coxdr: It is just odd. I never actually use key resellers myself but the situation isn't reading right to me. many of the steam comments suggest that this is more than simply stolen keys. It can be a cash grab by forcing legitimate buyers to have to pay for there key twice if they want the game. if they do get a refund and don't by the game again then rebellion didn't lose anything doing it as its not them giving out the refund. the fact that there "solution" was to give out dlc seems to point to this even more as the only way to play that is by owning the game you will have to pay for twice. if that's not a cash grab then what is?
The game is pretty expensive already. Do you really think that a significant number of people would
pay full price for a product that they already bought and didn't receive? And that Rebellion would focus a "money grab" strategy on that? I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense at all.
I'll give you a few alternative explanations:
a) It's possible that GMG was the legitimate vendor from whom the keys were stolen. If GMG didn't notice that in time, then they probably sold these keys as well. We're talking about a text document with a long list of keys, whoever stole them will have copied the keys instead of deleting the document. GMG would then be selling the same keys as the illegitimate vendors, and GMG customers would be affected by the revocations as well. If this is the case, then GMG will provide those customers with new keys.
b) It's possible that GMG "padded" their supply of legitimate keys with some stolen ones that were sold to them by the thief. Every legitimate store gets "offers" from dubious people who want to sell them keys for cheap. I don't think that's very likely though and I certainly won't accuse GMG of doing such a thing, it would be an extremely serious betrayal of trust.
c) The claims that GMG purchases are affected could be fake, or they could have been fraudulent purchases. Not likely imho, but not completely impossible either. The people who _do_ sell stolen keys are certainly making enough money to be able to afford some misinformation campaigns.
That's just three alternative explanations that I pulled off the top of my hat, there are probably many more. Why are people so readily buying into an extremely weak and illogical "Rebellion money grab" conspiracy theory when alternative explanations exist? Do those other explanations even get explored?
I've read the first couple of posts in the Steam discussion, and what I'm mostly seeing is deplorable disinformation on part of the customers. One is basically saying "I always buy from the cheapest store, I have bought from 150 stores, I never had a key revoked, so Rebellion must be lying". There are probably less than two dozen legitimate stores in the world. Many others are saying that "Steam is too expensive", so they bought somewhere else (which must be an illegitimate store because the legitimate ones have the same, publisher-determined price as Steam). There are also many who say "I bought so many keys from that store and never had a problem, so they must be legitimate". The amount of ignorance and disinformation is just ... sad.
