A digital gaming convention named Endix became an opportunity for key resellers to exploit. During the November 2025 event, certain users realized how easily they could get games to sell on gray market websites. This unfortunate vulnerability, while potentially short-lived, especially harms indie developers. One example among many includes Race Jam, which is currently on a gray market for $1.79. Despite normally going for $19.99 on Steam.
We’ve spoken briefly with the developer behind Race Jam and learned that they were unaware of the exploit, similar to others we’ve contacted. While they only sent the Endix team eight keys to give away, it’s tough to know where those ended up. A different developer who participated in the event also believes their keys were listed on the key reselling website, Kinguin.
Part of the problem is that it’s difficult to confirm each key’s origin without buying it first. However, we checked every game available in the Steam Endix Showcase and found 22 are on Kinguin. Several of which have been available for some time now, meaning it’s possible key resellers acquired them through other means. Regardless, this points to an overall problem with gray markets that, unfortunately, isn’t a new one.
Aside from undercutting developers, there’s always the worry of how sellers are acquiring these keys. This can be via stolen credit cards, scams, and other nefarious methods. Then, when something goes wrong or a game is revoked, this backlash can fall on the developer. Which doesn’t even begin to get into the time wasted when developers have to verify every key request. As Robby Bisschop of Pirate PR put it,
“It’s a huge time sink. Imagine if we could just approve every request we get, because they are all legit. We’d save a lot of time not having to investigate every request.”
On top of this, people are less likely to buy a game at full price or even at a discount when it’s sold for practically nothing. While verifying which Endix games key resellers were listing, we also noticed rampant deceptive pricing. For example, one seller increased the retail price of Moros Protocol to deceptively create a larger discount. This is against the FTC in many U.S. states as a form of false advertising. However, in the case of Kinguin, they’re based in China.
Speaking with the publisher behind Moros Protocol, Super Rare Games, they were also unaware of the issue, but believe their codes are not connected to Kinguin. When asked if they distribute any keys to the website, Daniel McGrath of Super Rare Games stated, “We do not sell our games directly on Kinguin or provide codes for the purpose of selling on Kinguin.” With that said, we noticed many of its games are on the website, including one for as low as 25 cents.
The problem of key resellers and gray markets is far from one that a small digital gaming convention can fix. But after noticing suspicious activity, the Endix creators were able to halt it and plan safeguards for their next event. Due to how this convention works, anyone could participate for a chance to get one of over a thousand games.
Theo from the PR side of Endix explained the questionable activity to us after seeing a player surge, “We noticed a pattern: accounts with default avatars (despite Endix having full character customization), strange auto-generated names, and behavior that suggested they were jumping straight to key-claiming terminals.”
While Theo can’t confirm how many keys were maliciously gotten, he did say, “that around 50 accounts had temp emails.” This led to some developers revoking keys and at least one content creator allegedly losing access. Going forward, Theo explained how they plan to prevent this from happening at future events,
“For the next event, we’re planning several improvements, including time-based participation barriers, so that anyone who wants to receive a key needs to spend time actually experiencing Endix.”
This may not stop every key reseller, but it’s bound to at least make it a more involved process that many may not bother with. The next Endix event is currently planned for Spring 2026, for those interested in learning more about it.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.