Eh, there's at least one way to get Valve out of hibernation, mess with their $. Well, it's their right to do so.
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We got 10 000 games that no one buys... Why should we not get paid for hosting these?
I can see the logic.
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With a bit of foresight they could've avoided this entirely though ;>.
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Honestly, I expected this to happen for a while now. I'm just glad they didn't go the usual route and disabled keys completely for everyone, lol.
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I have been looking for an excuse to limit my Steam usage to the bare necessities, when games are strictly Steam exclusives. I actually wouldn't mind if they did this, at least I could go ahead with it.
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For example, $100 and my trash "game" in steam store
I will generate 30k keys, sell this keys to sites like steamground for $0,01, get easy $300 and make another "game"
So i dont need cards to make profitz if valve "going to take a deeper look in my game" only if i generate 500k keys
I think Valve should encrease direct fee to $500 😎
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I think Valve should increase direct fee to $500
I believe $1000, but we're on the same page.
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I'd love to be able to release a game someday, but if that (1000 to 5000 dollar fee) were the case I'd have to work years to save up that money here, where lots of people work for 300$ a month... it used to be 200$ not long ago.
And that's only for releasing the game on Steam.
So there goes the dream of being a developer for everyone in a similar situation. =)
What Steam needs is better curation and management of their released games.
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You are harming yourself. If it happens above 1000$, then forget indies and reasonable prices.
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They should also remove Steam, that way we would be sure no one is fooled.
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Maybe Valve should do like 100$ fee = 10k keys. 500$ fee= 50k keys etc. But there should be an up and down limit. So if you pay 1000$ you should do what you want. Also if you are small developer who just want to release game on steam, it won't hurt much. This is just an idea on a fluke so i don't know how will this work.
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Maybe first release from new dev should be f2p. And only if ppl play and like it, dev could pay $100$500 for 1 non-free game 😁
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Too easy to abuse i guess and there will be a lot of groups just for that purpose like greenlight ones. :/
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Why not simply cut the nonsense completely and charge per key generated.
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If I were Valve, I would charge a fee equal to the cut I take from each copy sold directly through Steam. That would make the most fiscal sense for Valve, and would prevent this "loss of profit" of which they speak.
Disclaimer: In no way do I support this path, as it would be a huge hit to developers and would prevent them from making any money from bundles, retail copies, or other legitimate purposes.
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As I was always expecting, they're going to "hit" the steam keys too. They're trying to avoid all means of purchases outside steam and steam keys are the only ones left that offer an alternative to steam users in a cheaper price. So, before you are like "Woohoo, no more 10 cent bundles", look at the bigger picture and think of what may happen in the steam key market. Limited number of steam keys means expensive steam keys.
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And it never was. It's a company that strives for maximum profit. All the changes that they have implemented, they introduced them to us as necessary, made for "our own good". I've predicted in the past that they want to hit the steam key markets too, so they had to find a way to make them harder to get. But they have found an even smarter way: Limit the number of keys in order for them to become expensive.
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I guess capitalism has always been about creating artificial scarcity so it makes sense. The surprising thing to me is that they somehow convinced most people in this thread that scarcity of goods is good for them. Like ,what?
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Let's see what they'll do when the lack of steam keys will hurt sites like humble bundle too and steamgifts ends up becoming deserted. xD I'm pretty sure that game devs won't really care though. They'll just increase the prices of their games in order to regain the profit that they lost by not being able to sell keys. xD
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I hope they finally wake up then and we can stop the Valve craze once and for all. But probably not :(
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Never gonna happen, Valve fanboys still think the company's great despite all their douchey anti-user moves in the past few years :D
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i'll go back to pirating but i also have a backlog that will last me untill the year 3000.
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If it actually hurts Humble then Valve would be fucking themselves for good. Humble donates a lot to charity. It would be a PR disaster for Valve if they screwed them.
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I'm sure Humble will be fine. There must be a reason why the minimum amount to get Steam keys is $1 (it used to be $0.01 a long time ago, to just get games without Steam key, before Humble got married to Valve), and that reason must be along the lines of "Valve gets a few cents per bundle to make up for the trouble"
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The reason is that PayPal has minimum fee which is 0.30$ for average sellers. HB might get better rates, but not by much. As such for them to make any money at all 1$ is pretty clear threshold.
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Well, in the early bundles where you could get both DRM-free downloads and Steam keys, there was a $0.01 minimum for DRM-free but already that $1 minimum for Steam (for the same bundle). So I'm pretty sure that Steam, not PayPal, is the reason for that minimum.
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No first bundles were real no minimum price for Steam key. Then the Steam had event for holiday sale that gave free stuff, so HB got exploited hard for keys. Thus they instigated the limit. There might have been world from Valve. But losing money on every sale was a real issue.
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Oooh. Never saw one of those, I guess the party didn't last long ^^ 👀
Did they really lose money on these though? Not sure how PayPal can possibly charge more than the whole transaction. I mean if they did, HB would have been better off just refunding them.
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Probably also not free. And paypal charges their thing, as credit cards have their own fees. It's reality that most people miss when buying stuff online.
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I know (from refunds I gave some years ago) that on PayPal, refunds are free and do refund all fees at no cost for the merchant. Not sure what happens when a credit/debit card gets involved though, as I don't know how people paid in the cases where I sent refunds.
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Wasn't Steam asking them. http://www.gamesradar.com/humble-indie-bundle-responds-steam-key-exploiters-1-minimum/ People were exploiting the keys with multiple accounts. Anyway I meant Steam would be screwed, not Humble. Humble could easily just turn their store around to other services.
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Interesting... And 5 years later, Steam doesn't have such raffles anymore (as far as I know), but they didn't revert that decision nonetheless... Money talked :s
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Humble has already some keys redeemable on GoG and Rcokstar, wouldn't be hard to just close the Steam deal for most games and turn to GoG
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I guess capitalism has always been about creating artificial scarcity so it makes sense.
Sorry, basic economics and the Marshallian Cross Diagram begs to differ :)
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Yes? Digital products have literally infinite supply. Lots more products in the real world have virtually infinite supply. The point is to drive that back to keep the price up. What part did I miss?
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That every person has a price that they are willing to pay for any goods, and corporations have to sell at the intersection of supply and demand functions, as it guarantees the maximum profit for them. Really, look up the Marshallian Cross Diagram. It's not too difficult, and it shows that many small profits > few big profits. And Steam games aren't that luxury like Apple products are, where the sales doesn't reflect common logic.
