Is curbing of CD keys by Devs a good step?
Absolutely this. I would think that it just means that they are looking to be more restrictive about it. If they simply stopped Steam key generation altogether it seems to me that it would kill their business. This move is probably aimed at gray-market sites like Steamgrounds and their ilk that sell 'games' at next to nothing and yet who (if the comments from the Valve rep hold water) incur costs and overhead for Valve that may not be worth it. All of the stuff on there is basically crap anyway, so as far as I am concerned this could be a good thing. Card farmers and collectors won't like it though.
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Reads to me like - "if your game is shit ... and your sales on steam are low -> there shouldn't be a point in mass generating
a ton of your crap game." Should work to curb mass trash-game idling - to what extent only volv and their dog knows.
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This part says all about how and for to what instance Valves does their job lately - "you're probably asking for more keys because you're offering cheaper options off Steam and yet we are bearing the costs".
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Yeah no idea how they'll effectively do it - the mentioned "500K keys" / half million made it sound well exaggerated (to imply 5 - 50k is nothing). But i'd doubt that as well ... not to mention, things start off small then the grip tightens (region locks, mail confirmation, authentication, more region locks, gift inventory gone).
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Good, no more key spam with shit games from shit devs.
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It seems like a measure to keep a developer from developing a junk game, ordering tens of thousands of free keys, and reselling them on gray market sites.
I wouldn't worry at this point about this measure affecting "legitimate" games or developers.
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Valve will no longer automatically fullfill key requests from the developers to combat game sales outside of Steam
Misleading statement based on a rumour.
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The Cow is Drying.
WAT?
I mean, once upon a time the internet were fulfilled of free games keys, promotional stuffs, join this and won that and they felt that as a miserable fat kid that can't split his toys because they aren't playing at his house.
There are sides, and i'd spoken about them on the other thread, but i'm not caring about that because it'll only take major effect over the junkies.
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To sell them in bulk on DIG and other places? ;D As no one would pay that much on Steam ;D
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I think you read them too literally.
They stated that 500k key for some k sold on Steam is abused ...
For games with a few hundred sales on steam that means 500 keys ^^ ' (Or not, but without the explicitly established rules, one can think of everything)
Edit: Some game need thousand of key just for kickstarter ;)
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For bundles? You know, they sell keys, the ones that were generated by the developer. The MicroJUMBO bundle sold 59.000 copies, so it's safe to assume every single tier 1 game needed to have a key for it, meaning 59k keys for each.
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The Developer should get their keys other way
You don't understand. Steam generates Steam keys, by the request of the developer. You're suggesting that one should stop getting apple from an apple tree, and should get from somewhere else.
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nope mate they cant ending the steam keys, this is only affect the shity devs that making games only for cards
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the only thing here is that exactly Valve floated Steam with shitty games...
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For one, we have no idea what game got denied more keys. It could have been another company like digital homicide trying to only money off the card.
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It just seems like someone was denied for asking for a lot of keys to be generated and most being sold or given off steam so the cost for them is a lot higher than the return.
Though this could be a real threat seeing how most only use Steam as a platform and Valve could easily say hey we're not making any more keys but this seems to be an issue of generating large amounts at one time.It would also be counterproductive for Steam to make such a move and really is not worth the backlash IMO to halt generating keys.Though by some replies on this thread it seems some read a little too deep into that and jumped on the hate wagon.
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Looking at the comments from other devs on Twitter, this is nothing new and have been going on for years. They might have merely tighten the rules a bit to curb the recent bulk distribution of crapware on Steamgrounds and Plati.
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I guess that's 1 way to stop the 1$ 5 cards idle me for profit nonsense .
Judging by how some games have less then 10k actual sales on steam yet everyone and his mother own them I'm totally fine if they limit the ability of devs to sell complete garbage for 2cents a key .
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I don't think that's what the quote says - it doesn't say they'll no longer automatically provide keys. What it says is that they'll investigate and eventually cut you off if your key requests vs. sales on steam are incredibly disproportionate. It also doesn't say it's a new policy; my impression is that they've always done this.
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This is wonderful, people are reading the link and considering the subject matter by its actual wording and implications, and not just instantly jumping on the usual "screw Valve!" bandwagon. After having been neck-deep in a ton of infuriatingly dumb discussions off-site recently, this is strangely refreshing <3
In relation to the OP's title, I'm gonna defer to Betteridge's Law of Headlines :
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
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I think it's gonna happen sooner or later, so there you go.
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"Over the last few years, new features and additions to Steam have changed the way Steam keys were being used, for instance as a means for game-shaped objects to monetize on Steam through methods other than actually selling fun games to customers. Most notably, this meant farming Steam Trading Cards,"
…wrote the representative, then he quickly went back to upload the latest CS:GO knife skin on the global market, because he was late with presenting the new design sketches for the upcoming TF2 hat expansion.
I love how concerned Valve is combating something that is also their core income.
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That's quit short-sighted, they really aren't.
Main reason is these things mess up recommendations, which end up taking away income, because slots could be used in better ways.
ie. if user is shown 0.5€ "shitty asset flip 524" instead of 3€ "popular indie game 2", user might not buy anything at all or even worse buy and subsequently refund it. A 0.5€ refund will cost like 0.4€ (in addition to loss of the 0.5€)
but if Valve had shown "popular indie game 2" to user he could've bought that, liked it and possibly even recommended it to his friends.
Much easier and cheaper than spending millions into research to improve recommendations system.
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Sounds like good news, I'm sure they are going to be fine with clearly legit stuff like Humble, but shit like g2a will be screwed.
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Regulating it a bit is fine, but if they remove cd keys fuck steam.
Losing gifts was already a huge loss.
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1k keys limit for new devs will help a lot.
Is this ok? --> 1 2 No!
Over 200 games launched on Steam in the first week of August alone
Greenlight was bad, Direct makes me sad 😎
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Seems very bad news!
"Valve will no longer automatically fullfill key requests from the developers to combat game sales outside of Steam."
https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/898208219675447296
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