Indie solo video game dev here.
I am okay with gamers “requisitioning” games if they truly can’t afford it. While it is my livelihood, it’s also my attempt at art and I want people to enjoy it. I even plan on releasing a safe cracked copy for the next game.
If you pirate a game, there are ways to help support us starving devs if you like the game.
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Spread the word far and wide that you like the game. A little effort on your part can save us marketing budget and trigger new sales.
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In the future if you have the financial ability, buy a legit key on sale. Even at 75%+ discount it helps.
But please don’t cost us additional money. It costs time and money to process chargebacks triggered by the key resellers selling keys procurred with stolen credit cards.
Unless you plan on implementing any other stronger DRM than the steam provided one. I wouldn’t bother releasing a safe version.
It’s brutally simple to crack steam drm on your own. You just need the clean files from cs.rin.ru/forum or something.
Unsafe cracks will be published elsewhere anyways if your game is popular enough.
I suggest you just don’t add any DRM at all.
Running files you downloaded from a Russian website, what could possibly go wrong
cs.rin.ru is very well regarded in the piracy community and quite a few cracks originate there. You can also learn how to crack yourself on that site.
how to crack yourself
now you got my attention
“Very well regarded in the piracy community” isn’t a phrase I thought I’d see today 🤣
Why not, after you clicked on a post in a piracy community?
Well, it’s not like people that know what they are doing, download from any random site they come across. There are sites that are well regarded and many that are not (like piratebay)
Speaking of cs.rin.ru, unfortunately most of the clean steam files are not available anymore there right now.
It’s silly to assume all (or even the majority imo) of key sellers are fraudulent. How do you know resellers are costing you more money in chargebacks than they make you in legitimate purchases?
Edit: downvote away, but until someone provides some actual evidence of this instead of just “a few devs said so” I’m going to assume this isn’t true.
- In the future if you have the financial ability, buy a legit key on sale. Even at 75%+ discount it helps.
I’ve been doing this a lot recently. Back when i was a teenager i used to pirate a lot, but now that i’m older and have disposable income i’ve been buying a ton of the games o used to pirate then.
Which unfortunally leads to me having tons of games on steam with barely any hours played (yet), when they should be in the thousands already.
I will also use this excuse to justify my huge backlog of steam games bought on deep discounted sales that I in all likelihood will never ever ever actually play.
I’m just making up for my middle school years That’s the ticket…
Lol, yeah, i do that too…
But with these old classics it’s even harder to resist for me. They usually have the biggest discounts, and how can i say this game that gave me so many hours of fun isn’t worth 2 fucking dollars?
The Gamestop NFT marketplace will hopefully allow creators like you to release games and collect a royalty for each re-sale
Sounds kinda sus man
What’s sus about creators receiving royalties for their own work?
The sus part is the royalties being tied to unregulated, highly risky “assets”
I don’t think your opinion is wrong, just misinformed/uninformed. I share your opinion mire generally about blockchain tech, as it’s clearly been used for scams and bullshit.
We’re not talking about Bored Ape fake trading card nonsense. We’re talking about Game Publishers and re-sellers who want to verify provenance of a file. The publisher (creator) wants to get a cut of a forward sale of the game. That’s the speculated way that this would work. Whether it’s tied to Gamestop is irrelevant. NFT technology will serve this purpose for all forms of digital media.
Gamestop is just the only service currently offering this benefit when minting your NFT (or was… Maybe it changed)
Ok, I’ll hear you out but explain to me how the developers and teams get money from it
Why not just give them financial incentives? Why shoehorn a cryptocurrency derivative into financial incentives?
The publisher mints the NFT. As the creator of the NFT, their wallet will automatically be given a percentage of future sales through smart contracts.
When it goes mainstream, it won’t feel shoehorned at all. You probably won’t even know you’re using the technology unless they decide to emphasize it in marketing materials.