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Trust me, I saw the Marshallian Cross Diagram at school when I was 15 like everyone else and had to memorize it. This is sort of condescending, to be honest. I don't need you to explain basic economics to me, thanks.
What you're saying works with a diverse and healthy market. As it stands, Valve is aiming to have a complete monopoly. Once they do, they can set the price to whatever they want and people who refuse to pirate will still pay them for it, because what other choice do we have? No one is gonna give up on gaming as a hobby now.
There's a reason so many companies do exactly what Valve is doing: Be extremely convenient and cheap, introduce many benefits for buyers and extra features, and acquire a large consumer base with many small profits. Then once you do, strip them of all of these benefits, and increase prices. People are lazy and don't want to believe the company they loved is going bad so they'll stick with you any way. It's no longer a question of many small profits vs few big ones. It's a question of many small profits vs many big profits.
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i agree i would just change the last statement to "It's no longer a question of many small profits vs few big ones. It's a question of greedy economics vs morale economic"
all the rest i agree :)
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"cheap assed bundles being put out and gamers mentality of waiting for the next 95% off sale" are the answer to the over priced market of games in the first place - those bring the games to a fair price one that not justify "other" means to get them.
im sorry but i dont see it like you it is a combat that is true but frome a point of greed not a point of injustice.
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i dont agree. not at all.
there is a difference between making profit (which is good by all standards) and between acting greedy.
when you have balance between the supplier (from the creator of it to the distribution of it) of the product benefits and the consumer benefits - then the profit isnt a greed oriented, when its not balanced (in our case product pricing who is out of proportion for example 50-60$ and on the other-hand piracy of the product for 0$) then its on the "greed card" of yours.
this aint the case here with valve and not on +80% of the games market.
on those you constantly see things like:
- overpriced product (that comes in turns of enormous profits on the end cycle of the product on the expanse of the consumers)
- release of bugged and unfinished product while "fixing it" on the back and time of the consumers.
- release a broken game (in the first place) and abandoned it
- release of partial product and then releasing its (structured content) as "DLC" while pricing it as "complete" product + additional dlcs price
- meaningless content as prime content like cosmetic, "skins","weapon pack", starter packs etc
- systems like "cards" and "keys" or any other virtual content that its all porous is to max draining user $$$
- taxing (free) community development like modes
and more and more...and we havent even talked on the "steam market" design and the restriction that were added in the last years whos all goal are to direct users to market perches and reduce the trade community slice (as there is no income for valve from normal trade - no tax).
greed is greed and fair profit is fair profit - trying to highlight it differently is wrong.
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"Who determines what is fair profit vs greed? In fact, who determines what is fair at all" - both parties.
"Do you know the expenses each individual company incurs" - yea i do, do you know the profit merging of good game?
"who are you to decide what level of profit is acceptable anyway?" - i am a consumer im 1/2 of the system - who are you to downside my part in it (or any other consumer out there)?
its not my "brand of morality" and i dont "assume" nothing all those are facts - not suggestions, not makeups, and not pointless one person observation - just hard core fact of the market.
"No, I call bullshit on the whole greed argument" call how much you wish it want change the bottom line, greed - is greed. and fair - is fair :)
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well considering i actually worked 4 years on game QA company i will deffer otherwise, but you already know all about me so what is the point in arguing? :-)
and no my half is the part that dictates demand - which dictate in turn supply - which is part of the profit system no less - no more :)
calling bullshit again and again wont make it that way - get a valid argument :)
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first of all there is a deference between understanding something from inside and between "100% knowledgeable about everything pertaining to the industry".
the first called experience the second is patronizing over "X", i talk from experience i dont know 100% of any subject but i do know what i know - and that part is solid.
last time i checked "bullshit" aint a valid argument, nor throwing things out there in the air with no foundation, my argument is backed with solid profs (some of them i mentioned) and from personal experience and understanding as with friends inside of the market experience, yours so far is based on opinion and "bullsiht" throwing on the other side.
my argument is based on both sides flows and cons and aim to balance, yours is one sided and sorry to say in a way half blinded.
and this is no "crusade" :)
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they careless of the quality of the game there only concern is if it is profitable to them or not - they are a distribution platform after all.
do you really think that if those key would have add income to them instead of free distributed they would have give a dam of it? :)
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While digital products have a theoretical infinite supply, there is a cost associated to it. Valve still has to pay the storage and bandwidth for hosting the game.
They can't keep giving free keys for a game that doesn't bring in any profit but has a constantly increasing hosting cost. In order to stay in business, a company has to remain profitable. If the cost of infrastructures, upkeep and salaries is greater than their revenue then the company isn't viable and will eventually have to close down.
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they cant? are you sure?
we are talking about a platform thats charge % tax for imaginary cards, badges,emoticons, keys,backgrounds and market items who have no real connection whats or ever to the game itself but extract from the user more $$$ - and they get that with almost 0 effort.
dont petty them they are over 100% profitable even with free keys.
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Actually I'm pretty sure there is no constantly increasing hosting cost for those games with tons of keys. Crapware that noone ever plays costs a tiny amount of storage (the price of which gets lower every year), and barely any bandwidth (since it's scarcely downloaded). Meanwhile it generates money with card sales and other marketplace things
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Yeah, the end cost are potentially neglible. Bigger issue is if Valve wants to impose some level of quality to entries in their store. As even if these games make bit of money, is it worth it if they mask games that actually sell?
They have tried to find way around curation done by themselves. I think this is the next step in line of issues that have popped up and need solving.
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your mixing economics and capitalism together. economics is a market of goods/cash but capitalism is how those goods/cash are controlled. tipping the scales is vary capitalistic.
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So this means no more showelware? Isn't that a win?
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It probably means no more cheap keys in general. -_- So, the next time you're trying to buy a really expensive game in a cheaper price on a key site, it'll probably cost the same as its steam version.
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Said sacrifice, yes. I would be sad to see DIG gone, and Bundle Stars would probably close shop eventually as its store is simply not strong enough, but there aren't many bundle sites which would be that missed.
Humble is essentially a store for a good while now, that also happens to do some bundles, so they would likely stand on their own (especially if they start adding back DRM-free versions of games too).
IndieGala is in junk collector mode for well over a year now.
Groupees used to be a music bundle site, they can go back to that.
Cubic, One More, and the rest of the small bundle sites live off on exactly the kind of behaviour that is targeted by these massive key drops.
