yes or yes?
Another page in this Epic Storybook. That's life.
Glad I rid of it.
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"We have been made aware of illegal stolen keys being sold by an unofficial key reseller.
Great - 2 Amazing guesses as to whom that could've been :p
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Aren't physical copies come with epic keys, why the announcement is on steam??
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"These keys have been obtained illegally from the factory where physical key printing had taken place prior to the announcement of exclusivity with Epic Games"
These were keys obtained before the announcement with Epic, directly from the factory, which means they were steam keys. It says right there in the announcement that illegal steam copies are being removed.
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Ohh. I guess I don't understand how this thing works. I thought steam keys for metro exodus on physical copies are all become invalid automatically when they announce to become epic exclusives and that physical copies will come with epic keys instead.
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Given the circumstances we've been presented with, I see a fairly straightforward explanation for what occurred:
It takes time to prepare the large number of physical copies that would accompany a launch. As such, they'd already made good progress in their preparations before the factories involved were informed of the game's platform being swapped over to Epic. Any already-prepared physical steam activation code slips then needed to be removed and replaced by epic activation code slips.
One possibility is that the company originally considered later reusing the physical code slips, for the sake of saving the money of re-printing them. It is also possible (and perhaps more likely) that the company simply forgot to invalidate the codes as part of the process of disposing of them.
Whatever the circumstance, certain employees associated with the factory presumably decided to try and make a quick buck by pocketing a few of the keys (which by that point likely were not being given thorough oversight) for the sake of reselling them on the usual murky sites. Somehow*, the company became aware of the existence of the keys being sold, determined their source, and proceeded to invalidate the keys. Be it due to belated follow-up on their plans to dispose of them to begin with, or out of necessity of not knowing which keys were stolen, this invalidation extended to all physically prepared key codes.
*Likely due to the fact that the games apparently never activated or updated properly to begin with, which we can assume led to a lot of customer support requests being directed to the company.
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+1
This seems like a pretty good explanation for those confused or unsure what was meant by the developer of Deep Silver.
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Given that these keys were only available on disreputable sources, the bulk of the blame can be spread out between the disreputable sites, the criminals who make use of them, and those who try to take advantage of such sites despite being fully aware of how they operate. Comparative to the responsability of those three, any blame leftover for other entities would be of minor note- even if Epic "was in on it", as some of the comments in the thread linked in the OP claim.
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Weird I did not see info about it on Eurogamer or Rock Paper Shotgun.
When Sniper Elite 3 stolen keys were revoked, backslash for developer / publisher was huge.
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Never fully understood that.
Maybe now it's more clear since the game isn't 'supposed to be on steam' so buying steam keys in itself is already kinda sketchy, apart from them being grey keys even.
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Not all gaming community follows game development, and even those that followed this particular case were fed with "Metro on Steam" trailers / info for a long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx2Irm3ZFz8 - like here
So I'm sure big portion of people that bought those stolen keys wrote "Metro Exodus price", and when did not get results for Steam - added "Metro Exodus Steam price" and bought game where it was available.
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https://steamcommunity.com/app/412020/discussions/0/1771511442683077969/
"We have been made aware of illegal stolen keys being sold by an unofficial key reseller.
These keys have been obtained illegally from the factory where physical key printing had taken place prior to the announcement of exclusivity with Epic Games, due to the criminal nature of these keys, all unlicensed keys have been deactivated and activation / download of Metro Exodus without the executable file is no longer possible. In addition, the software will be removed from the Steam library of any players using an unauthorised code. The keys being sold on this platform are stolen goods, and are therefore illegal.
If you have been affected we strongly recommend you contact the seller who sold you the unlicensed key and demand a refund.
The only supported key sellers for Metro Exodus were Humblebundle and the Razer store.
Metro Exodus will return to Steam after 14 February 2020."
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