Right now, how would you re-sell a digital game and verify it’s an authentic originally purchased copy? Blockchain tech allows for this. That’s the incentive for end users. They can know where the file originated and trust the seller. You’re not buying a stupid trading card, you’re buying digital media with a certificate of authenticity attached.
Edit to add: I’m pro-piracy and generally anti-blockchain (especially as currently used, where we all pretend it’s stonks).
hasn’t that been coming any day now for like two years or something?
just drop the bags and move on with your life man
The Gamestop marketplace has been operational for a while. Not sure what you’re on about…
Fuck no. Nobody wants NFTs.
I am not really all about NFTs but they are not going away… They are the perfect tool for digital capitalism. They create a kind of artificial scarcity
In the case of the Gamestop policy, at least creators get paid for their work as long as its remains popular/desirable
How does it been an NFT stop piracy?
Honestly, I don’t think it does, but it makes re-sale of digital media possible. Right now you can’t return a crappy game to the shop where you bought it. If you want a refund through Steam or something, there’s a limited time. If. you accidentally buy the wrong version of a game, it’s a lot of hassle. If you get tired of the game, or just don’t really like it, it’s basically stuck in your library forever
Attaching the files to NFTs will make these things possible and even easy.
You probably won’t even know you’re interacting with NFT technology
The company’s wallet, not its NFT market. The recent ruling with Ripple and SEC made it appear that running both an exchange AND a wallet would be considered a violation of securities law.
Gamestop wallet users can move their digital items to any compatible wallet
The future
Will be a dark place, mostly
Their NFT website doesn’t even work anymore andyou still out here shilling garbageThat’s just not true.
Oh my bad. It did load after connecting to a UK VPN, seems like they block my region from accessing it.
The part about shilling garbage still stands however.
Only if you can put the license itself on the blockchain, and guarantee the blockchain is robust enough to last beyond Gamestop’s bankruptcy. Or survive past the day Gamestop decides they can make more money by destroying the current blockchain and “upgrading” the system.
The blockchain has nothing to do with Gamestop’s solvency as a company (which is not in doubt, BTW). It’s Ethereum blockchain.
The last sentence of your comment sounds like you don’t actually understand blockchain technology at all…
I don’t think anyone can say that Gamestop will definitely be around longer than people want to use these licenses they sell. And I hope the license isn’t just a pointer to some Gamestop website that stores the licenses (re: standard NFT). But I don’t trust any corporation to do something like this without building in some sort of backdoor to revoke licenses. Especially Gamestop.
Your comment makes me think you don’t get how the technology works. Ethereum blockchain will continue to exist whether Gamestop does or not…
It doesn’t matter if the blockchain is eternal, if this is a traditional NFT, it isn’t stored in the blockchain. All you’re buying is a link to a website where the NFT is stored. It doesn’t matter if it’s a license key, or a shitty computer generated picture of an anthropomorphic ape. When Gamestop decides to shut down the server (it will happen eventually), you lose access to your license key. If Gamestop allows you to copy your license key, you still lose access to your software when Gamestop shuts down the licensing server. I’m not sure the technology works the way you think it works.
Uhm… Sorry but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this tech works.
NFTs are stored in a “wallet”, the address is recorded on the blockchain. As long as you know your seed phrase (or other recovery key) it will be yours eternally. The NFT market is only a place to put buyers and sellers in the same spot. Even “in the market”, the NFT lives at a blockchain address, someone else’s wallet.
That’s why Gamestop can say “we’re shutting down our wallet service. Get your recovery key and restore your NFTs elsewhere”
Gamestop doesn’t run a licensing server and probably won’t. That’s for publishers. Also, NFTs make licensing servers redundant.
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NiX:
I love you guys and postal series, but I’m not made of money, if I can get a game for cheaper I’d rather pay less than more.
Running With Scissors:
Which is why we’re telling you to pirate our games instead of paying a scammer who will cost us money and probably even get your key revoked Our games are cheap right now through official sites. Is saving a few cents worth lowering the chances for releasing another POSTAL game?
