Blackwell Deception Giveaway Goes Bad, 30,000 Steam Keys Stolen

[Jorpho]

Actually, it would be a worse decision to not honor CD/Steam keys than to honor them

I wasn't talking about honoring them or not; I meant allowing the keys to be used in trades. If Valve required you to use the keys to generate a Steam inventory item that you could then trade, at least that would make some kind of sense.

Additionally, not honoring these keys also lose out to giving the possibility of extra rewards to fans who owned a boxed copy of the older game.

I don't think this happens very often.

And then there's piracy - If you've got a legitimate CD key to an older game whose CD is damaged beyond repair, but is on Steam, would you pirate another copy, or get a new, legitimate copy that you can have guilt-free access to?

The number of games which have CD keys that can also be activated on Steam is very limited and probably won't get much longer.

 

[Formica Archonis]

A zillion shitty publishers and developers out there and they had to do this to Wadjet Eye instead. Pricks.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Really sad when genuine generosity is abused so badly like this. Those resellers can go jump of a cliff.

 

[weirdee]

while I am disappointed that I waited to get a download and missed out, at the same time they've got on their plate to handle and it's really okay if they can't do this again (although not in the sense that it was okay for people to fuck it up for everybody else)

 

[Kyogissun]

You know, I understand that it's a responsibility of these people to stay on top of this kind of shit and prevent it from happening, but SO many people are eager to point the finger at them and be all 'THEY ENABLED THE BAD THING' while not passing ANY judgement on the thousands of shitbags that actually exploited the thing.

Of course one could easily suggest that I'm biased since I had no input on the whole thing but you know what? I probably would have gotten myself a key and told some friends about it and that would have been the end of it. I wouldn't have gotten keys for reselling or something of the like.

"This is why we can't have nice things" has never been more appropriate.

 

[Extragorey]

The funny thing is, because I'm somewhat technologically-minded, when I got my free Steam key I though, "huh, all you need to do is just click the buy button - that would be really easy to exploit."
I didn't actually act on that observation, but the thought did occur to me. I guess some people are just selfish douchebags.

I did notice the server was quite unresponsive when I visited the site, though. Go figure, if there were people generating 100s of codes a second.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

*facepalm*

Thank you, Internet, for once again giving people a reason not to be generous.

And people wonder why the game industry doesn't get a very good rep.

 

[Andy Chalk]

It is too bad that this had to happen to Wadjet Eye. It's a small, out-of-the-living-room company that publishes some really great games and is really good as far as supporting and interacting with its customers. I suppose that's not something a lot of people consider when they're pulling shit like this, but it causes a lot of stress and headaches to people who really do not deserve it.

 

[mistwolf]

OT: Re OAuth and Humble: I don't see the problem. They have been very explicit from the beginning that giving away surplus keys was Not OK and a way to block it was inevitable. And seriously, how cheap do you have to be to gripe that you aren't getting to give as much away as you can for your average $6 cost? It's not like anyone is making a bundle (hah!) off those bundles. If you think a friend would like a game, buy them a bundle, or find another way, but expecting to be able to trade away a $15 game you paid a buck for in a charity promotion is... I don't even know. Selfish?

 

[porous_shield]

Some of these dirtbags are going to get value out of these codes and they'll continue being dirtbags and exploiting free games and giveaways like this because they got something of value from exploiting. Those dirtbags who get stuck with 100s maybe 1000s of codes are hurt by this kind of behaviour so they'll keep doing it on the off chance they will get something of value back from exploiting. I wish there was some way to punish these exploiters.

No one can ever have anything nice without someone shitting all over everything.

 

[Amir Kondori]

So I have two thoughts on this.

First, obviously this is terrible and the people who abused this should feel ashamed of themselves, it is not an OK thing to do.

Secondly, Wadjet Eye has primarily themselves or their partners to blame. While most people are decent and wouldn't abuse a giveaway like this when millions of people know about your giveaway it only takes a small percentage of bad actors to completely ruin it.

