Hiya guys

First of all i was thinking about an easy title but something didn't come out my head and i don't know if there is a post about it.

Since i know Keysellers website sell games for -5 to -90% i was wondering even i already spend money and start giveaway since yesterday > Which websites are tolerated or recommended by SteamGifts for giveaway ? And tolerate by Steam

i have list who i can trust but i need your help to clarify for the other websites

site to know trusted website and got some voucher code (GMG voucher code isn't working or i miss something)
IsThereAnyDeal
gg.deals

Approved by Steamgifts:

  • Humble Bundle (Has Fees if you don't from US)
  • Indie Gala (Needs a rework)
  • Fanatical (BundleStars ancient name)
  • Amazon (sometimes find low price than others)

Approved by members

  • Green Man Gaming (official Keysellers)

  • GamersGate (Official Keysellers)

  • Voidu

  • CDkeys

  • Instant-Gaming

  • Groupees

  • WinGamesStore

  • Gamesplanet

  • Gamesbillet

  • Direct2Drive

  • Daily Indie Game

  • 2Game

  • DLGamer

  • Opium Pulses

  • Allyouplay
    Untrusted by members:

  • HRK

  • G2a

  • G2play

  • Kinguin

  • Gamivo

  • Gaming Dragons

  • Games Rocket
    Ceased to sell / Vanished

  • Chrono.gg

  • GoGoBundle / OtakuBundle

Still waiting for approval by Steamgifts: (needs more feedback)

So as you can see i didn't list all of Website who sell games' keys.

6 years ago*

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Any website is fine as long as the keys work (or if you are prepared to get another key for the winner if it doesn't). I mostly use Humble Bundle, Indie Gala and Fanatical. My main issue with Green Man Gaming is a lack of clarity with regards to region locks. I have used GamersGate before and they are decent but rarely have the best deals. I wouldn't personally trust HRK, G2A and the various other key resellers for giveaways but I know plenty of other people do.

6 years ago
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for G2a i brought games before after that i felt so in stress because i was scared to get ban then i decided to spend money from good sellers

6 years ago
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You aren't going to get banned for it. If you get a bad key and give it out you can get another and fix it (as I did the weekend - long story) or just take a 'not received' which may look bad if you are trying to get into certain groups or whatever but isn't going to be the end of your steamgifts life. You are only going to get into trouble if support think you are making fake giveaways intentionally and the occasional bad key isn't going to make them think that...

6 years ago
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GoGo and otaku should be fine as I see threads for their bundles nearly every day.
GMG is also fine having bought from them before also.
I personally have bought a game or two from voidu and cdkeys and haven't had issues with them but I wouldn't rely 100% on them.
Chrono.gg should be alright but never bought from them so I cant be sure but I think they are alright.

6 years ago*
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Well Gogo and Otaku have too much people don't want but i see some who intrigued me.
For GMG i see good deal and i'm going to make some deal to see.
Voidu looks clean and CDkeys i should take a look a bit more

6 years ago
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CDKeys is one of the most "legitimate" grey market sites in my opinion, I wouldn't expect to ever get scammed there. Doesn't mean it isn't still risky though. Whether you want to support something that is hurting the game industry and directly killing game bundles and huge discounts is up the person I guess, but I wouldn't touch sites like G2A with a ten foot pole regardless. They not only screw over developers but they go out of their way to try and screw you the customer over too with shady complicated to cancel subscription services

6 years ago*
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I've only bought from g2a once in the past I think and that was for one of the bundles they used to do. I just don't trust the keys and the shady shield thing they do as well as the subscription thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth so I avoid them like you've said.

6 years ago
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from ones you doubt - GMG and Gamersgate are official key shops, not grey market resellers and for the most part they are trustworthy (yet they had issues in the past, but same had Humble yet you still 'trust' them).

6 years ago
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As far as I know, Instant-Gaming is an authorized reseller. I bought from them and never had problems so I am happy with their service.

6 years ago
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Chrono.gg is approved as well, right?

6 years ago
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isn't Chrono.gg region lock ?
Also this site was E3's sponsor 2018

6 years ago
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I believe Chrono.gg is pretty legit. They do not do massive discounts too.
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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I don't think it's region locked? I mean, I snagged Hotline Miami 2 despite it being banned in Australia, soo...

I totally approve of it, though. Nothing dodgy at all.

6 years ago
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alright thanks for the info

6 years ago
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had good experiences witth chrono

you forgot to list tremorgames? they dont sell keys but you can get keys there, among other things for doing surveys.

