After discovering that 7,050 Steam keys for Sniper Elite III were stolen from PC distributors, and then re-sold to unaware buyers, Steam and developer Rebellion cancelled the keys.

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The unsuspecting customers who bought any of the keys have been told to seek a refund from their sellers, and may have to purchase Sniper Elite III again. Rebellion posted a list of retailers that were unaffected on the Steam discussion page where the cancellations were first announced. As of this writing, there are 744 comments on the post."To clarify, one of our PC retail distributors informed us that some of their allotted Steam keys were stolen," the developer writes. "We believe these keys were then resold to multiple companies, with no payments going to either Valve or the retail distributor."The affected customers will, however, receive the "Target Hitler" DLC for free. Rebellion posted a set of instructions for anyone attempting to download the compensatory content –– the customer needs to provide a receipt and the original blocked Steam key before July 4 in order to do so."We appreciate that some people are upset, this is exactly why we wanted to make this offer to gamers who’ve been affected through no fault of their own." Rebellion writes.Commenters on the Steam page and Rebellion's Facebook page are angry, saying they shouldn't be paying for something that wasn't their fault. As of now, Rebellion has made no comment as to the specific retailers or distributors affected by the announced thefts.IGN has reached out to Rebellion for further comment, and will update this story with any new information.

Mike Mahardy is a freelance writer for IGN. To hear him rant about Wes Anderson and Kurt Vonnegut, you can follow Mike on Twitter