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[Ascheroth]

Um so as a consumer how do you know where it's safe to buy from? Like someone already said humblebundle but also GMG etc. normally legit resellers, if I just read his statement that could also mean these stores.

Edit: And before people point out that "it's just certain developers" still as a consumer how do you know when it's safe? It seems rather ambiguous and subjective.

Every store listed on https://isthereanydeal.com/ is legit, that's where I get my deals from.

 

[Gipsy Danger]

Um so as a consumer how do you know where it's safe to buy from? Like someone already said humblebundle but also GMG etc. normally legit resellers, if I just read his statement that could also mean these stores.

Edit: And before people point out that "it's just certain developers" still as a consumer how do you know when it's safe? It seems rather ambiguous and subjective.

Here is a list of authorized resellers. I don't think it's complete though.

 

[Neo_Geo]

Can't say I blame them. A lot of people just use Steam as a showroom, and then buy the game for $20 less somewhere else.

All devs and publishers need to look at this and see that it signifies that game prices as a whole, now that it is virtually a fully digital market, are too high.

A simple way to combat offsite discounted games could have Valve working directly with publishers/developers and encourage MSRPs to more accurately reflect the market, IE $50 instead of $60. This could even be combined with 20-25% off preorders of $60 games, 10-20% off preorders of $50 games, 10-20% off newly released games for a 1-2 week period after launch. Maybe offer a reduction in your own cut from 30% to 20% in these enticement efforts. Also Steam sales, while another many paragraphs long thread entirely, frankly have sucked fairly hard for what seems like a couple of years now.

We are in an era where many people, even console only gamers, are routinely getting prices of ~ $40 min $50 max on brand new $60 AAA games due to programs like Best Buy Gamer's Club, w/ possible preorder discounts and Amazon Prime.

Besides those helpful points to Valve, I hope this isn't an effort to try and stop progress of the return to the $50 AAA game price and is to prevent actual malicious devs/resellers from using loopholes to game the system.

 

[Kaleinc]

There's incentive for real people to participate in this, because you can always have lots of cards - 10 cards in a game will produce 5 drops. You will always get at least 1 cent per card if someone buys them, so if you go on to that Russian key site and buy some card farm "games" for 2-3 cents, you will make slightly more money to your Steam wallet than you spent.

I'm just saying the example in the OP doesn't work in real life.

Now to the origin of the problem. Which is 'loot' and desire to generate money from thin air by Valve. Before trading cards it was pointless to make shovelware shit because nobody wants to pay a fee to become a developer to sell 10 copies of asset swap garbage for $0.30 each.
So useless garbage starts dropping items which can be sold on the market and becomes not so useless = scummy 'developers' + bots + level boosters + 10000 shovelware 'games'.
Removing evil chain which is marketable trading cards solves all the problems, it's actually enough to make them only tradable like steam gifts used to be. But free moneyz disappears too, the horror.

 

[Sephiroth_VII]

All devs and publishers need to look at this and see that it signifies that game prices as a whole, now that it is virtually a fully digital market, are too high.

A simple way to combat offsite discounted games could have Valve working directly with publishers/developers and encourage MSRPs to more accurately reflect the market, IE $50 instead of $60. This could even be combined with 20-25% off preorders of $60 games, 10-20% off preorders of $50 games, 10-20% off newly released games for a 1-2 week period after launch. Maybe offer a reduction in your own cut from 30% to 20% in these enticement efforts. Also Steam sales, while another many paragraphs long thread entirely, frankly have sucked fairly hard for what seems like a couple of years now.

We are in an era where many people, even console only gamers, are routinely getting prices of ~ $40 min $50 max on brand new $60 AAA games due to programs like Best Buy Gamer's Club, w/ possible preorder discounts and Amazon Prime.

Besides those helpful points to Valve, I hope this isn't an effort to try and stop progress of the return to the $50 AAA game price and is to prevent actual malicious devs/resellers from using loopholes to game the system.

With games getting more and more expensive to make, you want pubs to sell them for less?

I mean, if you do get your wish, it'll either mean less content, more paid DLC and microtransactions, or fewer AAA studios. The money needs to come from somewhere.

 

[Pheace]

I'm just saying the example in the OP doesn't work in real life.