6 years ago
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huh tremorgames it's just a website with flash games i don't see we can win games...

6 years ago
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You get points for logging in each day and you can do surveys to get points that you can buy games with.

6 years ago
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get coins, suppose to give you a list of sites that give tremorcoins if ya asnwer some question (aka sell all ya privite info)) you can then use those coins to buy keys.

6 years ago
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First time seeing this thread now that it's suddenly revived, haha. Saw this and got so sad because I miss TremorGames, I used to love that site so much, haha. :'(

3 years ago
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Sites like, Humble Store, Indiegala, Fanatical, GMG are Retailers. G2A, Kinguin are Key Resellers. The difference is, When Retailers make a sale, a portion/large portion of the profits go back to the Game Devs/Publishers. Key Resellers are usually individuals whom purchased a bundle or a batch of keys at a discount and resell them on the site.

This harms the Devs as they do not receive anything from that portion. In the 1st place they had already made a discount or bundle the item at a lower profit. In some extreme cases would be credit fraud where, games are purchased at full price/discounted using a credit card however the credit details are stolen. Afterwhich the payment bounces and the Devs are left with deficits. The keys are then sold on Reseller sites. However Reseller sites do not work with the Devs to track those keys.
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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Sounds more scary than comforting i feel like i don't reward devs by buying from Steam....

6 years ago
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No, Steam is just a medium/retailer site like Humble, Indiegala. Fanatical. GMG. These other 4 sites works with Steam Keys, they also get offer from the publishers for discounts or bundles. The profits go to the publishers/devs as mentioned. I am not an insider but if you look at it, Retailers take a cut, Publishers take a cut, the Devs end up getting lesser of the pie. Thus there are so many indie studios now.

Steam also takes a profit cut probably even more as it has a large user base and is the medium for most games. As SteamGifts are Steam based games. GOG is good retailer site too, games offered are DRM-Free. Personally, if there are bundles and great discounts on GOG I am hopping to move towards GOG. Sadly, the lack of bundles are killing the competition. GOG has very good discounts too, they are also subsidiary of the makers of Witcher series CD Projekt. You cannot offer GOG keys for giveaways here as its not recorded, perhaps in future.

Edit: What I meant is All these Retailers/Marketplace which is Steam/Steam related does provide the Devs with profits unlike Reseller sites. As they are legit and recommended, look out for great deals! To support the devs also saving your wallet from malnutrition. :D
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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Well if Steam has SteamGifts well GOG can have GOGifts too but this is too early to talk about that XD

6 years ago
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Hahaha, yeah if you want to make one, GOG has public profiles starting this year too. Its not very different from Steam but its games are DRM-Free which means you can download the game on your PC, Laptop and you do not need internet connection to play!
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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If you are looking to ensure that the devs and/or publisher get the full amount you always want to buy off their site directly if you can. If you buy off of any client or website store often 1/3 of the purchase goes to the store selling the product, sometimes more depending.

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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doesn't Kinguin belong to G2A?

6 years ago
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I . . . Don't think so? Kinguin came after G2A and Kinguin used to be an Esport team. I think they were sponsored by G2A before? Not sure I don't follow them. They may have some association in the back but I do not have the info. I am staying clear of both sites anyway. :D Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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well, i might be wrong about this though.
Ordered quite some keys over Kinguin during the last few years, mainly personal use, and never encountered any problems. You just have to make sure to buy the "Buyers Protection" - otherwise they won't exchange the key if it's a bad one 😐

6 years ago
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That is a very Shady practice in my opinion, thus I will not trust these sites.

6 years ago
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You just have to make sure to buy the "Buyers Protection" - otherwise they won't exchange the key if it's a bad one

Maybe if you live in a country where corporations > customers, but in civilized world they have ro replace faulty product or give you your money back -and if they say "you didn;t bought protection" you reply "you didn't bought protection from chargebacks".
Buying that Protection is just buying 24/7-contact with support.

6 years ago
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Really? I feel like buying the buyer protection pretty much defeats the purpose of buying it from the grey market in the first place. It's like buying something off eBay for cheap, then getting charged shipping until it's the normal price. May as well wait 'til a sale, then.

Then again, I have yet to have an issue with any dodgy grey market seller. Okay, maybe 1, but they resolved it ASAP, no protection bought. I might be lucky?