And people who miss the old SG, when it was not about a bunch of people racing on who can get more cheap keys en masse to level for the sake of levelling, could get the old small site back. And cg could start mourning his cute Alexa ranking.
But I doubt keys would be gone. CS:GO's potential for growing is getting more and more limited as actual competitors rise with Overwatch and the upcoming Destiny 2 (assuming Bungie fucks it up a few degrees less than they did Destiny 1 at launch). The actual response I think Valve will give is asking money for new keys after a certain amount.
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it would kill Steam as a platform entirely for me. I'm already moving over to gog
And this is exactly what I would like to see more of. Not just GOG, but any other store, even UPlay (blergh). The PC gaming scene should be an at least 3-5 player competition, not valve taking 80%+ of the pie. (Heck, I'd be happy if GOG managed to stay under 20%, so it will avoid having the allure to just go down the same road as Valve did.)
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Don't think so. https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/ypBPJE0
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But looking at them as a business entity, I think not so. It is the massive decision forcing developers to place their product as exclusive in Steam, even though you have already taken 30% cut or so and not letting to sell to other retailers. Never happening as per my opinion.
And there has already some backlashes with gifting policies, and other competitors providing DRM free products.
Developers would be more than happy to coordinate with other competitors.
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They're trying to avoid all means of purchases outside steam and steam keys are the only ones left that offer an alternative to steam users in a cheaper price.
No they aren't. There is a document which says the following:
- You are welcome to generate keys for resale with other retailers, including your own website.
- Steam keys are designed to help our partners run their businesses on other retail and digital stores, where the partner is compensated for every unit sold.
- You are free to use keys to distribute your product via bundle offers off Steam. We've learned from developers that pay-what-you-want bundles are a great revenue opportunity when your product is very far along its life cycle.
No way does this impact the price of the game or number of keys. All it does is limit those scummy developers.
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thats very good. so cheap crap games finally cant live alone from free keys + trading card fees anymore.
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SG need to do something here too. Just look at all the devs here. They generate thousands of keys and giving them away here to gain cv for free.
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That's not really so big of an issue. The value decreases after 5th copy so pretty soon after that it's not too much.
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Is CV really their aim? Or they just want people to farm their trading cards, so they can profit from market transactions?
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SG already did.
After you give away a game 5 times (whether in the same giveaway, or in multiple giveaways), it will begin decreasing in value. The value is decreased by 10% for each additional copy. This means if you decide to give away 8 copies of a $10 game, it would add $74.39 (10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 9 + 8.10 + 7.29) in value towards your level. This has little effect on the majority of users, but prevents individuals from receiving a high level from gifting a large number of promotional gifts, games obtained through pricing errors, or keys from contacting game developers.
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This doesn't come as that big of a surprise because after removing the Steam Gifts to inventory feature I thought that the next step would be that they\Valve look at bundles\Steam keys and that this was a real possibility.
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I like how everyone is so happy with these news. :D Let's see how happy you'll be when steam keys become limited and steam game prices will go up in order for the developers to regain their lost profit (because they won't be able to sell many keys). ^_^ Keep being happy about the 10 cent bundles, if these were the only games you were buying anyway. :D
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I think this will mostly kill showelware, that are only bought for trading cards. If no one buys the game on Steam for their "normal" price, then it's not worth buying anyway.
If no one buys the game on Steam, increasing the price won't really make them more profit, since even less people will buy it, because they wanted a cheaper price.
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Heh, steam bets on people's gullibility and they're obviously smart to do this. xD
Limited keys means that a dev will lose profit, since most people usually buy steam keys rather than buying games directly from the steam store. So, first of all, he'll find a key site with low fees, like Kinguin and G2A, since they offer good prices for devs that want to be the exclusive sellers of their own games (this has been done already so many times). So, this means that probably no keys will be left for sites like humble bundle, bundlestars, etc. That'll also increase the number of physical copies or may even make some developers to make their games console exclusives. But anyway, no steam keys in bundle sites means no more steamgifts giveaways. Also, since there will be a limited number of keys, they'll have to find a way to regain the lost profit. How? By increasing the prices of their games on the steam store. Like, what are you gonna do? Buy their game elsewhere? What if steam is the exclusive seller of that game? Now, pay up 70 or 80 euros for a new game. But don't worry, during the steam sales, the price will go down to 60 euros - pretty nice, eh? xD
Heh, don't be gullible. They always address new changes like they're doing it for our own good. They did the same for steam gifts, right? Didn't you expect that they'd do the same about steam keys? Let's see who's correct. But anyway, it's funny to see that people keep supporting steam. I prefer buying non-steam games myself though.
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Most of the games on key stores or in bundles are cheap showelware that no one actually plays. And then won't even have cards, because no one plays them to meet Valve's metric, so they are completely worthless. They won't be missed.
And an AAA 60€ games probably sell enough copies on Steam, to warrant generating enough keys. Or the AAA publisher have a special deal that has no limit on key generation. I doubt those will be affected. Or any decent game, that is actually good enough, that people buy on Steam.
And yes, the Steam gifts thing bit me in the ass, because to that point, every giveaway of mine on this site was a Steam gift. After that I gave away really old leftover Humble Bundle keys and some games I bought on Humble store. But I don't giveaway showelware, so I don't expect this to really affect me. I will still just buy games that are ~75% off else where, like I did on Steam.
TL;DR
If the game doesn't sell on Steam, maybe it's a shitty game. Why would you want to buy those?
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Most of the games on key stores or in bundles are cheap showelware that no one actually plays.
Nope. A lot of sites sell AAA games too as steam keys. Where do you think that people buy their AAA games from? G2A, Kinguin, GOG (this doesn't have steam keys though, making it the perfect candidate to take steam's throne), Gamesplanet, Instant Gaming, Green Man Gaming, etc. Even bundles have good games sometimes. There were some bundled games in the past that I really loved.
And an AAA 60€ games probably sell enough copies on Steam, to warrant generating enough keys.
Not necessarily. Dunno if that's a fitting example, but I remember the Football Manager's developer threatening greek gamers that they'll remove the greek language from the game if the greek gamers keep downloading it from pirate sites rather than buying it, since the game's purchases in Greece kept going down at some point, even though a lot of Greeks were playing it (since they had downloaded it illegally).
If the game doesn't sell on Steam, maybe it's a shitty game.
