the modern games equivalent to this is:
how much money the developer gets if you buy it off g2a/other shady cheap games sites: 0$
and that is why i only buy AAA games off g2a. indie devs generally deserve my money still
just pirate them too. no reason to touch the garbage pile of shady resellers at all
At that point just pirate it unless you’re trying to play a game online. Also if you were unaware g2a uses stolen credit cards among other morally dubious methods to get their game keys. You probably shouldn’t be supporting that regardless of your reasoning.
In fact developers could lose money (in addition to losing a legitimate sale) because of credit card chargebacks for fraud because those sites are often just laundering places for stolen payment information
I’m not sure I see how that would affect the developer. The charge back would be only to the reseller, wouldn’t it?
so what I think the problem is, or how I understand it, is that the person with the stolen CC info buys keys, puts it on reseller sites, and then gets laundered money in return
But the people who had their CC info stolen obviously contact their bank, or their bank does it for them, and tells the marketplace that originally sold the keys “hey those were fraudulent transactions, we need our money back” and get some kind of refund, while the keys stay valid for whatever reason. This can have a negative impact on the developer because not only do they need to return previously made profit, but there is something about people who get X amount of chargebacks that they get penalized for, so its basically like giving the devs a fee for having their game stolen (an actual lost sale), so they lose money on two fronts.
Idk how accurate this information is, but this article basically lays it out as I understand it
When keys are either stolen or bought illegally, the developer in question is always the one who is hurt the most. For transactions that get chargeback, the developer is out the money in the transaction.
