gbaz69: All of your comments so far are really bashing on the customers, when it isn't their fault. Even well educated and cautious customers can be duped if a retailers supplier wasn't credible. In that case it has to be the retailer that takes the loss, not the customers.
Oh, wait, you mean "educated and cautious customers" wouldn't suspect a U$17 price-tag on a new game that costs U$50 and hasn't even been released yet. Oh, yeah, right. That seems like a reasonable discount for a pre-order.
It's just common sense. It's not reasonable to expect that a store will legally sell cd-keys for a new game that costs U$50 for less than half the price ON PRE-ORDER.
Those cd-key resellers are really fishy. Most of them get those cheap cd-keys from Russia and there were some cases of cd-keys getting revoked because they were bought with false credit cards.
gbaz69: I've seen $60 games sold for $20 in Russia all the damn time, so don't say 'too good to be true'.
Even within steamstore iself, you can see $50 games being sold for $15-20 in Russia.
No shit, Captain Obvious. Of course it's cheaper IN RUSSIA. You're not supposed to buy RUSSIAN games when you're not in Russia. This is against Steam's TOS and they could ban your account at anytime if they find out that you're bypassing regional pricing. Sure, you can bypass the regional lock and buy from the Russian Steam, but don't come back screaming "VALVE IS EVIL" when your account gets banned for good. If you're buying russian keys and you're not in Russia, you know the risks.
gbaz69: Truthfully and legally, it is not the customers fault. The fault lies solely with that one distributor that says 7050 keys were stolen (how exactly? did someone hack into their servers and get the cd-key list? was it not encrypted?).
Any retailer/seller can somehow get 'stolen' goods, for sale, if their distributor was compromised (they should invest into better security).
No, the fault lies those fishy cd-key resellers that bought stolen cd-keys. Rebellion has already stated which sellers they sold keys to. Customers are also partially to blame because they bought from shady sellers.
Cd-key resellers are the ones who should refund these customers. Rebellion doesn't have anything to do with this.