Developer Rebellion has admitted that some bad people have stolen a batch of Sniper Elite 3 Steam keys from a third-party vendor and then resold them on the cheap, and Steam has revoked all the stolen keys, to the chagrin of many burned buyers
The PC market is a bit wild, and as a result it is often pretty simple to get some good deals on even brand-new or pre-order games. But sometime there are shenanigans involved. For games that require Steam to run, you can usually still purchase keys outside of Steam from Amazon, Green Man Gaming, Gamersgate or any number of other sites. And apparently one disreputable seller had stolen a batch of Sniper Elite 3 keys from a legitimate vendor and then sold them at a markdown.
When Rebellion caught wind of this, they alerted Valve and had the keys revoked, leaving buyers pretty peeved on the Steam forums because Rebellion is not offering a refund for those who bought one of the stolen keys. They are giving out keys for the pre-order exclusive Target Hitler DLC (the game launched on Friday), but that’s all. It was, after all, stolen property folks were unwittingly purchasing, and none of Rebellion nor Valve nor the retailer that lost the keys saw any money from those purchases.
Here’s the statement from Rebellion on the matter from the forums:
To clarify, one of our PC retail distributors informed us that some of their allotted Steam keys were stolen. We believe these keys were then resold to multiple companies, with no payments going to either Valve or the retail distributor.
Steam were immediately informed and have now revoked that set of keys.
As a developer Rebellion are happy for you to purchase the game anywhere you see fit and support price competition in the PC market – we have in no way targeted any specific vendors (who may have also thought these keys were legitimate), just this one set of keys.
All we can suggest if you have been affected is to please contact your vendor and first ask for a replacement key, and then contact us for the free pre-order DLC if you are successful.
Comments
10 responses to “Sniper Elite 3 Steam Codes Stolen, Resold To Innocent Buyers, Revoked”
Wasn’t this story already reported? Just askin’.
Deja vu.
It means either Logan Booker or Phil Owen stole a story and sold it to Kotaku. The articles should be revoked and all commenter’s accounts banned.
Dear Kotaku, if a “shady(tm)” writer offers you a story for a pittance it must be “too good to be true(tm)”. Remember, “buyer beware(tm)”.
This news seems slightly updated supporting my initial assumption that CD key resellers bought the stolen keys from a supplier without knowing that it is stolen and selling them at a low price that I saw before the game release. Almost every site was telling it for $30 or less.
The way I’ve come to understand it, a legitimate distributor had keys stolen/duplicated without knowing it (my money is on an inside job) until the last minute when they turned up on the actually shady side of the net. These stolen versions were showing up on steam and duplications of keys sold by legitimate retailers (and even histrionic unprofessional cockheads like buydlplay & cjskeys) were showing up on steam in bulk when retailers sent preorder keys out which was when it was detected and the whole list of codes from that distributor had to be cancelled.
The shops have already or are in the process of refunding purchases or replacing keys so the only people who have actually lost out are the people who bought from the sources that were actually stolen and frankly, fuck em.
You know what? CJS keys was being a dick about it and was flaming the entire issue. Read their blog: http://www.cjs-cdkeys.com/blog/.
Not sure why they are being a dick about it when their keys were not affected which means not the batch of stolen codes. They are earning money and yet bashing Rebellion by following the hype train. I hate all these stupid companies lately. I think Rebellion should just kill supply to CJS since they are publicly defaming them.
Yeah them (well, I’ll say him because it’ll almost certainly be one guy) and the buydlplay were both suppliers I’d never heard of before and now that I know of them I won’t go within 3 hops of their domain server
I assume the key buying market is legal? I’ve used it a few times myself. The old saying, ‘If it’s too good to be true, it probably is’ applies here. It sucks but that’s life.
Key buying market is definitely legal but in this case, it is Just the issue with stolen keys. The stolen keys was sold by supplier to reseller without them knowing.
looks like its off to the bay for many a pissed off gamer
Happened to me with Arma 3. Bought a key on eBay three months later get this message saying i no longer own the game cause the key i used was stolen or something like that. Anyway leaned my lesson.