Prey Pre Order Bonus

[Justina Ky]

Ihave zero experience with these websites and this type of product key, which came as a pre-order bonus only. Listings for less than a dollar, but I'm worried the key won't work. Does anyone know how reliable/unreliable this could be?

I mean, you can buy two keys and worst case you're losing a dollar. The websites themselves are pretty legit, I've bought from Gamivo, Kinguin, CDKeys, and G2A before, but you should read everything before clicking to avoid hidden fees like the "protection" that they offer. On something this cheap, you're better off just buying another key if it happens to not work the first time. Other than that just look at the key sellers/providers and pick the ones with the price to feedback ratio you're comfortable with. If the seller sold 200K keys and has a 99% positive feedback, chances are keys they sell will activate with no problems. Assuming of course that the sellers are real and not made up by the storefront.

LOL, to speak in the case of g2a from legit is a very risky stunt because the site is (maybe) legit but, nearly, all that they offer aren't.

A, scam, subscription model that can't be ended in a expected, normal, stress free way, sellers that scam you or bought the games with stolen credit cards etc..

I bought some stuff on G2A yesterday and they don't charge fees at all like majority of others. Also when checking out their Plus membership that charges you monthly wasn't turned on by default, unlike Gamivo for example. I was pleasantly surprised. :P

I'd describe these sites as "honest thieves" from a customer point of view. In the rare case a key fails to activate you'll get your money back if you provide proof with screenshots of your activation attempt and your license history.

Sure these sites accommodate merchants selling keys fraudulently acquired with stolen credit card credentials and money laundering takes place but why should you care if a small studio/publisher loses a few hundred thousand bucks through charge backs and goes potentially bankrupt?(sarcasm)

IIRC, CDkeys is "not as grey market" as the others listed, because their system is centralized (meaning they are the only sellers, no 3rd party involved) and the keys are bought from regions where they are cheaper. I don't really remember where I read this, so take it with a grain of salt.

CDkeys and allkeyshop both have twitch accounts with constant streams. While AKS is mostly advertisement, I connected to CDkeys' a couple of times and it was a person (same guy both times) playing games. I imagine he probably is an owner of the website or smth.

OMG

Just go ahead, I mostly agree with NucularS, they are spot on. But I still wouldnt buy 2 keys. in case it really doesnt work, Id go through support and withdrew my payment asap.

Ah -keys.

So, if youre used to buying on Steam directly ofc you never see the thing, but basically everything available on Steam is identified via a, I believe 15 digits, code. Back in the day when you still bought hardcopies, because download-times were abysmal, that code would be printed on one of the CDs or the inner sleeve of the package.

This code/key has to be redeemed on Steam (bottom left corner in the client), to identify the product and bind it to your account.

Nowadays when you purchase anything outside Steam, be it with official retailers or on the flea market these reseller platforms mostly are, all you get is such a key you then have to enter with Steam to activate your product.

Looking at your case specifically, if you want to be on the safer side, Id go with one of the offers of either CDKeys or K4G, because they are not marketplaces, but normal albeit seemingly inofficial retailers, who sell their stuff on their own behalf.

You can easily spot the difference, because they dont list a variety of offers with different prices for the same thing.

Id also recommend having a look at gg . deals - they do pretty much the same as allkeyshop with a little extra.

Also I realized that CJS one isnt listed with gg . deals - maybe stay away from them, at least thats what I would do!

edit: lol, theres been a little traffic, while I wrote the above ..

The buying games with stolen creditcard data to resell them later scheme - I believe this mostly to be an urban myth, I cant imagine this being in the slightest profitable for organizations capable of acquiring hacked credit card data in bulk. Also no idea where those charge backs for the devs should come from ?

Something else about what youre after in peticular, because it is a rather special case. Im certain in purchasing that Cosmonaut pack youre doing Bethesda a favour !

Being a pre order bonus, it seems Bethesda didnt know how to get rid of the leftover keys they must have had. They themselves had to put it on the so called grey market, because they could hardly put it with their officially licensed retailers after they had promised their initial customers that it would be preorder only !

