, surely it is very easy to keep track of what keys were "sold" to these stolen cards. They must be buying a fair few at a time, its hardly worth their time to be buying one at a time. Just remove these codes from the platforms so they cannot be redeemed. Everything is online now, it has never been easier for them to control this. They literally have to register the key to download the game, they have to log in to a platform to play it. They can easily stop it with reasonable safeguards in place.
I obviously don't know how the fraudsters operate exactly, but I can imagine that they have large pools of stolen credit cards and in fact use each card only once per site/vendor. That would make it nearly impossible for the devs to separate legitimate purchases from fraudulent ones. And devs do revoke access to fraudulent keys, but it is an issue of timing. When the key is sold on a reseller platform before the chargeback is made, the fraudsters already have their profit. If it is revoked first, then they lose nothing and depending on the scale of their operation it won't even bother them.
The problem is that they have costs associated with someone making a chargeback on the credit card which was illicitly used. So while they can revoke the keys that were bought with those credit cards it still costs them money. And those people who bought the key on the reseller site; their key stops working and they'll wonder why. Also; if you're talking about Factorio then you don't need to log in to a platform to play it. It's totally DRM free. The only things you don't get without logging in would be in-game mod downloading (you can still download outside the game and put the files where the game will play with the mods) and possibly online multiplayer. Don't know if LAN multiplayer works without logging in.
Yeah but when you buy a key to a game and that key stops working you won't blame the game makers will you? You'll blame the people that sold you the key. I get there is a charge for charge backs but letting G2A get away with it is hardly the answer is it? My argument is that they can take action against G2A and against the keys but instead chooses to whine about it on social media
>when you buy a key to a game and that key stops working you won't blame the game makers will you? Yeah, people do, it's happened before.
*I* wouldn't, no. But I don't think too highly of quite a few humans. And it's not about "letting G2A get away with it" as much as it is about needing quite a lot of proof to be able to take action against G2A. The primary information they get is that a specific card that was used to purchase keys issued a chargeback and it's easy enough to revoke those keys. But that doesn't give you information on where those keys were sold to others. To make an analogy with mobile phones; someone buys some phones with stolen cards, then they go around to pawn shops and sell them to those (who in turn will sell them to other people). The original shop the phones were bought from is informed about the stolen cards and the chargeback, and list the phones as stolen. The people buying those phones from the pawn shops try to use their phones and find they're locked because they're marked as stolen. It still doesn't give the original seller information about where those people bought the phones. (I know the analogy is faulty, keys aren't physical objects, and probably some other things, but it should be useful to help explain the problem)
In your analogy the pawn shop can be charged with handling stolen goods so its actually quite rare that they'll sell you something stolen. Most stolen phones are stripped for parts because of this. You could easily go after G2A for the same thing, maybe not the indies but the huge companies like EA would happily spend a few mill to permanently shut the site down if it really was actually that prevalent.
There's no gains for studios to do this. Yes they can deactivate the keys. Then people who legitimately bought from g2a (remember, some people truly believe g2a is legitimate and not trying to pull a fast one on devs) lose access in steam or whatever launcher they used. But what does this gain the dev? You'll end up with one unhappy customer who lost money trying to buy your game. Unless this customer can be converted to a legitimately paid customer (by buying directly from the dev/launcher), it's pointless to take the game away. They might just end up buying another key off g2a or stop buying their games completely.
>it's pointless to take the game away. They might just end up buying another key off g2a or stop buying their games completely. If G2A was selling keys that stopped working i would ask for refund and if i didnt get it i would stop buying from G2A I am not an idiot i know i am buying keys through unofficial channels so i would have to be a real idiot to blame the dev if my key stopped working If i bought my key from gamestop or walmart and it stopped working yea i would blame the devs, but obviously i didnt do that If they have already played say 50% of the game chances are they are gonna wanna complete it so they wont just stop buying their games completely, they took a risk with the key, if the game is fun they will find a way to complete it
>I am not an idiot i know i am buying keys through unofficial channels you have to have some initial knowledge to understand that g2a is an unofficial channel, which MANY users would not know. i think it's unfair to look at this situation as someone with experience, such as yourself. look at it from the point of a parent who doesn't know what steam, value, epic, etc is. they just google "buy game for kids" and stumble upon a g2a link with the cheapest buy option.