Now to the origin of the problem. Which is 'loot' and desire to generate money from thin air by Valve. Before trading cards it was pointless to make shovelware shit because nobody wants to pay a fee to become a developer to sell 10 copies of asset swap garbage for $0.30 each.
So useless garbage starts dropping items which can be sold on the market and becomes not so useless = scummy 'developers' + bots + level boosters + 10000 shovelware 'games'.
Removing evil chain which is marketable trading cards solves all the problems, it's actually enough to make them only tradable like steam gifts used to be. But free moneyz disappears too, the horror.

Their recent changes have combated this exact problem already. Both by raising the cost of each shovelware game release as well as creating a minimum threshold of sales/revenue a game needs to reach before they even get access to trading cards. And now this on top of it.

 

[Pixieking]

Didn't the whole card scam get fixed already though? Remember last week reading up on a discussion forum on steam where someone was asking why the promised cards on the steam page weren't implemented . The dev replied saying you have to now sell over a certain amount of units to actually allow cards to be inserted . You can't just make an asset flip now and get card money . That's why you are seeing these new shitty games releasing with hundreds of achievements as a new way to entice potential buyers .

Changes to Trading Cards:

Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we're going to move to a system where games don't start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it's actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who've played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you'll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.

The cards are already "inserted", they just don't drop immediately.

I'm just saying the example in the OP doesn't work in real life.

Now to the origin of the problem. Which is 'loot' and desire to generate money from thin air by Valve. Before trading cards it was pointless to make shovelware shit because nobody wants to pay a fee to become a developer to sell 10 copies of asset swap garbage for $0.30 each.
So useless garbage starts dropping items which can be sold on the market and becomes not so useless = scummy 'developers' + bots + level boosters + 10000 shovelware 'games'.
Removing evil chain which is marketable trading cards solves all the problems, it's actually enough to make them only tradable like steam gifts used to be. But free moneyz disappears too, the horror.

Relevant:

Security and Trading

One option proposed was to simply remove trading. The Steam Market already accounted for the vast majority of virtual goods exchanged by Steam users. We even generate revenue off those transactions, which helps cover the cost of fraud, unlike person-to-person trades. And removing trading was by far the easiest solution to implement. But we felt that was a bad choice for users.

Valve aren't entirely averse to the idea of killing trading cards/item trading... They just don't want to yet, because the value users get from the system makes it worthwhile for Valve to keep on putting the effort in.

 

[spindoctor]

Account won't drop cards unless you made a $5 purchase on it. 5*300 000 = 1 500 000. That's quite a dedication for someone who has $1.5 kk to fuck around with 300 000 bots to make $9000. Not to mention each bot needs an authenticator etc.

You don't need to spend $5 to get card drops. Here's the Steam knowledge base article on exactly what restrictions apply to limited account. Note that a limited account doesn't have access to the Steam market but they can trade the cards to an account that does. Likewise, authenticators are required for instant trades but even without them the trade will go through after a period of time during which the item is held in escrow by Valve. There is no hurry to get these cards to the market for the people selling them.

Additionally, this is not a one time endeavor where someone sets up a 300,000 strong bot farm to earn $9000 once and calls it a day. Thousands of games are being released on Steam each month and a lot of those are being farmed for cards. There are tools being specifically coded to automate as much of the process as possible. Some folks simply cannot understand the scale at which this is happening.

Finally, this is not speculative fiction. You can see all of it happening. You can go to sites that are selling these keys in bulk for next to nothing and buy them. You can go to the Steam market and see the cards selling. You can check profile levels of people who are crafting the badges. Regardless of how many hurdles or restrictions you think are in place, this is still an ongoing process. It's why Valve continuously takes steps to curb it and why developers are trying to find ways to bypass every new restriction.

I mean, even Valve admits in that Gamasutra article that card farming is one of the problems they're trying to combat and you think this doesn't work in real life?

 

[Paz]

Um so as a consumer how do you know where it's safe to buy from? Like someone already said humblebundle but also GMG etc. normally legit resellers, if I just read his statement that could also mean these stores.

Edit: And before people point out that "it's just certain developers" still as a consumer how do you know when it's safe? It seems rather ambiguous and subjective.

