this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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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.
Buying games on steam doesn't give you steam keys though, so this doesn't really explain why sales on steam stopped being awesome.
Yeah, it does. Any time you buy a game you have the choice of buying it for the account you're logged in as or having a key sent to an email address. Resellers do that second one, many times.
Are you sure about that? Because that's not my experience. If you're buying for a friend it asks you for their account and adds it to their library directly. I'm pretty sure the behaviour you describe was phased out a long time ago. Granted, there's a possibility this is regional.
Looks like they did update that, which is definitely a step in the right direction. I had an option to email a key about a month ago buying from the website, so I'm not sure if it was a gradual roll out or if it's different depending on account or connection type.
It doesn't seem like it can be a universal thing, since the article says the way this happened was a regional pricing error that resellers took advantage of and bought a lot of keys to resell at the incorrect price.
Honestly they should get rid of keys altogether and just make it so if a dev wants to give a copy away they need to manually select the account in the same way.
The article doesn't say that they were bought on steam in the first place. Given the pricing error, more likely they were bought on another storefront that issues steam keys with purchases. That would explain the error.
Regional pricing error caused the game to be much cheaper than it should be in some region. Resellers bought a lot of keys at that incorrect price to sell on shitty key sale storefronts at a profit.
Those keys are invalid by the Steam ToS.
Ok, it does say on steam, missed that.
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.
Oh? If a dev puts a game on sale, what are the legitimate tools and processes they can use to prevent another company from buying tons of keys at that sale price to resell for it's own profit later?
There aren't any tools. They shouldn't get to control what happens after they sell it. They sold it, they chose the price, end of story.
Try to apply the same logic to GameStop and not sound like a capitalist bootlicker. If Activision was pulling this, you'd be seething at the mouth.
The problem is the digital format. If it was a physical game disc and they put it on a huge sale for a weekend then even scalpers would only be able to get ahold of so many. Resellers can buy thousands of keys at the sale price to resell after the sale ends.
It's a bit hilarious you're calling me a capitalist bootlicker while defending whats basically private equity reseller companies that exist only to leech off of others labor, turning them having one time sales into a constant stream of revenue for assholes.
Maybe you got lost, but the ml instance is over that way somewhere.
It's up to them to figure out solutions that don't fuck over regular consumers. Steam doesn't get to be the only legal storefront. It's bad enough that we only get a license but I don't get defending this when it's clearly anti consumer above all else. I figured most people on Lemmy would like to properly own their games, it seems like a hot button issue. This is the opposite of that, a feature that takes advantage of the fact that we don't own the game.
If you buy a product, it should become yours and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It doesn't matter if you bought it from a reseller or on sale or wtv.
Some people seem to have gotten their keys removed even when they bought it from a reseller that got it directly from the publisher, nothing shady about it.
I don't think it's scalping. Scalping has scarcity involved to drive up the price, this is the opposite.
It's not scalping. The keysellers are what fuck over regular consumers. Steam sales used to be known for their crazy discounts, but as soon as keysellers began buying thousands of keys at those sale prices and then reselling them for a profit that pretty much died and now it often takes years for well selling games to get a decent discount.
This has nothing to do with Steam being the only legal store front. It doesn't matter how many legitimate store fronts there are, if key resellers scum profit for themselves out of a game ever having a sale on any of them then those sales stop happening.
Of course if you buy a product you should own it, but if you buy it from some guy in an alley wearing a trench coat for 20% of the actual price then you don't get to be surprised when the thing doesn't work. It doesn't matter if it's software or hardware, when you see something being sold for a fraction of the price the actual creator sells it for at a place that isn't an official store front there's a reason for that and that reason might be that it's stolen and effectively worthless. If you don't buy from the creator or an official seller of their product then you don't have the right to complain to them. It's not Nintendo's fault you bought a stolen Switch 2 of of a social media ad and they bricked it because it was reported stolen by the actual owner.
The problem is that it isn't stolen, counterfeit or anything if the sort.
Buying on sale is perfectly legal. On top of that, in this case, they also banned keys that the publisher sold directly to a reseller, not a reseller that bought it on sale pretending to be a regular customer. Granted, they are going back on that and it was largely a mistake, it just shows exactly what's wrong with all this.
The fact is that if a key is sold by the publisher and ends up in my possession, and I activate it and it's valid since it was bought legally and is an official key, then that's the end of it.
They shouldn't get to have a say in the transactions along the way. The whole reasoning for it is petty excuses. It doesn't matter the effects, they can find solutions that don't associate massive risks with using second hand shops for fuck sakes.
You know that bullshit where if you buy a second hand Tesla, a bunch of the software stops working even though it has a lifetime membership since its associated with the person and not the car, this is the exact same kind of bullshit.
We should be able to turn our games into keys whenever we want and trade them with friends ffs. 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.
You are defending a wrong (taking perfectly valid keys offline) because of a group abusing it in a legal manner (buying excess keys).
They could find solutions that don't spit on our ownership rights.
It's ToS abuse imo, not really defendable. Steam is getting dragged into court because of shit like this. The breach of ethics involved in trying to dictate the use of keys is far greater than the one committed by the reseller imo. They can only do this because of the quasi monopoly they have.
I really think this is the steam pink google effect. If it was Microsoft and Activision behind it, everyone would be livid imo.
I don't have some strange love for Steam. It was the dev who decided to do it, and the people need to get a refund through the storefront they chose to use.
Well, we can start with what valve recommends, which is treating steam keys like cash, not distrubuting them willy nilly. This is literally Valves recommendation. Literally.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
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.
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.
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.
👍 been using jt since the orange box but do what you gotta do to make yourself feel better and important therw bud.
? 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.
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.