Indie Dev Says People Stole 30,000 Steam Keys

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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Stealing is such a hard word, so let’s call it creative exploitation. :D We all know how the Internet operates by now. If someone offers anything for free, there is always going to be an element that will find a way to exploit it and take advantage. The Indie developer learned that lesson the hard way this week.

"This whole thing has made me terribly terribly sad," Gilbert wrote on Twitter.
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Sounds more like a poorly planned promo than anything. If I'm running a store and I give stuff away with no limits, I don't really have a right to be mad when people take advantage of it.
 
Too lazy to make a demo or a shareware version? Then you deserve this. Also don't complain about giving stuff away for free when people took it.
 
Nothing new. Deal sites like Slickdeals are practically populated by resellers out to make a buck. It's getting harder and harder for actual consumers to participate in a deal.
 
Honestly I don't think it's completely his fault, he just didn't take into consideration that most people are a**holes. And if you allow those people unlimited access, they will try to take as much as they can to resell later. Well at least he voided a good number of keys that were taken after midnight Friday, but he definitely learned a hard lesson. To his credit, he could have gone a much harsher more "the nuclear" route, and voided all the keys and possibly try to ban steam accounts.
Sounds more like a poorly planned promo than anything. If I'm running a store and I give stuff away with no limits, I don't really have a right to be mad when people take advantage of it.
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If the people took advantage of your giveaway, so you put up a sign that says the giveaway is over, but they go to your unlocked backdoor and keep taking your stuff, then yeah he has every right to be mad about it. He made a giveaway, it was poorly planned, so he stopped it, but people still kept taking advantage of it by directly accessing something they weren't allowed to access the key generator for the game.
 
LurkerLito said:
Honestly I don't think it's completely his fault, he just didn't take into consideration that most people are a**holes. And if you allow those people unlimited access, they will try to take as much as they can to resell later. Well at least he voided a good number of keys that were taken after midnight Friday, but he definitely learned a hard lesson. To his credit, he could have gone a much harsher more "the nuclear" route, and voided all the keys and possibly try to ban steam accounts.

If the people took advantage of your giveaway, so you put up a sign that says the giveaway is over, but they go to your unlocked backdoor and keep taking your stuff, then yeah he has every right to be mad about it. He made a giveaway, it was poorly planned, so he stopped it, but people still kept taking advantage of it by directly accessing something they weren't allowed to access the key generator for the game.
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It was public on the internet so they were allowed to access it.
 
What I don't understand is why he isn't doing a Humble Bundle (Weekly) with his games instead. More people would have realised that his games exist and actually getting them than the promo he choose to do. Also money.

I have the four that's been released via GoG already but would probably have bought the Humble Bundle that these games had appeared in just to support the guy a bit more.
 
It'd be awesome if the steam keys simply must be activated within 24 hours or something, that way the people who want the free game can get the free game. People hording the keys to sell them later so the developer gets nothing is just a dickhead being a dickhead.
 
sfsuphysics said:
It'd be awesome if the steam keys simply must be activated within 24 hours or something, that way the people who want the free game can get the free game. People hording the keys to sell them later so the developer gets nothing is just a dickhead being a dickhead.
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You can do that with the tools steam give you and a bit of work, have it so people enter their email and then send the steam keys in batches every day, then make any un-used ones invalid after 24 hours, then send the next batch.
 
Koolthulu said:
Sounds more like a poorly planned promo than anything. If I'm running a store and I give stuff away with no limits, I don't really have a right to be mad when people take advantage of it.
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You do have a right to be mad though if you say "one per person" and someone grabs a pile. Then when you kick them out and start watching more closely the number each person takes they keep wearing a different disguise so they can take more.
 
My guess is the publicity of the so called 'theft' is its own marketing. I'll admit, I had very heard of the series but now I'm curious.
 
plugwash said:
You do have a right to be mad though if you say "one per person" and someone grabs a pile. Then when you kick them out and start watching more closely the number each person takes they keep wearing a different disguise so they can take more.
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Still, the whole point of the giveaway was to what? His problem wasn't that people were getting more then one copy for themselves, but were going to sell the copies once the giveaway was over.

But the whole point was to get people aware of his other creations right? Either way, he certainly got what he wanted, and then some. A lot of this could be avoided if he simply released a demo instead. And it's not like his games are super huge in file size. He could easily release a small portion of the game.

