BROK the InvestiGator dev gives Prologue keys to Steam curators to prevent scammers. Developer suspects some are key resellers after they change their recommendation to negative.

More can be read in the thread made by the developer on twitter: https://twitter.com/COWCATGames/status/1563957983884845056TL;DR: Developer of BROK the InvestiGator which was released this week knew beforehand that a lot of emails they'd get requesting a key would be from key resellers and decided to give them a Prologue key (Incomplete game) and give them a full game key if they messaged back telling them it was not a full game key and couldn't continue playing.After getting only positive curator recommendations (and universal user acclaim), they find out that a few of them changed their recommendation to negative and voila, there are already keys in gray market sites and also that all these curators have striking resemblances.Some information I gathered about the curators. I'll hide their names and emails to prevent witch hunting. The list includes all curators giving negative recommendations:CuratorCreation dateFollowersTotal negative reviewsA17 Sep, 202126,9492B17 Sep, 202121,7922C17 Sep, 202121,6732D17 Sep, 202120,9292E19 Sep, 202120,6451F17 Sep, 202120,4701G17 Sep, 202120,2771H17 Sep, 202120,2221I17 Sep, 202128,0462Some points:All curators were created on 17 Sep, 2021, except for one on 19 Sep, 20217 of the 9 curators are in the same 20k-21k followers ranger. It's just speculation but it's probable that numbers were inflated via bots to a similar amountThey all have 1 or 2 negative reviewsAll their curator pages share several games as recently reviewedTheir "All" and "Recommended" numbers are the same e.g. in the first example there is: All - 434, Recommended - 434, Not recommended - 2. I'm suspecting there's a bug on Steam that doesn't update the numbers correctly when they change the Review status from Positive to NegativeMore resemblances that may or may not be importantI think that there is a high chance and I'd say even evident that this is done by an individual or group with a personal motivation that is seeking to harm this indie developer by doing this.The developer itself suspects that the are doing it in revenge for giving them keys that are not the full game, keys which were sold in these gray market sites and caused them trouble with customers and the site for that. Whichever is the case, this situation is an example of why you should be careful when buying in these sites, because some of them may have been obtained via shady methods and buying there does nothing but hurt the developer and more so from small indie ones like this. via /r/Games https://ift.tt/UfcYTxZ