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FWD: Please ban keys

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Scorcher24

copy for you from my support section

Please disallow keys at all, except for developer giveaways. Only valid Steamgifts should be allowed in the future.

My reasons:

In the past there has been to much drama surrounding exploited giveaways. Also, with the appearance of keygenerators that are able to generate valid Steamkeys (A Valley without Wind), this is just too much of a risk to take in the future.

You could make it proof of purchase only, but that would put a lot of work onto your support team, which are only volunteers. All this combined, leads only to one solution: disallow keys, no matter the source.

Yes, it will hurt legit users, it always does. But it is the only way of keeping steamgifts.com clean in the future.

Update:

We cannot verify the source of a key or if a stolen credit card was used etc. There is no way. With the contributor status it has become too much of a risk, because people will do anything for that stupid contributor thing.

A key purchased with a stolen CC from GamersGate can be as illegit as one from badkeystore.fuck etc.

Update 2:

Regarding buying steam gifts with stolen credit cards:

That is true, but steam support can verify that you got the game as a gift and also see that maybe the offender comes from a different country, rendering you innocent. In that case they just remove the gift.

But if you activate a fraudulent key on your account, things might go different.

Alternative:

I made a suggestion like 6 months ago to verify gifts through the inventory via steam-xml, but that was flamed down as well. We need either one. If a gift is validated through the inventory, display a small icon on the giveaway, like a green hook. But nobody wants that either.

12 years ago*

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221 Comments
DatWiseGuy

I think the OP forgets Keygens are only good if they generate keys on the system, hence why you cannot get Keygenerators for things like Xbox Live, PSN, MMORPG time cards etc... Thats not to say it won't work, but something like a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of getting one that is in the system, but your not going to try them all out to that point... and systems will pick up on the amount of bad keys tried and then ban the account.

More chance of picking up a key bought with a stolen CC, as seen by someone lately with GW2, he wouldn't refund people when peoples accounts started to be closed down... blaming the fact on his supplier and that he had no money through the deal at the end, which is BS as he obviously sold at a higher price after paying for a bundle of keys... if he did indeed buy them and not did the deed himself.

This is why people should stay away from weird looking Russian sites that offer keys, they are mostly stolen in some way from CC fraud to simple physical theft of a product.

For other sites like gamersgate etc, people can easily have their Gamersgate profile on show, that way people can see the time they have had the account and games purchased - this way people know if they are legit etc.

12 years ago
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NekuSoul

The icon idea would be a good idea, maybe in combination that only those will give count toward your contributor amount.

12 years ago
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Rhah

Don't get me wrong but the idea is gay. Over 75 % of the games given away on SteamGifts are keys. About they keygenerators which seem to totally depress you, well, how many of the people who got in touch with these did make a giveaway here ? They generate keys mostly for themselves, they rarely give a fuck about the others and moreover they would rather try to trade the extra ones for other games than making a giveaway.

12 years ago
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DatWiseGuy

As said in my post, keygens for Steam is very very difficult due to the fact only legit keys will activate, and finding a key that is still on the system as open and on sale is 1 in 10,000,000 chance.

12 years ago
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vcvc8

Dude, people who give fake/exploited keys, get their punishment. We aren't gonna ban keys altogether (hopefully)

And I don't believe you can just "volunteer" to support. There's a select few who get those admin features, and that won't likely change.

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Scorcher24.