I really don't care... Except the fact that I hardly can Imagine a person with a remunerative and satisfiyng job spending his free time into reselling keys, you must consider that you are not innocent either.
You buy a bundle, activate 4/6 games and trade 2 for 2 games from another bundle. By doing so you don't buy the bundle and the other trader doesn't buy your bundle. Basically trading harms publishers and bundle sites because they lose buyers. Of course you can argue that without a trade, you wouldn't buy the other bundle however, but truth is that a lot of people who want and can afford a bundle, will look to trade in the first place and buy only if they are not able to get what they are looking for.

I'm not even sure that gifting a key for a bundle game that you already own in library is 100% ethical, as you could stop the winner from buying the bundle and harm publishers.

At the end of the day, these are just rethorical facts, I'm a trader and a gifter and I won't lose sleep for this. Why? Because with my action I may be able to make someone happy.

Recently administration of one forum I'm part of changed rules, to prevent these kind of resellers to buy every copy of highly-demanded game, to make profit out of them later. For me it's a good thing. But maybe it's because I'm weird person and I always look from ethic perspective firstly, never look for a way I could game the system, gain something using someone else and so on.

So knowing that someone bought key just to make profit out of it, selling it on G2A / Kinguin would left bad taste in my mouth. Sure, it'd be their key after all, but still.. not everyone is proud capitalis who will abuse, lie, and use grey-zone to make as much profit as possible.

I think some of these discussions are pretty interesting, but what about people who already have a key for a game and win a giveaway for it, then trade the original?

The fact these people even refer to themselves as 'traders' is laughable, it's like calling someone who plays football for his pub team an athlete. The mad, tears and effort people put into fucking $10 steam games is just unreal.

I'm sure you're a delightful person and wish you nothing but happiness but six months of your life over this shit? In this grim world the ethics of steam trading is what sends you over the edge!?

Take a step back my friend, this is the scary brand of crazy.

Now I know why I got / get these RPG Maker offers, with gift link highly preferred..

When I trade its to get what I want. I don't look at everyone who gets more than me with envy. Its their business, I've already done mine.

Once you give someone a key, it is their key to do what they want with. You gave it to them.

I think you're getting a little too involved in someone else's business. No offense but it's not really your concern what someone does with the trade after it's completed. If you're afraid that your trade/sale is going to someone or somewhere that you don't approve of then you shouldn't trade or sell anything EVER. This applies to real life as well.

I misread the title and thought it was asking about giveaway winners reselling their wins for profit. This is what I think about that:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082198/quotes?item=qt0446938

A game that was traded I don't really care though.

"It is illegal to resell bundle keys."

No, it isn't.

Unethical, perhaps.

But not illegal, ever.

Terms and conditions of sale do not supplant statutory law.

I don't know of any country that has any laws regarding bundle keys.

i agree with Sa6peto

also i dont care what they re doing. these "right", "justice", "ethic"s you re talking about is just your opinion. there could be another platform which is very cool with selling/trading their keys and ur topic wouldnt make sense for them anymore. people dont have to live up to your expectations. you want them to be "right" but they dont have to. they can behave however they want. and you can only deal with it (nope. i dont trade nor i lie)

i think you are feeling cheated because he got something better out of it. or it wouldnt matter what hes gonna do with ur key.

No resale rules have been struck down in most major jurisdictions. Even Sony, Microsoft and the big textbook publishers lost in court.

The publisher lists a game for $15 on Steam and then sells 10,000 keys to bundlers at $0.10 each because they know it's not worth $15.

The bundler puts a false claim that you can't resell the games on their site and then winks and sells the same handful of people 10 copies of every game every week.

I buy 1 bundle a month and trade away the 7 out of 9 games that don't interest me.

The next day, 1 of the guys I traded a game with then trades it to somebody else who wants it more.

How is the last guy more of a monster than the dishonest publisher & bundler?

If the developers want to capture more of the value then they should have honest pricing like $2 for a game to the end buyer.

I've never bought multiple bundles for resale because it's not worth my time but I have bought 4 packs of games for trades because I know I'll miss some of the short time 80% off sales and so will other people.

Can you seriously picture a pizza place flipping out if you take multiple pizzas to a party and trade some for beer?

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my two cents: successful trade =both parties get the item they want, neither scams the other. After that it doesn't matter what happens. If a person has made the effort to research ways to make money on legit trades, I don't see any ethics/rights/justice problem with it.

