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.
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.
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.
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…
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?
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.
So, those resellers listed have been known to hold and sell keys that are linked to stolen credit cards and other unauthorised payment methods. The keys are bought up cheap during sales using the stolen credentials then posted on the reseller sites. A few things happen when the victim notifies their bank or institution of the fraud. Steam or whatever site cancels those keys, meaning the person who purchased the key on the reseller site is out a product, the dev/publisher then has to front the cost of the charge back for the fraudulent purchase, or at least the 70% cut they get. Knowing that sometimes the keys you purchase dont work the resellers also offer a service, for an extra fee, to ensure that your key will work.
In essence, the reseller makes money from the purchase of the key, the fraudulent posters of the keys make money from the sale of the key, the legitimate store and the dev lose money due to the chargeback caused by the fraudulent sale, and the user who purchased the key is out money and a product. There are legitimate resellers who dont operate this way but the ones pictured are not those ones.
Thats not even the fact that the reseller wouldn’t be selling the key for less than they bought it so the customer is giving more money to someone else rather then the dev. So sure, the dev may have been paid for the keys at sale price, but the end user is paying more which goes to someone else.
I understand the theory, I’m looking for evidence that this is a problem that makes resellers a net negative income for devs. I’ve used resellers plenty of times for games I otherwise would not have purchased and I have never once had this happen to me, which makes me think that this is an unproven talking point based on outliers.
It’s not like it’s a straightforward calculation, it’s hard to distinguish between regular sales and sales made to resellers, as well as regular chargebacks and chargebacks made to resellers. So until someone actually puts effort into proving this, “because the dev said so” isn’t a good enough answer for me.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
So, those resellers listed have been known to hold and sell keys that are linked to stolen credit cards and other unauthorised payment methods. The keys are bought up cheap during sales using the stolen credentials then posted on the reseller sites. A few things happen when the victim notifies their bank or institution of the fraud. Steam or whatever site cancels those keys, meaning the person who purchased the key on the reseller site is out a product, the dev/publisher then has to front the cost of the charge back for the fraudulent purchase, or at least the 70% cut they get. Knowing that sometimes the keys you purchase dont work the resellers also offer a service, for an extra fee, to ensure that your key will work.
In essence, the reseller makes money from the purchase of the key, the fraudulent posters of the keys make money from the sale of the key, the legitimate store and the dev lose money due to the chargeback caused by the fraudulent sale, and the user who purchased the key is out money and a product. There are legitimate resellers who dont operate this way but the ones pictured are not those ones.
Thats not even the fact that the reseller wouldn’t be selling the key for less than they bought it so the customer is giving more money to someone else rather then the dev. So sure, the dev may have been paid for the keys at sale price, but the end user is paying more which goes to someone else.
I understand the theory, I’m looking for evidence that this is a problem that makes resellers a net negative income for devs. I’ve used resellers plenty of times for games I otherwise would not have purchased and I have never once had this happen to me, which makes me think that this is an unproven talking point based on outliers.
It’s not like it’s a straightforward calculation, it’s hard to distinguish between regular sales and sales made to resellers, as well as regular chargebacks and chargebacks made to resellers. So until someone actually puts effort into proving this, “because the dev said so” isn’t a good enough answer for me.