I work in games.

Please don't buy games from g2a and the likes. In the best case, g2a make money and the developer doesn’t . in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts.

Please, just pirate games instead.

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bhelkey 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts

Maybe this is just a hole in my knowledge but I don't see how this could be the case.

Regarding stolen accounts: Once I activate a Steam key, I can't deactivate my copy to get my key back (I don't think anyways). How would a stolen account generate steam keys?

Regarding bogus keys: If the keys primarily didn't work I suspect that we would see deplatforming of the site by payment processors. They generally don't like when all their customers issue chargebacks.

I think there is some risk that keys sold in a grey market are purchased by stolen credit cards but I can't imagine that this is too prevalent. I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and Steam would deactivate the key.

	▲	maccard 32 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Regarding stolen accounts A good number of these sites sell accounts, not keys. You buy an access to an account that you log in to, with the key enabled on it. Again, best case it’s a region swapped key between 5 people and g2a get paid and the devs get nothing. Worst case it’s a stolen credit card purchasing a single key. > I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and steam would deactivate the key. Yes. Chargebacks are painfully expensive for the vendor. One chargeback for a $10 game likely undoes 4/5 sales. https://www.tinybuild.com/single-post/2017/04/28/g2a-sold-45... This story did the rounds a few years ago explaining how much it cost a small publisher
	▲	small_scombrus 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and Steam would deactivate the key There's a real issue for both Valve and the game dev if this happens. The public isn't going to take this key doesn't work or worse my game stopped working after I bought it and blame nebulous credit card fraud, they're going to blame Valve and/or the dev