The anatomy of a game-key scam

If you’ve heard of Steam-key scams, you know that most of them seem too obvious to fall for. But some scammers are running sophisticated, brute force operations that blanket so many developers with so many key requests that they are likely quite profitable. And Helium Rain developer Gwennaël Arbona just broke down how the entire process works in a thread on social media.

Developers on Steam can produce an infinite number of 15-digit alphanumeric codes that anyone can redeem for access to a certain game. Valve gives everyone free rein to do whatever they want with these codes (it does have some limits that are not relevant to this topic). You can give them to friends and family. They can go out to media to help promote the game. Or you can sell them on your own website or a third-party store.