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PayPalG2A, the key reseller that isn't particularly liked by most game developers is having some time in the spotlight and as usual, it's not for good reasons.
They have a bit of a history with developers, something I've written about before and even the first comment on that article was about keys being revoked that were purchased from G2A. They're a very shady company and I shall continue to urge people to support developers and shop elsewhere. You would think after Gearbox pulled the plug on their deal with G2A, that lessons would have been learned but it appears not.
So why are they back in the spotlight now? G2A decided to take out sponsored adverts on Google so that they show above more legitimate sources, as noted by Mike Rose on Twitter from the publisher No More Robots. Rose urged people to just pirate the game instead of buying on G2A, as game developers see nothing from G2A. Developer RageSquid, who made Descenders (published by No More Robots) also jumped in to say the same on Twitter "Please torrent our games instead of buying them on G2A". The situation gets then even murkier when Rose goes on to explain (Twitter thread) how some games end up on G2A and it's not pretty but it boils down to this:
- Someone sells a copy of a game using dodgy links and "Steam Gifts", waits until the game is in their account and they're happy
- At that point, they have plenty of options regarding how to kill that key and not pay for it
They're not alone in this feeling. Rami Ismail of Vlambeer also mentioned on Twitter:
If you can't afford or don't want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller. These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more.
Even Fork Parker, the Chief Financial Officer at Devolver Digital chimed in on Twitter to say:
G2A is getting a lot of flak lately but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a garbage company.
Then we have Gwennaël Arbona, the developer of Helium Rain, who also jumped in to say:
Our game has never been offered on giveaway or wholesale, but you still did not take it down, despite our multiple demands.
Further Twitter posts from Arbona also note how they reached out to G2A back in November last year but are still waiting on responses. The list of developers complaining about G2A just goes on and on.
G2A has recently put up a blog post to claim they will bring in a "reputable and independent auditing company" who will look over claims of fraud. G2A also said they will pay developers "10 times the money they lost on chargebacks after their illegally obtained keys were sold on G2A". Their team also took to Twitter themselves, to say:
Let's say that petition goes and G2A decides to stop selling any indie game. "Nature abhors a vacuum". Sellers would move to the next platforms (there is like 20 of them) and then to Ebay and other marketplaces.
They're clearly aware there's an issue, but part of their argument seems to be that if they didn't offer this "service" someone else would. Not exactly a good foundation to an argument. Remember, this is the company that charges people every month, if they don't login to their account regularly! Yes, they still do that.
What's also brilliant is that G2A seem to be asking people to publish their "unbiased" article for payment, yet not mentioning that it's sponsored which is probably against some advertising laws, as well as being incredibly immoral and only continues to show how shady they are willing to be.
So now it has resulted in Rose from No More Robots creating a petition to ask game developers to sign their name to get G2A to stop selling indie games, since they're one of the most affected by it. The petition has so far managed to reach over three thousand signatures.
If you're wondering why things like the Humble Indie Bundle are a lot rarer now, websites like G2A are part of the reason. Too many developers worried about people mass-buying keys to sell on G2A, causing their games to be devalued over a very long time.
Updated after publishing, to add in a note about how G2A are trying to pay people to publish their article.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Seems to be the only way to make sure you're not getting ripped off eventually as a developer. Well, short of only selling on a single platform, that is.
G2A (and other grey market sites) are not the problem, they are a symptom.
A symptom of what?
The problem of bundles?
The problem of the possibility to resell keys?
The problem of people being greedy?
I was under the impression that a site like G2A is involved with reselling unwanted game keys. You buy a bundle somewhere, you already own one game in that bundle and so the key is useless to you. You put the key on a site like G2A for a small sum back. It doesn't seem "so bad" viewed that way.
But the thing is, there are also lots of keys acquired fraudulently which are sold on the same site, and then an unwitting gamer buys a fraudulent key for what seems to be a bargain, adds it to their steam account and it gets activated. Then a few days later, it gets revoked by the developers. So the cheap game you've just bought - Well, it's just money down the drain instead.
