Fraudulent Retailers Cost Natural Selection 2 Developer, Unknown Worlds, Over $30,000

[Linux]

I feel really bad for Unknown Worlds, get seriously get the shaft end to this with losing over 30k in money because 1,341 morons though it would be a bright idea to buy from a non-rep site. I know personally I just bought 2 extra copies from their steam page and gave them to friends because I truly love the game and can at least hope that it will help in the long run. At the same time this is the scarey part about being a start-up company making a game and selling it through these types of means :/.

[Shawn Zipay]

Let this serve as a reminder to everyone that if a site seems shady, it more than likely is. Also, try to purchase your game through only the officially recognized retail channels, okay?

That's a lesson that 1,341 gamers were taught this past week. Those gamers bought keys from a less than reputable site for Unknown Worlds' Natural Selection 2. The credit cards used to make the purchases issued a "charge-back" on the keys. As a result, Unknown Worlds never received payment for the game ($25) and were then charged a charge-back fee of $22 per transaction.

This resulted in Unknown Worlds being screwed out of around $30,000, both from the loss of those sales and from the charge-back fees adding up across all of those fraudulent purchases. That's not to mention that the people who bought the keys from the less than reputable site are now not only out of a game, they're also out of the money they spent to get the key.

See, the site that the users purchased the game keys from more than likely used stolen credit cards to make the purchase and then resell those keys to the end users. The end users having obviously bought the game with legitimate credit cards, thinking they were getting a good deal. Whomever actually owned the stolen cards probably found out it was stolen and got the legal ball rolling from there.

Unknown Worlds urges all of those who had their games revoked to contact the site they purchased the game from to request a full refund.

At present, the only place to legitimately buy Natural Selection 2 is from Steam or through the Natural Selection 2 website.

(via Unknown Worlds)