Third Party Sniper Elite 3 Steam Codes Being Revoked

[dlevere]

By Blair Inglis

If you purchased a Sniper Elite 3 Steam key from a third party retailer, such as CDKeys.com, then you might find that your copy of the game has been revoked due to it apparently not being legitimate.

Rebellion, the developer of Sniper Elite 3 and publisher on PC, let us know exactly what’s going down, and why this might be happening:

We – with Valve’s permission – provide our PC retail distributors with Steam keys at a wholesale price that go in the game boxes. One such distributor alerted both us and Valve that they suspected a batch of their keys were stolen or leaked.

Valve then moved to revoke this batch of keys as no money was given to either them or the distributor. In effect they were unlicensed copies of the game.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the retailers themselves have been doing anything illegitimate. We also contacted CDKeys, who stress that they purchased the keys from a legitimate source. There’s no reason to accuse them then, and Rebellion certainly aren’t:

We’re not accusing any retailers of foul play here – they may well have had good reason to think the keys were genuine. As far we know most are now providing refunds or replacing keys. Indeed some of these sites are well known, and gamers pre-ordered the game in good faith.

So, if you find yourself affected by a problem such as this, then the best thing to do is contact the retailer you bought the key from, rather than Steam themselves, as they’re aware of the problem and are willing to help.

Of course, you may find that you get a refund rather than a replacement, and then you’ll miss out on your pre-order bonus of the Target Hitler DLC mission. Rebellion is working to fix this, and if you’re affected then you should follow the steps below:

1. Email [email protected] and include the following information:
- Receipt or proof of purchase from the original (blocked) vendor.
- The original (blocked) Steam key you were sent.

2. We’ll process your request and get back to you as soon as we can. Please be patient – this is a manual process and it may take some time!

Let us know if you’ve been affected below, and get in touch if you’ve been affected by any of the issues.

[dlevere]

Steam revokes 7,050 stolen Sniper Elite 3 codes