A symptom of what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ4t7pRyjE
:P
But seriously, G2A is garbage. The whole system might be flawed, but that doesn't change that G2A is actively harming people.
What's also brilliant, is that G2A seem to be asking people to publish their "unbiased" article for payment, while also not mentioning it's sponsored which is probably against some advertising laws, as well as being incredibly immoral and only continues to show how shady they are willing to be.
G2A (and other grey market sites) are not the problem, they are a symptom. The whole system is flawed and G2A are simply taking advantage of it. This misdirected anger will ultimately solve nothing.
What system is that? I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely curious. Are you talking about how G2A takes advantage of game keys being purchased by stolen credit cards? I hope not, because perpetuating the problem would be just as bad.
From where I'm standing, it looks like G2A has a history of shady business practices, ignoring their customers and devs whose keys they sell and when they don't, they come off as arrogant and flippant. They also got in hot water with not one, not two, but three separate game companies: Riot, tinyBuild (twice) and Gearbox. That's not a good look, no matter how you slice it.
Also there are probably some legal sources on G2A, where people just want to sell their unused keys. But yeah, there is also a huge amount of fraudulent keys on it, and that's what hurts the devs. I don't know how much effort it is, to implement a system that checks more or less automatically if a key is valid, but it can't be rocket science.
Heck, from a friend I know whose key got revoked he got even his money back from G2A. They want to be on the market and deliver good service, so it can't be so hard for them to make sure devs don't make a huge loss. Don't get me wrong, I know key sellers are shady and I am buying my stuff from authorized resellers. But people also want to buy games for cheap, some even can't afford anything near full price, so they are looking for cheap prices. Unfortunately they mostly end up with G2A... that's how the free market works. Is all we can do just to urge people not to buy there?
I thougth though that with all the steam, humble, gog, gamesplanet, etc. sales those keysellers would have a hard time... but looks like it still can get cheaper.
I was under the impression that a site like G2A is involved with reselling unwanted game keys. You buy a bundle somewhere, you already own one game in that bundle and so the key is useless to you. You put the key on a site like G2A for a small sum back. It doesn't seem "so bad" viewed that way.
Then limiting the number of keys of the same game one account can resell per month should greatly mitigate the issue.
But the real issue is how Credit Card circuits works. If transaction fees were charged to the users instead of the sellers there would never be any problem (also: there would be more transparency on which circuit is the most efficient/convenient).
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
(Not talking lootboxes and nonsense into account here..)
In my humble opionion, most games are way too cheap.
In the 90ies, a game usually costed 100 german marks.
With inflation, this translated to 83 euros / 93 dollars.
Back then a game was made by, dunno, a handful or two of people?
Nowadays, even productions by hundreds of people cannot ask for 90 dollars.
And productions by a handful of people are often condemned if they take more than 20 dollars...
Isn't that petition a little silly? Like, even if we assume games are either Indie or AAA, and they have a sure-fire way to differentiate between them to justify the 8% number, if they abide to this plead they will be explicitly acknowledging their damage to the gaming ecosystem, which would be a really bad press.They're practically acknowledging it already with their blog post, twitter posts and attempts to pay writers to post it too.
Comandante Ñoñardo Jul 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/SomeIndieGames/status/1148201687141756928?s=19
Keep that spotlight on. It looks like G2A isn't quite done making asses of themselves again:Already in the article, slowpoke :P
https://twitter.com/SomeIndieGames/status/1148201687141756928?s=19
I'll continue to never buy anything from these morons.
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
(Not talking lootboxes and nonsense into account here..)
In my humble opionion, most games are way too cheap.
In the 90ies, a game usually costed 100 german marks.
With inflation, this translated to 83 euros / 93 dollars.
Back then a game was made by, dunno, a handful or two of people?
Nowadays, even productions by hundreds of people cannot ask for 90 dollars.
And productions by a handful of people are often condemned if they take more than 20 dollars...
If you where lucky back then you could afford one game per year, so the many hours we spent as kids looking at the backsides of games in the store so not to end up with the shitty game for the whole next year. O boy have the times changed, and then there are plenty of people crying all over the steam forums that 9$ for a game is a rip-off... Sometimes the old grumpy me wants to smack those kids on the head and tell them to get off my lawn!