The buying games with stolen creditcard data to resell them later scheme - I believe this mostly to be an urban myth, I cant imagine this being in the slightest profitable for organizations capable of acquiring hacked credit card data in bulk.

once the legitimate owner of the credit card realizes the card was used in an unauthorized transaction he'll report the fraud and the credit card company will issue a charge back from the seller e.g. the publisher/developer. Thus they don't get paid for the keys and have to pay the charge back fee.

-brazilian-hacker-explains-how-g2a-game-key-scams-work/

-confirms-stolen-game-key-sales-pays-40000-to-factorio-devs/

Not urban myth, but definitely overexaggerated. 3-4 years ago we had a lot articles on the subject, lately they don't appear at all. Marketplaces probably tightened the leash of who can sell there by verifying their identities.

It's definitely not overexaggerated. How do you think that so many games are cheaper on there? A lot of people say that they buy it cheaper elsewhere and then resell it. That's possible, pretty sure that it doesn't apply for every game on there. Also, where do they get it so many games so much cheaper?

e.g.: You can buy Battlefield V for Origin for 1 Euro. Do you think that EA would ever sell it as low as that? No.

It's because they get it by doing... shady things. (I recommend watching on 2x speed)

What do you think that the articles should be about? "Yes, G2A still sells stolen keys", "Nothing changed, developers still lose money from resellers"

I wasn't able to find any article on the subject of G2A making further verifications on the sellers (and I bet that at least G2A would boast about that to get some publicity).

Developer keys that were meant for reviews. I personally traded a couple times on barter after being offered good game at incredible price. In this case it wasn't keys but I was given a link to a page with many games and there I just claimed the one we agreed upon and it was added to my account.

I think so.

Pretty sure you could just contact an indie dev, saying that you would like to buy 100 keys for their game, send them the money from a stolen bank account/paypal account/etc. and then resell them. Seems pretty much possible to me.

You think that dev with any brain would actually do that? Why in the first place would you need that many keys if not for reselling. And if you agree to that trade with an unknown party having that in mind... well, lets just say that I wouldn't feel too sorry for you if something unpredictable happened.

There is a reason why you can't buy as many games/bundles as you want on HumbleBundle, Fanatical and other sites, precisely for this reason. I think that limit is 2 for both of those. If I remember correctly when I wanted to buy a second copy of some game for a friend on AllYouPlay, if I'm not mistaken, I coudn't do that at all because my account was already flagged as having bought one.

That is just reality nowadays and you can't be greedy by selling a lot to someone you don't even know. Also some regions like mine don't have regional prices at all, and without these websites piracy would be much higher.

You think that dev with any brain would actually do that? Why in the first place would you need that many keys if not for reselling. And if you agree to that trade with an unknown party having that in mind... well, lets just say that I wouldn't feel too sorry for you if something unpredictable happened.

I'm sorry for you and I understand that you don't really have a choice. The problem isn't you, but people who don't have to buy from such sites, but buy from there to pay less. Nonetheless, I think it's alright if a person from a worse region takes advantage of a regional pricing in a better doing region, but on G2A and sites like it, you don't really know the source. In such cases, I think it would be better to remove the middle-man and buy from the source (e.g. buying from russian sites right away).

I personally would make sure it's a gray market, not a gray marketplace. So basically all the keys coming from the site itself, not from random users. The sites with the random users will have occasional scammers, almost guaranteed terrible support, hidden fees, payment fees, all that absolute nonsense. The cheapest one I saw on that list was CDKeys. They get their own stock, they sell their stock.

Some of these sites have an extra safety payment (it either comes by default or you can add it) to assure your key is valid. If it turns out it's invalid, you can always contact their support to solve your issue. I once bought a cheap key from one of those sites and it was supossed to come with 2 games but I only received one; I contacted support and they gave me a refund.

If the rating of a seller is more than 98% I'd say it's a good bet. At least I personally wasn't scammed there once, and I used Gamivo quite a lot. There can't be 100% guarantee though. But then again, for more than 95% discount it's worth it (I think). But it's up to you to decide whatever you want to use this kind of sites or not.

3a8082e126