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We are receiving a lot of reports from you guys telling us that Steam is currently revoking Sniper Elite III keys bought from sites like CDKeys and Kinguin. Valve has yet to offer an official explanation or statement but this could be a sign that the company is going to fight back against cheap CD key selling sites.
Right now customers are receiving emails stating that a problem has occurred with the supplier and full refunds will be issued:
“We have continued to work with our supplier to find a solution to the issue that has affected your CD Key today, however despite our best efforts this has unfortunately not been possible. We understand that you are very keen to play the game that you have purchased as soon as possible but as a resolution has failed to materialize and as we are unable to offer you a replacement CD Key we have decided to take the action of issuing you a full refund rather than keep you waiting any longer.”
Some retailers are offering a discount on your next order to make up for the trouble but we don't know if this is Valve's first step to ridding itself of unofficial sellers.
I would like to draw your attention to a specific section of Steam's message: “This could be due to a problem with the payment methods you used to acquire this item from a third-part seller; or a problem with how the third-party seller acquired the product code.”
It's a little early to say whether or not Valve is moving to ban games bought from sites like G2A, CDKeys or Kinguin but it's possible. Hopefully Valve will offer a statement soon.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: If this has happened to you before then let us know as we are interested to see how many people this has affected. Lots of people use these third-party sites, even if they are unofficial so hopefully Valve doesn't start back tracking and revoking games people have bought in the past. What do you guys think of this? Should Valve be allowed to revoke games from user accounts based on how they acquired the code?
I got this message this morning, it seems rebellion are cracking down not Valve, I ordered from Simplycdkeys.co.uk, they are issuing refunds as Rebellion are not allowing them to sell keys
This has just happened to me after waiting 3 weeks since pre-ordering. absolutely ridiculous. why cant retailers be honest about this stuff. All i wanted to do was shoot people in the face.
One of my close friends had his Garrys Mod removed from his steam account with the same message and Garrys Mod was bought with my Steam Wallet(I sent it to him as a gift) and not only did I not get my money back, if he wanted to play it again, I had to re-buy it(Which I eventually did). It made me stop using steam for buying games for a loooonnnnggg time, this was about a year ago that this happened!
Yeh happened to me, bought from SimplyCDKeys. At least they sent around the email as soon as they heard about it and offered a refund. It will suck if they backdate and remove older games but its not big issue. I just bought it off Steam directly just now because I didn’t want to wait 😀
It’s simple, they bought a ton of the codes from the approved Bundle Stars sale and are marking them up.
It’s dickish, but I think valve and developer should have some control for restraints over such scabbing.
Well I got this from simplyCDKeys to as a pre-purchased a few weeks back … it was revoked this morning so I went online and found a new supplier and yes instant gaming gave me my key and DLC key installed and played 14 mins then popped out for some lunch … came back to find yet another message from steam :/ I have paid twice for what? refunds inbound but no game unless I pay steam twice the price.
I bought from cdkeys.com, and have the above message… If valve have an issue with the key then the issue is surely not with me but the people who supply the key to me… They should surely honour the keys (which was validated OK I might add) and take issue with the suppliers?
Also had it revoked, this is ridiculous. And they wonder why people pirate..
Personnaly I use frozenway to connect myself to steam from the States and with the cheap dollar the games are cheaper right away
If you want the game pay the price. A lot of work goes into creating games and if you don’t want to pay the full price, be patient, pay a discounted price and game on at a later date. 🙂
This will just push everyone back into pirating games. Whilst ‘unofficial’ at least the developers etc are shipping units and receiving money for CD Key’s purchased. If steam starts banning them, then it’s highly unlikely that those who usually buy CD Keys will start paying the often more than double retail prices and they’ll simply revert to piracy. Great job steam. Just when PC sales were starting to pick up again.
I’m not sure why everyone is jumping to the conclusion that steam is cracking down on third party sellers of their keys. The line “or a problem with how the third-party seller acquired the product code,” says to me that the codes may not be legit, as in, they are cracked codes. Like getting the key generators, that were big a decade ago, that allowed you to generate a code to use a piece of software for free. I’m not saying they aren’t trying to stamp out third party sales, but there are other possibilities, like the possibility that some third party sites might be running a scam.
This happened to me with Saints Row IV a while back, obtained from G2A. It turned out that the keys being sold had been obtained via dubious methods and the publisher requested they be revoked… G2A refunded the money, eventually…
G2A XD