http://kotaku.com/indie-dev-says-people-stole-30-000-steam-keys-from-him-1456875308
The internet made me sad again... :(
I has a sad too :cry:
To resell?! A game by a full-time indie? What a bunch of dicks.
Sadly, the exact same thing (http://www.indiegamemag.com/puppy-games-birthday-giveaway-leads-to-abuse-and-banned-steam-accounts/) happened to another indie dev earlier in the year.
I'm speechless....(wrong)
This really... man. Arseholes! >:( That is a new low.
Utterly horrible in all the cases mentioned. At least Valve are stepping up and invalidating the codes. I wonder where those codes are resold though?
There are some websites that sell steam codes for well over the regular price. Basically people buy up codes for the games when they are on a -75% sale or something and then just keep selling them for minor profit after the sale ends.
Yeah, this is the indie's equivalent of patent trolls. Some people will abuse any loophole as long as it makes them a dime. Sad indeed.
That must have been really scary... Kind regards, Dave. Glad you managed to get it sorted. There are some real assholes in this world, that's for sure... Hope all is well.
Pricks...Leave the mom and pop software houses alone.
So it's okay to steal 30,000 keys from say, EA?
It does suck though that this stuff happens.
Quote from: Armageddon on Sat 02/11/2013 04:41:35
So it's okay to steal 30,000 keys from say, EA?
Specifically from EA? Yes.
Well, somehow it feels worse when a fellow game designer is the target. A large company has more resources to avoid theft (in the case of EA, the whole always-online-thing is clearly an attempt to do just that) and at the same time is a more likely target. But theft is theft. I found some of the comments in that article really depressing, too, especially those that tried to put the blame on "bad planning/carelessness". If my neighbour's door is open and he is not home, and I go and raid his fridge that is a crime, no matter how careless my neighbour was. Like, leaving the door open. And actually buying raid-worthy stuff and putting it in his fridge.
That! Shifting the blame on the victim is a way of - whether consciously or not -- siding with the perpetrator. A few days ago I read about a judicial expert (!!!) saying that it's women who provoke rape -- because... well... when you meet a guy (whatever the circumstance), it's obvious he wants intercourse and will stop at nothing to get his way. Right?
Aaanyway... I'm logging in to Steam right now and buying Resonance :) (shame on me for not doing that earlier!)
The mistake was in not hiring the Obamacare folks to handle the web traffic. Had the precaution been taken losses would have been limited to about 6 or so. Just sayin ;)
In all seriousness though it is a sad day for the internet. Sorry this happened to you Dave but I am glad you were able to limit the damage.
Oh man... :(
Read about it on Joystiq... Hope you can sort it out.
With some luck you might find this whole thing to be good promotion for the game- people who never heard of Wadjet Eye {or adventure games) will read these news on major gaming sites and feel inclined to check out your games (if someone would steal 30.000 copies of it it must be absolutely AMAZING)?... What I'm saying is, I really hope that this bad thing will turn into something good in the end.
Yeah, that's like free advertisement -- and they are great games (playing Resonance as we speak -- blown away), so I hope it'll win WE's games some well-deserved attention in wider circles. It reminds me of when McPixel got pirated (via Pirate Bay). Right now, Sos is pretty much a celebrity in our neck of the woods.
I am very sad and angry at the same time about such things and the amount of criminal energy behind it.
Most of those criminals - yes, criminals because it's no peccadillo for me - are clever and could easily earn their money the legal way with half of the effort instead of stealing and cheating honest people.
... and even more sadly to see it going worse every year.
I am afraid that respect and kindness are becoming extinct. :cry:
For Dave I can just hope that the reports about the theft will bring him attention (kind of marketing) and some good customers to compensate for the damage.
Quote from: Armageddon on Sat 02/11/2013 04:41:35
So it's okay to steal 30,000 keys from say, EA?
Quote from: Ghost on Sat 02/11/2013 06:33:09
But theft is theft.
But these were
free keys. How can you steal something that is free?
Noone would have noticed or complained if some 10 people had generated 10 keys for themselfs, a couple of friends and even to resell 5-6. But the pure scope of the same 10 people generating 3000 keys for later resell makes it this bold asshole move. The mean thing with digital goods is that you can't even complain about them taking away and not leaving anything for the honest people. Except for overloaded servers that make it impossible for honest people to get a code. If it were a buy one game, get another game for free offer and people found a way to exploit this and get unlimited games for free it would have been blatant stealing in my book. I'm in no way trying to defend these actions, but still this is legally not stealing but morally totally wrong.
Not that these masses could have been expected in any way but when I'd do such a promotion I'd still make sure to have a one game only per person mechanisms in place, if it doesn't work with IP counts as people use proxies, maybe limit it to one copy per steam account or are people also hoarding steam accounts? Though technically this could make it slower on their end as they'd have to generate a new steam account for every code they want. Captchas do a good job in keeping automated scripts on the internet from doing the same task over and over again and thus exploiting mechanisms!
From what I read steam sorted it out and most of the bulkhoarded codes are made invalid. So except for some some hair lost while the whole thing was going on, I'm with Grim and Fitz, this could be a nice free advertisment, and turn out a lot better than the initially planned freebie thingy as people like to get emotionally involved now and buy even more games. Cheer up Dave :)
Quote from: selmiak on Sat 02/11/2013 09:55:52
But these were free keys. How can you steal something that is free?
... by selling these to those people that should have gotten them.
So selling something is stealing?
