Well, hold on, while that industry is indeed scummy, Valve doesn’t ever see a cut of it, do they?
Valve allows developers to print their own Steam keys, and takes a 0% cut of them. Game devs use that opportunity to sell the keys to legitimate key sites, which take less of a cut than Steam does, but offer no refund guarantees or other support. Then, credit card thieves buy those keys using stolen cards, and resell them on illegitimate key sites.
So in summary, as long as Valve doesn’t take a cut on that key generation, they don’t directly profit. They just keep allowing key generation to allow game devs a bit more freedom in sale.
Well, hold on, while that industry is indeed scummy, Valve doesn’t ever see a cut of it, do they?
Valve allows developers to print their own Steam keys, and takes a 0% cut of them. Game devs use that opportunity to sell the keys to legitimate key sites, which take less of a cut than Steam does, but offer no refund guarantees or other support. Then, credit card thieves buy those keys using stolen cards, and resell them on illegitimate key sites.
So in summary, as long as Valve doesn’t take a cut on that key generation, they don’t directly profit. They just keep allowing key generation to allow game devs a bit more freedom in sale.