Frostpunk 2 doesn’t yet have a release date, price or age rating, but that’s not stopping Kinguin from distributing it.

Frostpunk 2 was announced a week ago with a grim teaser, a brief synopsis of the new environment – no coal, no oil – and no release date. 11 Bit Studios warned that the game is still “pretty much in early development” and is probably a long way from completion. However, this hasn’t stopped online retailer Kinguin from offering “pre-orderable Steam CD keys” for sale, to which 11 Bit responded quite strongly by urging fans NOT to buy these keys.

The keys are being sold by G2A, which is part of Kinguin – the two merged in 2020 – and both sites include a notice that the purchase is strictly pre-order and that the keys will only be available after the game’s release when it is. The keys are currently available for $47 on CDN, which equates to about $40 US – perhaps not unreasonable, but utterly arbitrary given that the manufacturer hasn’t even said a price for the game yet.

11 Bit Studios noted this point in their response. “We don’t know the price of our game yet, no keys,” the studio tweeted. “Some SHITBAG is selling Frostpunk 2 for pre-order under the umbrella of another company, Kinguin?! Retweet us and let’s make some noise to stop it“.

ANNOUNCEMENT!
We don't know the price of our game yet, we don't have any keys. Some SHITTY SCAMMER sells Frostpunk 2 on pre-order under umbrella of another CROOK Kinguin?!
Re-tweet & let's make some noise to stop it. Media folks?@gameinformer @pcgamer @eurogamer @gamestar_de pic.twitter.com/sx7uX6sciq

— Frostpunk 2 ❄ (@frostpunkgame) August 19, 2021

“As a further addendum to our announcement about the cheaters – they have a PEGI rating while we don’t even know what we’re getting yet(!), and they embedded our trailer from the Epic Games Store; meanwhile, they’re ‘selling Steam keys’ on pre-order. Sorry, but this is ridiculous.”

Just for the record, the trailer says Frostpunk 2 will be available on Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG. Kinguin is a “key reseller,” a digital marketplace where anyone can sell game keys. Resellers can be a bit of a wild west: they offer a way for people to earn a few bucks on spare keys they’ve acquired in a Humble Bundle bundle, for example, but they’re also open to less unscrupulous behaviour.

G2A is probably the most notorious of the bunch: they’ve been accused of cheating by studios like Gearbox, TinyBuild and Unknown Worlds, and other indie developers have gone as far as asking cheapskates to pirate their games rather than buy them from a retailer (they can be pretty desperate – ed.).

This particular situation is dubious at best: the listing says the keys will be “available at game launch”, but that’s years away – even according to creator 11 Bit Studios – and since the price is not specified, people will likely end up paying more through Kingui than they would if they went straight to Steam or Epic. This is an attempt to take advantage of people who are not paying attention or simply don’t know how it works these days.

“We have used bitter words, but not without reason; they are technically selling something that doesn’t exist,” 11 Bit Studios said in a statement. “We certainly have access to the game in its current state for internal testing, but we do not generate keys that can be sold, redeemed, and used by players to access the game.”

“Most importantly, we haven’t even launched a pre-order campaign yet. This means that the false information that Kinguin is publishing could cause a lot of trouble when Frostpunk 2 is officially available for purchase. This could include backlash against us regarding Kinguin pre-orders and the price Kinguin got for the game off the air if our official pre-order price is different. We could also get complaints from people who just bought those non-existent keys from Kinguin and then have problems later on with whether they work.”

No counter for gold men!

11 Bit Studios said it would like to see an industry-wide crackdown on this kind of thing, and in the meantime, they may try to get the Frostpunk 2 pre-order page deleted. “But they will probably just ignore us as they do with other games,” they said. “Any legal action could be tough as they are – probably with good reason – a Hong Kong registered company.

Kinguin’s acting CEO and CFO Brandon Doerfler denied in a statement issued on August 19 that the retailer had done anything wrong and said the listing had been changed to make it more transparent that it was only a pre-order.

“We know there’s a lot of excitement around the upcoming release of Frostpunk 2, and we want to connect fans with the retailers who are offering the key,” Doerfler said. “We apologise for any unconfirmed information about Frostpunk 2 that appeared in the Kinguin.net listing. We have since removed this and made it clear to visitors to our site that the game is only available for pre-order,” the CEO retorted. Despite this, Frostpunk 2 Steam keys are still available online…

Source: PC Gamer