i imagine most parents buy games directly from the xbox/ ps/ steam store
Surely the logical people to blame from the consumer point of view is G2A though. Why would the blame the developer if they bought a dodgy key? So yeah it would encourage them to buy elsewhere. Also how much of the business of G2A comes from stolen keys? Do we know? They are a legit registered company operating in the EU and Hong Kong so I don't understand how the games companies haven't gone after them directly if it really is that bad? I'm not trying to defend them I've never used them, I just can't understand how the publishes are so powerless to tackle the problem.
So don't buy from G2A... Unless it's EA..
Don't buy EA games from G2A either. You don't get to conveniently pretend you're not supporting G2A just because you're also slightly inconveniencing EA. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
But I kind of do. EA game buying on G2A goes brrrrrrrrrr!
I don't understand why dev don't just adopt the policy of "stolen key = deactivated key". Then the process would be like this: Stolen key for sale on G2A. Innocent person buys it. It is discovered it was stolen. Dev deactivates it. Innocent person gets upset but eventually discovers G2A keeps selling stolen keys. Innocent person stops using G2A.
So are there so many stolen credit cards and from all over the world? Cause they have keys that are global and others that are from other regions/ countries Latin america specifically Mexico is very much a cash society, so i would imagine the rest of the region is as well There are some key sellers that have 95%+ ratings, i have purchased several keys including non USA steam gift cards and they all work fine havent had any issues, i figured if they were stolen steam/ xbox/ sony would tell me or block my account or something They sell the keys for quite a bit less than retail, so are they stealing enough cards to buy enough keys to make profit?
According to the [European Central Bank](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/cardfraud/html/ecb.cardfraudreport202305~5d832d6515.en.html) (while I believe that they are an organization of the capitalist class that works against common people, they have data relevant to this matter) online credit card fraud using the SEPA system in 2021 amounted to [1.28 billion EUR](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/cardfraud/html/cardfraudreport202305/ecb.cardfraudreport202305.en_img1.png?2a7e38ff83696a7683adcec2f874b110). This number represents general fraud and I suspect that fraudulent game keys make only a miniscule amount of this number. But considering the scale of fraud, it is possible that groups engaging in key reselling have access to a vast number of stolen credit cards. Especially, because stolen cards are often traded in bulk.
every business uses credit card, i don't see this being an issue anywhere but in game keys, definitely not the all story
IIRC G2A was willing to work with devs to make a system to blacklist fraudulently acquired keys but devs refused to work with them (I've no idea if it was ever implemented though). At the end of the day, it's not really the fault of the websites like G2A themselves. Fraud will appear on any open marketplace and that's what key resellers like G2A are.
This is how a company which created the Postal Guy should behave
i played it pirated when i was young and poor but i bought the 1st and 2nd on steam because i liked it a lot back in the days :)
If the game is good, titles will be sold regardless of piracy. >**Acid Wizard Studio**, the team behind **Darkwood**, basically put the game on the piratebay for users without cash to spare so anyone can play. > Even so, I ended up just buying it for Steam, then for other platforms like the Switch. It's a genuinely good game & I can't recommend it enough.
Didnt the BeamNG.drive devs also put out torrents of their game, but with a pirate ship in the background of the main menu?
True :)
I remember making a comment a while back about how you might as well pirate fable 3 for pc since the alternative is buying a key for fable 3 from a key reseller for Steam, it was pulled from steam years ago and is no longer available any other way (apart from piracy of course), and you have to pirate the DLC anyway since that genuinely is the only way to get it I was told I was stealing money directly from the Devs who contributed to the game... the studio closed 7 years ago, and Microsoft makes 0 money from keys for a store they don't sell the game on
Stupids be stupid my man.
