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[jocan2003]

I heard from multile source that it was mostly hit-and-miss when trying to find cheaper way to get game keys coming from other website. I wanted to know what is the experience of such website from inside this community.

Did you have luck? have any to recommend? Most horrible place to go to?

I found a website myself and i dont know what to think of it.

http://www.dlcompare.com/games/cd-key-download-arma-3-324

If any of you had experience with this website or any other for that matter please share?

[genmac]

It's a coin flip but sometimes you can pick up a russian key and get a decent deal.  They price the games super super low in russia and other places because piracy is so rampant no one would ever pay for them otherwise.

[10ebbor10]

Do note That game compagnies aren't stupid.  These Keys aren often region locked

[jocan2003]

I meant as website site not email spam hehe. I already knew about russian website and region locking too. I did find a few legit place for those using steam such as

http://www.steamgifts.com/
http://www.steamtrades.com/

Those are 2 good site as long as you follow the rules. There is some who tries to scam for sure but they are quickly spotted and if you do a little digging on the one you want to trade it, it become pretty much like a Ebay for steam. IE never buy expansive stuff from new user and stuff like that.

[Kaje]

I always use http://www.allkeyshop.com/ to compare prices, the stores they use tend to have customer reviews so you can see how well rated they are.

[Retropunch]

I personally hate that different regions pay different amounts, I know it makes sense from a selling point of view and that's how markets work, but it seems kinda annoying really when it's all digital. This especially when they up the cost massively for places like Australia. I always wonder how much of the cut goes back to developers for these price fluctuations or how much just gets swallowed up in conversion taxes and whatever. I also don't know how many games would version lock - possibly for exclusively online/blizzard games and stuff, but I imagine most won't bother?

To the point, I haven't ever used an external key shop personally, but I do know a lot of my friends did it for Titanfall - some did ok, some got scammed and some got theirs loadssss later than they should have. They're normally enticingly cheap and I definitely get the appeal but it seems like potluck, even with places that have been reliable before. I'd suggest caution.

[simoroth]

As a dev: The keys on these sites are often from bundles and reselling them is illegal. If a developer catches on and isn't feeling merciful you might find your game disabled.

Sometimes the keys are from more nefarious things. Eg stolen keys from hacked databases on other stores.

Some are just bought cheaper in a different region, but then you run the risk of a region locked key.

At the end of the day, it probably isn't worth the saving when you find your entire Steam library deleted because you bought a shady key.

[jocan2003]

So about that steamtrading website? I just had a very nice transaction and everything is good. As long as you take care of doing your homework, ill come back with the ebay analogy, watch out who you trade with but i would say 95% of the time they are legit or else they get banned asap or locked untill they investigate.

[Mookzen]

I remember buying a Diablo 2 key for dirt cheap on the internet, turned out they sold it to at least one more guy so I had to battle the other dude for the right to play the game unmolested, when one was logged on battle.net the other one got an error saying the key is being used, so I started an online game, got into town and made it so my character ran towards buggy terrain perpetually, then I minimized the game to do other stuff and had it running for about 3 days straight, I think the other guy got the message that he won't be able to do shit about that key so he left me alone from then on.

[Neonivek]

I personally hate that different regions pay different amounts, I know it makes sense from a selling point of view and that's how markets work, but it seems kinda annoying really when it's all digital. This especially when they up the cost massively for places like Australia. I always wonder how much of the cut goes back to developers for these price fluctuations or how much just gets swallowed up in conversion taxes and whatever. I also don't know how many games would version lock - possibly for exclusively online/blizzard games and stuff, but I imagine most won't bother?

Most of the time it is because even though it is digital you still have to pay the country's licensing fees.

And for some countries they will charge you an arm and a leg just to be allowed to sell your product there.

[deoloth]

I personally hate that different regions pay different amounts, I know it makes sense from a selling point of view and that's how markets work, but it seems kinda annoying really when it's all digital. This especially when they up the cost massively for places like Australia. I always wonder how much of the cut goes back to developers for these price fluctuations or how much just gets swallowed up in conversion taxes and whatever. I also don't know how many games would version lock - possibly for exclusively online/blizzard games and stuff, but I imagine most won't bother?

Most of the time it is because even though it is digital you still have to pay the country's licensing fees.

And for some countries they will charge you an arm and a leg just to be allowed to sell your product there.

If I recall, in Australia games go for about the equivalent of $80 or $90 dollars. I think a good portion of the countries that use the euro have the same exchange roughly.

[Mech#4]

I personally hate that different regions pay different amounts, I know it makes sense from a selling point of view and that's how markets work, but it seems kinda annoying really when it's all digital. This especially when they up the cost massively for places like Australia. I always wonder how much of the cut goes back to developers for these price fluctuations or how much just gets swallowed up in conversion taxes and whatever. I also don't know how many games would version lock - possibly for exclusively online/blizzard games and stuff, but I imagine most won't bother?

Most of the time it is because even though it is digital you still have to pay the country's licensing fees.

And for some countries they will charge you an arm and a leg just to be allowed to sell your product there.

If I recall, in Australia games go for about the equivalent of $80 or $90 dollars. I think a good portion of the countries that use the euro have the same exchange roughly.

Yes, in Australia a new game can be $100, which at current exchange is about $94 USD. Though that's usually at places like EB Games whereas you can usually find them for around $60 AUD at JB Hifi.

I buy nearly all of my games through Steam nowadays, waiting a year or two for a sale to come about. It's not that much of a loss since most games don't come with anything meaningful in the packages anymore anyway.

[Muz]

I personally hate that different regions pay different amounts, I know it makes sense from a selling point of view and that's how markets work, but it seems kinda annoying really when it's all digital. This especially when they up the cost massively for places like Australia. I always wonder how much of the cut goes back to developers for these price fluctuations or how much just gets swallowed up in conversion taxes and whatever.

In Australia $10 is like half an hour wage, whereas in somewhere like Indonesia, it's like 15 hours wages. Yet the market in Indonesia is 10 times bigger, so they still have the potential to make lots of money by selling a game at $2. But a $2 game in Australia would get less sales, unless it's on a medium where game prices are low (like Google Play).

You've got every right to be annoyed by it, but that's how it is. From a value perspective, the game might give say... an hour of fun to an Indonesian or Australian, and if they paid the same price, it'd still be unfair to the person whose currency is worth less.

Still, it's nice that Steam and Google Play have been driving down prices for a while now. Software pirates selling pirated games in Malaysian shopping malls were abundant 10 years ago when I was a kid. These days, the price for an original game on Steam is about the same price as buying from a shopping mall pirate.

[10ebbor10]

So about that steamtrading website? I just had a very nice transaction and everything is good. As long as you take care of doing your homework, ill come back with the ebay analogy, watch out who you trade with but i would say 95% of the time they are legit or else they get banned asap or locked untill they investigate.

I think this is still infringing on some part of the Steam EULA somewhere, so be careful with it.

[Retropunch]

Yeah I definitely understand why it's like it is, but it seems like one of those things that's just going to push more people towards piracy in the long run. Like if I was a poor Australian and had to pay 3-4 times more for my game, I'd be pretty pissed off, even if I understood why.
Steam sales/bundles and stuff are great for stopping this, but I don't think many people are using key sites for stuff like this - it's more for battlefield/titanfall/diablo 3 and the like.