Because Wadjet Eye was not properly prepared for the giveaway instead of being a great promotion that would have allowed a lot of people to experience their game, Wadjet Eye to get a lot of good word of mouth, now you have a lot of disappointed people and Wadjet Eye has only damaged their reputation among those who ended up not getting the free game.

This of course is always one of the risks of small developers, they don't always have the experience or manpower to really make sure these types of promotions go off smoothly without a hitch, which hurts them more than anyone.

Just to reiterate, the people who abused this situation showed a complete lack of ethics, they should feel ashamed of themselves though most surely don't care, but there are always people out there ready to take advantage. It is the responsibility of the company putting on the promotion to make sure things like this don't happen.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

For resale? By the thousands? Seriously?

Don't those stupid traders know that even a tiny amount of over saturation makes any game for trade useless?

-frozen synapse
-dont starve
-portal
-Civ V
-XCOM
-Bioshock Infinite items
-Hitman Absolution items
-ROME II
-metro 2033

Didn't these fiascos teach the steam economy anything? Don't even try to make money off something given away for free or what everyone is buying. Because everyone will have it and it won't move.

Those copies will be sitting in their inventory. Unable to move. Useless in every sense of the word and taking up space for unusuals and stranges.

I swear, if this keeps up the steam economy will collapse under people's own stupidity. Its already happening with key price inflation ruining the trade thanks to people trolling key price sites with fake information to inflate their own pockets.

Now people are hoarding keys, and hoarding currency is never good for any economy.

The player run steam economy will crash, but the only question is how long until the opportunistic vultures looking for free money without actual work break it.

This makes me think that people don't even understand the idea of supply and demand.

To be fair to Valve they at least realise that this is a problem and have gotten staff to help manage the ecomany, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.378852-Valve-Hires-In-House-Economist
Too bad they con't hire people that can manage stupidity and greed.

 

[stormeris]

Seriously, what the fuck...

Why do people have to be such shitfaced fuckwads?
Fuck...

This makes me very VERY sad and disappointed.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Wow. This really is why we can't have nice things. People just don't care that you worked hard on your game and that you're not one of the nastier corporations, they're scummy little shits who want free stuff to sell for profit. I mean, 30,000 codes overnight, really?

 

[RicoADF]

This makes me very, very sad.

Dave Gilbert is one of the nicest people I've interacted with and he's been stellar every time I've had questions about his games. He even gave me Steam keys for all his games when I mentioned that I had them on Gamersgate when I bought the disc version of Deception at release. Not to mention all the stuff he did for me when I bungled up my order of Resonance and he fixed it so I'd get the boxed version. Guy is a genuine good person and it's terrible to read that this happened to him.

I now also feel a bit crappy as I by coincidence wrote him about a new download link to The Shivah just last night. I had no idea this shit was going on and I'd rather not that I add to that pile. I'd rather just buy The Shivah again than bring him more hassle right now.

Edit: just got a reply and they sorted it out in a moment. Basically got a new copy of the game as the storefront they'd been using in 2011 was closed. They are really nice people.

That's it, I'm buying the whole catalog, people like this deserve support and not the bullcrap these dicks are causing him. *purchase*

 

[teh_gunslinger]

This makes me very, very sad.

Dave Gilbert is one of the nicest people I've interacted with and he's been stellar every time I've had questions about his games. He even gave me Steam keys for all his games when I mentioned that I had them on Gamersgate when I bought the disc version of Deception at release. Not to mention all the stuff he did for me when I bungled up my order of Resonance and he fixed it so I'd get the boxed version. Guy is a genuine good person and it's terrible to read that this happened to him.

I now also feel a bit crappy as I by coincidence wrote him about a new download link to The Shivah just last night. I had no idea this shit was going on and I'd rather not that I add to that pile. I'd rather just buy The Shivah again than bring him more hassle right now.

Edit: just got a reply and they sorted it out in a moment. Basically got a new copy of the game as the storefront they'd been using in 2011 was closed. They are really nice people.

That's it, I'm buying the whole catalog, people like this deserve support and not the bullcrap these dicks are causing him. *purchase*

You're getting some really good games if you do!