Beware Discount Steam Keys - Unknown Worlds
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Beware Discount Steam Keys - Unknown Worlds
Beware discount Steam keys - If you don't purchase a key from an official store, you risk losing both your money and the copy of the game.
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That's ridiculous, why and how is a $22 charge back justifiable for a $25 purchase?
That is all!
It's not UWE's fault you didn't buy your copy of the game through a legitimate source.
Quit being cheap. $25 is nothing for a new game.
Shit, games like CoD are upwards of $60 when they're new.
Also keep in mind financial transactions like 'charge backs' and fraudulent charge disputes take weeks to resolve. The fraudulent charges listed hear were prolly accumulated over a few months, plus amongst these false charge backs, are mixed in many reasonable charge backs, or credit card failures in which the customer then fixed the relevant information.
Charge backs and dealing with missing or incorrect credit card information are a totally normal part of running an online store. Most companies just don't both to comment about the problems or keep their customers in the loop on details like this.
And how could they know that it was "one person" using a stolen credit card to buy all those keys? they can't, you have any idea of how many transactions they might had to deal at the time? they can't verify each individual purchase to make sure that it was all ok.
And ofcourse they don't have any idea if those websites will refund the people that bought the keys, and why would they even care, it's not their problem, they just took a huge hit of U$30,000 because of this they have bigger things to worry about.
Deactivating the keys only punishes the innocent people who bought the keys. It doesn't restore the lost money to UWE, and it doesn't punish the person who sold them. The proper response here was to eat the loss and hope the people who obtained the game in this way lead to more sales via positive word of mouth.
they shouldn't have tried to skimp by going to other sites then.
And from UWE's end, all they're really asking is to be paid for the copies people have bought. The only people doing the screwing are those who knowingly engaged in credit fraud or the transfer of stolen keys; the developers and most end-consumers are equal victims. The consumers are out the money they (perhaps foolishly, perhaps not) paid for a bad key, and UWE are out the chargeback costs (assuming people re-purchase, else it's chargeback + price).
Shouldnt people who had their account deactivated be able to do the same (get their money refunded from that shady retailer) if they paid by creditcard? UWE is doing them a favour by alerting them, who knows what else may pop up on their credit card statements.
Tell me how uwe can punish the thrifty that uwe false/stolen info to buys the key?
Tell me how you know all those 1341 Keys been resold?
Tell me how the the buy again option won't let uwe collect some id the money lost?
> That's not an English sentence
> They can't. Who cares? Reselling keys isn't a crime and it doesn't hurt anybody.
> It will. Assuming an unrealistic 100% conversion rate, it will limit their losses to 22 USD per purchase, meaning each chargeback basically cost them as much as an entire user's sale after that user then paid them correctly for the game.
You appear to misunderstand the situation, and who is being 'punished.' There are four entities on this dance floor:
1. The fraudster who originally bought the keys.
2. The people whose credit cards were used to buy said keys
3. The people who unknowingly bought the fraudulent keys
4. Unknown Worlds
Lets see where each entity ends up, when the music stops:
1. Has the money (3) gave them for the keys
2. Has their money back via their card issuer
3. Has their money back via their card issuer
4. Is out of pocket $30,000.
At what point in that chain is Unknown Worlds punishing those that unknowingly purchased fraudulent keys?
Gave away more CDKeyS to randoms on launch and come back later to strike the game out from people for buying outside the monopoly, for a game with such a low retention rate I can only hope they weren't active players.
@Xao, I'm having trouble understanding what your argument is. But you appear to equate two types of sellers as the same thing:
1. Sellers that stole Steam keys (Websites referred to in our post)
2. Sellers selling legitimate Steam keys (GOG, GMG, D2D)
That sounds like an insult to people like Green Man Gaming. If Green Man Gaming is selling legitimate NS2 Steam keys (which they will be soon, we are finalizing store page artwork with them this week), what possible relevance does that have to UWE deactivating stolen keys?
Where on Earth do you think legitimate stores like Green Man Gaming get their Steam keys? Are you saying they steal them with fraudulent credit card transactions?
go to bed, Xao, you're drunk.
Say I'm a big name game developer/publisher, lets call me Gearpox, and I have a smaller independent competitor called, I don't know, QWD.
All I have to do is find an underhanded way to make an exorbitant number of purchases, and then chargeback all of them and bunkrupt the competitor in the process?
This system seems flawed.
How does a buyer differentiate between a legitimate or illegitimate seller is my point, I've been told numerous hardware retailers online and sites like ozgameshop were scams whenever they are brought up yet they've been in business for years and keep expanding.
I'm not even aware of any websites selling NS2 keys but I'm also not aware of anything on UWE informing people "The game is only to be bought from Steam/retailer and anything else could be a scam", someone noted above "isn't 50% off good enough for some people" has nothing to do with the fact that steam in plenty of regions over the world overcharges the fuck out of their games and people have long stopped going to steam for their game purchases.
I'm assuming step 3. in your post above hasn't happened for most people as they've only just realised they were sold scammed keys because you just invalidated them because they couldn't startup NS2 anymore through their steam account, so they're out of pocket whatever amount they paid for a disabled key until they call their bank and have been labeled thieves or CC fraud supporters for making an honest purchase AND can't play NS2 until they re purchase. Unless I am majorly high 3. isn't getting their money back automatically because UWE queried the charge back.
I seriously doubt the website they bought them off had some disclaimer like "Warning: The CDKeyS here are all resold via CC fraud using stolen/borrowed CC for charge back purposes that would normally get your steam account permanently banned and if the developer can be fucked chasing it you may be unable to play the game at a later date, do you agree to this purchase yes/no".
edit: And like james brought up this was a great PR angle missed out on.
double edit: I mean look at all these legitimate looking re-salers now I've spent 5 seconds in google:
http://cdkeyprices.com/product/Natural-Selection-2-CD-Key-Steam.html/
http://www.allkeyshop.com/blog/buy-natural-selection-2-cd-key-compare-prices/
http://www.dlcompare.com/games/cd-key-download-natural-selection-2-426
Best believe I pre ordered m8, didn't wait 8 years on a chance, I got the swag armour in game and all, even had an old constie account lost in moving and changing computers 1x times.
Caveat emptor.
First they give 40 000 copies away for free, and now this.
What has the world come to, I think its pretty clear where UWE's true motivation lies.
Those poor bargain hunters...
Do you honestly believe every person who got stuck with a fraudulent key is going to issue a chargeback? The odds are high that well over half the people affected are simply going to be out whatever amount they paid for the game. Because most people aren't going to waste their time chasing down a chargeback for 10-20 dollars - they'll chalk it up to the game being bad and move on.
It's a bad situation, but the action that UWE took in deactivating the keys was wholly unnecessary. As explained above, most of the people who end up with deactivated keys will just leave the game. And they'll be out money because most people aren't going to go through the hassle of a chargeback for what's a nominal charge. The extra step you guys took in deactivating keys falls squarely on the shoulders of otherwise innocent people and it's not really right. Take it as you will.
Kind of like how insurance on phones isn't payed back unless the phone is blacklisted.