“They ruled in favour that digital distribution sites such as steam should be be forced to allow users to resell their games to other users.”

Nope that’s actually poppycock being repeated by ‘tech’ bloggers.

The court allowed ONCE (and it’s very unlikely we’re gonna get a repeat) an european company to buy and resell extremely expensive professional licences from US companies (such as Oracle, who was the american company suing the european licence-reselling company), to globally allow companies to more fluidly switch from one activity to another – like you externalize or internalize something, you buy/resell the machines, so why not doing the same with the professional softwares? That’s what the court ruled on.

Non-professional end users buying video game licences have nothing to do with that – the only situation where maybe you could argue that the ruling applies, would be a cybercafe changing (terminating, modifying, adding) its gaming activity and trying to resell its licences. Oopsie, it’s already taken care of: cybercafe licences are specific and time-limited (subscription), so cybercafe professionals wouldn’t have anything of value sitting around to resell (the end-user licences they’re illegally using can’t be sold legally anyway).

That’s the only situation where you could apply that ruling to video game licences. That’s why no one in the software/gaming industry reacted to that one case, after it was clear it was a one-off, limited to a very specific setting, very likely to just piss off Oracle, who was caught bullying european companies into getting its overpriced licences from them only.

Not always, that’s the problem.

Key resellers buy their keys from all kind of people, which includes people collecting promotion material keys (that have a much lower value because they’re tied with a product like an expensive GPU ; turning them into commercial keys is a direct loss for the devs who only got a much less valuable marketing partnership in return) or, as often with G2A, keys bought using stolen credit cards information and hijacked Paypal accounts.

Most illegal transactions are cancelled by the banks/paypal and it’s the publishers/devs footing the bill in the end, because it would cost them too much money to track down each key reseller and bring them to court (especially when most of them are in Hong Kong, like G2A).

That’s why the key reselling market is widely known among online traffickers as an easy and secure way to launder stolen CC/money, that’s why the market is still growing and resellers keep offering prices that are not commercially possible (even with russian or brazilian prices).

” I want money to go to the devs”
When it comes to resellers, the money has already gone to the publishers/devs. The product has been purchased, one way or another, and has not been used.

FWIW, I agree with Matt (and Tingler and Heliocentric). I agree with your point of view, but would also prefer personally not to buy from resellers – both because I want money to go to the devs, and because I consider buying from resellers to present a (currently very slight) threat to my Steam account, which I don’t want locked. Clearly, the onus is on me to check who I’m buying from, but it’s useful if you provide the information, as you do with Zavvi.

I don’t mind when these deals appear in sites like this or hukd for instance but I personally would never buy from one of these sellers if I they cannot inform the customer where they got the stuff. Piracy is illegal but at least pirates will usually boast publicly where they got the stuff.

The reason I feel uncomfortable buying from these “retailers” is that I come from a country where there’s a lot of illegal stuff sold in black markets and stuff highly discounted usually means at least at some point it was stolen, either from shipments or from people.

@notGorgeos – I hope you’re just trolling !

Zavvi / The Hut are a *terrible* company in my experience. Customer service is terrible – from barefaced lies to over-promising resolution to closing un-resolved tickets. The sales service is hardly any better with snail-paced delivery times and 80% off deals with a product that they never originally sold at the prices they claim.

AND they still send me frickin spam emails no matter how many unsubscribe requests I’ve sent.

I had COD:MW (or was it MW2?) removed from Steam years ago after I bought it a few weeks prior from some key shop a friend on FB recommended. The official explanation was that the keys were only intended for the Russian market, but there were rumors they were bought (at least partially) with stolen CCs.

Paypal was no help as they only allowed disputes on physical goods, so I ate the 25 bucks and moved on. The seller went out of business shortly after.

FWIW, I have about 200 games on Steam and have since bought from sites like CJS without issue.

It’s not so much Steam/Valve not liking where you bought the item, but the publisher/developer, and there is a legitimate reason for that. As I note above, the NatSelection2 devs got scammed by someone using a stolen card, and they deactivated all keys bought using those cards. Activision banned a ton of Modern Warfare 2 keys that G2Play and OzCDKeys sold, after it was revealed that, again, they’d been initially bought with a stolen card.

(Both are easy enough to Google and verify, so, whilst I don’t know the people affected personally, it’s close enough, I think? 🙂 ).

Also, as I say, I got a BF:BC2 Origin key from a reseller that was (about 3 months later?) revoked.

WTF? Whats wrong with zavvi dude? It’s one of the best shop for games.

Globalization goes two ways. I don’t see how this is controversial at all. I will continue to purchase keys from “shady” sites as Simply CD Keys, Fast 2 Play and even G2Play, as I have never had any issues and I refuse to pay about 50 instead of 25 euro. For me, the difference is massive and absolutely worth it.

Thanks for the deals Lewie and also good on you for adressing this. I see Savygamer as the best consumer advocate for gamers really, simply because you always will post the best deals that in the long run saves someone like me a couple of hundred euros per year.

