So, why is this even a “gaming” issue? Why isn’t it affecting every other purchase?
If you can “get a bunch of stolen credit cards” and use them, why would it work only on computer games?
And in any case this isn’t even remotely a problem of the key shops, it’s a problem of the credit card companies.
And this is essentially the repetition of the flawed logic that says internet providers are responsible of what the user will do.
Because there is no physical product to ship (e.g., to an approved address associated with card) and because the delivery of the goods (the keys) is immediate.
If you steal my card, you’re not going to be able to get Amazon to ship a bunch of stuff to your house. It works on games because you can quickly flip the keys to “clean” cash, before the card is flagged.
I do not know why this isn’t Steam own issue rather than whatever indie dev. It’s the shop itself in charge of the transaction. If this person gets a bunch of stolen cards, buys the keys, sells them to “legit” customers who register their copy of the game. This second transaction is invisible to Steam, because it’s solely between the end user and the guy who actually bought the key. So when a credit card company sees the purchase was made with a stolen card they call Steam and ask the money back.
To Steam.
Steam that ideally at this point would recall the key in use. Though maybe you don’t want to do that, because that was a legit customer in the end. If Steam contacts that legit customer, the guy would tell Steam he bought the key from some other shop.
What is preventing Steam to go after that shop and ask the money back (and then that shop having to track the original guy who initiated this thing)?
Those are the two weak points:
1- If this would become a big problem, stolen keys would be revoked. In a matter of a week all these shops would close.
2- Steam or the credit card company should be motivated to track the thing back to these shops or the original user
(1) Same as if you buy a stolen car and the police finds out, you don’t get to keep it.
In any case this is very unlikely the problem. Stolen cards get blocked right away, especially if you start multiple purchases out of nothing. I don’t know how you can actually build a system that reliably provides an unending flux of stolen credit cards to then feed continuous max purchases.
What I instead observe is that the prices are usually in-line with regional + sales prices. Basically there are these guys who invest some amounts of money purchasing keys when and where they are cheap around the world, and then sell them later. But that’s a grey market, not a really illegal one.
Just to be clear: the original complaint comes from indiegamestand. They sell steam keys on behalf of a game. Whilst I’m all for Steam revoking keys from people if that key is reported as being fraudulently obtained, it’s too late by that point. The fraudsters have already stung IGS and converted the key into cash, and physically cost IGS something in the process.
Steam has their own struggles with credit card fraud, and is the principal reason for tradeable cooldowns and region locks and the like.
If the CC companies ate the loss, there would be no incentive for the merchants to try and do better, aka don’t sell to thieves, check the cards… I am surprised they can’t tell when someone goes on a shopping spree with a new card as some sort of red flag.
There is more than meets the eye. Our online transaction on google playstore frequently fail transactions from a particular region.
Because we go through google’s payment channel, purchases are run against their anti-fraud system so we get “protected”. But you can consider it as loss of potential revenue because the CC checking mechanism seems pretty strict from the relative large number of failed transactions.
I can see publishers going with less strict payment gateways and getting hit big time.
E.g. Why didn’t the site have a spam check against suspicious buys? Large order spikes from single source etc.
Edit: In case it’s not clear, we get quite a lot of failed transactions (card transactions rejected) from a particular region. So no virtual goods were issued. The payment didnt go through from playstore’s end.
GMG is gray market? I view GMG as more legit than the G2A cd key places.
Well, it’s not illegitimate, but I could see it being considered “grey” in that Steam isn’t in the business of propping up other game license storefronts. Steam’s ability to register retail keys creates added value to such keys, GMG gets keys from publishers (er … mostly, I hear) and then they sell them for a profit. That’s legitimate, but grey as I understand it.
While the grey-market key resellers could do a better job of policing the credit card fraud they are providing an important consumer-friendly service: The right of first sale doctrine.
With software and games, consumers already have too few rights: we don’t own the products, sometimes have little control over the software and how it changes, and increasingly are being forced into ongoing subscription models to access the software. At the very least consumers should be able to resell an unredeemed key. That practice itself is not hurting gaming.
I hope the grey market as a concept doesn’t get too vilified since the problem, as usual, is the minority of people exploiting a very defensible and sound consumer right.
-Todd
I don’t think that is correct. Steam seems perfectly happy to be providing both a storefront and a library/community service concurrently and even separately. They want people on the library/community service because they are then much more likely to spend on the storefront, trade cards, buy hats, and just generally engage (there’s that magic yardstick they are all striving for). They certainly don’t seem to mind at all that people consuming the library service don’t strictly get the keys from their own storefront. Pretty sure that is working as intended for them at this point in time.
If GMG are getting Steam keys from publishers, it is with Valve’s blessing and would not be considered grey market.
I’m unsure why Valve would want GMG to succeed. I think it’s not by design, but rather making the best of a bad situation (sales where Steam gets no money). I mean, if that’s “by design” then I guess okay, but it’s clearly not an optimal situation for Valve (they’d of course prefer zero competition).
If GMG are getting Steam keys from publishers, it is with Valve’s blessing and would not be considered grey market.
I don’t think Valve would have any say in the matter, or do you mean there are exclusivity contracts that they would otherwise make with publishers? (not that many would agree to them, but leverage is leverage)
This is not actually true. Stolen creditcards are commonly used to purchase items from ecommerce sites. They are then “reshipped” via patsies to the criminals.
Steam provides all Steam keys. If they didn’t want other people to sell them, they could easily refuse to provide them or the ability to activate third-party sales at all. Instead they hand them out like candy, because it cements their presence as the universal constant of PC gaming and that’s more valuable to them than a (30%, I think?) cut of those individual sales.
They’re also used to buy Gift Cards. And guess what’s happening with the merchants who haven’t update their machines and therefore now get to eat the liability… they’re limiting some of the purchasing
The merchant should at least try and identify and stop suspicious behavior. They’re only going to do that when they have skin in the game. The stolen credit card problem isn’t unique to gaming.
That doesn’t quite make sense. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying it’s incorrect, but it’s strange. Steam allows you to activate retail keys for many products, such as those that come from the increasingly rare boxed copies of games. These come in different formats, varying it seems from publisher to publisher. In the past, there have been issues where publishers have stated (perhaps lying - I couldn’t say) that they needed to “release more keys to Steam” for whatever reason. Because of that and other similar things I’ve stumbled across, it has long been my understanding that the publisher provides valid codes to Steam, not the other way around. You’re saying that’s not the case, correct?
When I got a review copy of a game, the publisher stated they needed to wait until they got the next batch from Steam. Could be they just wanted me to wait, but that is what they said and I got a key about a week later. It could be they wanted to give the main outlets time to review before a peon like me got one.
I’m pretty sure we can’t really speak plainly about this here, but I’m sure you can do a quick Google search to find out, Dan ;P
Got it. Sounds like an “unreliable narrator” bit (trying to be generous) when it comes to the stuff I’ve been reading. That’s what I get for being out of the business so long, lol.
I’ve often wondered the same thing, exactly how this works. Valve is very vague about it, and I couldn’t find any publishers talking about the process either. Clearly the publisher authorizes Steam to sell a certain number of copies, but when they run out, you’d think authorizing more would be a simple matter of an authorized user clicking “OK” in a webform. But there must be more to it.
Yeah, like this story about Fallout 3:
“We have recently ran out of CD keys for this product,” a notice on the Fallout 3 GOTY Steam page warns. “As soon as we receive more from the publisher a key will be granted to new owners.”
I mean, we honestly don’t know the truth of the matter - it could be that Valve was covering their own screw-up, it could be that some publishers issue their own keys and Valve does it for others, or it could all be publisher-based.