The indie studio behind Runeveil isn’t exactly on good terms with key sellers right now.
Normally, video game piracy is a huge thorn in developers’ sides. That’s more than understandable, since it usually means they miss out on important sales. For small studios in particular, that makes a crucial difference.
But one such studio is now advising you to download its game illegally instead. At least,if the alternative is buying a cheap Steam key from a reseller website.
Steam keys that were actually free
Dicehit Games, which recently released its deck-builder Runeveil on Steam,they are reaching out to potential players on X. There, they write:
For those who don’t know: These sites [key resellers] sell the codes we’ve given out for free in order to get content for our game. We don’t receive any content this way, and our goodwill is being abused.
If one of our games is too expensive for you and you want to use a code site, then just pirate it [»just pirate it«].
For those who do not know, sites like this sell the codes we sent out for free to get content on our game. We don’t get any content, and our goodwill is being abused this way.
If any of our games are too expensive for you and you’re going to use a code site, just pirate it. https://t.co/xJM3YzJKvy
— dicehit games (@dicehitgames) August 10, 2026
The Runeveil keys that ended up on reseller sites did not come directly from Dicehit, but from sources that received free game codes. Dicehit distributed these to the press and content creators so they could, for example, draw attention to the game through videos and streams—not so the codes could be resold cheaply.
In a follow-up post, Dicehit goes into more detail. The studio isn’t interested in criticizing key sellers per se. Some developers sell key bundles to such sites to secure funding upfront. That’s perfectly fine, but Dicehit didn’t do that.
Nor is the developer suggesting that you should “pirate” every game; rather, in cases like this, it makes no difference to the studios because they don’t see any of the money anyway. Ultimately, of course, it’s always best to buy games directly from official stores.
Theoretically, it would be possible to manually deactivate individual keys, but the studio has deliberately decided against it. For one thing, because that would affect not the resellers, but the buyers who have a genuine interest in their game. For another, Dicehit consists of only four employees, and it would mean a lot of extra work to track every game version.
Ultimately, while the developers aren’t happy about game pirates, at least they don’t make them angry. People who profit from giving away game keys, on the other hand, certainly do.
