this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
57 points (90.1% liked)
Games
32696 readers
1192 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It feels like an easily solvable problem. Every key is unique. It can be centrally tracked from it's origin to the buyer. Steam should allow the easy revocation of keys if reported as bought with fraudulent means.
The reason keys aren't revoked more often is because it results in negative press. If you bought a Plony GameStation 6, you're very clearly not a Sony customer. But if you buy what looks like a Steam key, you enter it on Steam, you play it on Steam, and then days later get invalidated, usually the customer frustration is towards Steam. Most people looking for cheap games don't follow the chain of causality to see who's at fault.
It does. That's why sometimes you'll buy a game on g2a, it'll work for a while, and suddenly be inactivated. (Because it was bought with fraudulent means)
And even if the keys don't become invalid and were initially purchased with a non-stolen credit card, it may be part of a money laundering operation and therefore facilitating some shady crap.