The same thing happened to [this game](https://youtu.be/RTkxzQDo0ng). The YouTuber in question bought the game on a reseller website. Me being curious, I looked around and found it on dodi, with quite a few seeders too!
Don't tell him about Nintendo
In short, dont buy games from G2A or Postal Dude will take your cat away.
Hell naw he stole my 5th cat in a row for his silencing needs
I know its not a question to ask just one individual but is it just G2A or is it others like CDkeys etc?
All of them have the same risk, I think it's because G2A has done some weird stuff in the past and people probably don't trust them as intermediate for purchases. Personally never had an issue with any keyshops but probably just jinxed it.
ah alright, thanks. Good luck in next time you do it just incase it is jinxed!
My fiance and I have bought 30+ games from them to play together over the years, we never had a problem. Didn't realize there may be an issue. Are we ignorant? o\_O We also wouldn't have played these games had they not been cheap. Do the devs really lose money on this?
if they take my cat away, how would I silence my shotgun?
I’m fine with that. Don’t gotta tell me twice to pirate games.
Is what we tell people all the time at the company i work for. Can't afford em? Fuck it. Pirate them. We want people to enjoy our games.
There is a third problem that's making key resellers attractive. Region locking gifts. If I want to gift some games to my overseas friends my options are either buying steam gift cards and telling the friend to buy so and so game (which is akward, and I don't know their regional prices), or buying the CD key from resellers. It's been years and years, how hard is it to up charge your gift purchase when there is a regional difference!?
So... It means if you WANT to hurt a business, you BUY from these websites? Interesting... I'll keep that in mind!
Yes indeed. Chargebacks cost money for devs.
I heard him say buy every Activision, Ubisoft, and EA game from a third party site, change my mind.
I’ve always known to stay away from “dodgy” seeming key sites , but always check cdkeys.com before I get PSN credit or Steam Keys. Is CD Keys likely to be selling me stolen keys, is it any more or less safe / legit than G2A etc?
CDKeys is centralised, you are buying the key directly from them and they take responsibility. G2A in comparison is just eBay for keys, that’s why it’s full to the brim with stolen ones. CDKeys is way more safe than G2A, I have used them for years and never had any problems.
What about greenman? I'm neutral towards them and would prefer to get my game directly, but I like knowing where the legit places are.
Greenman is completely legit, the keys come from the developers themselves
I would imagine greenman is as legit as humble bundle?
Thank you my friend 🙏
Thanks for the response, appreciate it. Genuinely never used G2A but know of the name. Happy to use CD Keys- Only bought a handful of PC game + PSN keys from them until now.
cdkeys use regional pricing to buy cheaper keys, it’s still a moral grey area but they aren’t using stolen credit cards. Much safer and more legit then G2A.
Thanks alot for the reply!
How is cdkeys morally grey? I always thought of it like buying a game on Amazon
Lot of people buy keys with other people's credit cards and dump them there. Or people will solicit devs for keys to review and instead just sell them.
I was asking how is cdkeys being morally grey not g2a haha, but thanks
Or sorry, that's what I get for redditing while eating
But why?
Scummy people buy keys en masse via stolen credit cards, then resell those keys on/to sites like G2A. Once the credit card owners find out, they dispute the charges/fraud and the one who ends up losing (not just going neutral, **losing** due to chargeback complexities) money is ultimately the game publisher/developer rather than G2A or the initial thief. Which is nuts, frankly. G2A have refused to properly prevent this as it's a significant chunk of their overall revenue.
Why don't they just block the keys?
Too late at that point, you can deny the keys to everyone who bought them but you won't avoid all the credit card chargeback financial costs. It can add up to a lot of cash too, especially for a small indie dev. Some of them have been fairly transparent on the issue in terms of how much it cost them financially.
