Releasing the source code would allow anyone to copy AND modify or extend the game as they see fit. Including all the inner logic that is normally compiled away.
Piracy or a compiled release without DRM (like GOG) only allows you to play the game and maybe modify some parts of it through modding after a significant amount of effort.
Releasing the source code would allow anyone to copy AND modify or extend the game as they see fit
So just like when you buy a bicycle irl and you are allowed to customize it and set it up as you want. Are you saying we shouldn’t be allowed to modify goods?
The source code is arguably more comparable to the bicycle factory. When I buy a game, I’m thinking of buying the experience, not the underlying mechanisms.
You still can find ways to mod and tinker with the finished product you own (bicycle), but you don’t have the info and machinery you’d need to make your own identical bicycle.
Or, if you buy a book, you own the finished book, but you don’t automatically also own all the author’s notes and rough drafts and file organization that went into making that book.
That is not the correct analogy. Offcourse you can customize it. Just like you can customize or mod the game.
But you won’t get the actual designs to the bicycle. You will not get the blueprints to send to a factory to create exact duplicates or with your modifications.
A house isn’t software, it’s more like getting handled the blueprints of the building. They already have access to the property what’s the difference if they have the blueprints or not
Their reason is: people is using g2a for “discounted” keys.
Where the “discount” comes? Easy, some asshole buys from their website many keys with a stolen credit card, then they will need to refund it + pay an expensive fee for the chargeback.
I’m not a dev but at that point I would just give up selling keys by myself and I would just rely on steam for fraud detection. The only case where the 30% fee is justified
I’ll take the downvotes but this is hardly true. Most of them come from bundles and purchasing them in other countries where it’s a lot cheaper. You can prove this easily by checking games on g2a that almost never go on sale or are included in bundles and you will notice the price is the same or a few dollars cheaper than steam.
The issue with G2A is that any keys at all come from scammed credit cards. In a silly way it’s like of like tor. It doesn’t matter if I am trying to sell my excess Humble Bundle keys in good faith on G2A if other sellers on the market are selling scammed keys. Good users making listings obfuscate all the bad users.
Also, purchasing regional keys cheaper and reselling them is also what causes this shit in the first place. People blame Valve for making the decision, but not the people switching to a region to buy a game for cents on the dollar and then resell it? That is actively hurting the people in those countries who are now being charged closer to USD prices. For Brazillians this is exorbitant.
I don’t disagree with you in that there are G2A keys that come from bundles. But I do disagree with the notion that “it doesn’t matter.” It absolutely matters because it’s affecting people’s ability to buy games and it affects people circumventing legal purchase methods (of which I support their circumventing) who then have to deal with buying scammed credit card keys instead of me selling them and excess Humble Bundle key. The card gets charged back, the developer loses money, the G2A purchaser loses their key, and the scammers get off scott-free.
Basically, G2A should be a good idea but has been co-opted by scammers. These sites have their grey-market reputation for a reason, because it’s run entirely off of the losses of others. Losses of the developers, losses of regional players, and losses of players purchasing games on these grey-market sites.
There’s no winners for G2A except for the owners of the site and scammers. You may win once in a while getting a brand new game for $5-25 less. You may end up losing when it’s pulled from your account, if it does. At that point, you’re effectively gambling. Taking a risk for a discount on something with a high likelihood of it being unethically sourced which may be removed from your account?
In most cases I’d personally rather pay the extra $15 to just have the peace of mind. The chance of the game not being bought on a stolen CC and not supporting regional theft that hurts those players is just a bonus.
If they’re charging less in different regions and people were using VPNs to purchase then you’d think that’d be a sign that maybe game prices are too high. They’re selling an identical product at a much cheaper price because the people in some countries are poorer or their currency is garbage compared to USD? Pretty gross to think about.
I never said it didn’t matter. I said it’s not at prevalent as people are making it out to be. I’ve purchased 100s of steam keys from these sites over the years and never came across an instance where the key was removed or revoked. All of these sites guarantee the key is good or your money back anyways so I find it hard to believe that is what is going on at all. As long as you purchase the key from a reputable seller as they all have ratings just like eBay then there is no issue. I think maybe in the early days of key sellers it’s what was happening, but these sites would have fizzled out a long time ago if they were bastions of credit card fraud.