6 years ago
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the buyer protection is mostly just a few cents or 1-4euro for higher priced games.
Well, yea, it somehow sounds like you will get bad keys intentionally if you don't buy it -but i won't complain as long as it works^^

6 years ago
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CDkeys and Instant-Gaming are grey market resellers similar to G2A, I think, not sure why you'd put those under approved by members. Like others said before as long as the key works there's no way for anyone to know where it came from and most won't care anyway.

6 years ago
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well did you check today some posts here, i see some people ask to know where their key they win come from i prefer to be trusted by them when i do a giveaway but yeah i don't ask when i enter in a giveaway >.<

6 years ago
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CDkeys are grey market resellers and just because of that some users consider them exactly as dependable as G2A, etc. Other users consider CDkeys far more reliable - from what I hear they mostly sell keys from physical products acquired cheaply due to regional pricing, etc rather than the less transparent methods used by other sites. But at the end of the day with anybody other than official vendors you pay your money and you take your chances...

6 years ago
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I've never actually seen someone ask that honestly. Personally I stick to the official resellers that I see on isthereanydeal.com. From what I've read on this site most grey market sellers are safe too though, and even official resellers can be difficult in compensating for a non-working key, so...

6 years ago
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Regardless of your stance on Grey Market, I find it ill-advised to use them for Giveaways. It's one thing if you try to buy a game you want and run into trouble there, but running into trouble with a key from there that you try to give away will give double trouble, because you have find a replacement for the winner AND deal with that site about a replacement for you. Which may or may not take longer than the grace period you have on SG.

That said, being still somewhat new-ish (it feels) myself, I know that you first need to form an awareness for the good, the bad and the ugly. I know people who highly praise places like G2A and those that blacklist you for so much as suggesting to go there. While asking around for advice is not a bad idea, ultimately you'll have to see for yourself as well whether some place other than certified or approved key sellers is something you wanna dabble with.

As someone who's still learning things here and there about Steam as well, I can definitely say I appreciate the topic, if naught else for seeing sites I may not have heard of before (and what people have to say about them).

6 years ago
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G2A is like a private market (with individual sellers) run by the mafia. The sellers are okay, but G2A shield, unsubbing for.it, 'protection money' (publish your games with them, and then they will care about shady resellers) are all fall well into the dishonest practices category.

6 years ago
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runs by mafia are you about that ? then i feel more safe by them than steam and government XD

6 years ago
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It's just the 'publish with us, and then we will help you if you have issues on our platform' is exactly the so called protection money, which was just money extertion :/ their user-marketplace is still different and okay(ish, depending on the seller) but the corporation itself is shady as fuck.

6 years ago
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  1. Approved by Steamgifts:
    - all sites

  2. Approved by members:
    - all sites, as long as they win

  3. Untrusted by members:
    - G2A! G2A! G2A! (unless: see #2)

  4. Still waiting for approval by Steamgifts:
    - none

View attached image.
6 years ago
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That about sums it up.

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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All shops covered by https://isthereanydeal.com/ are reliable, by my experience.

6 years ago
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I would not say all but the site is a good reference for options out there. I only knew of the site this year been a good help for deciding on a price for games I consider buying.
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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And I said all and I meant all. I checked their store list and I have accounts on 21 of those stores and wouldn't have any reason to recommend to not use them. Among the rest there are familiar names like Razer and none is a grey market key reseller.

6 years ago*
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+1

6 years ago
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For me personally.. Square Enix, Battlenet, HB, Fanatical, IG, GMG. I've never had issues with any of these and all from my experience have good customer support.

I also want to add GOG, Uplay, and Origin. I haven't used these in awhile but you can include these also.

I don't use grey market but I have heard a lot of good and bad from people I'm friends with.

6 years ago*
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I fully agree with your choices, they are the sites I frequently visit with the addition of GOG, Origin and Ubisoft. I had been researching for those sites for quite a long time after I decide to buy games off Steam.
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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I haven't used them in awhile but those 3 definitely fit into my comment above.

6 years ago
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In addition to Humble, Fanatical and Chrono.gg, I would recommend Wingamestore and Bandai Namco - I believe both are retailers and frequently offer some nice discounts. I very much like the charity aspect of Humble, they have hundreds of charities to chose from, and many are very worthy if you do a bit of research.

6 years ago
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Bandai Namco are not just retailers, they are the Developers and Publishers, they make physical toys too. I just did not realise they are selling games so frequently, are those all Steam Keys?