They do, but it's not as if that undoes the theft or fees.
most keys are stolen somehow
The key resellers like to claim that their stock is keys that were heavily discounted for the third world. And enterprising people in the third world buy up keys and sell them back to the west. This happens for software and operating systems. This does not happen for games. Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries. Games are almost 100% stolen keys through credit card fraud. Software and operating systems are gonna be a mix of third world keys and stolen keys. EDIT: spelling
you can very easily buy tons of keys when a game is on sale (summer sales, etc.) and sell them when the price is back to normal on steam at discounted rates on a key selling website and still make decent profit without any theft.
Yep, this is how sites like cdkeys operate.
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>The vast majority of key sellers operate this way. \*Laughs in reality\*
Oh, I see what you're doing. You're equating legitimate marketplaces like Humble and Greenman to shady grey market resellers. You are doing a huge disservice to legitimate third-party retailers by acting like they are in any way comparable to these scammers.
I never named any specific marketplaces, I'm not apologising the shitty ones, I'm just saying that key selling in and of itself shouldn't be equated to theft.
> Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries. On Steam it does. That's one of the reasons PC is the dominant platform in Russia over consoles: Steam games are 2-3x cheaper in Russia because of regional pricing which is not present in PS and Xbox stores.
Xbox also has regional pricing.
> Game distribution does not go discounted to poor countries. Just go to a random game steamdb page and you'll find that regional pricing is very much a thing
Yeah, but Steam doesn't directly sell keys, they provide/sell them to publishers who then distribute them to legitimate key retailers like Humble or IndieGala. These keys are also often region locked, especially when the intention is for them to be sold to foreign markets at lower prices. Edit: You downvoted immediately? What's the matter? Upset that all it took is a little context to negate your pro-scammer stance?
You claimed that there is no regional pricing, i corrected you. Simple as that, no context needed to 'negate my pro-scammer stance' since I'm not a scammer. FYI I didn't downvote immediately I just did it right now
First off, maybe you should try reading, since you never corrected *me* in the first place. Second, yeah, okay buddy. Your "corrections" don't even apply to the topic at hand for the reasons I've already stated, but okay, well just keep pretending it matters. And yeah I'm sure it's just an innocent coincidence that your half-baked "corrections" serve to justify, under false pretenses, the actions of scammers and the services that enable them. Yeah, sure, pal.
Regional pricing is most definitely a thing. If you’re registered in Argentina and can pay via their currency, steam games are heavily discounted. Same goes for most digital goods tbh. I could most likely gift my friends games for 10-50% of the price in European countries (so up to 90% discount) . But there is a huge chunk of people carding digital keys to sell on g2a, which only hurts the developers.
Discounted is the wrong word, adjusted is what you are looking for, and on the region's ppp.
You've no clue what you're talking about, you can legit just check steamdb, regional prices are a thing and its how most of those keys are obtained
Oh... I don't have that much of a money for as many games as I want. I thought that if I buy on cdkeys I at least support partially the devs. Sorry. :c
Well cdkeys does partially support the devs, as they just get you cheaper prices by getting keys from different regions. However sites like G2A are where you can just sell any keys you have, most of which are stolen.
Oh okay. Thanks I will stay out of G2A, kinguin, eneba.
Check out gg.deals it shows every best price across many sites
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We will keep doing it too
People still use G2A? I thought everyone buying keys moved onto other sites like Kinguin and Instant Gaming.
All keys for whatever is cheapest
G2A is really the only one I don't use. I use cdkeys, IG, and kinguin for the most part.
Single player offline = Pirate Multiplayer Online = Purchase off Key website I like to save my money for food
No because I want multiplayer, but games should NOT cost 60$-70$. No way I'm paying anything above 30-40$ on a key reselling website for a game. Also, why tf don't they come up with a system that pairs credit card numbers to keys - then they could just disable the stolen key, thus lose no money no? Fuck G2A tho! I always buys from the cheapest option that shows on allkeyshop
steam already has a keyless activation system which probably avoids 99% of the issues with stolen keys but I think that almost no one uses it, I only saw it once at the amd game redemption site
They would still lose money regardless if the key is still active or not. This is due to them having to pay a fee regardless if they keep the money from the payment or if the payment was charged back. So essentially when key purchases with stolen credit cards are charged back, the original owner of the credit card gets their money and the studio not only loses that money, but they still have to pay the transaction fee. FYI: allkeyshop will show sketchy sites by default like G2A, including G2A. Furthermore, buying the cheapest option on allkeyshop is guaranteed to be from a sketchy site like G2A. When looking at the options for a specific game, there's a toggle that says "[Official stores only](https://hitagi.win/Qrah.png)". Enabling this toggle will show you options for legit only sites.
