Originally posted by Shadow-79:

the only legit alternatives are Fanatical or Green Man

Incorrect. There are a few. IsThereAnyDeal aggregates them.

https://isthereanydeal.com/

Humble Bundle is also legit (you don’t have to subscribe to the monthly bundle to buy individual games). Can vouch for them & especially Fanatical. Have never used any other key sites, personally.

I never had an issue with Kinguin or CJs but I havent used either in quite a number of years at this point.

Gray market have risks, as there two kind of sites, 1st kind is where site sell keys themselves as they buy bulk keys from other sites, and peoples via private deal example CDKeys/Loaded, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, or etc, and 2nd kind is where site allow people to sell via their site like it eBay, example G2A, Kinguin, or etc.

For legit Retailers that deals with Devs/Publishers directly you find most of them here on this tool site. https://isthereanydeal.com/ most popular sites are humble bundle, fanatical, greenmangaming, and etc...

There's nothing wrong with buying stuff on the gray market, but the problem is that a lot of these so-called "gray market" websites are actually black markets (unauthorized reseller = gray market, stolen goods = black market). If you buy from them, you may get screwed. Or maybe not. Who knows. I personally would just stick to authorized resellers, though.

Originally posted by matt:

There's nothing wrong with buying stuff on the gray market, but the problem is that a lot of these so-called "gray market" websites are actually black markets (unauthorized reseller = gray market, stolen goods = black market). If you buy from them, you may get screwed. Or maybe not. Who knows. I personally would just stick to authorized resellers, though.

Yea and they probably selling your information to a information broker on the black web.

Originally posted by matt:

There's nothing wrong with buying stuff on the gray market, but the problem is that a lot of these so-called "gray market" websites are actually black markets (unauthorized reseller = gray market, stolen goods = black market). If you buy from them, you may get screwed. Or maybe not. Who knows. I personally would just stick to authorized resellers, though.

Yes risks with gray market sites in this scenario, you never know if encounter scammer, until you try out the key, which it will either work, or not. Support on gray market sites tend be very demanding up front, asking for screenshot of proof showing account activaition page, and time of date with error, and sometimes they may not exchange it if it a very pricey game, and limited supply, which smaller chance getting refund as credit, or refund back to how you paid.

There one, or two gray market sites testing waters doing broswer addon, the one I tried is eneba where the broswer addon requires you to login into steam beforehand, and then go to their site to using their addon to auto redeem for you which doesn't display key to you, and if it detect used, or error it automatically deem you a refund. And yeah IT SOUNDS pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sketchy not going lie, I tested the app, which seem safe, but don't take my word on this to getting it, as I only tested during time over month ago, so I wouldn't know if they make changes in the future if it becomes a problem, as I don't like addons that make changes, or control things for me without me knowing exactly what it doing.