NiX:
Isn’t pirating illegal? You want your fans get fines and shit? Now they are on sale so I might pick up some but normally i still rather get the game of g2a for cheaper
Running With Scissors:
You can’t get fines if the owners of the IP give you permission to download. Just know that by getting on G2A, we not only get no money, we also have to pay for the chargeback, that’s the core of the problem and it means no new games in the future and no more RWS
Edit: fixed formatting.
I’d be super interested in reading the full interview if you could point me to it? I’m not familiar with the “NiX” acronym
It was part of a twitter thread that I’m too much of a luddite to figure out how to link. Last comment: https://twitter.com/RWSstudios/status/1671832971601408000#m
I thought it was a news outlet! I’ve know that G2A and the like were “not good” but didn’t have any insight why and am definitely going to look into this more. Thanks for the link!
Wow that guy was kinda a dick
Not sure if this was intentional, but on mobile that text has no line breaks. Just one looooong line I gotta scroll sideways to read.
Try Sync for lemmy, it formats the comment correctly.
Try Infinity for lemmy, it formats the comment correctly.
The old school pirate philosophy. Pirate the game. If you like the game, buy it. If you loved it, pay full price. The best games are being released by indie devs that could use the money.
I wonder where sites like GreenManGaming, Fanatical, Humble and IndieGala fit into the mix as I understand it are legit keysellers?
the listed ones have contracts with publisher to get legit keys where the developer gets it share too
At a legitimate website, the developer(s) and publisher(s) make money for each key purchased and every key is legal to own, so there is little chance of a key being revoked and your account banned on your chosen storefront. At a grey market seller like G2A, they can sometimes get their keys illegally (credit card theft, stolen accounts, etc.). So because GMG, Fanatical, Humble, IndiaGala, etc. are all legitimate resellers, they buy their keys directly from the source (usually the publisher or storefront where they are redeemed, but that’s just my guess). Apologies if that’s not what you were asking.
I wonder if Humble Bundle has any stance on the giveaways people do with their unused Humble Choice keys
It’s against the TOS unless you are actually giving it away as a gift with no promotional value. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/202712380-Can-I-sell-trade-or-use-my-keys-for-promotional-purposes-i-e-Stream-Social-Media-giveaways-
So perfectly fine in the common case where people give keys away for free.
Like this one.
THE LONG DARK is a thoughtful, exploration-survival experience that challenges solo players to think for themselves as they explore an expansive frozen wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. There are no zombies – only you, the cold, and all the threats Mother Nature can muster.
Pee See Pee Aych En - Nine Why Ay Eee Double You - Vee Eight Pee Em Vee
Please don’t take it unless you actually want to play it.
Yeah exactly like that. Damn that’s a good one.
Here’s another: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Ex Seven Pee Ex Jay - Four Gee Bee Gee Bee - Too In Eye Eee Tee
At first I thought I was having a stroke, then I realized it was a key. If I may ask, why spell everything out instead of just posting a copy and paste able code? Only thing I could come up with was to prevent bots from scraping codes out of comments, but I think it would still be pretty easy to parse it into a regular game code.
It’s probably not as bad here; But if you posted a game code on reddit without some kind of obfuscation, a bot would grab it in seconds. I was mostly just copying the person I was replying to.
Great game. Spent over 50 hours not even playing the campaign just exploring with a majority of the hazards turned off.
It sounds like the typical Reddit giveaways would be fine under their TOS but they would understandably not provide support for them.
Those are all official seller stores.
ELI5, Why are resellers bad? Do they acquire the keys in a shady way?
Here’s a dev explaining it: https://lemmy.ml/comment/2618947
Apparently they do chargebacks, which costs the gamedevs money.
This is something that should have been in the opening post.
It explains why using these sites actually causes harm.
Instead of getting a game at a reduced rate without harming the dev much (just losing a sale) you’re actually harming the dev.This is something I didn’t know and now I’ll look more at discounted games on official platforms instead of these key sites.
