Retailer Scam Re-Sells Humble Bundle Games, Reaps Profit Off Charity
Services like Humble Bundle offer a pay-what-you-want service that is beneficial for developers, charities, and consumers. We’ve discovered that the PC games digital distributor 7 Entertainment and other sites are taking advantage of this generosity and obtaining Steam keys from Humble Bundles, or other similar services, and illegally reselling them for profit. We’ve investigated into the situation and reached out to some indie developers who have been affected by this practice.
The games being sold by 7 Entertainment (which owns Fast2Play, Kinguin, G2Play, and other sister sites) have been heavily marked down compared to their regular Steam price. Games like Red Shirt and Thomas was Alone usually sell for $19.99 and $9.99 on Steam, but are being offered on Fast2Play at $1.35 and $3.78, respectively.
Indie developer Ed Key, one of two people who created Proteus, has confirmed Fast2Play is reselling Steam keys from Humble Bundles. His process involved purchasing his game from Fast2Play’s store, and cross-checking his history of issued Steam keys. The copy that he purchased matched one sold through the Humble Indie Bundle 8 batch of games. Key said there is no way to know how they’re obtaining all the copies, but that it is possible Fast2Play is taking advantage of Humble Bundle’s pay-what-you-want approach to selling games by purchasing bundles at the minimum price Steam keys are offered at of $1. Proteus has since been removed from Fast2Play, but it was listed at $4.59 and can still be found on Kinguin, though it’s listed as out of stock.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/03/28/retailer-scam-resells-humble-bundle-games-reaps-profit.aspx
Scumbags.
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