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You're continuing to make poor choices. PR and thinking about the future goes way further in business than the "now".
So we're urging you again, do a George Costanza, and do the opposite of what you think this time. It worked for him, it'll work for you. Because right now you, your game. your reputation and your company are being raked over the coals on many gaming websites, which are extremely important for indie devs, especially for word of mouth.
I don't know who you are trying to fool. Generating hundreds if not thousands of keys is as easy as clicking a button. Your excuse has no merit and is again full of lies and deceit. You are beyond redemption and your reputation will continue to be destroyed until you have nothing left.
You might as well just quit the gaming industry and become Phil Fish 2.0
Same with the 3rd key.
Haven't bothered creating a 4th account, so the 4th key would be trade territory.
What this person said. No matter how bad you think things are now, they will get worse if you don't honor those keys - regardless of whether or not that entails giving out a measly 200 extras. People seeing their friends playing the game and will bring awareness to it and might actually improve your sales, though at this point you'd have to perform a total about face and apologize profusely to not end up with so much bad PR that you are effectively blacklisted from the industry.
Indie games sell by word of mouth, and right now you have the worst word of mouth imaginable. If you just sit by and let yourself happen, you are damning your chances both of this game being successful and of you ever being able to make a successful game in your life. Plus, with how widely this story has spread and how much enmity there is toward you, you're running the risk of doxxing and death threats. For your own sake, you need to give people their keys. If you don't, an already bad situation will continue to spiral out of hand. If you think things can't get worse than they are now, you are so very very wrong, and I genuinely hope that you don't have to find out how bad this will be if you don't make amends immediately.
You may or may not be aware of this, but even if 200 "bonus" keys are out in the wild, that doesn't mean you've lost 200 sales. I'd bite the bullet and consider it advertising, or maybe even spin it as an "Oops, sorry for all the drama, here you go."
Something similar happened to GOG recently, where a pricing glitch caused thousands of free games to go out. They earned a lot of good will from the way they handled it[www.joystiq.com].
You know that you could've sold that many copies in an hour just through word of mouth had you actually given IR the keys to begin with?
Just... argh. ;_;
These things get heated because so many games have delivered bundle keys now in one way or another, and it's difficult for players to understand why it would be difficult for a developer to do what's already been done a hundred times before. However, there's a somewhat surprising number of developers who aren't really familiar with the way the community works. Perhaps this is because they've been too busy making their game to have time for that, or perhaps it's because they're here just to do business - but the best way to do business on Steam is to understand and embrace the community.
You're not the first dev to get things wrong and won't be the last, though this situation has gotten uglier than most and some damage has been done. Still, sorting things out and making a public apology could go a long way and can hopefully turn peoples attention away from the issues and to the game itself. :)
Jeez.
I'd say that's a simple solution.
Thoughts?
If it wasn't clear, I don't want that to happen to them either. The reason I mention it is because I'm expecting it to happen, not because I support the idea. No one deserves to get that treatment. But, unfortunately, it is one of the things that frequently happens when you tick off the denizens of the Internet, and the controversy surrounding this has gotten big. I'm not even one of the people who bought the Indie Royale bundle, I have no stake here.
That's actually a very good idea. Let me see if that's doable from the steam works back end.