Steam Sale Exhausts Risen Keys, Nerds Rage

This weekend’s Steam deal proved alarmingly popular. Risen, a slightly old-school RPG from Piranha Bytes, was discounted by half selling for only $15. Apparently this was TOO good a deal, because players started getting errors on Friday, signifying that the server had run out of authentication keys for players.

While I can understand that it sucks to drop money on a game only to see an error message, the thread on Steampowered Forums absolutely runneth over with nerd rage. Choice quotes include “I’m just disgusted. AFK while I emo,” “these inconveniences are unforgivable because they’re just unnecessary obstacles that mess with the customer experience,” and “they sold something they have no business selling.” Most of the complaints revolve around having no warning that the game might be out of keys, which is reasonable.

A spokesperson from Risen publisher Deep Silver acknowledged the issue on the Deep Silver forums yesterday.

“On the one hand we’re very happy that you decided to buy the game since this shows us that Piranha Bytes and we did the right thing by investing a lot of time to get a fantastic game,” the spokesperson said. “On the other hand it forces me to beg you for your patience until we finished the ‘quest for the missing keys.’”

The spokesperson asks for patience and warns against trying to circumvent Steam’s copy protection, which is a violation of the terms of service. Is this unforgivably unjust or understandably annoying? Probably depends on how much you wanted to play Risen.

[via SteamPowered, Deep Silver Forums]