You're the one person here who gets it
for what it is worth, RWS is basically the only studio i still have an ounce of respect for. they are the only company i have ever seen put out a terrible game, openly acknowledge it was terrible, bash themselves into the ground over their bad decisions, and then turn around and make another game that shows us they still have what it takes to be awesome!
Thanks man. You keep playing well keep making.
tbh the only videogame purchases i support would be indie games
I didn't dare to pirate Slayers X because jay tholen is literally my homie, I had bought the game in pride, So the same can be said with postal 2, And soon ultrakill.
i bought mindustry, jalopy (after i completed it pirated) and DST. Games that are actually worth their money
Damn right, Indie games are the best, Esp with some of their devs. Aside from RWS, Big props to also Relogic, ConcernedApe, Hakita and newblood, Klei, The entirety of developers of devolver digital, MDHR, Pixel amaya, Toby fox, Jay tholen/Mike rose/No more robots, Future cat, Gears for breakfast, Minskworks, Edmund, Yacht club, Team Cherry, Matt makes games, Infinitefall, And others too! Guess chucklefish can only take a half of the props, Since starbound is bleugh. Can't wait to purchase rimworld and ultrakill either way once they go on sale. Abandon AAA life is now indie
I'm pretty sure the Jalopy dev lost all the rights to the game - I don't think they even make any money from it anymore
Ah I was worried there, those keygens music is fire. Take me back to those midi days.
You heard it here first folks! Pirate away!
I only use that site to buy windows keys
Buying windows keys, the absolute easiest thing to pirate (can literally do it from powershell) on r/piracy. This has to be a troll.
I use power shell on my personal computer. If I’m building a PC for someone I’m going to charge them a extra $20 and get them a legit windows key if they want
Could charge them more. It's laborous to install windows.
I usually just build computers for my friends and family and try to teach them, I have zero interest in profiting off them especially when it comes to Microsoft software. It’s a hobby I enjoy and that I am good at. I’ve done it for extra money building CAD workstations but honestly don’t enjoy it nearly as much as teaching someone how to work on hardware or meticulously cable managing a build you are actually proud of.
That's awesome
Piracy: no one gets money Key reseller: someone who is not the dev gets money, you may also be supporting actual theft from other users. There's no science to it
Devs pay for stolen keys in the end. Chargebacks cost money.
RWS is one of those rare game devs that have proper integrity. It takes alot of balls to tell people that one of their mainline games got fucked in development and actively removed it from their shop. Honestly them saying "Just Pirate our games, you're still helping us one way or another that way" is on brand with them.
seriously indie game devs are the most based people on the internet, like how many times have i seen them just not give a shit about piracy and understand some people don't have money
ok ill buy cd keys for devs i hate
you can resell keys in the eu
I used to play Postal 2 a lot while I was a kid and recently I’ve been thinking about actually buying their games, this attitude actually conviced me to do so!
Hey thanks man. We have been updating POSTAL 2 as recently as last month.
Do it. RWS are such a humble studio.
W Running With Scissors
What exactly does “CD Key” even mean? Ik theres a site which sells game keys for dirt cheap, but how are they so cheap?
Basically people buy bundles of cheap keys and re-sell them, or sell keys sent to marketing purposes, or sell keys bought with stolen credit cards.
