Valve have announced that they are revoking the serial keys from some 7000 copies of Sniper Elite 3 after it was discovered that they had been stolen from authorised outlets and resold to unsuspecting Steam users.
Users who have purchased the game through the unauthorised outlets will find that their games will no longer run and they will have to seek a refund for their purchase, but not from Steam themselves. Rebellion have made a list of retailers that are unaffected by the key recall, with users who have had their keys revoked having to purchase another copy of the game either through Steam directly or through an unaffected retailer.
The announcement came after a retailer discovered that a number of their game keys had been stolen, with the money from the illegal sales not going to Valve or the retail distributor.
“To clarify, one of our PC retail distributors informed us that some of their allotted Steam keys were stolen,” the developer writes. “We believe these keys were then resold to multiple companies, with no payments going to either Valve or the retail distributor.”
As a goodwill measure, Steam are offering those users who have been affected a free copy of the “Target Hitler” DLC, with proof of purchase and their key needing to be provided in order to validate their claim, however the whole situation has already resulted in a large number of users venting their anger for something which genuinely was not their fault and understandably so if I might add.
It is not known at this moment in time who stole the keys and Rebellion are not making any statement as to the retail outlets that area affected, but we can probably guess that Steam may look into their security and key validation methods to prevent situations like this happening again.
Source: Joystiq
