Here’s a cautionary tale, and a stark reminder that digital goods are still the World Wide Wild West. While a majority of PC games these days seem to ultimately involve a Steam key (which is itself an understandably controversial state of affairs), ownership of one of those keys can be sold by any number of third parties. So we see online stores both reputable and troublesome striving to offer downloads for less than a direct Steam activation, less than each other and, most commonly, less than the frequently outrageously inflated official pricing in some territories. Such was (and presumably is) the case for Natural Selection 2. Revealed developer Unknown Worlds yesterday, “Recently, a batch of 1,341 NS2 Steam keys were purchased using stolen credit cards. These keys were then offered for sale by various resellers. The owners of said cards disputed the transactions, and thankfully received their money back.”
Thankfully for them, but less thankfully for a) Unknown Worlds and b) the people who had bought the keys.
“The end result is that for each key, Unknown Worlds was charged a ~$22 charge-back fee by the card companies involved, and we lost the $25 purchase as well. Once this activity was detected, all the keys were deactivated, and we are encouraging affected players to seek refunds or initiate their own charge-back.”
Oof. No-one wins there, do they? Well, apart from whoever it was who managed to spoof those credit card details and may now be able to scarper with the cash gained from the key re-sales.
As the NS2 team themselves admit, this is not an especially dramatic crime and few, if any, of you lot will have been affected by it. But quite a few of you will, I imagine, at some point find yourself doing a price search for a game you’re interested in, and will then gravitate to somewhere that’s a dollar or two cheaper. Clearly, a little common sense goes a long way. But sometimes our wallets make their voices known before our logic does. Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!
You can read more on the NS2 situation here. In that particular game’s case, it can currently only be officially bought either direct from the devs or via Steam, with Green Man due sooon. If you see it anywhere else, be vewy, vewy careful.
Beware Shady Key Resellers and Discount Steam Keys
Recently we asked Valve to deactivate 1,341 Steam keys that were purchased through our website. As a result, some Natural Selection 2 players who were previously able to play the game on Steam are now receiving a “Buy Again” option instead of the “Play” option. This episode is a prime example of why all gamers need to beware discount steam keys and those offering them.
We deactivated these keys because they keys were purchased with credit cards where the card-holder initiated a “charge-back.” A charge-back is a consumer protection mechanism offered by payment companies such as Visa, allowing a card-holder to dispute a charge on their credit card statement. This means we never received payment for the game. In fact, we were charged a fee by the card issuer for the charge-back. For these 1,341 keys, these fees totalled around $30,000.
Right now there are only two official places to buy Natural Selection 2; through Steam or through our website via the Humble Store (The Humble Store option is temporarily disabled due to this issue). If you see Natural Selection 2 available anywhere else — like the many sites out there that sell Steam keys at a discount — then you are not buying it from us and there is no way to know if that key is legitimate. As as result, we strongly discourage purchasing from these sites.
If we offer Natural Selection 2 from other stores in future, we will make a news post informing you of the legitimacy of that store. You can always find an up to date list of authorised stores right here.
We don’t know how exactly these sites obtain their Steam keys. It seems likely that they were originally obtained from our store using stolen credit card information. Keys were then sold through a handful of questionable sites to people using legitimate credit cards. The owner of the stolen credit card ultimately disputed the charge and we lost the sale. In total, we lose ~$45 per transaction of this kind, due to the charge-back fee (~$22 fee + $25 game price). Meanwhile, the unauthorized key reseller kept the money from the player who ultimately received the bad key.
If your key was deactivated, we recommend you contact the site you purchased it from for a full refund. It’s unfortunate that players who believed they were buying legitimate games were hurt by these unscrupulous resellers.