You should open your horizons and see how many games are getting sold daily on key sites. Why the heck would I ever give 60 euros for a game that I can find for 40 euros in a key site?! Even the ubisoft store(!) gives me a 20% discount for their games if I only use 100 of my points. Even the ubistoft store is cheaper and more user friendly nowadays. Heh, steam will get destroyed eventually. xD
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As I said AAA games aren't affected. Your Football Manager example is bad, because it only sell badly in Greece, but overall it still has enough sales on Steam for not to be affected.
You will still be able to buy a 60€ game for 40€ elsewhere, or wait for a sale on Steam.
And put yourself in Valve's shoes, not only in the dev's, and ask yourself why should you let devs misuse your good will, to let them generate the keys for free, by completely skipping the Steam sales. Game hosting and distribution isn't free. One time fee of $100 won't cut it. Should they charge for every key generated? Would that make Valve a less shitty company?
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So, haven't you noticed all the changes that Valve has implemented the last years? Steam is becoming less and less user friendly each year, just so they'll manage to leech more and more money, while what they manage to do is to make steam users search for alternative sites for their purchases.
As I said, limited keys = bad prices. If an AAA game dev has limited keys for his own game, he'll sell the steam keys for a bigger price. It's logical, if you think of it. You have a limited quantity of something, so you wanna get more profit from it. So, if there is only a limited number of keys, why do you think that it'll be possible to be found for 40 euros? Or do you think that Valve will make an exception for AAA games because they're so nice and beautiful? xD They're not doing this to fight shovelware - they're doing this to fatten their wallet, so no, they won't make any exception (except if they do an exception at first and, after some time, do it for every game xD). And what about the mediocre games, the indie games, etc.? Their devs will be even more affected, even though they're not making games just to get profit from their cards.
Valve isn't spending money by generating keys, they just lose possible future profits. There's a slight but obvious difference.
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Yes, it became less user friendly because users and devs misused Steam features. Because of those assholes, we can't have nice things.
Or do you think that Valve will make an exception for AAA games because they're so nice and beautiful?
Because they are more or less guaranteed to sell their games.
They're not doing this to fight shovelware - they're doing this to fatten their wallet
How do you explain the removal of trading cards for new games? Surely Valve made profit from those.
And what about the mediocre games, the indie games, etc.?
If they can't sell their game on Steam, why are the on Steam? Why not just sell it on other platforms and not deal with Valve's restrictions.
Valve isn't spending money by generating keys, they just lose possible future profits.
Steam isn't a free game distribution service. Do you want Valve to charge devs monthly for that?
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A lot of sites sell AAA games too as steam keys. Where do you think that people buy their AAA games from? G2A, Kinguin, GOG, Gamesplanet, Instant Gaming, Green Man Gaming, etc. Even bundles have good games sometimes.
Yes cheapest and most reliable are bundles But rarely are the AAA games in bundle before a year's time. Not everyone waits for the bundle that they are not even sure when it contains particular game. The cheaper alternative like G2A, Kinguin are there but if you wanna take risk its their choice you might be scammed during the sales or later in the future, revoked keys and there wont be anything you could do. GMG and GOG mostly have the similar price with STEAM sales.
....but I remember the Football Manager's developer threatening greek gamers.....
I don't know how the example of Football Manager fits in this context.
...Why the heck would I ever give 60 euros for a game that I can find for 40 euros in a key site?!...
Again I don't know how this fits in the context. I don't think there is some guy willing to pay extras for a product when there is reliable alternative source. They never said they are against selling keys on other site but they said they will have a watch on those games and developers who have undefinable and suspicious differences in sales figure in steam or outside.
I do agree with "If the game doesn't sell on Steam, maybe it's a shitty game." Yep pretty much that or in rare case bad marketing. But I think the later one is pretty much solved by the introduction of steam Curators.
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Showelware doesn't get sold (i.e. might fail to cross certain sales figure), but decent game does.. no issues on that.
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Ehm, so? What do you mean? A lot of people, instead of buying expensive games directly from steam, buy the games from key sites. If they can't do this anymore, steam presumes that they'll end up buying them directly from steam.
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I mean in this context. The change will make it tough for showelware but not for other games.
I know most people opt for cheap games, but there with be certain population who will try it out when it is released. There will be promotional sales and discounts even before the product gets bundled. And people don't always have a patience to wait for a decent bundle. Or to summarize there will always be a sales figure for Valve for a decent game.
And BTW they never said about users can't buy bundles from humblebundles or bundlestars or developers can sell keys for bundles. Look at it from a business perspective of a company at a long run, developers will opt for other platform like GOG, GMG etc., this is like pulling a trigger on yourself and giving the competitors unwanted advantage.
The thing is, the context was for some game which tried to exploit Valves facilities. You opted for the service which should have been profit for both the party but you tried to gain more and keep it to yourself by massively dumping keys on other sites using Valves services.
You can't just sell 200-300 copies on Steam and then dump over 5000 copies elsewhere. If that's the case why should Valve host you or provide you a service. At least give them the return for their services. After all they are not running non-profit organization.
They are targeting those games and developer who are trying to run fraudulent and scummy practices like trading cards and asset flippers.
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If Steam prices go up, people will buy at Origin, UPlay, GOG, or they would buy consoles. Or pirate it again. As Denuvo has showed us, no 100% safe DRM exists.
It would only hit Valve, and as we all know, the only thing Valve cares about for years now is its profit. As much of a legal money print CS:GO is, I refuse to believe that it would generate 50% of their income to worth sacrificing the store over for it.
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If Steam prices go up, people will buy at Origin, UPlay, GOG, or they would buy consoles.
If no one is buying the game on Steam, no one will want buy it anywhere else. Buying it elsewhere also won't give you Steam trading cards, Steam achievements or +1 to your Steam library game count. I doubt anyone actually wants to play those games.
It would only hit Valve
Getting rid of games that don't make a profit, won't really hurt Valve.
And I doubt that decent games that actually sell on Steam, will be affected.
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You'd be surprised how little ratio of players actually give a single fuck about trading cards or achievements. Most users treat trading cards as some nice additional bonus money, but their lack wouldn't start some mass exodus.
If no one is buying the game on Steam, no one will want buy it anywhere else.
Why wouldn't they? The video gaming world doesn't consist of Steam, not even on PC.
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You'd be surprised how little ratio of players actually give a single fuck about trading cards or achievements
They why is the showelware bought? Surely no one wants to play a retro platformer #635434 and asset flip #546714.
Why wouldn't they? The video gaming world doesn't consist of Steam, not even on PC.