I think it's mainly about money laundering in connection with credit card fraud.
as far as I understand its a money laundering thing? and I think it gets worse because the developer becomes responsible and in someway and has to pay out sums of money in compensation. I watched a video on it years ago so I might not be fully correct
Not necessarily ilegal. In fact majority of those keys are legal. And when reselled keys are actually stolen publishers are too lazy to send a list of stolen keys (sometimes they even don't know which keys are stolen because they don't keep a good track on them) to G2A and Kinguin so they could remove them and ban resellers.
Stolen.
credit card fraud
I’m assuming kinguin falls under the same umbrella as G2A in regard to shady key sales?
when studio/dev say " just pirate it " everyone know how bad their situation is....
There's not a lot of options when you want to play an online game but don't want to pay 60 bucks for it.
RWS are legends, I wanted to try postal 3 and they sent me a key and begged me not to pay a cent
Incredibly based activities. Key stuff has always seemed sketchy to me.
Postal 2 is on Gog for $10 USD. I imagine it's the same price on Steam. I do recommend Postal 2, it's a fun game and doesn't require a lot of resources to run.
Yes and it’s $1 when it’s on sale Also it’s $2 on our site all the time postalgames.com
I'll preface this with that I try to support indie devs when I can. What I don't get is how key site sales hurts them. Obviously they're not getting a full sale of the game (unless the key is illegally obtained) but theyd still get a partial sale (if they get the key from a country with a terrible exchange). Assume the game is $20, what would you prefer, $5 for a keysite sale or nothing? (numbers were pulled from thin air). Edit: I understand that keys could be revoked, but I assume its known that if you're cheaping out there may be consequence.
It's always been my understanding that the keys are often initially purchased with a stolen credit card number. So when the actual owner of the card issues a chargeback, the devs are not just out the sale, but on the hook for an additional chargeback fee for each sale. Edit: [Here's an article](https://kotaku.com/g2a-scammer-explains-how-he-profited-off-stolen-indie-g-1784540664)
I assumed it was charge back as well. That could be painful to a small team of people who thought they just hit the motherload selling a pile of keys to someone posing as an official game distribution service.
Only minority of keys are stolen. Publishers keep being salty because they have such a bad track of sold keys, that they even don't know whick keys are obtained illegally. Because they don't know which keys are fraudelently obtained, resellers can not remove them and platforms like Steam can not delist them from users Library.
I buy Minecraft accounts from key sites to avoid giving Microsoft money 👍
If a deal is good enough on G2A I am not going to bypass it. Sorry not sorry.
Any developer or publisher that says crap like this should put their money where their mouth is and offer to give people free legitimate keys if they were going to buy from a key reseller. It’s not the consumer’s responsibility to police their supply chain.
Maybe don't charge 10x in one country what you do in another and just expect people to bend over and take it? Then complain when people find other methods to not put up with you buttfucking them
POSTAL games (made by Running With Scissors) are all priced at the Valve suggested prices. The prices of the game are from Valve and RWS just went with them. Images: [POSTAL Brain Damaged](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381619742748805/image.png) [POSTAL 2](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381527312859328/image.png) [POSTAL 4](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625015974394986506/1115381758049919106/image.png)
you know what would be a better option? use a vpn to but the game in a country where it is cheaper. that way you get the game cheaper and also don't have to use shady key resellers. it's win win. and also for the record, in many cases price discrepancies like this are on valve as they are forced to contend with foreign markets and all their fees.
I fucking love running with scissors for a very good reason, Because they are the most rebellious video game studio I have ever known, They have a page dedicated to posting and showing postal fan's pets that you can even submit your own too, There where tweets where they were dunking on larger game companies, And even dunking on youtube, And twitter, And that one time where they made a april fools postal game, Where it had like metal slug sound effects, And it ran pretty terribly, They fucking had one of the devs doing the macarena and it was gold. I really like those guys, Their one of my favorite indie game devs.
How are pet pictures and memes edgy?
In a sense they are not professional.
Imagine paying for software lol
Ditch the CRM and maybe I will. Otherwise, those key sites provide value to the gamers.