This has nothing to do with store or key legitimacy, it is exclusively regarding developers generating steam keys.

 

[Parsnip]

Lots of hubbub about nothing it seems.

Soooo... I didn't see this posted in the thread, but I may have missed it.

Valve says it's cracking down on big key requests to combat Steam skulduggery

Game-shaped objects is my new favorite descriptor for asset flips.

 

[Conkerkid11]

All devs and publishers need to look at this and see that it signifies that game prices as a whole, now that it is virtually a fully digital market, are too high.

A simple way to combat offsite discounted games could have Valve working directly with publishers/developers and encourage MSRPs to more accurately reflect the market, IE $50 instead of $60. This could even be combined with 20-25% off preorders of $60 games, 10-20% off preorders of $50 games, 10-20% off newly released games for a 1-2 week period after launch. Maybe offer a reduction in your own cut from 30% to 20% in these enticement efforts. Also Steam sales, while another many paragraphs long thread entirely, frankly have sucked fairly hard for what seems like a couple of years now.

We are in an era where many people, even console only gamers, are routinely getting prices of ~ $40 min $50 max on brand new $60 AAA games due to programs like Best Buy Gamer's Club, w/ possible preorder discounts and Amazon Prime.

Besides those helpful points to Valve, I hope this isn't an effort to try and stop progress of the return to the $50 AAA game price and is to prevent actual malicious devs/resellers from using loopholes to game the system.

Games aren't too expensive. Consumers just see a place that sells them cheaper, and buy from there.

Doesn't even make sense to jump to the conclusion that games are too expensive.

 

[Pixieking]

Lots of hubbub about nothing it seems.

Game-shaped objects is my new favorite descriptor for asset flips.

It took me a couple of seconds to realise they weren't talking about Walking Simulators.

 

[UserDoesNotExist]

With games getting more and more expensive to make, you want pubs to sell them for less?

I mean, if you do get your wish, it'll either mean less content, more paid DLC and microtransactions, or fewer AAA studios. The money needs to come from somewhere.

That's not "my wish". Games are worth what the market is willing to bear and not a penny more. You already gave the answer: AAA game budgets are completely unsustainable, and in the long run they'll price themselves out of the market.

 

[Spence]

Every store listed on https://isthereanydeal.com/ is legit, that's where I get my deals from.

Here is a list of authorized resellers. I don't think it's complete though.

This has nothing to do with store or key legitimacy, it is exclusively regarding developers generating steam keys.

The last quote is exactly my point, wouldn't it be possible for a developer to generate a ton of keys and sells them through legit keysellers like humble or GMG and then having steam deny the keys?

 

[Durante]

The last quote is exactly my point, wouldn't it be possible for a developer to generate a ton of keys and sells them through legit keysellers like humble or GMG and then having steam deny the keys?

No.
You generate keys before selling them.

 

[Rellik]

The last quote is exactly my point, wouldn't it be possible for a developer to generate a ton of keys and sells them through legit keysellers like humble or GMG and then having steam deny the keys?

They already do this through third party companies who buy them in batches at clearance prices and sell them on to sites like GMG. There is a guy on this forum who runs one of those companies and went into detail on how it works.

You don't need to be on some Steam list for them to be official keys directly from the dev/pub.

 

[Kaleinc]

You don't need to spend $5 to get card drops. Note that a limited account doesn't have access to the Steam market but they can trade the cards to an account that does.

Limited accounts can't trade anything.

 

[Neverforget]

I'm talking about the potential of developers who're using Steam but want to sell their game on their own website. Valve are the ones who offered Steamworks (which this is included with it) for free and now are taking features away. They just want their 30% cut from games being sold on Steam. But they knew and even told you that you could sell elsewhere and they wouldn't take a cut. Now they want it again. So this is just a way to ensure that they get something.

When steam started, Valve had to get games devs/publishers on board and gave them options to make them warm up to their system, back then the digital industry was a thing of Sci-fi. Generating keys with no issues/limits was one of the free feature, steam wanted games to promote their store/system. Now that steam is huge and almost a monopoly they want to put the brakes on some of the features.

