People are just scumbags when you try to get in their way of profit :/ I commend you though for trying to dissuade someone from taking advantage of someone else
While true, I just don't know why even the people who aren't trying to rip others off are against me here.
I think it is up to the seller to put a price on all their items. Some people may have bought their keys somewhere and later on the key was given for free. I myself was a prime example. I end up giving away free keys which I paid for them.
Though I must admit some sellers are simply looking for profits and prey on inexperienced or gullible traders but I don't blame sellers for selling overpriced items. I blame buyers for not using the SEARCH feature and look for a better deal.
I think the biggest scumbags are people who scams traders of their games and impersonating others for their own ill-gotten gain.
It's typically pretty obvious if someone got the key free.
You...don't blame sellers for preying on new traders? I feel like there's a bit of an issue there.
The biggest scumbags that you're talking about are doing actual bannable acts.
You do know what "in less precise usage" means right? It means people call it price gouging even though it really isn't. For one thing, price gouging tends to be about necessities-especially when you're the only source. It's not a scam. People being price gouged are well aware they're being ripped off.
BTW this is a place where, thanks to standard market practices, Russian, Brazilian, etc. traders can come in and massively undercut people from the rest of the world and this is considered fair. Regardless, games here often sell well BELOW their standard market price. This is also a place where self-entitled assholes think that just because someone else got a deal on something, they deserve to get one too.
So, let me ask, who're you to dictate what other people charge?
"in less precise usage" means that it won't hold up in a court of law. When a term is commonly used for a specific definition by most people, that definition is added to the word. A fun, very regrettable, example of this is the word "selfie" which is actually an English word now. If you really want to be technical about it, what's being done here is profiteering and sharking, but price gouging is a far more recognizable term.
I'm going to just ignore your second paragraph, because, frankly, it has nothing to do with this topic.
I'm not the one who needs to dictate prices. We as a community just need to put our foot down when we see shitty ones.
No my second paragraph is the point of my post. Steam trades prices are usually BELOW market price.
Just because a game goes on sale somewhere or because Russians can get the game for $20 less or because it was in a bundle does not make it price gouging to charge the ACTUAL market price. For example, the market price for Bioshock is close to $20. If you buy it from someone for $10, you're still getting a deal even though you could probably get it significantly less somewhere else.
What makes something price gouging is the lack of alternatives. Here if you don't like someone's prices, you just buy from someone else. That just means someone has it overpriced--nothing more. It also means they probably don't sell very much.
Price gouging is a form of scamming people. Why do people keep allowing it to happen on this site? In fact, it seems like people encourage it. Sure, a lot of people just go "oh that price sucks" and leave the thread immediately. Then someone else comes along and gets ripped off. Why is this okay?
It's a well known fact that we essentially don't have mods for this site. We definitely don't have any active mods. That means that when something is wrong, we can't rely on a mod to step in an delete the offending post and suspend/ban the user who posted it. The only people I see posting how things are overpriced are when I make a minorly reaching post like [H] key [W] list of games saled around 3$.
People were happy to jump on that as a bad deal. Yet here I am getting admonished for pointing out that charging a key for a UPlay key that you can get for free is flat out highway robbery. What the hell? Why are we letting shit like this go on?
For anyone who believes the things I'm referring to are not price gouging, here's this from Wikipedia: "Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities at a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair." "In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a crime that applies in some of the United States during civil emergencies. In less precise usage, it can refer either to prices obtained by practices inconsistent with a competitive free market, or to windfall profits."