If the other boot drops and these keys start getting accounts locked you will have met your ethical responsibility to your users. You laid out the warning ‘people disapprove’ and they made the purchase fully informed.

I second this. I understand your view, however I personally wouldn’t use these re-sellers. Why not just label them “re-seller site” – that way you are making no judgement at all, just giving the reader information.

One difference between them and G2Play would be that Simply don’t have a history of selling stolen keys, so you’re less likely to have the police involved!

Judging by what people say about getting keys that are already in use (when bought or after a while) it seems safe to say that they sell the same key more than once, hoping that the first user has stopped playing the game. That’s one of the things keeping me far away from key shops, the price difference from normal sites isn’t near enough to keep me happy when somebody else gets “my” key and I have to choose between not having the game any more or going through the trouble of getting another key.

From the outset, I think it’s useful to mark some lines in the sand. An issue the article has is that it deals explicitly with bundle keys/indie devs, but implicitly what is said covers *all* games.

So, my off-hand comment of “a few quid here and there” is aimed at the bundle-side of things – do we really want indie devs to feel they have to region-lock their games so that bundle keys aren’t taken advantage of? I think everyone can agree that that would be a bad thing. But what about the big pubs? There’s no difference between the two, but human nature is to side with the underdogs and hate The Man, so would people feel differently if it was EA that was being conned out of a few quid? It’s an issue the article ignores (for whatever reason).

On the flip-side, you’re right, the big/mediium sized pubs are region-locking/region-pricing of their own accord (for one reason or another). But they’re also the companies than can most easily track retail-keys (if only because they have the funds to do so), so buying their keys through resellers is it’s own riskiness.

The main issues I have with buying AA/AAA games through resellers is that the prices aren’t that much cheaper – generally speaking – than legitimate stores, and the consumer protection is far more limited than buying from an authorised seller. For example, I note above that the the Fast2Play price for DS2 is only a couple of quid cheaper than Nuuvem. Nuuvem is totally legitimate, will be region-free, and up-to-now hasn’t been dodgy. AMD Never Settle coupons for Thief were available on Ebay for £8, couldn’t be blocked, and were region-free. Both purchases are – I feel – more secure than G2Play, which has… lots of issues. And let’s not forget that Fast2Play is owned by the same company as G2Play, so they’re tarred with the same brush.

Certainly, I can’t argue with the core of your argument – that games are to expensive through the obvious legitmate channels, and they can be bought for cheaper. But I honestly don’t believe that giving hard-earned cash to “dodgy” resellers helps. I think what we need is to take a step-back and ask what we can do to promote official (but foreign) companies.

Alllllll imooooooooooooooo of course. 🙂

I don’t really WANT region locking on games, or any kind of content, really— I was just stating that as things stand now, any and all mid-to-big sized publisher can (and do) region lock their content to preserve their sales in the richer regions. They do so because they can’t do much else— the resale is not illegal, so they can’t do much to curtail it. Also not selling the titles in those regions, or selling at higher prices, is counterproductive, as it will only encourage further piracy and lost revenue for them.

And honestly, it’s not “a few quids here and there”. It’s 50€ at retail for PC games, up to 75€ for console releases, when they’re even stocked (PC games almost never are) versus 15-20€ off a resale site. For me, it’s either the cd-key or no game at all, so all in all I’ve ended up buying many more games that I wouldn’t have even touched otherwise.

Another thing that many (I think UK-residents) are not considering is that it’s always been common practice for many gamers in other countries to shop around for better prices, even ordering titles overseas. I’ve bought most of my Xbox games off Uk retailers because, even with shipping, and even with the disadvantageous exchange, I still ended up paying 10-15€ less than buying local. Why the hell should I pay more when there’s a legit alternative?

If they want me to buy games in my own region, they have to start charging reasonable prices. If I have to choose between buying a physical copy of Thief for PC for 50€ (I’m not making this up, that’s the price), or a key for the game for 15€, what am I going to do?

I’ll get the key every day of the week, and I honestly don’t care if it hurts their bottom line.

Ah. I thought they were legit since they sell boxed games too.

The problem with your solution is, it starts a tit-for-tat that only harms the consumer. “Different and incompatible versions” is just region locking by a different name. Do we want that, as consumers? And do we want to force devs to do that, because we’re so concerned at saving a few quid here and there?

If someone only wants to deal with ‘authorized’ resellers, only wants ‘own region’ keys or wants to buy from resellers they already trust – it’s upto that person to decide whether to take advantage of that deal.

It’s not upto Lewie to decide for you – nor is it his job to determine whether someone is ‘authorized’ or where a key comes from etc. etc.

He can, of course, pass on his and his reader’s experiences and help people discover good deals from good sellers – but at the end of the day, you choose what you want, from where you want and pay the price you want.

It’s a tough world – no-one is holding your hand anymore – keep your eyes and ears open and all that…