Depends a lot on the game company though. Sometimes I am willing to pay for the convenience while ensuring that I fuck over the publisher/developer. Sometimes you want to play a game developed by a company you dislike.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
458 points (96.9% liked)
Piracy: κ±α΄ΙͺΚ α΄Κα΄ ΚΙͺΙ’Κ κ±α΄α΄κ±
70163 readers
276 users here now
β Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules β’ Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
We heartily recommend visiting the free port of freemediaheckyeah (aka FMHY) while you sail the high seas, for all the freshest links the ocean has to offer.
π c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
π΄ββ οΈ Other communities
FUCK ADOBE!
Torrenting/P2P:
- !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !trackers@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !qbittorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !libretorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !soulseek@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Gaming:
- !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !newyuzupiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !switchpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !3dspiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !retropirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
π° Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Factorio devs once put out a blog post about game key stores. Essentially, they were running into the issue of people buying factorio keys with stolen credit cards and then reselling them for cheap on G2A or whatever. Then the credit card would get identified as stolen, charge backs would be issued, and bank fraud departments would get involved. As a result, the factorio devs were actually losing money from stolen credit card sales.
Of course, factorio is in a somewhat unique position of never putting the game on sale, so if you're getting it cheap it's probably from some dude using a stolen CC.
My problem with pirating anything isn't the principle, it is the reliability and risk of viruses.
Should be nearly a non-issue on Linux, unless the DRM busting does some seriously shady shit as well.
True, assuming the crack works in Wine or Proton. However, those emulators aren't fully sandboxed, so as long as the code can run it could in theory grab data or damage the system. Probably only a matter of time before such things are compromised regularly.
as a teenager i did a lot of business with shady key resellers. now iβm missing an unknown number of games from my library as a result of chargebacks and fraud. iβm fine to buy them again, but iβm gutted that i lost all my playstats, achievements, cloud saves, screenshots, etc. iβm not even sure what all is missing :/
Wait, really? You lost your cloud data?
if its steam, none of the stats are lost, if they repurchased the game they would have it again. You just can't buy a game you don't know is missing. I don't think cloud saves are ever deleted, I've had cloud saves be restored when I refunded and then humble choice provided me a key to the same game 4 years later.
Yeah, I thought that was the case. But there has to be a way to see what games you have previously played.
You can see your entire steam purchase history which will include them.
Like the other person said, you can check your Steam account to see every key redemption that you've ever done. I believe refunds should still appear on that. I'm not sure if Steam initiated refunds will though.
It took me several times to understand what they meant by content.
Those are keys for reviewers and streamers. Companies steal and sell them, without giving anything to the developers. Now that makes sense.
What do you mean "companies steal and sell them". How? Like they are hacking into the email accounts of streamers and stealing and selling the key before the streamer can activate it?
Or they are stealing them from the developer directly somehow?
I don't see how this would be feasible...
More likely that the streamer or reviewer receiving the free key is selling it on these marketplaces.
That's one option. Or the sellers scam the keys posing as reviewers or streamers. Or a streamer shares them with friends, and they leak that way. Some combination I imagine.
Well, for a start, a streamer sharing the code with a friend and them selling it is obviously not the marketplace stealing anything.
So do we have any proof that these sellers are scamming developers by posing as streamers or is this something that you are asserting?
I'm speculating. Those are possible ways they could get it. Likely more I haven't thought of.
I'm not making accusations. I'm putting together things based on what they said in the post. Just trying to make sense of it.
I'm not a researcher, investigator, or reporter.
I'm just a random Steve online. Feel free to ignore me
This happened on stores like G2A and Kinguin. Generally stores that one way or another let users sell their keys, not stores that buy games in bulk and specially not stores where publishers and developers sell their keys officially.
It's pretty easy to find out online which do what.
When it comes to committing piracy, one element is whether or not the money would reach the actual developers of what I bought. I usually don't give a toss about publishers, unless they have a reputation of actually caring for the studios. If the developers are dead, my money goes to someone who isn't.
Aside from that, my main use of piracy is to get stuff that isn't sold anymore, to avoid DRM, and being free of the cloud's tyranny. Autonomy is more important than money.
I always assumed key sites were using stolen credit card numbers and acted like Karma was watching (as in, I donβt want my credit card stolen, so I wonβt benefit from those of others).
I always assumed key sites were using stolen credit card numbers
I always assumed it was largely money laundering.
Claim to have bought a key for 1$ sell it for 10$. Declare you made a 9$ profit. In reality there was never a key for 1$. You bought a 10$ key with dirty money and are selling it at cost.
Fundamentally no different to the mafia run pizza place.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Indie game devs are bombarded with free game requests.
I read about one indie dev who woke up to a dozen emails a day asking for a game key to "twitch stream" their game.
It becomes extremely exhausting to verify every single one, and so many just hand it off and hope that one emailer really is who they say they are and they suddenly get a shitton of sales.
Can confirm, I get emails daily.
To add to that, if they are using stolen payment info, then they'd probably have no qualms about stealing yours too
Crazy thing, but my credit card info was recently stolen and after closing it, making compensation claims for my bank and filing a offence report to the police I contacted the three different online store the card was used with.
The only one that responded was a key seller and they even refunded me the money.
Maybe they're workinh in such a grey area that they want to avoid all possible legal trouble?
load more comments
(3 replies)
Use sites like deals.gg or isthereanydeal
There are usually many legit places cheaper than steam with legit paid steam keys
So, what happend to evaluation keys, valid for 20 days after activation.... Would solve a bunch of problems.
No no.. It's fine. Just pirate it. You got a free ticket now.
load more comments
(9 replies)
I always assumed people used those sites because they didnβt want to get in trouble for βactuallyβ pirating software.
I assume the main issue is that downloading from somewhere like steam and activating with a code, largely ensures there's no malware included in what you just downloaded.
If you're pirating something and certainly if you don't know what you're doing, you can't be entirely sure the game you just downloaded isn't a security risk.
As far as I know, gamesplanet.com is okay, they get a deal for buying in bulk from publishers and then resell them at a small markup. You won't get prices close to the games' historical lows and they rarely have indies or other smaller games, but it's a nice, non shady alternative for the bigger ones.
all the ones featured on isthereanydeal.com are legit
That doesn't even make sense tho, why are they giving out 1000s of free keys?
If you have no marketing budget, then shipping keys to streamers. Like small streamers, with 10 concurrent viewers, they might actually install it and play the game.
That's 10 more people exposed to the game. Now send out 10.000 of these keys, even if 1% that'd be 100 streamers, actually play it. That's expose to 1000 people, if you're lucky that's 20 extra buyers - But it's also buyers way more likely to leave a positive review, given they've already seen the gameplay loop before buying it.
The early reviews are incredibly important for Steam to determine whether or not it should boost visibility of the game
Maybe in hopes that youtubers and streamers will play the game on their channels if they got it for free? That's probably what is meant by 'to get content on our game'.
load more comments
(18 replies)
so this is where those stores get their keys from
view more: next βΊ