Anecdotally, I’ve bought 3 keys over the years from g2a and 2 of them immediately didn’t work. Iirc there’s a big button you click during checkout if your key doesn’t work and the seller immediately has to provide you with a working one. That’s not g2a though, that’s just the seller providing you with another cheap key from their collection. G2A is scammy in other ways too (I’ve yet to be able to cancel their $2 “insurance” fee or whatever they call it the first time, it’s been years and I’ll probably have to chargeback since their site just throws me errors when I try to cancel. PayPal won’t even let me cancel it from their end.)
No, I said they are bought in other regions. There is no proof that is from any bypass. Just some guy who lives in a poverished nation trying to turn a profit.
Because only Factorio has been able to proove that is happening. That and they pretend they don’t know that is happening as they are just the middle men.
I had a better link on my old Lemmy instance but that one went the way of the dodo and I can’t find that in-depth explanation.
Basically Factorio never goes on sale. Ever, it only gets more expensive so, if someone is selling a key for a price lower than their starting price point it must have been fraudulent.
In Europe at least if strong authentication was done during the purchase (and it is mandatory since a few years), the merchant is protected and the bank issued the card will take the loss. They don’t need to refund or pay fees for charge back.
Are you sure? My stripe merchant account still mentions the 15 euro chargeback fee and now in my country is easier to ask for a chargeback, can do at the phone while before you needed to send a registered snail mail at a secret address with the right timing using a secret form, while sending a copy of the police report via fax
SCA (strong customer authentication) should indeed move the liability for fraudulent purchases to the issuer. Wording in contracts may still mention other things. We had to, for one specific payment service provider, explicitly tell them to only allow card purchases using SCA since we had problems with stolen cards. With some PSPs we could just refuse certain ECI codes. Been a few years for me and YMMV but if chargebacks are causing headaches it might be worth looking into.
I worked at company like stripe and exactly at the scope of authentication/liability. I am not sure about whatever you pay the charge back fee even though the liability is shifted from you to the issuer bank. Do you have 3DS2 enabled for your payments?
It is normal that Stripe mention the charge back fees as there are exceptions for strong authentication but it is worth asking them for details and whatever you pay the fee even when liability have been shifted. And maybe the issuer bank will just do refund and take the loss if it see the SCA have been done.
I might buy one of their games just to offset someone who can’t. I absolutely appreciate a business with this kind of attitude. Like someone else said, the people who pirate it probably weren’t going to buy it anyway. Might as well get some goodwill out of it.
the people who pirate it probably weren’t going to buy it anyway
Exactly. For example, you can’t expect some middle class kid in some third world country to buy the game they like. Playing games by pirating might make them play their favourite game until they eventually grow to a point where they earn themselves and then they buy the games they like.
P.s) Pirated games all this time but the first game I will actually buy will be Spiderman 2. Really excited to try it out since Spiderman 1 was so fucking good.
I have learned a lot while I was setting up my NAS and all the *arr applications. It taught me a bit about networking and a bit about docker which I know is going to be helpful for me in the future. That kid you were talking about might be able to learn the something similar which might get them interested in the tech world and you have just created a future programmer, or network admin, or any number of other tech job. Those can be very marketable skills in a pool of people who seem to be less tech literate as tech becomes so easy to use.
That kid you were talking about might be able to learn the something similar which might get them interested in the tech world and you have just created a future programmer, or network admin, or any number of other tech job.
One of those kids is me. Pirating has taught me to troubleshoot things and adapt to new things at my tech job and I have met pretty cool people across different pirating communities who taught me various things.
I didn’t know games could come with professionally printed labels, when I was a kid with no income. I thought everyone just got them on disks labeled in marker from a good friend of the family.
It’s important to me to support developers, but I can’t say I regret getting to play those games before I could have ever afforded them.
I’ve since gone on to buy those same games from their developers several times over on various platforms.
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Aktywne