: The Nexus of PC Gaming

I'm just helping my fellow upline acolytes.

This is one big troll that we must slaughter.

You might be interested to read up on Regional Pricing 101 aka Russian keys.

Sounds good on paper but it's almost impossible to control since CD keys are not exactly generated by Steam / Valve themselves. Steam gifts, on the other hand is a lot easier since well, they're fully controlled by Valve & even the CD keys are hidden from the user.

Yup, that's what I'm trying to describe. If we compare both Steam gifts & CD keys, we can easily see which one is much easier for Valve to control.

In the past before Steam implements the trade system, we've had lots of scams going on where people received Steam gifts that are not activable in their region. Then come along Steam Trade, where you can easily see the gift description before hitting the Trade button which is pretty neat as it eliminates the probability of being sent a out-of-region games.

If CD keys are tradable, we're actually taking a step backward again. Take for example the last GamersGate fiasco. Someone actually managed to order himself 20 copies of Borderlands 4-pack, which amounts to 80 copies of Borderlands. I can think of at least 2 scenarios that could happen from this incident if CD keys are allowed to be traded via Steam Trade:

1) Just because of GamersGate's fault, Steam suddenly has 80 copies of Borderlands 2 being traded around via its Steam Trade. What if the numbers are even higher due to someone hoarding the CD keys? This is almost akin to money laundering & believe me, someone has brought up this topic in reddit where they found some reasonable proofs that certain parties are using Team Fortress 2 item trading as a money laundering platform.

2) If there comes a point where there's a need to void the CD keys due to some other distributor's fault (price error being a perfect example), they'll have to contact Steam to deactivate those keys that have yet to get activated (those still floating in inventories). Problem is, why would Steam has to get involved over someone else's fault? Moreover, Steam will have to bear the wrath of its users whose keys got voided before they can sell them away.

Just my 2 cents on why CD keys should remain as they are; non-tradable since they present more hassle rather than convenience.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Jan 12 2013, 05:19 PM

The fact that you're allowing externally-sourced entities to be passed around in your own platform is not a very feasible idea, at least to me. Oh well, we can argue all we want but at the end of the day, Steam / Valve will have their own say on such matter.

Both are awesome nonetheless.

But... but... that would have killed all the "AHA~" moments.

Limbo is awesome as well but I've to say that it's much linear compared to the Portal series. Reminds me of the Lord of the Flies though.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

You've given away your personal information whenever you entered your card / PayPal details during online purchases.

Stop spamming! Imma creating the new thread NAO!