@savvywolf@pawb.social @mateomaui
Going to elaborate on my thoughts here because it’s important.
Anyone promoting key reselling sites in order to help people save a few bucks without even a passing mention of the ethical implications demonstrates a complete lack of empathy.
Firstly, how these sites work. Typically they steal credit cards, buy a bunch of steam keys, then resell them to these black markets. Sure many of them claim that they don’t do this, but given that they think offering an insurance policy for it will be profitable, I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Then when a chargeback happens, the store (such as Humble here), is charged about $20 by their payment processor, which they then (directly or indirectly) pass onto the indie devs. So you saving $2 costs the developer $20.
You can say that you’re offering “options”, but you’re also intentionally omitting context that allows people to make an ethical decision.
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@savvywolf@pawb.social @mateomaui
You can make the point that maybe it’s ethical to do this for big game studios. Not sure I agree, but I can see where you’re coming from. But for indie devs and small stores?
The creative industry, including gamedev, is in a rough spot right now. They’re having to deal with NFT nonsense, the cost of living crisis, the collapse of social media platforms they rely on for marketing and their payment processors pulling the rug out from under them. 2024 is also the year when they seriously have to worry about megacorps being able to mass produce acceptable quality versions of their work for cheap.
My feed is full of creative types begging for people to support them or they’ll have to drop out of the content creation industry.
I speak from a point of privilege here (having a good stable income), but I think anyone for which $2 extra for an indie game breaks the bank also doesn’t want to wish that life on anyone else.
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