I hope this doesn't affect the chance of getting a Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 3 negatively. The first two are totally awesome.

No one has linked this before so: http://unknownworlds.com/blog/beware-shady-key-resellers-and-discount-steam-keys/
^
NS2 developer.

http://blog.playfire.com/2014/06/official-retail-partner-benefits-of.html

Interesting

This simply isn't true in all cases.
I tried to dispute a game I bought from gmg because their storepage was purposely missleading/falsely advertised or that it didn't properly label what they were selling.
I contacted gmg support, and politely pointed out gmg's error on their storepage and kindly asked for my gmg credit back and to revoke the key they gave me (no, I didn't use it yet).

I'm not sure why gmg refused to help me, but, where was this sort out any issues directly with the publisher they mentioned?

I was basically told to shove it. So I'm stuck with a wasted purchase because their error of a storepage.

My friend even tried to get a refund because another games storepage didn't list the drm and he took it on faith of gmg to have properlly labeled their storepage to have correct info.
Sadly he was stuck with a drm'd version. He also used his gmg credit and thouse can't do a charge back.

I've only reported the link, I've never asked for a refund on GMG, so I don't know how it works.

I believe one of the problems here is that it's difficult to know who to believe. On the one hand you have Rebellion stating that keys were stolen and that they are simply rectifying the situation according to applicable laws, on the other hand we can see various 'unofficial' CD Key sellers defending themselves and their business practices and giving some pretty compelling reasons why the keys may not have been stolen but in fact is Rebellion trying to inflate the price of the game. A large number of their customers believe this to be the case too. Frankly I don't know what to think.

The problem I have is that the only loser here, like it generally seems to be in the game industry, is the customer. We talk about 'shady' key sellers, but the 'stolen' keys would have come from either Rebellion themselves or one of their 'official' distributors, so even the official sellers can be shady (I'm assuming that a seller is to blame here). Put simply, Rebellion dropped the ball when approving a distributor who clearly shouldn't have been approved. They are partially to blame for this sorry mess as they enacted a poor vetting process in terms of their official distributors' security procedures (if they enacted one at all).

Even if that weren't the case, a money off voucher would have been appropriate; though there would be no legal reason to give one, it would at least show empathy from Rebellion's side for the poor experience their customers have had and possibly won a bit of goodwill from people. As it stands, Rebellion have some explaining to do as to why they allowed a shady business to become an approved seller, and their current stance will win them no customers at all (it may lose them a few though); indeed it will simply create more pirates for a game that is already grossly overpriced on Steam.

Edited for spelling.

How do you even know some sellers were approved? If Rebellion's story with the stolen keys is true, this means these shady sellers got their keys from someone who stole them.

On the first page on the Steam forum's topic about this subject, Rebellion give a list of such sellers (referred to as 'licensed' sellers). As the keys were held either by Rebellion themselves or distributed to these licensed sellers, it stands to reason that the keys would have had to have originated from either Rebellion or these licensed sellers. As mentioned in my original post, I have assumed the official (as I termed it) seller to be the source.

Link FYI - http://steamcommunity.com/app/238090/discussions/0/540744936577983546#p50

...christmas sales? :)

And I ask a question once again: How can you be so sure the keys of those sellers were revoked? From what I read in that Steam Thread, Rebellion have not revoked any Steam keys from the aforementioned sellers. This means that the keys that were blocked, were stolen ones for which Rebellion received no money.

A bit confused with what is being asked here, but I will attempt to answer as far as I understand it. The stolen keys would have been held originally either by Rebellion or one of their licensed sellers. A presumably rogue employee (assumption being made here) in either camp could have sold those keys illegally, thus making them stolen property. The batch of keys now missing from the licensed seller (or Rebellion) must have been identified through some kind of reconciliation check and blocked. As for being sure of them being revoked, as well as Rebellion's confirmation of this happening there are also a lot of people reporting that their Sniper Rifle 3 games were taken off their list of games in the Steam forum among other places.

Not sure if this answers your question, but hope it may help in some form.

It's neither Rebellion's fault, nor is the licensed sellers'.

Bottom line Rebellion are scum.

Somehow this reminds me of Amazon with it's kindle. It became apparent it had a back door when ebooks that were bought were deleted against the user's will upon the next time they logged onto their computer to get new books and updates. This included a few older books including Animal Farm and 1984. --see article--

Simply buying or owning a game doesn't mean it can't get revoked it seems...

Sure am glad that I've been careful and never bought from some of the sites out there that are the digital equivalent of buying games off the back of a truck in an alleyway in Russia. Some of them almost fooled me a few times with great deals and a legitimate enough looking site, but any time I come across any game retailer I've never heard of before and have not researched, I look them up on Google, Wikipedia and other sources and really try to figure out exactly who they are and where they are located, etc. If a site doesn't scream out loud to me that they are 100% legitimate and an official licensed reseller of Steam or whatnot, I put them in either my "Known shady or grey area retailers" or "Possibly shady retailers" bookmark folder and avoid them.

By using http://isthereanydeal.com and sticking to known official retaillers I end up getting deals on pretty much any game I want for prices that are hard even for a scammer to beat, just by watching legit sales, promos, freebies, bundles etc. It isn't that other sites can't or don't work out for people, it's that I couldn't be bothered to take any risk just to save a buck or ten on a game.

As they say, buyer beware... I feel sad for the thousands of people who were affected though and hope they're able to get their money back one way or another from the crooked or semi-crooked shops they got their games from.

It's very nice of Rebellion to offer the DLC package like that to people too, what a good faith gesture to their gaming community. I own the first game on GOG and love it, and got the Sniper V2 game on their freebie promo a few weeks ago. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy Sniper Elite 3 soon now for their kind gesture of the free DLC to those affected by those shady sellers. Probably a good idea to pick up a few more of their games off my GOG wishlist on the next Rebellion sale here too.

Thanks for the info about this.