Vavle is a business and as such the only thing they care about is how to make more money, thus the restrictions added this past few years (restricted gifting, trading, cards drop, keys limit, worst sales...etc).

It's basically like an Internet provider that lures you in with a good promo and services and once they get hold of you and become popular their services start to deteriorate and get pricier.

This is why competition is always healthy, GOG and Origin should get more love.

 

[RionaaM]

When steam started, Valve had to get games devs/publishers on board and gave them options to make them warm up to their system, back then the digital industry was a thing of Sci-fi. Generating keys with no issues/limits was one of the free feature, steam wanted games to promote their store/system. Now that steam is huge and almost a monopoly they want to put the brakes on some of the features.

Vavle is a business and as such the only thing they care about is how to make more money, thus the restrictions added this past few years (restricted gifting, trading, cards drop, keys limit, worst sales...etc).

It's basically like an Internet provider that lures you in with a good promo and services and once they get hold of you and become popular their services start to deteriorate and get pricier.

This is why competition is always healthy, GOG and Origin should get more love.

It isn't like this at all. You can't access the internet without connecting through an ISP. You can buy and play PC games without using Steam.

Competitors shouldn't "get more love" just for competing. They win your support by providing a good service or product, not by simply existing. Otherwise we should be praising GWFL and the Win10 store too, and they both suck. I want competition, but I want it to be good. I don't feel like giving participation awards for mediocre efforts. GOG is great and Origin has gotten better, but the latter only has EA games and the odd third-party title, so I don't feel it's trying to compete with Steam.

 

[madjoki]

If you're planning on doing a retail release of your game, you'll need pre-release keys so you can print them in the boxes. But I guess that big AAA publishers are still going to get those big requests approved, they're the only ones that still do retail releases.

Prerelease keys are special keys that are used only for beta/review etc. purposes. Their purpose is to allow access before release date.

Sales always use standard keys.

You don't need to spend $5 to get card drops. Here's the Steam knowledge base article on exactly what restrictions apply to limited account. Note that a limited account doesn't have access to the Steam market but they can trade the cards to an account that does. Likewise, authenticators are required for instant trades but even without them the trade will go through after a period of time during which the item is held in escrow by Valve. There is no hurry to get these cards to the market for the people selling them.

Additionally, this is not a one time endeavor where someone sets up a 300,000 strong bot farm to earn $9000 once and calls it a day. Thousands of games are being released on Steam each month and a lot of those are being farmed for cards. There are tools being specifically coded to automate as much of the process as possible. Some folks simply cannot understand the scale at which this is happening.

Finally, this is not speculative fiction. You can see all of it happening. You can go to sites that are selling these keys in bulk for next to nothing and buy them. You can go to the Steam market and see the cards selling. You can check profile levels of people who are crafting the badges. Regardless of how many hurdles or restrictions you think are in place, this is still an ongoing process. It's why Valve continuously takes steps to curb it and why developers are trying to find ways to bypass every new restriction.

I mean, even Valve admits in that Gamasutra article that card farming is one of the problems they're trying to combat and you think this doesn't work in real life?

Limited accounts can't trade trading cards. They will be untradeable until you spend $5.

But yeah it's very profitable, especially when you consider

You don't even need that many accounts to begin.

Account won't drop cards unless you made a $5 purchase on it. 5*300 000 = 1 500 000. That's quite a dedication for someone who has $1.5 kk to fuck around with 300 000 bots to make $9000. Not to mention each bot needs an authenticator etc.

One phone number is good for iirc. several thousand accounts.

How much prepaid costs? $5? that's less than half cent per account.

 

[patapuf]

When steam started, Valve had to get games devs/publishers on board and gave them options to make them warm up to their system, back then the digital industry was a thing of Sci-fi. Generating keys with no issues/limits was one of the free feature, steam wanted games to promote their store/system. Now that steam is huge and almost a monopoly they want to put the brakes on some of the features.

Vavle is a business and as such the only thing they care about is how to make more money, thus the restrictions added this past few years (restricted gifting, trading, cards drop, keys limit, worst sales...etc).

It's basically like an Internet provider that lures you in with a good promo and services and once they get hold of you and become popular their services start to deteriorate and get pricier.