Here's the thing about trading: it's always going to be uneven. One person is always going to get a better deal, maybe in the short term, maybe in the long term, but unless the two items are identical, there's always going to be a way to find unfairness in it. In fact, both people involved in a trade are almost always going to find it at least slightly unfair in their own favor, or they wouldn't make the trade. You're always going to barter for a deal that "looks good" to you. Presumably, the other person is thinking the exact same thing. As long as there's no lying going on, it's not fair to judge.

Given that, let's look at the case in the first post. If you just convert to straight dollar values, yeah, it looks really uneven. But you're losing part of the story there. The person geting Ethan Carter activates the key and the trade is done. Meanwhile, there's effort and risk involved in reselling those three keys. He can't test the keys without accidentally redeeming them, so he has to take it on faith that they're unused. Maybe tomorrow there will be a 500,000 key giveaway of it and the market drops out for the game. If the G2A sale doesn't go smoothly, it's on his ass, because G2A isn't going to take "oh, I traded for these keys from some random dude online" as any kind of proof. Even if the final sales go smoothly, there's another middleman website getting a cut and it took time to list the games there for sale.

And of course, once you get into discussions about the value of time and effort, there's not really any more room to talk about scamming. Everyone's got a different value that they put on their own time and effort, and that value also changes from task to task and day to day. Going back to that first example, I would ask the person with the three games why he didn't resell the games and buy from nuuvem himself. I would also hazard a guess that his answer is along the lines of "it isn't worth the time to check out every bundle game" or "I didn't need the keys anyway, idc". For him, the instant copy of Ethan Carter was worth more than the opportunity to sell his keys, commit fraud buying from nuuvem, and have some cash left over.

In short, trades are not just about value. They're also about perceptions of value, and that's something that you can't really judge. Obviously, if there's a lie involved in the trade, that becomes a scam. But if there was a lie in the scenario we're talking about here, that should have been the focus of the post, not the dollar values.

Hello, OP. I was just disembarking from my private jet this morning and got a word from a friend about this thread. You know, I sold a bunch of Particula and Digital Homicide keys on some obscure grey market site, and decided to spend a few hours at the Bahamas. I had a real hard time trying to sell my keys though because the listings of WOMD and the porn material took almost all the shelves.

(Well, to be honest, I also sold one of those keys for the game whose name you deleted from your original post. You know that Particula and DH would just pay for the Kerosene, not the hotel, the open bar and the golf course.)

I’m surprised you started the topic at this site, though, since you’re pretty much aware that I only visit here to give rep to my fellow traders. It’s almost like if you wouldn’t want me to find out, don’t you think?

Anyway, I was not sure how to take this thread, honestly. You seem to have started it as a crusade against profit in game trading, but since you did not get the support you expected you turned it into an ethics discussion. Finally you summed this up making it a thread to raise awareness.

Awareness about what? To make people aware that you still believe in Santa? Some people trade for profit, yes. Some people also resell traded games, yes. I would welcome to the real world but your already knew all this, right?

You seem to have strong feelings for justice, for fairness, and to tell right from wrong. However, you disguise this thread both on a general tone but also pointing your finger to a single person, which by induction means you attribute every single unrighteous behavior you've seen on scammers and bad traders to this said person, including lying, having second accounts, dishonesty, using and abusing other people's trust.

And you do all this generalization without a single piece of evidence. Where's the justice of that? Where's the fairness?

Sincerely, too far-fetched for me.

So let's talk about ethics then. You have been careful not to mention said person's name. Is that the reason you think your post is ethical? Well, I think it makes your post hypocritical, because you provide enough clues for people with some interest on the subject to realize —or find out— who you're talking about. Throw the stone and hide the hand.

By doing that you don't have to provide any evidence to sustain your claims. It's just like dropping a pile of shit onto a fan and not taking any responsibility.

Where's the ethics of that? Do you even know how to spell ethics or you had to look it up on the dictionary? I think that yours is a very cowardly behavior. (*)

(*) Sorry if you think I’m being rude now. You said that said person was never rude to you and look where it took him!

But let's assume for just a second that said person did something terrible to you. You're using a public forum to expose and impale someone with no evidence whatsoever for vengeance and personal retaliation. Is that fair, just and ethical? Is it at least one of those? Really?

Whatever you have told each other, was that in the context of a private conversation or in an open forum? In either case, does that entitle you to defame him publicly? Well, since you have shown no respect whatsoever for intimacy, I’ll take the liberty of disclosing some real facts you’ve been concealing.

So let's end the charade at once, OK? This is not a post about those anonymous guys who "use you to make profit, even if you think you did a good trade". This is not about justice, fairness or ethics. This is a hate thread (*) initiated out of spite against a single person.

