this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Piracy
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Indie solo video game dev here.
I am okay with gamers "requisitioning" games if they truly can't afford it. While it is my livelihood, it's also my attempt at art and I want people to enjoy it. I even plan on releasing a safe cracked copy for the next game.
If you pirate a game, there are ways to help support us starving devs if you like the game.
Spread the word far and wide that you like the game. A little effort on your part can save us marketing budget and trigger new sales.
In the future if you have the financial ability, buy a legit key on sale. Even at 75%+ discount it helps.
But please don't cost us additional money. It costs time and money to process chargebacks triggered by the key resellers selling keys procurred with stolen credit cards.
Unless you plan on implementing any other stronger DRM than the steam provided one. I wouldn't bother releasing a safe version.
It's brutally simple to crack steam drm on your own. You just need the clean files from cs.rin.ru/forum or something.
Unsafe cracks will be published elsewhere anyways if your game is popular enough.
I suggest you just don't add any DRM at all.
Running files you downloaded from a Russian website, what could possibly go wrong
cs.rin.ru is very well regarded in the piracy community and quite a few cracks originate there. You can also learn how to crack yourself on that site.
now you got my attention
“Very well regarded in the piracy community” isn’t a phrase I thought I’d see today 🤣
Why not, after you clicked on a post in a piracy community?
Well, it's not like people that know what they are doing, download from any random site they come across. There are sites that are well regarded and many that are not (like piratebay)
Speaking of cs.rin.ru, unfortunately most of the clean steam files are not available anymore there right now.
To your point, If I really can't afford a game I'll pirate it and when I can get those games for $5 - 10 I'll pick them up on steam or gog for as much convenience as anything. I'm not trying to get a free ride but my appetite for more art is greater than I could possibly afford.
It's silly to assume all (or even the majority imo) of key sellers are fraudulent. How do you know resellers are costing you more money in chargebacks than they make you in legitimate purchases?
Edit: downvote away, but until someone provides some actual evidence of this instead of just "a few devs said so" I'm going to assume this isn't true.
So, those resellers listed have been known to hold and sell keys that are linked to stolen credit cards and other unauthorised payment methods. The keys are bought up cheap during sales using the stolen credentials then posted on the reseller sites. A few things happen when the victim notifies their bank or institution of the fraud. Steam or whatever site cancels those keys, meaning the person who purchased the key on the reseller site is out a product, the dev/publisher then has to front the cost of the charge back for the fraudulent purchase, or at least the 70% cut they get. Knowing that sometimes the keys you purchase dont work the resellers also offer a service, for an extra fee, to ensure that your key will work.
In essence, the reseller makes money from the purchase of the key, the fraudulent posters of the keys make money from the sale of the key, the legitimate store and the dev lose money due to the chargeback caused by the fraudulent sale, and the user who purchased the key is out money and a product. There are legitimate resellers who dont operate this way but the ones pictured are not those ones.
Thats not even the fact that the reseller wouldn't be selling the key for less than they bought it so the customer is giving more money to someone else rather then the dev. So sure, the dev may have been paid for the keys at sale price, but the end user is paying more which goes to someone else.
I understand the theory, I'm looking for evidence that this is a problem that makes resellers a net negative income for devs. I've used resellers plenty of times for games I otherwise would not have purchased and I have never once had this happen to me, which makes me think that this is an unproven talking point based on outliers.
It's not like it's a straightforward calculation, it's hard to distinguish between regular sales and sales made to resellers, as well as regular chargebacks and chargebacks made to resellers. So until someone actually puts effort into proving this, "because the dev said so" isn't a good enough answer for me.
G2A made an offer years ago to any video game devs that they would compensate any devs if they and an external investigation could prove that the keys were illegitimate.
Wube the company behind Factorio was the only one that took them up on the offer and they were right, the keys were illegitimate.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/g2a-and-wube-software-settle-usd40-000-chargeback-dispute
https://www.pcgamer.com/g2a-has-paid-factorio-studio-nearly-dollar40000-over-sale-of-illegitimate-keys/
Official announcement from G2A: https://www.g2a.co/g2a-strikes-anti-fraud-agreement-with-indie-developer-wube-software/
About the issue from Wube: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303
Follow up [last section]: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-348
I'd still be very interested in knowing whether or not this was a net negative income for Factorio, as the question wasn't "does fraud exist on G2A", it was "is pirating better for devs than resellers". For pirating to be better than resellers, resellers have to provide net negative income, and to know that we need to know the total revenue from resellers. I didn't see that in the links provided (just seeing that 198/321 chargebacks were fraudulent), but let me know if I just missed it.
Thanks for the links though! This was a super interesting read, and honestly big props to Wube and G2A for being so transparent about the process. Honestly not sure why more game devs wouldn't take G2A up on this offer, 10x the cost of chargebacks with zero risk??
198 chargebacks mentioned cost Wube $20 per chargeback, on top of losing the sale. They mention this in the linked blog post.
So instead of earning $20 (minus various cuts), they lose $20. So they urge people to avoid using key resellers, and instead just pirate their game if you can't afford to buy it properly.
What he's trying to say is that if there were 198 fraudulent copies sold on G2A, but G2A also was responsible for 500 non-fraudulent sales, then Wube might have still netted a profit off G2A from people who would not have bought Factorio full price. Since nobody has ever shown that anywhere near a majority of keys are fraudulent, it is entirely possible for most games that they still make more money even after chargebacks than if G2A didn't exist. There are, however, definitely going to be games where that's not the case.