Do you have an example of a game that's on multiple platforms for the same price, but it doesn't sell on Steam?
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Three quarters of the hidden objects games ever created. They are mostly sold on Big Fish Games, GameHouse, Gamersgate, and to a degree on MacGameStore.
Any console game without a Steam/PC port.
Any EA game since 2014.
Most hero clickers. An average PC gamer maybe never even heard about that genre unless they also play on their smartphones enough.
As for shovelware, it is not bought, it is received in bundles and through key drop sites, then the cards traded for 3-5 cents, so they can have money for CS:GO items. So this is why I would go as far and call bullshit on valve cracking down on these key sellings, they get most of the card money back in CS:GO skin transactions anyway.
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I am talking about those who buy showelware for cheap and in bundles. I don't have numbers, but I doubt those get actually played.
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Hm, I might be misinterpretating things, because I am under assumption, that key restriction based on Steam sales only affects showelware sold for dirt cheap or given away in big numbers.
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hope they finally kill steam by disabling keys, it's what they would love doing after all. not bought on steam = not good for valve.
then i can go back to getting my games the old way with 100% off sales.
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They won't disable keys entirely, because they know that would indeed kill (or at least severely hurt) Steam as a platform.
Keep in mind that Valve has the near-monopoly distribution channel, the service behind the market. That doesn't give direct income, but that does give a lot of leverage in the industry. (Enough that even the biggest publishers are very careful in how they try to get out from under that. Guess why Call off Duty is still distributed via Steam instead of via Battle.Net and all that).
Valve won't be giving up that influence easily, because that will really drive people to start up their own alternatives, and then Valve won't be able to rake in cash from their 30% cut of the profitz.
What I do see them doing is:
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Limiting the max. number of review/developer keys that can be generated and/or forcing a termination date onto those. So those can be generated for free still, but restrictions makes them useless on the grey market.
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Start asking for their cut of the steam store price up front for generated retail keys. Then they won't have to give a shit about final sales price anymore, since they already got their cash - selling at lower price will only hurt the dev/publisher and the sales channel at that point.
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Guess why Call off Duty is still distributed via Steam instead of via Battle.Net and all that).
Destiny 2 is going to be Battle.net/Blizzard app exclusive o PC, at least this is the latest stance from two days ago. Activision is obviously trying to jump ship, question is whether they can do it. Overwatch sure as hell brought enough new plebs over to them.
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Activision is obviously trying to jump ship, question is whether they can do it.
But much later than they could have. EA pretty much proved it could be done about 4 years ago, since at that point they showed they were still in business after pushing their PC business to Origin.
And at that point Battle.Net already had a store infrastructure where they could put other titles on - even if it was just to test the waters.
I'm just surprised that they're takng the risk with Destiny 2, because Acitivision is pretty risk-averse most of the time, and trying to put a franchise on a new platform is already a risk. They must be thinking they can hype it hard enough to keep interest high.
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They put enough money into Destiny 1 to turn it, slowly, into an actually almost half-decent fake MMO shooter in roughly 12-18 months after launch. Now, if they found a writing team who was not doing their job in a 24/7 drunken stupor along with the cut-scene animation team and half of the voiceover cast, they may actually have a best-selling game on their hand which doesn't have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy at least one measly GOTY award with its stellar 65% rating.
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Amen. Steam hasn't had a decent sale in over 4 years. Sadly I don't particate in humble bundle or other key sites since I don't want to spread my card info around anymore than I have too but I do admire what they bring to the table and the environment it creates in other places.
Unless steam goes back to the days of 90%+ sales they're pretty much going to kill off a large part of their customer base that hasn't already left.
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Those look more like guidelines of best practices, than rules that Valve enforces (well until now, apparently).
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Rules has been enforced before, just those complaints not "leaked" to reddit.
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"Giveaways and selling keys in bulk
Steam keys are designed to help our partners run their businesses on other retail and digital stores, where the partner is compensated for every unit sold. Keys are not intended to be sold in bulk or given away for free, except for testing. If you want to give your game away for free, we think that’s great, but it should also be free on Steam. If you want to sell copies of your game for pennies or less, Steam probably isn’t the right store for your game, and Steam keys aren’t an appropriate way to distribute your game in that manner."
So literally every developer that has given his game away for free (not on steam) broke the rules. Nice.
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I doubt Valve has a problem with smaller promotional giveaways. But if most of the keys come from free giveaways, that would be not OK. But IANAL.
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I doubt they can ever see for example most of SG GAs - I mean generating 50 or 100 keys for Featured GA will not look suspicious. Generating 1000-5000 keys neither - it's amount you get for retail shops or bundles. I guess it's more about things like Digital Homicide scenario - where they created millions of keys to give away to get money from cards. They were making multiple GAs of same title with 100-200k keys per GA and they had 22 titles on steam. So if you are shitty dev whose sales on Steam are probably few dozens maybe few hundred copies and you suddenly generate few millions of keys - something smells fishy.
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exactly, like just yesterday I noticed another dev got steam banned, cause I had bought a bundle of games bhy BUG-Studio few months ago, which had 9 games, and somewhere between the 16th and the 17th my game count got down 9 games, and later on IsThereAnyDeal sent an e-mail about the games that got removed from my count and they were all from that dev.
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This is Bad.
Previously we had virtually limitless keys. Meaning a huge supply of products, which could allow both sellers and buyers to profit.
Sure, it meant some people could sell crap games for less than a dollar. Oh my god, what a tragedy. Not like we could easily ignore those and never buy from them and they'd have 0 impact on our lives anyway.
But the thing is, it's not only them that did it. Only recently there was the amazing telltale bundle with some real pieces of art for less than 1$ each. Other games that have gone for ridiculously low prices include Bioshock Infinite, Company of Heroes, Endless Legend, and other truly great and wonderful games. So millions of players got to enjoy those games on the cheap, and the companies making them still made a profit based on the fact that keys are in infinite supply and they could sell a large amount of them.
I mean it's not exactly a secret that digital selling has made games cheaper and better accessible to a much larger number of people because there's no distribution cost.
Now Valve wants to kill that. They are hurting both devs and players to benefit only themselves. I mean, maybe this is just fearmongering, I have no idea what the extent of these changes will be, but there is simply no way anyone that's not Valve stands to profit from this. I get why Valve wants to do it, but why do you?
