this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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How does this work? How are the keysellers able to make keys that cost the developer money?
Many of the keys sold on key reselling sites are bought with stolen credit cards. It usually works like this:
Oh. Now I feel bad. I've bought keys a few times from such sites assuming they just bought them in bulk for resale ☹️
You and me both. Maybe it has changed since then, but when I found out about this, I was told that there are a handful stores that operate legally. Apparently the ones that are listed on isthereanydeal.com are legally operating businesses? Other than that, Humble Bundle is also working legally.
There are several those keys can be obtained, and most of them don't involve fraud:
Purchasing keys in a region where they're cheaper, and reselling them in regions where the game is more expensive
Purchasing keys during a sale, and reselling them after the sale
Claiming keys from giveaways and selling those when the giveaway is over
Buying a bundle (such as Humble Bundle) and selling the keys you aren't interested in or you already have
Buying games with stolen credit card and reselling those keys
Only the last one is illegal and costs the developers money. Digital storefronts have made it harder to obtain raw, transferrable keys and have introduced region locks to try to combat those top 3 methods, but they all were very common in the past.
Key resellers like G2A are pretty much just an eBay for keys. It's not an illegal organisation, they just provide platforms on which people can sell their game keys, but they don't know (and probably don't care) how those keys are actually obtained. The majority of keys on those platforms are actually legit (iirc by far the biggest category is games purchased out of region).
HOWEVER,
The legally obtained keys sold on the platform are all obtained in such a way that the developers get little to no money from it, so chargeback fees from a few fraudulent purchases easily outweighs the small amount of money they get from the legit keys there. So even though the majority of keys sold on such platforms are not illegal, the few illegal keys that do exist are enough to make the developers still lose money on average with keys sold there.
If I steal your credit card and buy a key to the new FNAF that costs $60, I can sell that key on G2A. Let's say I make $50. That $50 is mine, the third person has the key and thus the game, the developers have your $60.
But your CC was stolen. You shouldn't pay for that. So you contact your financial institution and are like "hey wtf I don't wanna pay for this." They respond "yes sir/ma'am, sorry sir/ma'am" and return the funds to your credit card.
Now your financial institution isn't just gonna take the hit. So they're like "well, this money is with the weird dude who made FNAF, so let's take that money back." They issue what's called a chargeback, reclaiming the $60. But that's not enough, right? Because "We don't want them putting their products in sketchy places that might make us do this more, so we're gonna add a punitive fee." These punitive fees range from $30 to $100 depending on your institution.
So now, I have the G2A user's $50, you have your $60 back, the third person has the key, and the FNAF developers? They had $60, but after the chargeback that turned to $0, and then there was a punitive fee. They now have -$30.
Epilogue:
After losing the money, and in fact paying for someone else to have the game consider their options. They'd be right to revoke the key as the person who used it didn't actually pay them for it. But if they did, they'd get bad reviews, the G2A customer might be mad at the FNAF devs, and you may just go and buy another key from G2A. So in all likelihood they just cut their losses and let you keep the game as it causes less problems that way.
They buy keys with stolen credit card credentials. Owner of the card blocks the payment, devs have no money and in addition have to pay for the chargeback.