Pixel Empire sells “mystery boxes” of Steam codes. On the same website where they review video games and tell indie developers to get in touch with them in order to get exposure. They claim (in their recent statement) these codes come from g2a, which has come under fire in the past for concerns in regarding to second-hand game selling.

That’s a system ripe for abuse. The buyer has no means of knowing the methodology in which Pixel Empire uses to put together these Mystery Boxes. They could be selling keys that indie developers send them as review codes. It’s entirely possible that the website arranges deals with developers to have their titles show up more frequently in these packages.

The fact that such a thought is pondered in the first place means something is terribly wrong there. A media outlet having financial ties to the subjects they report on is something that’s been frowned upon in recent years. It’s not pure speculation, either. Cementing this fact is another piece of important evidence. Pixel Empire runs a website called InkFire, which sells “Indie Game Website” for £200.00.

“Did you know that we run an indie game blog called Pixel Empire UK (www.pixelempire.co.uk)? Well, following the success of this, we would like to offer a 20% discount for our website design service/packages aimed at Indie Games,” they write.

If you’re under the impression that Pixel Empire would be able to separate their business ventures here, you’d be wrong.

“BONUS: We will throw in a blog post on our Pixel Empire website as well! Our magazine has 3000 monthly visitors so it is highly likely you will make the money back in no time!,” they add at the bottom of the page.

They advertised this deal on their Pixel Empire Facebook page. The same page they would later claim to a group of angry Indie writers that they “do not earn any money” from.

Pixel Empire would go on to publish an apology for this situation.

To boil it down, according to them: the situation itself was a result of the duo becoming more focused on their personal life. Pixel Empire claims they had good intentions with their automation, that it was meant to “spread the message” for indie gaming.

We would first like to mention that it is true that we performed the act of reposting, however it was out of interest to spread indie games.

There’s reasons to doubt the authenticity of this statement, as what they define as reposting is unclear. There’s the “reposting” of articles word-for-word, which we discussed previously. But the Pixel Empire Facebook page also has instances of directly linking news stories to their website of origin. That is to say — cutting out the middleman of themselves. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

According to their sister site InkFire ”Everything we write and deliver is 100% original content. We NEVER copy, paste or spin content, this is degrading practice done by many other copywriters that should be avoided as it is detrimental for SEO,” they say on their services page.

Pixel Empire goes on to acknowledge they see people were concerned with their monetization methods of reselling Steam keys and selling coverage, and that they had a delay in removing them. The furthest they go in apologizing for their initial response was calling their execution “slightly crude,” simply. That initial response which insulted the intelligence and passion of indie game writers, telling them to “deal with their problem,” with a winking emoticon.

Their statement claims they don’t resell codes, but that they give them out for free in giveaways. Pixel Empire says they won’t give out developer’s names, but then directs people to their Twitter account to dig the names of giveaway code recipients. They tell us they’re attempting to contact some of the developers involved in order to try and clear their own name as a media website.

Then they briefly mention the mystery boxes, telling us that g2a was their source for that.

If you look back to the Pixel Empire Facebook page, they discuss this point a bit further. The archive cuts the full statement off, but here it is:

False accusations coming from Kotaku regarding Pixel Empire. WE DO NOT resell codes, we resell codes coming from G2A and YES this was an attempt to make more money. BUT GUESS WHAT, WE SOLD NONE, NADA NOTHING. We live in the real world, if you are bold enough to accuse then you should be bold enough to put forth evidence. We highly recommend Kotaku to put some evidence forward before sending false accusations. It’s very unfortunately a program that was put forth with good will has been put down to such a level by peasant greed by the infamous Kotaku.

So to sum this up. When it comes to the accusation of reselling Steam codes — they don’t resell codes, they resell codes coming from G2A.

When it comes to the permanent damage vs temporary damage section, they claim they get “200 hits a week max,” at that. But if you look back to the InkFire page where they literally sell Indie Game Websites, they advertise that Pixel Empire has 3000 monthly visitors. That discrepancy brings doubt as to the actual traffic numbers, and is considered false advertising.

Pixel Empire goes on to lament the negative response from social media, and claims they were falsely accused of reselling steam codes (which they seriously said they resold from G2A).

Accusing Kotaku of bandwagoning, Pixel Empire never addresses the concern of the fact they sold coverage via InkFire at any point. The rest of the post reiterates Pixel Empire doesn’t earn any money according to them. They defend themselves by claiming they produce their own original material, yet we have no clue as to which is which. They close by claiming to love indie gaming and the developers, say they didn’t mean to cause harm, and apologize to the people that were affected by their controversy.

The core of their statement is based on the idea they had a genuine love of indie gaming. However Pixel Empire’s Byron has multiple website domains set-up under one of his whois registries. Which are apparently associated with his InkFire operation.