"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
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/simulation/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/
101 points · 21 comments · view on lemmy.world
21 Comments
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 13h
Old advice, but probably still true: Either buy from legitimate vendors or pirate it. Buying from shady sites creates extra work and costs for developers.
If you can’t afford or don’t want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller. These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more.
— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 30, 2019
https://www.techdirt.com/2019/07/09/indie-publishers-tell-gamers-to-pirate-instead-buying-keys-through-reseller-g2a/
Romkslrqusz@lemmy.zip · 24 pts · 14h
The assumption being every one of those users would otherwise have bought the game at full price.
As is the case with the same argument against piracy, most of them weren’t and you can’t really count those numbers as ‘lost sales’
Obituarykidney@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 13h
That's fair, but the point of piracy is that it's free. This is just someone else making money off of their work now.
Wrufieotnak@feddit.org · 14 pts · 14h
Meh, for piracy I agree, but here the users were willing to fork over money for the product. So its not unreasonable to assume at least a significant part would buy it normally as well. Not all obviously, so it would be better to name it "up to xxxx $" or something like that.
gedfromgont@piefed.ca · 3 pts · 13h
Agreed but there is a price difference to take into account to. Likely the key resellers sold the key for much much cheaper than Steam, that's the whole appeal, isn't it? So maybe some people would have still bought it on Steam but others may have been put off by the price. Now if the game on Steam went on discount later for the same price as the key reseller sold it for, you could definitely argue for lost profit since no one would buy the key twice.
DNKski@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 5h
Well... Yes, but actually no. I mean, they've revoked many, many keys. Some of them may be from scalpers / stolen credit cards / cheaper regions.
But... There is key selling store, Green Man Gaming. Publishers are deliverying keys to GMG, only them. Perfectly legal keys. And they still revoked that keys.
Links:
My suggestion for tinyBuild is, if you want to get rid of scalpers, just dont sell game outside of storefront. Like Steam/EGS/GOG. If you want extra cash from stores like GMG/Fanatical, live with it.
Neocorporation@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 5h
The publisher sold keys to GreenManGaming (and probably other stores ) and then the developers unilaterally revoked all serials without first checking if they were legitimate?
Sounds like the developers are running their company out of a shed and are immature.
DNKski@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 4h
Don't know why, but yes. Now, they are trying to fix that fiasco, with GMG support, but leaves bad taste.
Neocorporation@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h
I think the bad taste in my mouth is the 300k copies they sold and the need to then do this? Stepping over pounds to save pennies etc.
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 6h
The game is repair shop sim ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 6h
Fuck scalpers.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al · 1 pts · 6h
Why do the keys even exist? If it's such a burden, don't generate or sell keys, just rely on the official store fronts standard purchase process.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 4h
A lot of official store fronts provide steam keys with your purchase because Steam is so universal.
oyzmo@piefed.social · 1 pts · 13h
I prefer physical game media.
Grimy@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 14h
This works because we don't own our games. They have an equivalent to key resellers for physical media, it's eBay.
Crazy that I'm supposed to think some random gamer that bought a perfectly legal key from a "shady" website is at fault here.
zurohki@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 13h
That's the thing, they were bought with stolen credit card details in the first place, so they aren't really legal keys.
Grimy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 12h
No they weren't. None were stolen or bought with stolen credit cards according to the article.
Ptsf@lemmy.world · -7 pts · 15h
Maybe manage your keys better and don't push the burden off on third party marketplace consumers...
Abyssian@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 14h
Key resellers are shit. Just because a dev decides to be awesome for a weekend and have a crazy 90% off sale to get more people interested in their game doesn't mean companies should buy thousands of keys at that lowest prices and resell them to people for a profit as a business model. It's the reason a lot of games don't have those strong sales any more.
Ptsf@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 13h
Devs shouldn't do any sort of unsustainable sales, and if buying isn't owning... Idk what we're doing at this point. There are plenty of legitimate tools and processes to prevent this, a lack of planning on the Devs side shouldn't disregard the credible reasons third party key exchanges exist.
athatet@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 14h
lol wut