Grargar: No such warnings should be uttered without the necessary story to accompany them.
Beware Shady Key Resellers and Discount Steam Keys worlddan: Yeah, be wary of shady publishers who plant misleading stories should be the honest response to that link.
Unknown Worlds is a small Indie developer who probably don't have the resources to provide the information that you perceive as missing. On the other hand, it's debatable whether they really need to prove the obvious - though, granted, whether or not these things are "obvious" may depend on one's involvement/insight in the industry. In any case, I wouldn't call the devs "shady" or the story "misleading" based on that article.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your level of expertise with digital distribution of computer games? Please do not perceive this as an attack on your statements, it's just that they are the kind of statements which which I'd expect from an analytic mind that's well-versed in evaluating a line of argument, but may not have personal expertise with the problem at hand.
worlddan: However, the story never actually mentions how many of these 1,341 keys were actually
resold. It just simply states they are the result of "chargebacks". But the mere existence of a chargeback is not evidence that the key was ever resold--it's not even proof that fraud was involved. The story omits the reasons why those chargeback happened, which could be any of a dozen different reasons that are allowed by a credit card processor.
Well, which reasons would you expect to come up in a significant number that are not fraud in one way or another?
Digital downloads of games are a business that, as far as I'm aware, is massively targeted by fraudsters. The vast majority of charge-backs in this business are due to "unauthorized transaction" (i.e., someone else obtained the credit card info and used it). Then there's a much smaller group of charge-backs due to customers feeling entitled to a refund but not getting one from the shop - whether this constitutes fraud depends on the perspective, but in any case, it should be obvious that those customers can't expect to retain a valid and usable key if they retract their money. The frequency of all other charge-back reasons is negligible compared to those two. So which ones do you expect that are non-fraud?
Regarding the "lack of proof" that those keys were resold - well, the situation is like this: Imagine you are an indie developer who sees that fraudsters have obtained keys for your games. You also see that keys for your game are popping up at "CD key stores" that you never authorized to sell them. Furthermore, you know that the bigger publishers have already proven the connection between fraudulent purchases and those "CD key stores". So what do you need to still prove? You are deactivating the keys that you know to have been obtained fraudulently (because you've seen the charge-backs in your shop), and you warn your customers not to buy keys at unauthorized shops (which are known to be offering fraudulently obtained keys).
The part they may not be that obvious to the public is that the connection between fraud and "CD key stores" is well-established already, or is at least seen that way in the industry. Contrary to popular belief, publishers are not completely stupid. ;) The bigger publishers did of course notice that there are lots of "CD key stores" selling their games and undercutting the market price, and they have the resources to buy a couple of those keys. Then they can cross-check them with the keys that the distributors sent them as fraudulently obtained, and - surprise! - there's a match.
As said above, this connection is - to my knowledge - established fact within the industry. It's not that well-known outside of it though. The publisher don't wildly publish this information, mostly because doing so would not only warn about these semi-legal shops, but also advertise them to customers who never heard about them before and who might be willing to take the risk. Rather, the publishers' preferred method of dealing with "serial key fraud" is to drown out the ecosystem that makes this particular type of fraud so easy. That's why we're seeing a push to key-less systems lately - Steam already implemented theirs, Humble and IndieGala already use it, other stores will follow, and Origin/Uplay seem to be working on their own key-less systems (though I'm not sure how reliable that last bit of info is, it seems very plausible though).
worlddan: Finally, the story says nothing about their actual fraud rate.
That's correct, but not relevant for the warning about buying from "CD key stores", is it?
