Dicehit Games, the developer behind the roguelike deckbuilder Runeveil, has issued a blunt recommendation to its player base: if a game is too expensive, it is better to pirate it than to purchase a key from a gray-market reseller.
The studio posted the warning on August 10, 2026, after discovering that promotional keys—which the team had distributed for free to media and content creators to generate coverage—were being sold for profit on third-party sites like Instant-Gaming. According to the developer, these resellers are essentially flipping free assets without the studio seeing any revenue.
The Developer's Stance on Resellers
In a thread on X, the four-person team explained that they opted not to deactivate the compromised keys, as doing so would risk punishing the honest reviewers and creators who were originally gifted the codes. Instead, the studio highlighted the financial reality of the situation:
- Zero Revenue: Whether a player resorts to piracy or buys a resold promo key, the developer earns nothing.
- Reseller Profit: Buying from these sites allows the reseller to keep the profit from keys that were meant to be free.
- No Coverage: When keys are flipped for cash, the developer loses the intended benefit of the original distribution, which was to gain visibility and game coverage.
The studio was careful to note that this stance specifically targets gray-market sites selling stolen or flipped promo codes. They distinguished this from legitimate bulk sales, clarifying that some studios use authorized bulk key sales as a deliberate funding strategy—a practice that Dicehit Games does not currently utilize.
A Growing Industry Friction
This situation highlights a recurring tension for small independent studios navigating the digital marketplace. Dicehit Games' frustration follows recent reports of other developers struggling with Steam refund policies and unauthorized key distribution. By explicitly choosing to endorse piracy over supporting resale platforms, the team is attempting to devalue the business model of sites that profit from their promotional inventory.