I was under the impression that a site like G2A is involved with reselling unwanted game keys. You buy a bundle somewhere, you already own one game in that bundle and so the key is useless to you. You put the key on a site like G2A for a small sum back. It doesn't seem "so bad" viewed that way.
Then limiting the number of keys of the same game one account can resell per month should greatly mitigate the issue.
It would be easier to do a key cold-down time. Of course, this would only work with fraudulent key acquisition, for beta or press keys there isn't an easy solution without a key validation system (but at least, that would isolate fraud to G2A users that bought the key) .
In the current state, buying keys from G2A is the same as buying car parts from unauthorized re-sellers; in the end you could be part of a credit card fraud operation.
orochi_kyo Jul 8, 2019
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
This argument could work in the 90s, but it is not as easy to steal a physical disk or a cassette than a key.
The problem you explained is already solved, if DLCs and lootboxes annoys you, dont buy those games and get some other games. Even some AAA games are way too cheap on sales.
We are almost at 2020 and we have stores with local currencies and local payment methods, stop justifying this trash and trying to sound smart about it. G2A is as trash as it users and defenders.
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
This argument could work in the 90s, but it is not as easy to steal a physical disk or a cassette than a key.
The problem you explained is already solved, if DLCs and lootboxes annoys you, dont buy those games and get some other games. Even some AAA games are way too cheap on sales.
We are almost at 2020 and we have stores with local currencies and local payment methods, stop justifying this trash and trying to sound smart about it. G2A is as trash as it users and defenders.
Funny thing is that the devs ask users to do the same that most of us (the poor kids) did in the 90s. So yes, it's not like the 90's 00's piracy problem, is more a problem of how they have to deal with the steal charges and that G2A just associates with the robbers.
From my point of view, some of the devs complaints helps me once again to justify Steam 30% cut (supposing that Steam deals with the credit card charge-backs and game deactivation).
G2A (and other grey market sites) are not the problem, they are a symptom.
A symptom of what?
The problem of bundles?
The problem of the possibility to resell keys?
The problem of people being greedy?
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
It has always been, at least in the US since the 90s, that physical $60 games come down to $20 or less in a year or two. I don't see nearly such a reduction in price for digital games. Also, with physical games, there has always been a used games market. So, one could argue that developers are able to make higher profits over the long term with digital games as compared to decades past.
And so, one can see an impetus to finding alternative ways to obtain games at what used to be reasonable prices. Further assisting in this endeavor is the continued failure of the credit card industry to secure their systems from such rampant fraud.
I'd love to see Steam allow selling and reselling keys as often as you like. If they already have the ability to take away one's access to a game after verifying a fraudulent purchase, then they should be able to manage the hand off of a used game from one owner to the next.
Comandante Ñoñardo Jul 8, 2019
The video game market is broken as shit. You have publishers gouging money from gamers everywhere you turn, so people turn to other sources in order to buy games for less. Its been happening for decades. Remember when copied games were sold in the market for a fraction of the retail price?
(Not talking lootboxes and nonsense into account here..)
In my humble opionion, most games are way too cheap.
In the 90ies, a game usually costed 100 german marks.
With inflation, this translated to 83 euros / 93 dollars.
Back then a game was made by, dunno, a handful or two of people?
Nowadays, even productions by hundreds of people cannot ask for 90 dollars.
And productions by a handful of people are often condemned if they take more than 20 dollars...
If you where lucky back then you could afford one game per year, so the many hours we spent as kids looking at the backsides of games in the store so not to end up with the shitty game for the whole next year. O boy have the times changed, and then there are plenty of people crying all over the steam forums that 9$ for a game is a rip-off... Sometimes the old grumpy me wants to smack those kids on the head and tell them to get off my lawn!
But, remember that in the 90's it wasn't necessary to buy the games for to play them. We were able to RENT games for consoles like Sega Genesis, SNES and playstation Cd's, etc..
And We were able to rent games for computers with MSDOS, totally DRMFREE in Cd's, or even Floppy disks.
I miss that freedom!
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