The issue_key always issues key even it developer is not registered. The correct behaviour is to fail with 404 or bad request.
curl -vvv localhost:4001/plugins/auth_key/issue_key \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"developer_id": "d8d63fd0-3987-48dc-9ac2-2f2f5fe49e92"}'