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I don't see how it's the same to decide on case to case basis and stop a developer whose game had 135 sales on Steam in 2 years to generate 5000 keys for the 5th time and sell elsewhere while Valve is hosting the game "for free" and let's say, Telltale or any other real developer that are actually selling games on Steam and use bundles as additional way of promotion, not the main income.
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Do you trust them that this is really all they want to do? Valve has for a long time been trying to slowly kill all non-steam markets: Restricting your account if you don't spend money ON steam every now and then, not showing your review unless people specifically ask to see it if you didn't buy your game from them, disabling inventory gifts, and now this...
What Valve wants to do is have an absolute monopoly on digital sales. But they can't exactly market it like that, so account restrictions are to stop people making too many alts, reviews are to protect against devs buying them, and of course this is also only hurting the latest outrage of the steam community which is bad cheap games. Of course. Trust the multi-billion dollar company, why won't you?
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Maybe. I'm not saying you might not be right in a long term. But at the same time, right now, in this situation, what they are doing is what I said, and it's obviously based on how many sales / keys devs already had before.
Remember that the very thing that is holding them in the top are steam keys, so removing those completely would be a suicide for steam.
What is interesting to me is that most people were saying, even before direct was announced, "Valve should do something about the lousy devs who earn from cards/cheap bundles". And then when direct wasn't it, they were all "Booo, direct is the worse". And now that Valve is actually doing something about that exact thing, people are like "oh noes, Valve big bad wolf".
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I think they just want move some of products price points from the near nothing to sustainable levels. If many stores had prices of 50% what game cost on Steam, there would be large population who would buy them on Steam for sheer convenience and trust.
On other hand if they see a game sold at hundredth of price somewhere, albeit in bulk it makes them less likely to spend money.
And the current price point for some products is just unhealthy for the market in general...
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Well, no, it's different people. I never once said something about lousy devs that get money from cheap bundles. I've always been fine with them. And I've been opposed to Valve for a long time as a matter of principle and because I dislike monopolies. Meanwhile the people who usually just really hate cheap games beyond anything else, well, you'll see them all over this thread praising the change. And all I'm saying is even if Valve is framing this change as something you asked for be careful of what it could mean for the future and how it could be used to hurt you.
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Do you know what actually changed? Are you sure this is the first time a batch of keys was denied?
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In the end it comes down to this: Are you denying that infinite supply is good for consumers, or that Valve is trying to end infinite supply?
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Infinite supply isn't possible. The marginal cost of hosting content isn't zero. So any business can't live for ever by giving free stuff to competitors. Valve can handle the cost, but should it?
On other hand I think higher prices and more discerning consumers due to increased prices, could very well be helpful in the long run. It could lead to better products that consumers are ready to pay more.
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While I agree with you, I find it hard to be optimistic. Valve became infamous for it's carpetbombing strategy, not even bothering with case by case issues. But really, I hope you will be right at the end.
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You have to remember, this wasn't an announcement, not them advertising it to the masses in a blog post, this was a screen grab of their employee answering to one of those devs, never meant for public. And as you can see, they are telling them "we analysed your previous sales and all the keys requests and come on man, fool us once... come on, now!"
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I really try to be neutral - my optimistinc side balances out the OMG THE END IS NIGH pessimistic side of mine by reminding me of years worth of backlog that's already owned ^_^
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they make money off the cards though (well did) so its more than just x sold games. they make 3cent off every key (if idled) and that's if the game only had 5-6 cards to a set. then they get the rest of the card price when you use the steam funds.
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I agree with you somewhat but why does Valve, a for-profit company, have a responsibility to host games it doesn't make any money from? A developer can sell nearly 0 games on Steam, generate all the keys they want (at no cost to them), and make a profit.
Valve sees that developer as a cost center. Would you run a business to support your cost centers or your profit centers?
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Specially when it's far beyond point of needing that sort of model as loss leader.
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This decision may make sense from Valve's point of view but the thing is, I don't care. People always use the excuse, "Companies will do everything they can to increase their profit". That's fair but only if consumers also do everything they can to decrease their costs. As a consumer, I see that this change will only make things more expensive for me. It will actively hurt me. Should I celebrate because it makes Valve money? Or give them a free pass? Is it my job to increase Valve's profit? No? Then why are people celebrating here? If Valve as a company is doing what's logical and increasing their profits at our expense, shouldn't consumers also do what's logical and demand that this never happen, so that we may increase our own profits off Valve's back? Why would both consumer and company look to increase the company's profits?
I guess the tl;dr is I'm not disputing that Valve should want to make this change. I'm disputing that we should allow them to. Because if they're allowed to ruthlessly seek profit with no consideration for our well-being, why shouldn't we say "I don't care that you're losing money over this, I want to increase my profits too"?
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I'm not disputing that Valve should want to make this change
I must have misinterpreted what you have clarified, because I read your prior post as disputing this. Re-reading it (and your reply) I understand better and from a pro-consumer perspective I completely understand.
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I'm not disputing that Valve should want to make this change
But is it really a change though? Just because one person leaked the message they got from a Valve employee doesn't mean it's not something that's been happening for months or even years.
As a customer with thousands of games on the Steam platform, it is in my interest that Valve remains profitable and doesn't shut down Steam. I'm okay if that implies less shovelware games sold for pennies.
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I don't understand how it will even impact price of the game.. make it more expensive.
Steam keys are designed to help our partners run their businesses on other retail and digital stores, where the partner is compensated for every unit sold.
In their steamworks document they have clearly stated that the developers can sell the key on other retail and digital stores
You are free to use keys to distribute your product via bundle offers off Steam. We've learned from developers that pay-what-you-want bundles are a great revenue opportunity when your product is very far along its life cycle.
Again the developers are allowed to create bundles.
You have to understand the context where a valve employee had that particular comment. It was targeted for those developer who run scammy and fradulant practices such as asset-flipping and unfair profit of trading card through mass key dump.
I fully agree with that valve, they should watch for those kinds of developer. Afterall the party that will be impacted are only them.
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I understand the "slippery slope" argument here, but the logic is sound.
There should be something like first x number of keys are free (1,000 for example, for marketing and promotion). The next y amount of keys cost z cents, then additional keys cost a slightly more amount to generate. In short, tiered key pricing.
To me, that seems reasonable and therefore unlikely to be implemented by Valve.
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Or just
"For every copy sold on steam you get 10 free keys" (Starting with 1000 for promo) or something like that.
So good games that have been solf for a long time can generate mass keys and new trah games can not.
