Comment by energy123
3 months ago
A reason to get this instead of Playstation/Xbox is that games on Steam are significantly cheaper through keys sites like g2a.com or just waiting for discounts.
Playstation/Xbox know you're locked in because you've already sunk money into the console, and they use this pricing power against you.
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.
> 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.
> 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
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> 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
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Ouch! I got one or two games from a key seller some years ago. I never knew these sites were such a shady act. I really, actually thought they just bought the keys in bulk during a sale to resell them later. TIL :(
I'm a firm believer in letting bygones be bygones. I bought from them too (cdkeys back in the day) before i learned the truth!
Just pirate the games instead of using key sites, they're full of chargeback scams that often end up costing developers more money than piracy. Those ten bucks you save really aren't worth the trouble of losing your account over.
With how often Steam games are on sale, you may ass well wait a little longer and buy directly through Valve.
The beauty of PC is that you can also buy games through GOG and Epic if they offer a better price.
A big thing here is that you can always buy another or build another PC that can run this stuff if you don't like the Steam Machine. You cannot build a PS5/Xbox to do the same.
Don't forget the subscription-free multiplayer
https://isthereanydeal.com/ is a great resource