That’s why I stopped using those sites. The only reseller I buy from now is Humble Bundle, but most things I just buy direct from the Steam Store.
Fanatical and greenmangaming are two other sites that only sell legit keys. I usually try to only buy games that are on sale, so I check Humble, Fanatical, GMG and GOG whenever something I want is not on sale on Steam.
Yes.
They steal a credit card, buy the game with it, and sell the game. Then the owner of the credit card (or the credit card issuer) discovers this and demands a refund from the game seller. Processing this refund requires extra work and additional money from the game seller.
For a longer explanation, with successful results, you can read https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303 .
I sorta blame big media companies for this. They have been trying to kill used movie/game sales for decades, moving to these (should be illegal) licensing models, etc. In doing that, they have failed to allow an infrastructure to form that would keep used or third-party purchases “legit” so you end up with sites that have no choice but to live in the grey area, even cdkeys.com that (allegedly) sources their keys 100% first-party legitimately.
Ultimately, credit card fraud will always be a risk. Someone installed a barcode copier on a local gas station machine a while back, and they bought 5 PS4s on it before the Bank got wise. It’s a little easier in other countries because there’s no physical shipping to deal with, but it’s not really creating the market. As a defrauded individual, you just can’t chargeback a playstation that was sold anonymously on ebay and already shipped.
What shits me off is the number of people who defend these key reselling sites.
I’ve been utterly lambasted for likening kinguin with G2A in the past. Like really? Their arguments literally fall apart with a small amount of scrutiny, but thet chalk it up to “they say they aren’t like other resellers so they aren’t” FFS you literally cannot prove that and that’s my point. And that’s why you DO NOT TRUST THESE SITES.
It’s really fucking common in YouTube comments specifically. Especially with youtubers who have been sponsored by these sites in the past.
I have literally unsubbed from youtubers that have advertised these stinkers, the problem is when the likes of MrBeast starts advertising it, people start to think that it’s ok.
I mean, cdkeys.com doesn’t allow third-party sellers and (supposedly) sources all their keys from verifiably legal sources, usually just region arbitrage. Considering they come into ownership of all the keys they sell, I’d think they lack all the “safe harbor” protections of the others.
Thing is, cdkeys.com is about the same price as the others. Which suggests to me that the “stolen keys” rate from those others is lower than some companies would have you believe. Remember, legal or not, the big label stance on all this is an extension of their stance on buying used, which is that they would rather you pirate something than support even a legitimate third-party or cross-regional market.
Based RWS
I do not understand why publishers don’t cancel the keys. Why do they allow that parasitic industry to exist? Surely they know which key corresponds to a chargeback?
I don’t think the majority of those keys are from stolen credit cards. A lot of them are just purchased in countries where the game is extremely cheap then resold for a profit.
Yeah the devs are still making their money. Just not the big first world money they want.
The indie dev behind Factorio spoke out about the grey market resellers in their blog. They talked about G2A, where they had received a bunch of fraudulent purchases, and had to pay fines to the credit card processor for each chargeback… Effectively making reseller sales cost the developer money instead of earning it. Here’s the 4 blog posts talking about the issue.
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-171
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303
Ok. So. That doesn’t seem so bad to me.
It pushes the price of games up in countries where the median income is a small fraction of places like the US. So it either takes away the gaming experience or encourages piracy from people who would have loved to support the developers and enjoy the game that way.
Fair enough. But devil’s advocate: presumably they’re still selling it there at a profit?
When it comes to individual copies of games, there’s not really an “at profit” price. Either it sells enough copies to cover the development costs, or it doesn’t. Like let’s say an indie game cost $100k to develop, and after taxes and the storefront (i.e. Steam or the PlayStation store) the net revenue for the dev is 50% of the sell price.