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Valve are scumbags. People have been saying they will do this for a long time. There is no shock here.
Valve don't make games, they make money. Every major change they make is simply to increase their profit, from regional restrictions, regional price gouging, cards, hats, selling user generated content, nerfing big sale events, Paid mods, to ending gifting. It's all a money grab. The funny thing is, it's usually a case of them Undoing something that they created themselves, something that gave them an edge over other stores.
But time and time again it happens, and they remain silent every time. I guess we will see once it actually happens.
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Hosting the games on their servers cost money to Valve. As they're the ones footing the bill, it's not unreasonable for them to expect that devs don't try to massively undercut their Steam sales by abusing the free keys they allow them to generate.
Who is the scumbag here? The devs who sell hundreds of thousands of keys they get for free without having to do any work, or the company who's paying for all the infrastructure and losing money from every sale?
Valve has made a lot of questionable decisions as of late, but this one is pretty sound.
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What is that insertion money for then? E.g. if you make a game that has 10 MB and you distribute 500k keys, that is like what... 5 GB if every key were activated and every activation came with a download? And you say that Valve is losing money after they received that insertion money (and cuts from every sale on their storefront) ? Seriously, $100 for 5GB of bandwidth and 10 MB of server storage (times however many servers there are for regions)...
Of course, most games these days have way more than 10 MB, there is some additionally about forums and such, and myself I am not a fan of asset flips neither (and when I come across one, out of principle I turn cards into gems instead of purchasing or selling cards of it). But just meaning to point out that if the main argument is about hosting (and bandwidth) costs, then it would seem quite reasonable that Valve's pricing would take that into account based on the data size that is being hosted (and perhaps even entice some of the devs to look into reasonable compression of data files instead of sometimes not even less than 90%).
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What is that insertion money for then?
That money is more like a deposit since it's returned to the developer once they have sold enough copies on the storefront. (Which of course might never hapen for a dev that sells the game for pennies outside of Steam)
And even small games nowadays are in the hundreds of MB range, so considering the storage and bandwidth (for ever since Steam will allow purchasers to keep downloading a game even if it's removed from the store) plus the salaries of anyone involved with upkeep (support to dev, updating packages, setting up the acount) that 100$ doesn't amount to much.
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Deposit, as in it gets returned after the sale of the game bring an amount over those $100 into the account of Valve? Well, still makes it that Valve has at least $100 for hosting a game in their store.
As for data size, I have quite a number of games in library which even after installing take up less than 100 MB. E.g. Aurora Nights, after install a total of 36 MB.
And what I am saying is that for the dev/publisher thereof to not be allowed to have a (bulk-sale) deal or gift hundreds of thousands of keys to e.g. an education ministry, and that based on some "but other games have way more data size and some of the devs expect nanny service from Valve", such seems a rather weird argument. All while that game probably never makes it to the front page of Steam store since too weird for that store's algorithm (and due to that less sales of such game than games have they somehow make it to that front-page while there may be online stores out there who enjoy featuring such games on their front-page or in bundles).
With that it isn't that I wouldn't understand that stuff costs money (such as hosting), and a dev may of course be interested to look also at other distribution platforms. But just saying that if the main argument is about data size and its cost, then it seems weird to me to throw the original game 10 MB into the same bag as that asset flipping game taking up several uncompressed GB. And if Valve were to have some policy of e.g. "thousands keys distributed outside of Steam for 1 GB each cost that much", that wouldn't really seem something devs with in size smaller games would necessarily mind that much while it is weird tho that they get restricted from having keys based on some premise of that they didn't do enough marketing for sales on Steam.
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it is weird tho that they get restricted from having keys based on some premise of that they didn't do enough marketing for sales on Steam
I don't think it has much to do with marketing. They're seemingly targeting the Digital Homicide type of companies and those who sell their crapware in bulk for pennies on Steamgrouds and other russian websites.
I think the key element in that message is "So at some point we start deciding that the value you're bringing to Steam isn't worth the cost to us." No matter how low you evaluate that cost to be, if the game isn't selling on Steam because the dev are selling it elsewhere for a tiny fraction of the price, then why should Steam host the game at all? They're a business, not a charity project, and it doesn't make any business sense to host large amount of crapware that no one will buy for more than a few pennies.
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Yeah, they are a business. But even as such they shouldn't be making arbitrary decisions on stuff, meaning that they should have clear rules and/or pricing in place and not treat their dev clients as if they were Valve's employees.
Whether or not a dev-publisher is selling keys for a few pennies into bundles, or gifting to orphanages around the world, or simply selling in bulk to an online store which features his game/s even on the front page or has some different search function with which to find games quicker, that shouldn't really be Valve's concern who as said should have their business plan account for the fact that some enjoy Valve's hosting services while not being happy about their 90s style storefront.
And as also said, Valve takes money for hosting even crapware anyhow, and if that crapware now all of a sudden became too costly for Valve to host as there are e.g. asset flips that take GBs of server storage, again, their business plan should reflect that instead of them making decisions based on some mood.
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It doesn't sound arbitrary to me, or based on mood. Also, according to other devs I've seen posting since, it's nothing new and Valve was already looking into large requests for keys years ago before approving them. They appear to have simply tighten the rules a bit with regular sized batches to prevent abuse.
There isn't any obligation from Valve to provide Steam keys for the developers to sell the game on other storefronts. Valve does it because it's good for it's own business. And if by abusing those keys one particular developer isn't profitable, then they have no reason to keep providing them. The devs are free to sell their games wherever they want, but why should Valve absorb all the costs?
selling in bulk to an online store which features his game/s even on the front page or has some different search function with which to find games quicker
Have you ever bought from these sites? They are pretty much the opposite of what you're saying here.
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I checked DIG yesterday. There was over 100 titles that had option to buy 500 copies at 0.02 each.
No pictures, just list of cheap games with name which links to Steam...
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Yes they are corporation/business, they are establish or run for profits, I don't think there are other business without this motif.
Yes they have made some decisions like gifting policy that made consumers angry.
But why do you think this particular decision bad? All I see is a good thing for consumers.
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What you're saying might be true, but it's also true that people are exploiting anything they can and in a really bad way.
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Guess it was coming for a while to be honest. If the ratio is as described in the post though it won't really affect bundles, as most of them don't sell that many.
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This is something we rarely spot with a AAA games.
Well, i don't think they're totally wrong because 'devs' really abuse it to create a large profit without spending time, resources, etc. I use to say the all free flash games went to Steam and now we're paying for it.
