this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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I wonder where sites like GreenManGaming, Fanatical, Humble and IndieGala fit into the mix as I understand it are legit keysellers?
the listed ones have contracts with publisher to get legit keys where the developer gets it share too
Those are all official seller stores.
They'd fall under Steam.
G2A would technically fall under Steam too, except they have a history of buying stolen keys and reselling them (over and over again).
They buy keys from the devs/publishers directly or legit wholesalers who are known to get the keys from the devs/publishers. Wholesalers themselves don't popup on consumers' radar since they only buy and sell in bulk.
Who do the wholesalers buy FROM, then? It seems clear that the dev, in this case, wants no part of this. Is the publisher enabling this crap?
Yes, only the publisher/developer can generate keys. That's where all key sites get their keys from. You cannot obtain them through the Steam store. And that's also why games that simply do not sell keys to wholesalers don't have this issue. Just look at Factorio. They don't do sales, they don't do bundles, and they don't sell keys. You can get it on key sites but only as a gift and for the same price it's being listed on for on Steam.
Wholesalers get them from the devs and publishers, like I said. But they're not the key sites.
Key Resell Sites, like G2A, don't often get them from wholesalers. They operate like eBay. The sellers buy them from whatever legitimate source they can use their stolen credit card info at, and then they slap their essentially free key on the Resell Site for pure profit. Some sellers on sites like G2A might be legitimate, buying keys from wholesalers, but too often they aren't. With a site system like that it's near impossible to police for stolen goods, as there is no way to verify a key's origin. Sites like Swappa, which facilitate selling mobile devices, can use things like a phone's IMEI to check if it's marked stolen or not. But Valve, for example, provides no way to check a key without redeeming it, and hence there's also no mechanism for anybody to report a stolen key short of telling the dev/publisher and having them revoke the key which has likely already been used by some unwitting consumer.
That's also where most other key sites get their keys from (mostly from bundles). It has been shown time and time again that keys being purchased with stolen credit cards is mostly a myth. Just look at the fact that Factorio, which never had a sale and never sold a single key in a bundle, is just as expensive on key sites as on Steam (Source. That wouldn't be the case if criminals where purchasing licenses with stolen credit cards and then selling them for cheap as a form of money laundering.
Where are criminals even supposed to purchase those keys? Only the developer (and publisher) themselves can generate keys. You can't obtain them through Steam.