It’s technically impossible to differentiate a legitimate key from an illegal key. They are usually created in batches to be distributed. So they are legitimate and exist way before the fraud takes place. By the time there’s a charge-back on the purchase, whether the key is illegal or not is irrelevant. The damage is done, banning the user does literally nothing. The developer is still on the hook with the processing fees and the user already downloaded and installed the game.
For what it is, a top down 2d factory game, Factorio rocks. Just wanted to add that in, it’s one of the more recent games that I managed to put hundreds of hours in before even getting to the finished achievement. Though I did use mods to make it worth that time as they make the chains pretty complex. To get to the end of vanilla isn’t overly difficult but I had over 150 before launching rocket due to trying mods and restarting but really that’s just the tutorial before you understand you want to launch so many rockets per minute to get bigger numbers.
Those devs always had weekly updates on what they were working on, fixed performance issues over the years and made a quality product. No this is not paid advertising but they are devs worth supporting overall.
No there isnt. Find interviews from developers on this. They go deep and technical with the detail. They create the keys at a different time. Yes, they are unique. But they’re not associated with the payment, only to the user who claims them in a DRM platform. Only the retailer knows the payment details. If it’s a reseller with stolen cards, then no detail arrives to the developer, just a transaction then a transaction reversal. The developer doesn’t know which client owned the card that reversed the payment, nor which key was given by the retailer to the final customer.
They would if they were easily identifiable. IIRC Steam might revoke them if the key is bought with stolen cards and their owners perform a chargeback.
Thing is for copyright law those keys are 100% legal.
EDIT: I explicitly said for copyright law. It’s how users justify that “they are not pirating”, except it’s much worse because game developers need to deal with fees anyway after chargeback.
Then why don’t illegal obtained keys just become banned? As long as they don’t, You can’t expect customers to see any problem with them.
It’s technically impossible to differentiate a legitimate key from an illegal key. They are usually created in batches to be distributed. So they are legitimate and exist way before the fraud takes place. By the time there’s a charge-back on the purchase, whether the key is illegal or not is irrelevant. The damage is done, banning the user does literally nothing. The developer is still on the hook with the processing fees and the user already downloaded and installed the game.
Not only that, but those users thought they were buying legit keys, and expect support from the original publisher. Pirates never expect support.
Factorio devs literally said to pirate their game rather than buy from one of these reseller sites.
For what it is, a top down 2d factory game, Factorio rocks. Just wanted to add that in, it’s one of the more recent games that I managed to put hundreds of hours in before even getting to the finished achievement. Though I did use mods to make it worth that time as they make the chains pretty complex. To get to the end of vanilla isn’t overly difficult but I had over 150 before launching rocket due to trying mods and restarting but really that’s just the tutorial before you understand you want to launch so many rockets per minute to get bigger numbers.
Those devs always had weekly updates on what they were working on, fixed performance issues over the years and made a quality product. No this is not paid advertising but they are devs worth supporting overall.
This is not true, keys are unique therefore it is technically very possible to track their way of payment.
No there isnt. Find interviews from developers on this. They go deep and technical with the detail. They create the keys at a different time. Yes, they are unique. But they’re not associated with the payment, only to the user who claims them in a DRM platform. Only the retailer knows the payment details. If it’s a reseller with stolen cards, then no detail arrives to the developer, just a transaction then a transaction reversal. The developer doesn’t know which client owned the card that reversed the payment, nor which key was given by the retailer to the final customer.
They would if they were easily identifiable. IIRC Steam might revoke them if the key is bought with stolen cards and their owners perform a chargeback.
Thing is for copyright law those keys are 100% legal.
EDIT: I explicitly said for copyright law. It’s how users justify that “they are not pirating”, except it’s much worse because game developers need to deal with fees anyway after chargeback.