Using Pizza Tower’s regional pricing as an example, it’s $20 in the US Steam Store and ~$0.80 in the Argentina Steam Store. So with those numbers (i.e. $10 revenue for US sales and $0.40 revenue for Argentina sales), you’d need to sell 10k copies to become break even if all sales were in the US compared to 250k copies in Argentina.
So if people all over the world are using the cheaper country’s price, it becomes a lot harder for the game to become profitable, and if that abuse of the system is widespread enough, the devs will either need to raise the price so that it’s no longer affordable for people in countries with lower incomes, or remove it entirely from that region. Most devs would rather people have a reasonable, legal way for people to play their games, and key resellers can make that harder
Profit for game industry is relative to sales, because the cost per digital game is practically $0, it’s all paid upfront.
You can sell a game for 1 cent and if all people on the planet buy it, it will probably still turn a profit.
Nothing is ever bad as places like this make it out to be. Reddit had (probably still has) the same propensity for hysteria.
The problem is not wether the majority of sellers aren’t selling keys like that. It’s the possibility that some sellers ARE. These reselling sites are massive, and even if it’s 10% that are using stolen credit cards - that can put a huge dent in the sellers wallet.
It can even hurt the one who purchasing thinking it was legit if the seller decides to revoke the keys - which they can do at their discretion.
Yet these sites take no responsibility, don’t really police or vett the users selling on their site beyond doing just enough to say they are in court, and even happen to offer a subscription model for “buyers protection”, essentially allowing them to profit the most off of these sites. I know G2A specifically has been caught making it super hard to cancel these subscriptions as well - it’s just super fucking shifty and slimy.
Apart from the other stuff about cross country reselling, cancelling them can bring a bad image to your company although it’s not even your fault.to begin with.
I mean there a number of big publishers who don’t seem to give two fucks about their image if there’s profit in it…
From prior experience gog sometimes cancels keys. Steam doesn’t seem to do so.
Well, that makes me feel marginally better for never having bought keys in gray market sites like my friend who doesn’t pirate because he’s afraid of viruses, but then does that to get “amazing discounts”.
What’s the last one from the top row? The Pirate Bay? :)
It’s not the Pirate Bay logo so my bet would be that it’s representing internet piracy as a general concept!
Eneba is selling pirated keys?
How does g2a even work? I’ve bought a few keys there before and they worked. I assume these keys were given to someone from like a promo or something then they just resell it?
They let people resell keys “no questions asked” (it reduces their liability to not ask questions). Some percent of the resellers they host use stolen credit cards to sell at a loss, and nobody knows what percent. It’s probably depressingly high, but (likely) still <50%.
Some percent of the resellers just buys games on sale, or in a cheap country to resell to expensive countries. It’s not uncommon when a game has a plummet sale (a $70 black friday sale for $20) that thousands of copies of the game show up for $30-40 on G2A as soon as the sale ends. Those are (generally) not in any way related to stolen credit cards.
they buy keys using stolen credit cards and then resell them
And then the owner of the card issues a chargeback, so they lose more money (chargeback fees can be $25-$100) than if you’d have just torrented it.
Technically they could revoke the key as well, but that tends to cause a bit of fuss and bad PR so they don’t often bother.
So the lesson is clear. Buy your keys on G2A with stolen credit cards.
I use G2@ to ea games, better get the % off or just piratbuy
What about Instant Gaming ? Is it also a website that only resales keys or do they have some kind of partnership with game devs?
Same stuff as G2A.
Do we have any intel concerning the percentage that the editors gets in the best and worse case ? I’m wondering if it would be okay to buy AAA on such websites (or more like the company behind a game has enough money) but small editor games on official platforms…
If it’s EA or Take2 my personal codex would so: Go wild.
This is no legal advice
Yes, I have seen Coherance and it’s really different, it is more philosophy and history focus. As history major, I loved it.
G2a has given me more and more fake keys recently so I stopped using them all together, now I just buy the game or pirate it if I’m really unsure if I’ll ever play it but want to try like EU4.