Indeed, Valve is also mistaken because they already toke the 'insertion' money to release the game onto the platform, but we'd know that they word aren't final.
I think...
Valve should take a look outside the box to understand that some games will never be purchased otherwise, so IF they were smarter, the first thing they should do is to set a minimum price for the garbage games to avoid these keys competition.
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If the games aren't sold on Steam, maybe they shouldn't be on Steam.
Steam isn't a "free" game distribution.
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well sales never go below 50cent now so that is kind of a minimum.
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... inside the Steam, which may be a term of their contract, but things like these will always happens because Valve keeps messing with others price.
Why keeps charging $1 for a game that we know doesn't worth $0.2?
It's not devs fault if the game were sold thousand times less on Steam than outside, the blame is all at Valve that established gold price for bronze titles.
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Because transactions aren't free. 50 cent is probably around price point where there is any sane profit to be made on singular purchase.
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PP right? CC? Ok, i can understand that.
But the world changes and teach us everyday how to handle things like that, and i'm pretty sure that their fees are very low compared to another key distributor so how can they do if a sector-giant can't? 50 cent, $1 is too much for the games sold at SG for an example.
But my text will always be contradictory, because it's their platform and they may charge whatever they want to, but as costumer i'll always look for the most profitable deal.
And we're talking about junkies at all.
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your right. people try to "look at it from the corporations side". i say screw them, they need to see it from our side. they take our money so they work for us not the other way around. i'm not a valve employee so i don't need to make them happy but if they want to keep seeing my money they DO need to make me happy. right now i'm not a happy camper and have not been for some time.
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they should let f2p games drop cards. then this shit could be free problem solved =P
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It was like that for a half a year now, valve employee logic is very simple - if you want to sell your games for 0.0002$ per copy why even bother selling it on steam? Go to itch.io
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And also the reason why they are actually bother themself to do anything - they broke steam gifting completely - you cant store gifts and cant gift across regions, so even more people stick to keys.
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I'm sure steam does ok with regards to those games sold for .02 on bulk websites.
They do get a cut for every card sale.
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Recently released games can't have trading cards, unless the meet Valve's confidence metric. Most cheap showelware won't.
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Will there finally have to be some sort of quality control on Steam?
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We've all predicted something like that for a while now. :-/
If they are only looking to put the brakes on the asset-flip pump & dump games, similar to the changes in card drops, then it shouldn't have too much of a negative impact. But what if their long-term goal is to remove the keys entirely? The developers won't like it and the customers won't like it -- but does Valve have a big enough stranglehold on the PC gaming market that they can get away with it?
As physical boxed product for PC gaming is nearing the point of extinction, all the keys are really used for now is undermining Valve's own marketplace: the Steam Store. And I don't blame them if they want to kill off their competition.
I do not work in the gaming industry and have never dealt with Valve/Steam as a developer. But I work in e-commerce and basically every marketplace (like Amazon, Jet etc) in their contract to sell on their site, they stipulate that you cannot sell products cheaper on other sites. So if you sell your product for $10 on Amazon you cannot sell it for $8 on your own website. I imagine Valve might consider doing something like that with keys -- if a game is $5 on Steam it should be $5 on Steamground and Indiegala and everywhere... which would basically put these other key stores out of business.
Alternatively, they could charge a fee for key generation -- even something small like 5 cents per key should stop these 1-cent, bundle and free giveaway keys from existing. If that's what Valve's ultimate goal is.
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"As physical boxed product for PC gaming is nearing the point of extinction, all the keys are really used for now is undermining Valve's own marketplace: the Steam Store. And I don't blame them if they want to kill off their competition."
As a ru/cis region user i saw this many times when on steam store i cant even open a game page because "oops! looks like this game is unavailable in your region" but i still can play most of this games after activate them via keys. I have plenty of games like this in my acc. So if they remove key system completely it means they technically ban for some users only available way to bought legally some games that have region restrictions.
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Japan has a similar problem, most Japanese publishers (like Sega, Namco) do not sell in the Steam store to their own country. But ROW keys bought from other sources will activate just fine.
I think the region locks are the publisher's fault.
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https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#9
Is quite good summary of Steam keys (that is publicly and can be shared)
Of course Valve is somewhat lazy when it comes to actually enforcing, but once you go too far, they're going to do something.
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fraudsters impersonating .. storefronts
you just left out two most important words.
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Very interesting, especially this part I think could be used to get rid of the flippers & farmers:
Keys are not intended to be sold in bulk or given away for free, except for testing. If you want to give your game away for free, we think that’s great, but it should also be free on Steam. If you want to sell copies of your game for pennies or less, Steam probably isn’t the right store for your game, and Steam keys aren’t an appropriate way to distribute your game in that manner.
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I think if everyone took a deep breath and read this document they'd calm down, as it explains a lot, and makes the reasons why they'd reject a request clear. The document even mentions the bundle sites and agrees that it can be a good way to generate revenue on older games, but just warns that they are exploitable. It doesn't discourage the practise though and reading through all the points, it's crystal clear that they would only be concerned with developers requesting large volumes of keys when they don't appear to have a support base on steam and their aim is to sell the game for much less than it is listed on Steam. Thanks for linking to this.
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This will probably help with those fraudy reviews that get posted on said crappy games as well since I've noticed those developers spamming keys everywhere and asking for a good review.. Blech
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Any Steam human moderation is welcoming, yet I am still optimistically cautious about the future. Steam's decisions since the introduction of refunds(2015) were not the greatest, but not the worst for me.
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I think the main problem is that some deveopers just put in the store their games and they sell/trade/giveaway most of the copies outside of Steam, but they still expect Steam to provide support for their games( like hosting download servers, store & host the community stuff, etc.) leaving Steam with no income. Although i don't agree with that decision at all, there must be a better solution for this..
Too bad i'm currently working on a game :/
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There's an easy fix to this - Valve's minimum price per game is $0.49. Valve's cut on that would be 14.7 cents. Therefore, each key generated after the first, say, 200 for press purposes will cost 14.7 cents.
Valve gets their cut, mass giveaways are dead, bundles still exist but the prices go up because devs won't take a loss.
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Found this link on Steam subreddit: http://i.imgur.com/eLDE2QM.png
It seems that Valve might be starting to look at bundles and overly cheap game keys...
Any thoughts?
Personally I think as seen game keys sold at 0.02 cents in bulk is that something has to give...
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