I don't know the legal term for it, but it's probabyl something along fraud or so. The whole thing is kind of like in a supermarket where they have this huge sweetsbox with free sweets at the checkout. You walk there, ask: Are these sweets for free? The cashier says yes and you take them all. He will complain because it is expected behaviour to just take one or maybe 2, but legally he can't do anything about it and you could theoretically stand in front of the supermarket and start selling these legally obtained free sweets. The supermarket boss couldn't stop you from doing so (except that you might need a license for selling things on the street in front of his supermarket but I think there are places on the internet where you can bulksell steamcodes and noone ask unpleasant questions), he couldn't even invalidate your stash of free sweets BUT he can ban you from ever setting foot in his supermarket again. And this is what steam should also do, ban these assholes!
Damn this is sad. But on the plus side, the big gaming sites published articles about this. At least that's some publicity.
Quote from: Armageddon on Sat 02/11/2013 04:41:35
So it's okay to steal 30,000 keys from say, EA?
Huh? Did someone say that it is ok to steal 30,000 keys from EA?
No, its not ok. I just don't care. I do care if someone messes with a small mom and pop software house.
Quote from: selmiak on Sat 02/11/2013 10:33:04
So selling something is stealing?
...
To sell something that doesn't belong to you and take the money for yourself is stealing, yes (nod)
If you get offered
one as a gift and take more, then you stole (and that is for steam-keys and candies or whatever).
As long as you sell just the one you were allowed to take it is okay by law, but selling the stolen goods is a crime.
Quote from: selmiak on Sat 02/11/2013 09:55:52
But these were free keys. How can you steal something that is free?
Granting rights to downloading free of charge and/or verbatim distribution is absolutely not the same thing as granting rights to commercial use. Examples: Noncommercial Creative Commons licenses, pretty much all freeware games and software. Just because something is free for you to enjoy it, it in no way implies you can go on selling it unless explicitly allowed by the author. So you can call it theft, you can call it ripping off, you can call it whatever you want, but it's still absolutely illegal.
edit: Although, since games are products that you should be allowed to resell if you own them (at least in EU?), it probably complicates things. I'm not sure how it applies here and how it even works in combination with the above. In fact I'd be pretty grateful to anyone who'd be able to explain how this customer right works together with freeware licenses denying any rights to sell. Anyone?
But in this particular case I'm pretty sure copies obtained against the will of the copyright holder don't count anyway.
Quote from: selmiak on Sat 02/11/2013 09:55:52The mean thing with digital goods is that you can't even complain about them taking away and not leaving anything for the honest people.
I imagine most of the people who would've purchased the keys from the reseller would do so
instead of buying from Dave, and for him, as any other full-time indie, that directly translates to losses of actual life sustenance. Surely you see the issue in that?
Quote from: kconan on Sat 02/11/2013 11:41:05
Huh? Did someone say that it is ok to steal 30,000 keys from EA?
Well, now I did. :)
I like selmiak being the devil's advocate because he do have a point. If they release a game for free as a promo, it's not stealing, no matter if you get more than one copy. Selling the keys is illegal yes but the other people who only took more than their share didn't steal anything because the keys were indeed free. It sucks, but that's the reality, whether it's moraly good is another question and I think those people are all dicks. Selling free stuff is not stealing though, it infringe on copyright but it's not stealing.
Like Nemo says, it's a complicated matter, it's strongly dependent on where you are located. It's much more than just 'theft' or 'not theft'.
Whether or not it's illegal is not really the point because those who did it are very unlikely to be found (or even looked for), but yes they are complete bastards and are going to hell.
Quote from: Tabata on Sat 02/11/2013 13:24:21
Quote from: selmiak on Sat 02/11/2013 10:33:04
So selling something is stealing?
...
To sell something that doesn't belong to you and take the money for yourself is stealing, yes (nod)
It's not stealing. It's more likely to be a case of conversion, but my fascination with the finer points of this was a long time ago :P
On it's face it's a pretty crappy situation and it caused a lot of headache for Dave, but I can see this being a positive thing in the end. He got publicity in places he probably wouldn't have otherwise and in the end it will probably turn out to be a good thing.
Unless Dave explicitly put in any kind of license or contract conditions that limited offers to one per person (I didn't see anything like that when I downloaded a copy, but I didn't have to use the code either, possibly because I've already bought the game before), this is more a matter of exploiting a loophole than it is theft, fraud or any other crime:
-Unless otherwise specified, when you give away something for free to the public, people are allowed to take as many as they like
-By the first sale doctrine, once you've given it to them it's theirs to do with as they like, including reselling (though this depends somewhat on the conditions in the "sales" contract and on the legal regime)
However, once BMT put in restrictions on the IP addresses, evading those restrictions is potentially a case of illegal "hacking" (under one of the dumber Internet-related laws).
Of course, those people were still assholes for taking advantage of a small indie company just to make a quick buck, but since most of the excess codes have been canceled and Wadjet Eye has got some publicity out of it, it all seems to have worked out for the best.
Quote from: Snarky on Sat 02/11/2013 14:55:49
-By the first sale doctrine, once you've given it to them it's theirs to do with as they like, including reselling (though this depends somewhat on the conditions in the "sales" contract and on the legal regime)
So where this doctrine is in effect, noncommercial licenses aren't enforceable?
No, I believe that's different because it's not about the rights to a single copy, but the right to make new copies and sell them. Though I'm sure you could find edge cases.
Longer blog post about this can now be read over at Dave's Blog (http://nygamedev.blogspot.no/2013/11/blackwell-unbought.html).
Hi everyone! Wow what a crazy couple of days. It all seems to have died down now, and everything has been sorted. So all to the good.
The blog link that David Ostman just posted pretty much sums up what I think about the subject. Whether the mass-nabbing of the keys was stealing or not, it doesn't matter. I still had to take steps to fix it. Thanks everyone for all the comments and support. It means a lot! :-D
QuoteBlackwell Unbought
Dave, you are a funny genius (laugh).