The better argument, honestly, is that G2A being unwilling to police fraudulent sales is helping the scam industry, and is responsible for us getting more Microsoft Support, Amazon Refund, etc scams in our inboxes. I do not hold the negative view most do on key resellers because most of the reason big media hates on them has nothing to do with the fraud... but honestly companies like G2A should be doing more (something) to own and police their shit. I personally think a majority of G2A's keys are legit because there are a lot of ways to legally gets keys much cheaper than MSRP. I frankly support that behavior because I'll never be a fan of the IP price controls and treating game purchases as "licenses" instead of purchases.
The Gamestop NFT marketplace will hopefully allow creators like you to release games and collect a royalty for each re-sale
Sounds kinda sus man
What's sus about creators receiving royalties for their own work?
The sus part is the royalties being tied to unregulated, highly risky "assets"
I don't think your opinion is wrong, just misinformed/uninformed. I share your opinion mire generally about blockchain tech, as it's clearly been used for scams and bullshit.
We're not talking about Bored Ape fake trading card nonsense. We're talking about Game Publishers and re-sellers who want to verify provenance of a file. The publisher (creator) wants to get a cut of a forward sale of the game. That's the speculated way that this would work. Whether it's tied to Gamestop is irrelevant. NFT technology will serve this purpose for all forms of digital media.
Gamestop is just the only service currently offering this benefit when minting your NFT (or was... Maybe it changed)
Ok, I'll hear you out but explain to me how the developers and teams get money from it
Why not just give them financial incentives? Why shoehorn a cryptocurrency derivative into financial incentives?
The publisher mints the NFT. As the creator of the NFT, their wallet will automatically be given a percentage of future sales through smart contracts.
When it goes mainstream, it won't feel shoehorned at all. You probably won't even know you're using the technology unless they decide to emphasize it in marketing materials.
Right now, how would you re-sell a digital game and verify it's an authentic originally purchased copy? Blockchain tech allows for this. That's the incentive for end users. They can know where the file originated and trust the seller. You're not buying a stupid trading card, you're buying digital media with a certificate of authenticity attached.
Edit to add: I'm pro-piracy and generally anti-blockchain (especially as currently used, where we all pretend it's stonks).
hasn't that been coming any day now for like two years or something?
just drop the bags and move on with your life man
The Gamestop marketplace has been operational for a while. Not sure what you're on about...
Fuck no. Nobody wants NFTs.
I am not really all about NFTs but they are not going away... They are the perfect tool for digital capitalism. They create a kind of artificial scarcity
In the case of the Gamestop policy, at least creators get paid for their work as long as its remains popular/desirable
How does it been an NFT stop piracy?
Honestly, I don't think it does, but it makes re-sale of digital media possible. Right now you can't return a crappy game to the shop where you bought it. If you want a refund through Steam or something, there's a limited time. If. you accidentally buy the wrong version of a game, it's a lot of hassle. If you get tired of the game, or just don't really like it, it's basically stuck in your library forever
Attaching the files to NFTs will make these things possible and even easy.
You probably won't even know you're interacting with NFT technology
L Bozo https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/08/gamestop-citing-regulatory-uncertainty-winds-down-its-crypto-and-nft-wallet/
The company's wallet, not its NFT market. The recent ruling with Ripple and SEC made it appear that running both an exchange AND a wallet would be considered a violation of securities law.
Gamestop wallet users can move their digital items to any compatible wallet
The future
Will be a dark place, mostly
~~Their NFT website doesn't even work anymore and~~ you still out here shilling garbage
That's just not true.
https://nft.gamestop.com/
Oh my bad. It did load after connecting to a UK VPN, seems like they block my region from accessing it.
The part about shilling garbage still stands however.
Only if you can put the license itself on the blockchain, and guarantee the blockchain is robust enough to last beyond Gamestop's bankruptcy. Or survive past the day Gamestop decides they can make more money by destroying the current blockchain and "upgrading" the system.
The blockchain has nothing to do with Gamestop's solvency as a company (which is not in doubt, BTW). It's Ethereum blockchain.
The last sentence of your comment sounds like you don't actually understand blockchain technology at all...
I don't think anyone can say that Gamestop will definitely be around longer than people want to use these licenses they sell. And I hope the license isn't just a pointer to some Gamestop website that stores the licenses (re: standard NFT). But I don't trust any corporation to do something like this without building in some sort of backdoor to revoke licenses. Especially Gamestop.
Your comment makes me think you don't get how the technology works. Ethereum blockchain will continue to exist whether Gamestop does or not...
It doesn't matter if the blockchain is eternal, if this is a traditional NFT, it isn't stored in the blockchain. All you're buying is a link to a website where the NFT is stored. It doesn't matter if it's a license key, or a shitty computer generated picture of an anthropomorphic ape. When Gamestop decides to shut down the server (it will happen eventually), you lose access to your license key. If Gamestop allows you to copy your license key, you still lose access to your software when Gamestop shuts down the licensing server. I'm not sure the technology works the way you think it works.
Uhm... Sorry but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this tech works.
NFTs are stored in a "wallet", the address is recorded on the blockchain. As long as you know your seed phrase (or other recovery key) it will be yours eternally. The NFT market is only a place to put buyers and sellers in the same spot. Even "in the market", the NFT lives at a blockchain address, someone else's wallet.
That's why Gamestop can say "we're shutting down our wallet service. Get your recovery key and restore your NFTs elsewhere"
Gamestop doesn't run a licensing server and probably won't. That's for publishers. Also, NFTs make licensing servers redundant.