I am not sure about Wingamestore, not heard of them.
Cheers, Cruse~

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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They seem to be, though it's often not obvious until you load into a cart. Then the steam logo appears. I've gotten some very decent deals from Wingamestore. Just make sure they are checked off on ITAD and you'll find them. But their deals don't last as long as Humble etc. - just a day or two, so you have to be quick.

6 years ago
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I searched on IsThereAnyDeal for Wingamestore and I saw Macgamestore listed below it. I smiled. hahaha It appears to be funny for me. On the level of trusted site and legitimacy, I will not consider them to be high like Humble, Fanatical, Indiegala and GMG. You can also add Razer game store to trusted site imo. I wrote more in my latest reply to the thread.
Warm regards, Cruse~

6 years ago
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+1 on Wingamestore. I've bought quite a few games from them. Nice site.

6 years ago
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CDkeys is the same kind of key grey market as G2A or Kinguin. It just has the only remaining vocal minority who like it.
Gamesplanet, Gamebillet, and GamesRocket are all authorised resellers. Heck, the first one has been in business longer (11 years) than most any other stores.

Essentially, if they are on IsThereAnyDeal, they are usually trustworthy. If not, then they tend to deal in keys that sometimes happened to fell off from a truck.

6 years ago
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I think Groupees should be on the approved list too.

6 years ago
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I don't know why they aren't. P

6 years ago
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+1. I've never had problem with Groupees.

6 years ago
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Groupees is legit because they sell little games

6 years ago
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Thanks for adding it. Btw, from the referrals page, these seem to be approved by Steamgifts?
fanatical.com, gamersgate.com, greenmangaming.com, humblebundle.com.

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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Oh yeah, I was looking at IsThereAnyDeal for information about Wingamestore I came across Razer Game Store the makers of Razer peripherals. They started the store recently and of course its very legit. I however isn't clear about their policy so you may want to check it out.

To be honest, alot of members above mentioned that sites listed on IsThereAnyDeal are legit, for me I can not agree. Its hard to interpret so as there is no official standings for sites like IsThereAnyDeal. The site is Great! A great reference, however, i will not use it as a mark as every site listed is legit.

Recently, as I was occasionally commenting on GMG forum, there was a thread of someone asking about the legitimacy of GMG. Linking Reddit and Steam posts from a Support member of the recent Pathfinder. The support member accused GMG to be a Key Reselling site but rather, they are Retailers and deem they do not work with GMG. What happened was that I realised the support member mistook GMG for G2A. If at this point, you are wondering what's the difference between a Retailer and a Key Reseller, just google "G2A tinyBuild".

There's certainly need to be a "place"/site where the Devs/Publisher agrees on. That place is Steam for now. You can also follow Devs on their twitter or other social platforms. Those site they occasionally listed on is of course a legit partner, at least for that game itself. Then you can work on whether the site is legit.

Edit: I forgot to mention Indiegala is a game dev too. GMG moved on to Publishing too. You can search games by both companies on Steam. Humble is owned by IGN the game reviewers magazine. Humble does some publishing too. Fanatical, previously is Bundle stars, they specialise in bundles. Some really good bundles. They are british, I do not know if they do publishing or other things.
Warm Regards, Cruse~

6 years ago*
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wait what IGN owns HB... god damn it

Thanks for the infos you give =)

6 years ago
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Which websites are tolerated*

6 years ago
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thanks i edited

6 years ago
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Actually, I would use "recommended" instead of tolerated. Tolerated already has some negative touch, like something you don't like but have to tolerate, e.g. "tolerating pain". I suspect that's not what you had in mind when creating this topic, but rather that you wanted to compose a list of sites that are recommended and safe to use for buying keys for giveaways. That being said, Gamesplanet is an authorized retailer and should be safe.

6 years ago
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Kinguin is like G2A but far far far less scummy. Never had any trouble with them or them adding fees they "don't have"

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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Alright i'm going to add those website i didn't add

6 years ago
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I need to talk with the steamgifts creator(s) to make this post official to be read by anyone that would be helpful

6 years ago
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HRK on the untrusted list? I feel it's alright personally, i've bought keys from them plenty of times and never had any problems

6 years ago
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I don't know pal i really want to switch as trusted but i'm not sure the admin from steamgifts will be okay.

6 years ago
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And then we have DIG(DailyIndieGame)... Which is anywhere between legit, bundle and grey/blakcmarket...

6 years ago
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DiG looks interesting i'll put on the list

6 years ago
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