It's likely because I use DNS-level blocking for a lot of junk and their "widget failed to load" was likely caught in that "junk" list. And the "widget" loader is badly (on purpose?) behaved and blanks the page.
I just read that article and while using stolen cards to buy keys is briefly mentioned in the first paragraph, that doesn't even seem to be the focus of the article.
On the surface, if a game developer generates and sells keys directly, they will always have to deal with fraud. It's a fact of life in ecomm. The fact that the keys are being flipped to a key reseller is beside the point, they will have to deal with the fraud. If they are giving away blocks of keys for free or highly discounted and those are making their way to a reseller, that is also something they need to deal with. They should be able to trace the providence of any given key they have issued. If they have commercial agreements in place about the disposition of keys from a batch and they can demonstrate that the batch was misused, that's a commercial contract dispute they need to solve.
I'm going to guess that most of these devs are using Steam to distribute their game and using their ability to generate keys they can sell. This, as far as I understand things, side-steps the Steam cut of a sale. If Steam is the one facilitating the sale, guess who is the merchant of record and deals with the charge-back.
Other than the dev selling a key directly and getting hit with a chargeback, if they are getting $0 in revenue from a key, that's their own fault for providing a key for free. If they didn't provide the key for free, then they would have had revenue. As for direct sales... they are in a better spot than merchants of physical goods. Those merchants not only lose the revenue and other aspects of devs, they physically are out the product. A dev can at least revoke the key.
I'll just close this out with, I don't buy from key resell sites as I find them less than reputable in most cases.
I just read that article and while using stolen cards to buy keys is briefly mentioned in the first paragraph, that doesn't even seem to be the focus of the article.
On the surface, if a game developer generates and sells keys directly, they will always have to deal with fraud. It's a fact of life in ecomm. The fact that the keys are being flipped to a key reseller is beside the point, they will have to deal with the fraud. If they are giving away blocks of keys for free or highly discounted and those are making their way to a reseller, that is also something they need to deal with. They should be able to trace the providence of any given key they have issued. If they have commercial agreements in place about the disposition of keys from a batch and they can demonstrate that the batch was misused, that's a commercial contract dispute they need to solve.
I'm going to guess that most of these devs are using Steam to distribute their game and using their ability to generate keys they can sell. This, as far as I understand things, side-steps the Steam cut of a sale. If Steam is the one facilitating the sale, guess who is the merchant of record and deals with the charge-back.
Other than the dev selling a key directly and getting hit with a chargeback, if they are getting $0 in revenue from a key, that's their own fault for providing a key for free. If they didn't provide the key for free, then they would have had revenue. As for direct sales... they are in a better spot than merchants of physical goods. Those merchants not only lose the revenue and other aspects of devs, they physically are out the product. A dev can at least revoke the key.
I'll just close this out with, I don't buy from key resell sites as I find them less than reputable in most cases.