Anyone ever purchased stuff from directgamekeys.com?

[Fenixgoon]

They have Dawn of War2 keys for $23 (and I really don't feel like dealing with international people on ebay). Everywhere else has it for $30+.

Just wondering if this place is legit/trustworthy or I should take my business elsewhere.

 

[pontifex]

i don't know that i would trust any of those types of sites.

 

[Lonyo]

Since DoW2 requires Steam I would run like hell unless you want to risk getting your account banned.
Even if it is legit, if Valve decide they don't like where your source got their keys from (e.g they are reselling cheap eastern country keys) they might remove the game/be nasty to your account)

 

[galgor]

Ironic. I just purchased a DoW2 key from these guys today. It worked. I did a lot of oddball forum research before I ended up buying anything, and here's what I've surmised about how these operations work. Though please note that the complaints I read about weren't about necessarily about directgamekeys specifically but about key websites in general.

In my mind there are three ways places like this could be selling the keys for so cheap:

1) They buy in bulk from an authorized reseller without any packaging, saving money
2) They buy in bulk from other countries where the retail cost of the game is lower/exchange rate is in their favor
3) They buy the games from a major retailer, slice open the bottom of the box and fish out the key, and return the item for the full price (hence, "stolen" keys)

So I figure two out of three ain't bad. Your protected by Paypal to a certain extent, so if things go awry you can dispute the transaction. Of all the encounters I read of people who actually used the service (and weren't just doing a knee-jerk "OMG AVOID" reaction), the worst things that happened were:

1) Key was a duplicate. Emailed the original website. Customer service is usually slow, but eventually they seem to pan out and they get a new key.
2) Steam removed the game from their account, citing that it's source was stolen. (note: no account ban)

So the true test isn't just that the key works, it's also that the key remains valid. Whether the keys remain valid for a long period, I couldn't find specific information on. But I assume that since no one had returned to tell of their horror story the majority of these remain in working order. My most major concern is that being sent a duplicate key seems borderline common from these websites. From a business standpoint, it's not that hard to keep this straight. I still haven't figured that one out.

I suppose it's possible they're stealing keys, copying down the keys and putting their respective keyslips back in the games before returning them. Which would mean that the games are being put back on the shelves and the legitimate user activated the game before you did. But it seems unlikely they'd still be in business if this was their common business practice.

Is it dicey? Sure. It's got risks. But the two major concerns people bring up (invalid/keygen keys, banning of Steam account) seem totally false. I can't really recommend it, but I can't really say it's a bad service either. The verdicts still out for me personally. Exercise caution and make your own choice.

 

[Fenixgoon]

^
holy crap ipod man!