this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Piracy
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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.