Can you please stop promoting key resellers?

This is nearly worthless. Give us sale countdown timers on the game pages already.

It was -80% as far back as 2021 but now it's just -70%.

Besides currently you can get it for around 12, directly on GoG, but indeed it could be even lower:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

11.99
Lowest price from 30 days before discount: 8.00

We can be fully open about "what is going on" and no one can get millions of keys just by some dodgy/scammy "giveaway-resellers", this is just a fairy-tale.

The market currently is simply working in a way like: The people simply are most likely paying the price "it is worth it to them", and the market kinda will have to apply to this "customer-demand".

...I don't feel it should need to be said, but any site that asks for your fluids as payment for games (or anything, really) is probably not legit.

Not so sure... money is one of the most evil things in todays world, yet we all are asking for it... weird enough and i am more than sceptical regarding this whole matter.

"Scammy key resellers" are only able to sell games for very low prices (something which that statement is characterizing as "scammy") in the first place because the "legitimate stores" themselves have implemented the scam which is "regional pricing," which by the way, there is a very old (or there used to be if they deleted it now) video on GOG's youtube channel wherein GOG itself made a parody of regional pricing and strongly implied it was a scam (which btw, it is).

So point being, "legitimate stores" with regional pricing have zero "moral high ground" over so-called "scammy key reseller prices."

So they are good for something after all :D

i noticed this feature as well, mesa like.



I stopped using them alltogether. To every price they list they have to add 25% taxes (Italy) and costs for the credit card. That usually results in a higher price than getting the game directly from GOG/Steam/Origin/Uplay discounted, because their prices already include taxes (and have no costs for paypal/credit card).

And you never know if the key from the seller is actually gonna work in the first place or - if it does - if the game will be removed a few days after and if it's even the key for the right game. In Steam's case you don't see that until you activate it. GOG at least lets you abort the activation. There are hardly any GOG key sellers around anyway, so it hardly matters.

Fact is, shops are even using "regional pricing" inside the EU and because the EU is the same "trade zone", so if you offer the same product for entire EU and still doing regional pricing... then it is, according to EU laws, not allowed. Steam already got sued because of it. Generally i do not enjoy to rob the consumers "according to their estimated economic power", because this is ONLY a estimated value as a median. There is rich and poor people everywhere... at every single location in the world. So when it comes to the individual level, the system is not fair and it can never be "made fair" by charging the maximum possible if we take a "median" into account which simply, on a individual level, can be totaly different.

So, we always have to treat customers on a individual level, if we want to be fair. Ultimately, the customers simply should pay whats worth it to them and/or what they are capable of; best way to deal with inequalities.

In my country, if we hand out a fine to someone else... the price of this fine will be calculated based on the income of a certain person. So this is probably the fairest way on "how to charge" someone else or... if we want to treat everyone equally... still... then simply charge the same for everyone else. What never can be fair is to charge a median.

However, it was never the intention "to be fair", the regional pricing is a tool in order simply "to charge the maximum possible".

You may never "know," sure, but you can easily make a reasonable hypothesis that the chances of something going wrong are very low, such as by gauging things like the seller's reputation.

And even if things do go wrong, which is a very rare occurrence, then you could always ask for a refund, and if that doesn't work, then open a chargeback dispute with Paypal and/or the credit card bank, etc. So it's not a big deal in the very off chance that something does go wrong, since worst case scenario, you get your money back and can re-buy the game again.

As for the higher prices you cited, I'd say that experience is atypical. Legions of people buy from key resellers because they get way cheaper prices that way; and if it didn't work well most of the time, then such businesses would not be very popular like they are.

You might save a few € here and then, but it's just not worth the trouble, I have a regular job now and my spare time has become more important.


In the US, where you need to add taxes to the prices from Steam and GOG, the "higher prices" problem probably doesn't exist. It exists in european countries where prices should be listed including taxes. The keysellers however never do so and always add them according to your billing adress.
Don't know about 'most of the time'. But I hardly could find cases where it was not like this.

Just a recent example: While Another World (steam version, I gave up on ever seeing an update for the GOG version) in the sale cost 1.99€. I missed it and a few days after that I took a look what keysellers offered: 1.78€, yay! Then the ckechout: 1.78€ + 0.44€ (Taxes) + 0,63€ paypal costs = 2.85€.

Similar things are to be seen in new games. The keyseller price is 10%(!!!) under the official price, but then you have to add 25%, which means that it's 12.5% more expensive. Only if the seller price is 21% under the price you pay on the official platform, it pays off. And - if you take in count all the sales - that does not happen all too often. I rather wait for a sale that matches the seller price. I have so many games in my backlog, time (getting a game right after release) is really NOT of the essence.

It totaly depends on the game, in my experience a lot can be saved up using keys on Steam. On GoG i can not say, because i never use it here. I simply pay some premium for GoG, this is okay for me and i can afford it somehow.

There is not much troubles, and in term you do lack the cash... every single buck could mean a bread to you or another gallon of precious energy... it totaly depends if you can afford it; so i do not judge people, because for many people every single buck may simply count.

No, many of the super low priced keys are sold after being purchased with stolen cards, which is why they can sell them for cheap in many cases.

Regional pricing isn't a scam. Would you think they pay the same for bread in Hungaria as they do in Dubai? Of course not. Just like anything, prices in localities are driven by market value. No one will pay half a month's salary for a game, but in some countries, that's the value at the US or EU price. Could you imagine paying about $1,000 for a single game? That's essentially what you're asking some people to do without regiaonal pricing. Better to make 150 sales at $2.00 than 2 sales at $60. The lack of physical copies means they can really lower the prices in poor countries.

Well, go get the bread from Hungary i assume... this is considered "free market".

You can still get your oil from Dubai if you got spare bucks left... your own choice.

If you see a key being sold for 10% lower than most stores, maybe it's legitimate.

If you see a key being sold for 10% of the price of any stores, then there's no way it's legitimate.

The free market allows you to buy stolen goods, but it still doesn't mean it's legal or moral.

Are those shops doing it now, or do you just mean "have done it in the past, and then got caught"?