It just smells of laziness. No demo, and didn't properly remove links to the game online, twice. Last Halloween I told someone not to leave a bowl of candy in front of their door, cause the first kid is going to take it all. I should know, that's what I did when I was a kid. The first kid that came, took it all. All this because nobody wanted to walk up to the door to hand out candy.
 
I saw a thread on this game being free the other day. Didn't bother picking it up for free. There's one sale he can feel better about not having lost...
 
Why are people giving the dev shit for trying to do something nice for gamers?

If a kid grabs all the candy then he's just an asshole. If he grabs all the candy and tries to SELL it to other kids then he's a complete and utter asshole.
 
Ashbringer said:
But the whole point was to get people aware of his other creations right? Either way, he certainly got what he wanted, and then some. A lot of this could be avoided if he simply released a demo instead. And it's not like his games are super huge in file size. He could easily release a small portion of the game. .
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I doubt releasing a demo would get any publicity what so ever.

anders190 said:
What I don't understand is why he isn't doing a Humble Bundle (Weekly) with his games instead.
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They have already done their games through other similar sites before. Humble bundle games tent to be exploited in a similar fashion and most of the games become worthless after the fact.

Highly recommend gemini rue and primordia by them. Good throw back to classic point and click adventure games.
 
The ability to buy/sell/trade on Steam really brings out the creeps. I wouldn't want the service to go away, it's just that this is a side effect of the market.

If you have desirable items in your Steam inventory, hide your inventory from public view and don't accept messages from people that aren't on your friends list.
 
This was purely the dev's fault. He should have put a limit on the total amount of keys.
 
So he wanted to "Give away" keys..then still have control over what people did with their "Freely given" keys.

Are people assholes? Yes..However the Dev is also one in this case. There was no stealing of anything here. Street runs both ways fella. Yet another indie dev I will be avoiding in the future.
 
The right way to have done this would have been to disable any keys that hadn't been activated after the promotion ended. You can only activate one per account and all of the extras people had would have then been useless after the promotion (I think).

If he put up a sign that said "free: take as many as you want" then yeah the dev's an asshole for getting mad, but if he had a sign up that said "free: please take only one" then he's not an asshole, he's just not very smart (or as it sounds in this case whoever was running his giveaway wasn't very smart.)
 
GaryJohnson said:
The right way to have done this would have been to disable any keys that hadn't been activated after the promotion ended. You can only activate one per account and all of the extras people had would have then been useless after the promotion (I think).
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I think that's what he ended up doing anyway. What I don't like is this article gave him more advertisement then his free giveaway on Steam. Which is why I consider this developer more of an asshole then the people that took "free" copies of his game.
 
Ashbringer said:
I think that's what he ended up doing anyway. What I don't like is this article gave him more advertisement then his free giveaway on Steam. Which is why I consider this developer more of an asshole then the people that took "free" copies of his game.
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He didn't write the article. As far as I can tell the RDBK people tracked him down, asked him what happened, and he responded without any outrage, call to action, or anything like that.

And you were complaining about a lack of a demo - all of his games appear to me to have demos available at his website.
 
Ashbringer said:
Which is why I consider this developer more of an asshole then the people that took "free" copies of his game.
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I wouldn't have any problem at all with people getting free copies for themselves, no matter how many.

Someone who tries to get a thousand free copies and sell them is just a piece of shit.
 
pigwalk said:
I wouldn't have any problem at all with people getting free copies for themselves, no matter how many.

Someone who tries to get a thousand free copies and sell them is just a piece of shit.
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Totally agree.

But well, the dev showed his discontent with the community, which is a really bad move if they are the ones that feed you, and we all know there are bad piece of shit people everywhere, whether is in your neighborhood or in the internet.
 
The sad thing is most will take it just because it is free. They don't need it but it is free is how they look at it. I wouldn't doubt if someone here tries to sale the keys in the forum later on after all this cools down.

It is sad how this world has went to crap. It is now who can get over the most on someone else. Seems "Slickdeals" seems to bring out the scum when something like this gets posted. Then it spreads to other forums for someone linking to what they posted. The never ending cycle.

I looked on Ebay and seen there was 4 games listed. Starting at $2.99 up to $4.99. Three of those was from London, Canada {same guy} and one was from Hopewell, Ohio. Looks like Ebay hasn't been hit with the wave of keys. Honestly nothing surprises me on the internet these days.
 
Let me be the obvious since no one else has done that yet:

Doesn't matter if the game is free, I wouldn't play this guys game if he paid me to do it.
 
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