Evolvation revoked? (Dev responding , Mod: no addt'l tickets, Whitelisted in SGtools, Game free now)

Yeah, SGT uses a 24h cache that you can refresh doing a manual sync :)

only for people entering sgtools giveaways. But every little bits helps in this case :)

it's not user controlled... admins can add game to list and it won't be checked when you scan for unactivated wins...

Sent an email right away and yes maybe he gets 5000 emails, but still no reply or key.

I sent email and no reply

Thank you.

That's what SHE said

Indeed

thanks for the response, It's all good, stuff happens, human's make mistakes.. seems like you have a plan, shame that by making it free for the weekend you'll run the risk of many many extra people putting it onto their account instead of just the ones who bought it on fanatical and won the giveaways..

Have you explained the situation to them and ask them whether they can undo your action (rather than asking for replacement keys)?

Just a passerby here

Thanks for doing this. I was surprised when the key was revoked, and I replaced it just now on Steam - appreciate your efforts to make it right.

Quoting for preservation here: "I am not sure how they do it. But sadly, I am sure that they have found a way so they are able to post negative reviews :(. No, there are zero sales and zero refrunds. So I think it is about the gametime.
They have gametime because they have just started the game and let it run so they would get trading cards and sell it, They have never actually played the game (I know because of my log in my database). I am sad that they do not play the game, but only are using it for the trading cards etc and now post negative reviews about a game they never actually played or ever where going to play."

Sadly there are able to post negative reviews for a product (that they paid for in many cases) which you stole? Are you fucking kidding me?

It makes zero difference whether they played it, might play it one day, or never would've touched it. Steam reviews aren't independent media analysis meant to perceive works in a vacuum for comparison across the whole medium. I get why the lines are hard to distinguish for small game creators since that process is so intertwined from their perspective. Ultimately though, there's a difference between reviews on some IMDB equivalent solely about the work compared to Steam which is a store front first and foremost so reviews inherently absorb the business dimensions too. .Steam reviews are more along the lines of what you read at Amazon for people buying a DVD which doubles as a subjective analysis of the artistic work and incorporate the purchasing experience / product in whatever proportions the reviewer finds significant to report. You're going to get dinged for a game that won't run or is buggy as hell no matter how deep the story or gameplay is. You're going to get eviscerated for a game that fucking self-destructed at random.

You never responded whether you were trying to deactivate unused giveaway keys or all unused keys including SOLD bundles, so I don't know where you stand on that. Regardless, trying to deactivate only UNUSED keys is still a massively shitty thing to do and tantamount to theft.

You fucked up bigger than you meant to, but you did that while intending to do something that's still also extremely fucked up. Don't mistake such generous empathy from people regarding a larger mistake as a mutual respect for the other shit decision you actually wanted to make.

Please do not be sad, sir, you are doing your best to rectify a clearly horrifying situation. At worst, some people lost a few dollars on a game they bought, others lost a game they got for free in a giveaway. You, however, you're losing everything in this situation, your reputation and your finances, you've put everything into this, and it's plummeting, and it's out of your control. And that, that is what makes ME sad for YOU.

Initially, I was angry too, I got upset, I wanted to write a bad review (but didn't). But after actually looking into the situation, and seeing it from your side, I empathize with you now. None of these people who are complaining the most are losing much at all in this situation, it barely affects their lives, it is affecting you super bad, and you are doing all you can to fix it. And for that, you deserve praise, not condemnation.

I admire you for keeping a positive outlook on all this, and through countless negativity, you seem to be dealing with horrid people respectfully. Do not allow them to drag you down, keep your chin up, a solution will be found, and the next chapter can begin.

Many people mentioned multiple times in this thread that all unactivated keys from Fanatical/Bundlestars doesn't work anymore and i wrote about it in the first posts of this thread. People are attacking you because they think that this was your goal in the first place. Your game was bundled only once so many think you were trying to deactivate these unactivated keys that people were trading and selling on grey market. If that wasn't the case you need to explain and clarify better the situation otherwise people will just not believe you. It's something that dozen of developers did in the past for unactivated keys.

Propably that's the case that steam denied you new keys in the first place. You didn't give them a good explanation of what happened and what was the purpose of it and steam find all the situation "tricky" and didn't trust you so much to give you new keys.