(*) BTW, the game which is supposedly making said person the richest person on the planet is HATRED, what a wordplay, eh?

Like several other posters, I wonder what’s the real point of this thread. But since we’re already here, I guess it would be interesting to make this fun for me too, not just for you.

What has said person done to you, for God's sake? A lot of traders on SG and Barter trade games for profit, and some of them also sell them online. You told said person that you have traded with them too. Why haven’t you taken action for justice, fairness and ethics against them?

Do you have a crush on said person? You claim that said person lied to you for six months. I don't get it. You only traded twice and you held a relationship for 6 months? Did he promise you a rose garden?

It would be interesting to know what were you told and how you discovered they were lies. That, of course, implies you have the facts that sustain "the truth" you claim to exclusively own.

It's very easy to accuse someone of lying. Look at this: YOU ARE A LIAR. See? Easy as pie.

But another thing is to accuse somebody rightfully! For instance, I can accuse you rightfully: YOU LIED, because you claim said person called you "sick", whereas in fact he called you "A VERY SICK PERSON" (emphasis added). See? This is how you prove things and make accusations than can be sustained: with facts.

You may think it's semantically the same, or that I'm making a fool out of myself by adding the 3 words you omitted, but let me explain the real difference to you.

At a certain point in time you told said person that it would be totally fine with you to trade away games, and I quote: "even if the other party would resell it for 10 times the price". So, you seemed perfectly OK with people reselling their keys for profit.

You claim, OTOH, that said person lied to you about reselling keys. Well, the fact is that said person shared with you —and more than once— his position on the matter: "anyone can do whatever they want with the keys they trade for" and that it was nobody else's business. (BTW, this is pretty much the same the majority of traders on this thread have told you too.)

Interestingly enough, this was in fact your own position as well, as far as said person was concerned.

But then one day you decided to change your mind about the legality/ethics/compliance with ToS/whatever and accused said person of lying. You change your mind and said person is a liar as a result? What's the logic of that?

I'll tell you whose logic is that: the logic of A VERY SICK PERSON.

If you had a cold you'd be "sick". What you have is completely different.

Or you consider this hate thread you created consistent with a sane state of mind?

Unlike you, I can back up my allegations with dates and transcripts of your conversations with said person. Please don't embarrass yourself by continuing to fake the facts.

As a final note, you claim that said person made you believe you were crazy. The facts show exactly the opposite.

During your conversations said person was surprised —and concerned— about how could you possibly put up with life thinking everyone was evil, your permanent questioning of other people's intentions and the extraordinary ability you had to be deaf to anything you'd not want to hear. Like you have shown on this very thread, for instance, ignoring most of the posts that don't go along your line of thought.

So said person tried several times to unveil before you that the evil you choose to see in other people (like newbies making lowballs, traders trying to get an illegitimate edge, etc.) can be in most cases explained by ignorance or other reasons, and that you'd be happier in life if you don't go around distrusting everyone but you. Said person was trying to dissipate your paranoia, not to reinforce it.

Can you explain to me how that translates into trying to make you believe you were crazy? (Please don't bother to answer. This is a rhetorical question.)

I can see —after some comments you made on this thread— that said person failed miserably. (Woman, you don't even trust what your own physician tells you, for God's sake!).

I'm not surprised you believe said person is such a horrible, horrible person. I think that, in your own words, you just got too emotional when said person was celebrating and somehow your relationship with him got in the way. Get over it.

But I cannot allow you to spit on said person's well-earned rep. You just don't have the right to do so, it's not fair, it's not just, and it's not ethical. Unless you can prove he has some "obscure intentions and that he’s constantly lying", please be a decent person and keep your comments to yourself.

Even if you cannot believe there’s decent people in the world, at least you try to be the only one.

And last but not least, let me tell you that I loved my dog very much. The picture on my avatar is from my first 4-legged companion. His name was Igor and he was with me for 15 years, the equivalent of 100 human years. And in spite how much I loved him, I’ve been blessed with knowing the difference between having a kid and having a dog.

You will probably have kids of your own someday, but until then, please, when someone asks you "Do you have kids?" Don't answer "I have a dog". It's not the same. Trust me, at least on that one.

While I understand it hurts to be lied to, I don't see a problem in trading the game away for profit. The game is theirs because they paid their end, and they can do whatever they want with it even if it violates Steam's ToS because Valve isn't going to check on them.

If they were profiting off of giveaways, then we'd have a problem.

Gotta go now. I've sold a few more keys of Particula, and also Dark Forces! My private jet is waiting and I think I'll spend the rest of the weekend at the Caribbean.

Don't worry, I'll send you a postcard. Cheers!