Pirate our games, don't buy them from key resellers, say indies

Re:Pirate our games, don't buy them from key resellers, say ... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:48AM (#20392287)

I wonder why Steam and others don't support extra field in keys that's fixed, but affects the generation algorithm[0]? So instead of:

  1234-5678-90AB-CDEF

you'd have

  1234-REVIEW-5678-90AB-CDEF

and for regular keys (say, with language discrimination):

  3141-PLLANG-5926-5358-9793

This way it would be clear at the point of sale whether or not you bought the kind of key that was advertised. Steam and others could spam the press to proliferate information about what "REVIEW" vs. "xxLANG" vs. "ANYVER" vs. whatever means, so buyers using reselling platforms would be educated and could push the problem back to where it was created in the first place. Similarly, sellers of keys couldn't cheat and pass review keys as regular ones.

[0] - So that you can't derive a key of one type from the key of another type.

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Re:Pirate our games, don't buy them from key resellers, say ... by jay_kyburz on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @06:17PM (#20397246)

You can send a key out that will only unlock a Review "branch" of a steam game. The game itself can be clearly marked as a review copy and can even be a cut down copy of the game if you want.

For Void Bastards we often have multiple branches going out to different groups for different things.

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