this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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What's the thing to the left of steam?
Looks like the company logo, Running with Scissors.
They are saying they would like you to buy the game either from them directly (I assume on their website or something) or via steam, or GoG or if all else fails for you then pirate it.
I assume they are stating in order of preference.
Presumably if you buy the game directly from them they get 100% of the cut.
How is it that Piracy is better than Key reselling sites? Am I missing something?
TLDR from Factorio devs: piracy costs only pirates(electricity bill, internet bills), resellers costs game studios a lot(fees, chargebacks) and often are part of fraud and money launderung.
They sometimes buy keys using stolen credit cards. When the fraud is found out, the banks will request the money from the developer. They in turn often don't have a way to lock the fraudulent key, so it remains valid.
The costs for the initial bank transfer, plus the time invested in returning the money to the credit card holder are payed by the developer.
The key reseller has a 100% profit margin, the customer has a valid and cheap game key, and the developer actually lost time and money.
Never realised this could lead to a loss from the game dev
Edit: So do it for Ubisoft, EA etc. but not for indie games. Got it.
Oh wait. realises you can't do it for big companies anymore
Old employer bought Windows keys from G2A.
They’re not around anymore..