This is why competition is always healthy, GOG and Origin should get more love.

competition is healthy but neither GOG and especially not Origin is anywhere near close on features that it provides devs.

If the bar is origin, valve have a lot of room to further restrict their policies.

Anyway, this is not about valve wanting more money. If they did, they'd charge for key generation. Like their competitors do.

 

[Neverforget]

It isn't like this at all. You can't access the internet without connecting through an ISP. You can buy and play PC games without using Steam.

Competitors shouldn't "get more love" just for competing. They win your support by providing a good service or product, not by simply existing. Otherwise we should be praising GWFL and the Win10 store too, and they both suck. I want competition, but I want it to be good. I don't feel like giving participation awards for mediocre efforts. GOG is great and Origin has gotten better, but the latter only has EA games and the odd third-party title, so I don't feel it's trying to compete with Steam.

Most PC games are steamworks only, so no you cannot play them unless you use steam therefore my example is perfectly fine thank you very much.

I never said competition should get more love for the sake of it. To be able to compete with something one must provide the same services or better, it goes without saying methinks.

competition is healthy but neither GOG and especially not Origin is anywhere near close on features that it provides devs.
If the bar is origin, valve have a lot of room to further restrict their policies.
Anyway, this is not about valve wanting more money. If they did, they'd charge for key generation. Like their competitors do.

GOG & Origin's restrictions have been put upfront from the get go, the devs knows where they stand and didn't get their options restricted out of nowhere AFAIK, I do hope that their services will keep on improving, like I said competition is always healthy and beneficial for us the customers.

Now as a customer/gamer POV I do enjoy and appreciate my DRM free games from GOG and their fair pricing, the 24H refund policy and amazing customer service from Origin as well. Of course their catalogs and functionalities still need improvements.

Steam is a business and like any other business they are all about money, pretending or thinking otherwise is disingenuous. I say that as an old steam user with hundred of games in my account.

 

[patapuf]

GOG & Origin's restrictions have been put upfront from the get go, the devs knows where they stand and didn't get their options restricted out of nowhere AFAIK, I do hope that their services will keep on improving, like I said competition is always healthy and beneficial for us the customers.

Now as a customer/gamer POV I do enjoy and appreciate my DRM free games from GOG and their fair pricing, the 24H refund policy and amazing customer service from Origin as well. Of course their catalogs and functionalities still need improvements.

Steam is a business and like any other business they are all about money, pretending or thinking otherwise is disingenuous. I say that as an old steam user with hundred of games in my account.

Right, and i'm not saying people shouldn't look at steam/valve with a sceptical eye. We always should.

I just don't think this particular "restriction" is a loss of service, for devs or consumers.

 

[Neo_Geo]

Games aren't too expensive. Consumers just see a place that sells them cheaper, and buy from there.

Doesn't even make sense to jump to the conclusion that games are too expensive.

It makes perfect sense if you actually read what I typed and understand the logistics.. Valve has shown that, with digital products, you can generate more revenue with selling more units at a lower price of entry.

You and others blinded into thinking games should be $60 with rare exceptions being below that have got to get away from the ancient (in tech/landscape terms) thought process of what cost goes into a game.

In 1995 after an initial run of a game, if you wanted to make more revenue off your product, you had to literally stop and carefully plan out the approach. Major decision making and legwork was involved, sometimes it was better to not even try and just let that revenue stream dry up and start work on something else.

Game development costs have gone up, but there are many more outlets for your content and many more people to sell to than there were in the Nineties. Now you literally flip a switch and you can start up the revenue stream instantly on any product you choose. 100% gross revenue if you want to peddle the product yourself, or 70% if you want the Valve or another storefront do it for you.

You seem to also completely skip over what was said about B&M stores beating digital storefronts in price. Even with membership fees, it's asinine that a digital product is a full $60 when it can be sold for 10-20% cheaper. I explained all of this in my explanations of how the industry as a whole can better themselves and reap more profits from happier customers. The tip top of the industry are still lighting cigar's with $100's instead of placing just a miniscule amount of thought into where it's all going.

If a AAA game is too expensive for a developer/publisher to sell for less than $60 in any outlet, digital or physical, then that house has failed and needs to evaluate the serious underlying issues that have brought them to that point.