*Gulp* Well then. By chance do you know the username of the person you bought the game from? I got my copy for $30 on ebay from "steamgames" (I think) who was from Vietnam. I am perfectly okay with losing the $30 but I honestly wasn't aware you couldn't buy these keys.
If I lose my steam account; however, I will probably stop gaming.
What I don't understand is how do they get their money back from steam after 45 days of sale to you. That seems odd to me. I haven't had the game for 45 days yet so if he did a mass pull of his "gifts" I should be okay. If he's biding his time, well then I'll lose $30 which is not too bad as I will probably have played 80% of total game time by then anyways.
My EADM keys I bought from the ebay chinaman are still working quite nicely after a year and change. Of course I went into it with my eyes open - the prices were in my "disposable funds" range, so if they got banned after a few months, I'd have already gotten my money's worth.
If you are willing to buy stolen goods why not simply pirate the game and hurt only the company instead of both the company and someone who got their credit card numbers stolen.
Also there are plenty of legit sites to buy keys for games on like g2play.com why go vietnamese?
This is why I do not buy much from Steam. There have been several people here who have had their accounts revoked for BS reasons, and they have no recourse.
Steam is trying to kill the resale market. Screw that.
I'm pretty sure g2play is selling foreign keys.
That is different than being a foreign run and non legit site. They are selling keys that they got for cheap in another country, the company is still making profits off of the sales just at a different rate than in the US, and also no one is getting hurt by stole CCs.
That is different than being a foreign run and non legit site. They are selling keys that they got for cheap in another country, the company is still making profits off of the sales just at a different rate than in the US, and also no one is getting hurt by stole CCs.
Some U.S. customers looking to save a few bucks by purchasing the game from overseas vendors have recently found themselves locked out of the game. Although the games were purchased legally and activated without difficulty, starting about a week later gamers were met with "incorrect territory" warnings and unplayable games.
If you are willing to buy stolen goods why not simply pirate the game and hurt only the company instead of both the company and someone who got their credit card numbers stolen.
Also there are plenty of legit sites to buy keys for games on like g2play.com why go vietnamese?
Right, but I said this because you earlier implied that SunnyD's buying a key off eBay from a "Chinaman" was "buying stolen goods," even though no one had said anything about the key being stolen, or bought with a stolen CC. All SunnyD said was that he bought a key from a foreigner - YOU said that he was buying stolen goods or goods bought with a stolen CC, despite there being no reason to think so. Yet you held out G2Play as a "legit" alternative. My point was that if the mere act of buying a foreign Steam key counts as "theft" to you, then it should be the same with G2Play (who, I'd venture, Steam is not happy about, and could revoke keys from if so inclined since they're violating Steam's TOS).
Well it looks like g2play sells keys that are not steam based but off of boxes from other countries. I do not see how steam could revoke it.
This is why I do not buy much from Steam. There have been several people here who have had their accounts revoked for BS reasons, and they have no recourse.
Steam is trying to kill the resale market. Screw that.
What resale market? You might be able to find the occasional used PC game on ebay, but activation and feature codes killed resale. That being said, rarely anyone gets revoked for BS reasons. Usually it's because they get caught cheating online or they purchased stolen keys or keys bought with stolen credit cards. On the rare occasion a mistake is made, Steam will usually make everything right.
How to avoid this? Don't buy Steam keys that aren't supplied by Steam directly or via gifting and if gifted make sure you know the person so that you know it isn't bought with a stolen card. The only way you can get a legit steam key outside of steam is if a game has Steamworks, and even then the game has to be opened to acquire it.
Long story short, assume all "loose" Steam keys are suspect and you won't have to worry.
A couple of people here have posted about how they lost their paid-for games for BS reasons, and how they were unable to convince Steam's service reps otherwise. IIRC, none of these reasons had to do with gifting.
Unfortunately there is no way to know for sure if these people were telling the whole story. You'd be surprised how people omit facts to make themselves look like a complete victim.
Like I said earlier, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's hardly an epidemic or systemic. Also, a few posts on a forum hardly constitutes a realistic sampling, given that Steam has many many thousands of daily users that have no problems at all. People don't exactly post on here every time it works fine. I myself have about 50 games on Steam and have never had a problem.
Some people simply don't like Steam or what it stands for. This is a perfectly reasonable opinion, but it doesn't automatically mean Steam doesn't provide a good service or deal with people with people in a reasonable way. Just like with most things, if you look at it on a case by case basis, you'll find that Steam works as expected in over 99% of cases or at least there is a reasonable explanation if not.
You're lucky, actually. I've heard of Steam disabling entire accounts in cases like this.