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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

These keys are effectively serial numbers, not blinded tokens, right? Why don't the original sellers just revoke ones that were obtained through credit card fraud?

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They did, as detailed in this blog post: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303

They still had to eat the $20 fee per fraudulent transaction and deal with the pissed off customers though.

It's difficult because game-devs rely heavily on good reviews. Even if you revoke a key that you know for a fact has been stolen (or bought and charged back on CC), if it has been resold there is a very good chance that the new buyer will leave you a bad review. It's a lose-lose really.

How does that get the devs any of their money back?

I don't know what you mean. Someone who wanted a key would have to buy one that wasn't fraudulently obtained, thus supporting the developer. The seller in fraudulent transaction would still have to eat the chargeback fee, but it would be a better overall result than now where the fraudster profits. Eventually they would do this quick enough that it would become pointless to attempt the fraud, thus reducing the chargebacks.

The fraudster profits regardless of whether the key is revoked or not, because they sell the key to some sucker before the fraud is discovered. The fraud is discovered when somebody looks at their credit card statement and notices the unexpected charge, so the game developer has a very limited ability to revoke fraudulently obtained keys more quickly.

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