Similar thing,a developer deactivated not only the unactivated but thousands of activated keys too if i remember correctly happened only once last 5 years but steam reversed it after 1 day or something.Why they denied you to reverse your action i have no idea.Propably they don't care because you are not a publisher with many games and needs some work to reverse it.

"I mentioned multiple times that I did not touched the keys of the bundle."

And that is a bold faced lie.

MULTIPLE PEOPLE have already reported unused bundle keys which you have clearly deactivated. I never bothered checking until you reiterated these claims just now, but I looked at Fanatical and found an unrevealed key to confirm the exact same 100% for myself just now. You deactivated those keys. You are lying when you say you didn't touch them.

Considering how you prop up a claim that's so easily confirmed fraudulent here, I don't know why you expect anyone to take anything else you say at face value regarding your intentions or what Valve is saying you can or cannot do now. I don't plan to monitor this situation, but hopefully the people who do are wise enough to task you with disclosing your actual communications with Valve which confirm your claims. Specifically this denied replacement key request that you say occurred.

If you're on the level about making things right, then you should already want to be provide absolute transparency and validate your sincerity here too. .

Banning Keys

If you need to ban product keys, that can be done from the Ban Steam Keys page.

Similar to querying a key, you may only ban a product key that you have the rights to. In the second step of the process, you can pick whether you wish to ban all keys in the batch, or just keys that have not yet been redeemed. Please be very careful when banning product keys, as you could be removing access from legitimate customers. 

You may ban keys to revoke access from legitimate users (for example, the end of a beta) or to revoke keys that have been stolen or purchased fraudulently. Once a key has been banned, it cannot be unbanned.

Tagging Keys

It’s very important to tag your keys correctly so that you can keep track of them in the future. For example, if you are requesting a batch of keys to be sold at retail in France, you can choose the France tag. It’s a valuable accountability measure for you to keep track of your product’s sales on other storefronts. Untagged key requests may be denied.

Steam Key Rules and Guidelines

You should use keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don't give Steam customers a worse deal.

It's OK to run a discount on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

Occasionally it may make sense to offer your game in a bundle or subscription, timed at the right point in a game's life cycle. Keep in mind that the perceived price in the bundle/subscription should be a price you are willing to run the game at a standalone price or discount on Steam. For example, 10 games in a bundle that costs $5 USD may have a perceived price of $.50 per game. Similarly, 10 games for $10 through a subscription this month may have a perceived price of $1 each. 

Steam keys shouldn't be given away for free if you aren't also offering the same deal (i.e., give the game away for free) to Steam customers. If you want to run a giveaway on Steam, please reach out to us at Steampublish@valvesoftware.com

Steam keys shouldn't be sold in bulk. For example, you should not sell your game on sites that offer customers the option to purchase large numbers of copies of your game for a lower price. You should also not include your game in bundles on sites that allow customers to purchase multiple copies of the bundle for a lower price.

We reserve the right to deny requests for keys or revoke key requesting privileges for partners that are abusing them or disadvantaging Steam customers. 

If we detect that you have requested an extreme number of keys and you aren't offering Steam customers a good value, we may deny your request.

We reserve the right to remove key requesting privileges from any partner whose sole business is selling Steam keys and not providing value or a fair deal to Steam customers.

Q: Why was my key request denied?
A: Your request may have been denied due to the amount of keys requested. If we detect that you have requested an extreme number of keys and you aren't offering Steam customers a good value, we may deny your request.

It may also have been denied because the request was for a package that contains a release state override. Release override keys make the content immediately playable upon activation. Unless a request for testing/promo/press override keys is a small batch and properly tagged for use, it may be denied. If the key request is intended for commercial purposes, be sure to use a package that does not override the release state of your app.

In general, you should treat keys like cash.

Source: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

but you did, the fanatical keys no longer work, the one key I purchased from a bundle was no longer accessible, forget my minor rant for some reason I was under the impression the game was put for free and then had the free period ended and it was removed.. Ultimately mistakes were made, things were said.. meh,

Technically it was. Developer asked Valve to make the game free so they did as requested.

One cannot just...
...
...
Make their game free on Steam.