In the horror game Friday the 13th, the assistant of a distributor partner of the publisher probably stole special keys from the Kickstarter campaign. With that, he made several thousand dollars in profit over months!
Those who supported the horror survival game Friday the 13th as Kickstarter backers received a special thank you from the developers in the form of a special skin for the killer Jason. This “Savini Jason” was otherwise not available in the game and was meant to be exclusively for the Kickstarter pioneers as a reward for their loyalty and trust.
Of course, there were players who sold their codes for the Savini skin on eBay and made a good profit. The codes sometimes sold for $180. But when a seller on eBay offered this skin in large quantities, a Reddit user took notice.
Where do all the codes come from?
The Reddit user JasonsThrowaway13 discovered that a certain seller on eBay had been selling these Savini skins as codes for months.
The price averaged $100 per piece. For JasonsThrowaway13, it was clear that something was not right, but the codes seemed genuine. No buyer had complained about fake codes yet; rather, the customers praised the great eBay seller.
So he suspected that an employee at the developers or the publisher Gun Media was behind it. He posted the results of his research online on Reddit and found out, among other things, that the company Limited Run Games, a distribution partner of the publisher Gun Media, must have been involved.
The eBay seller had indeed offered more codes, all of which came from the repertoire of this company. In total, according to another Reddit user, he must have sold so many codes that he likely earned about $23,000, which is 18,450€.
It was the assistant!
Meanwhile, developers and publishers also became aware of the matter and conducted their own investigations. Soon, Gun Media announced that there was probably a leak at one of the distribution partners and that the codes came from there.
It is now also clear that it really was Limited Run Games. According to the company, a rogue assistant is indeed the culprit. They had employed temporary workers in the past to manage the workload. But as thefts increased, they stopped hiring such temporary employees in December 2017.
Since then, the “anomalies” with the game inventory have declined as well. They now have a dedicated, permanent sales team. The perpetrator must therefore have been one of these temporary workers. Unfortunately, they cannot say who exactly it was. Limited Run Games trusted all employees and did not expect such actions.
In the gaming world, there are always clever fraudsters and scoundrels. A fake café was even opened to grab free game keys.
