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"Just buy the game on Steam": Indie publisher behind a recent banger that sold 300k copies in its first week warns against key resellers after canceling hundreds of scalped keys (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
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[–] -1 points 3 months ago (5 children)

So... nothing. You have no actual answer to the question.

The issue is if any dev decides to be cool and put their game on a great sale for 24 hours, reseller companies will buy a shit ton of keys and sell them at slightly more than that sale price to make a profit.

If a game is normally listed at $60 and a dev puts in on sale for $6 for one amazing 24 hour sale, then they need to take into account that key resellers will buy a ton of copies at $6 and resell them for $30. The reseller makes $24 per key and the dev is stuck only getting that $6 for the one time sale.

This is why a lot of games don't have those amazing Steam Sale prices they used to have. Doing that will fuck them on that game going forward.

It has nothing to do with devs failing to plan or to use your imaginary legitimate tools and processes to prevent this. It has nothing to do with devs failing to treat keys as literally being their source of income and distributing them willy nilly.

Key resellers are the private equity of the digital game sales world. They exist as leeches. Blaming the game devs they exist to make money by fucking is about as brilliant as crossing your eyes and gnawing on the wall while you shit your pants.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    It should also be noted that steam keys are different than steam sales or purchases on the steam store, but given how little you apparently understand I get why you would conflate the two.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I'm in my late 40s and have used Steam since it started for thousands of sales including dozens of keys to gift to friends. You are acting like a whiny child, and so will just go to the handy block list.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    ? I literally answered your question with industry best practices. Which is to manage your keys. If the Devs put up an insane amount of keys on a third party marketplace at a crazy discount and that leads to any adverse effects, that is the Devs personal responsibility. Valve agrees. I'm not sure why you're arguing for sloppy laziness for some fictional perceived dev event that according to the letter of how to handle keys from the provider of the keys is not the responsible way to handle them.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago

    Why are you advocating for taking keys offline just because of who’s hand it went through when they were bought perfectly legally?

    Buying keys on Steam to resell them is directly against their policy specifically so that developers feel comfortable putting products on sale. If a key was purchased by a reseller from Steam then they can legally use it, however they can't resell it. Many do. They're the one doing something wrong and fucking people over, in order to insert themselves as an unofficial middle man and leech money.

    Resellers are shit. Period. It's like buying something from a guy in an alley and then complaining to the manufacturer when it doesn't work. Buy through an actual authorized seller. Those exist for a reason.

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