G2A, 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.
doomiebaby Jul 9, 2019
Quoting: GuestG2A (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.
i'm just gonna say it and let it sit here, unsupported because i won't write a book in a comments section: the IP system itself does not reflect reality, and resulting business models are screwed at a fundamental level. inb4 angry mobs. i have some theories about what the future holds, however... =P''
EDIT: i shouldn't have to say that this is not in defense of G2A whatsoever. shady Ayy Eff, as the kids say.
Last edited by doomiebaby on 9 July 2019 at 12:30 am UTC
doomiebaby Jul 9, 2019
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoBut, 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!
yeah, it wasn't perfect, but they were still much better times for consumers. remember when the game you bought was the game you were still playing years later, and wasn't patched into an entirely different experience from what you paid for? golly i miss being treated like a human being
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoQuoting: F.UltraQuoting: EikeQuoting: GuestThe 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!
Not back in the 80ies and early 90ies where I live (there might have been some NES games for rent in the later part of the 90ies in larger cities at the video stores however). Today however you can borrow PS2-4, XB360-One, Wii, WiiU, GameCube, DS and Switch games at our local library for free.
edit: some research shows that we indeed had NES rentals as early as 1987 in Sweden but this must have been in major cities only, I never saw one on the villages where I grew up.
edit2: seams to have been later than 1987, the company that did this was launched in 1987 but they only rented so called video boxes (VHS players) initially so I have no year of when they launched their NES rental business.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 9 July 2019 at 12:39 am UTC
Quoting: Maathwith physical games, there has always been a used games market.
This is one of the biggest reasons I don't like paying "full price" for digital games. Besides that, by the time I get around to playing them, they have usually been out for quite a while...
Quoting: Maaththe continued failure of the credit card industry to secure their systems from such rampant fraud.
They could care less about fraud, they screw either the consumer or the merchant, and get their transaction fees regardless.
Quoting: MaathI'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.
Sounds great to me!
However:
A) That forces the developers to become active, when it really should be done by the store runners (who won't do it, as it would lose them money).
But if you are an indie dev team with a handful of people, just how much time do you want to devote to unending email communication with some fraudster store? All of that takes time away from making or marketing your game. That's really stuff developers shouldn't have to deal with.
B) If something is illegal or not can be arbitrarily determined by the store. No matter how shady the devs point out a single person owning hundreds or dozens of keys of a game that was never on sale for such a low price to be... until you have 100% proof, you've effectively got nothing and are just wasting your time.
Doc Angelo Jul 9, 2019
Quoting: GuestG2A (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.
You are not wrong that shouting at G2A will solve nothing, because they know what they are doing and will continue to do so as long as it is possible and they have customers that see things equally as G2A: "I just want to have more for less, regardless of the consequences for others." Almost all people who buy there and have said so in topics about the whole thing do know what is happening there. They just don't care (but still create some bullshit explanations why it is fine to buy there).
There are so many flawed systems on this planet. And there are so many assholes who abuse those flaws. It is correct that you have to protect yourself from the flaws to solve the issue with assholes. That still means that assholes are assholes. And dam, G2A is the biggest and nastiest bunch of assholes I've ever seen. And their customers are right up there with them.
Last edited by Doc Angelo on 9 July 2019 at 7:55 am UTC
Quoting: EikeQuoting: GuestThe 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...
That may be the case , but the market still decides what goes and what doesn't.
Also bear in mind all the editions and launch DLC that come with a game. A lot of stuff gets cut out on purpose when a game releases and you can buy it as "DLC" despite it being available on launch day.
Another reason why i think the 90 dollar price tag might not work is wages. You might restrict your consumers to high income individuals. There is no cost for the phyiscal media and given enough bandwidth/storage you can sell infinite copies of a game.
So what makes more sense ? Sell 90$ game to a few who will buy it or sell 60-40$ game to many more people ?
Quoting: HoriAnd I want to finish with two important points:
- G2A is not a cause, it's an effect. If it somehow gets taken don, other stores will take its place. It'd be just like the war on drugs, but on a much smaller scale.
- I fully despise the practice of what is in reality, stealing. I don't have any problem with legitimate sellers tho, but in it's current state, G2A is for the most part a theives den.
Your second point is what makes G2A a cause.
The fact that they are so famous and gives guarantee of money refund is what let end users accept the risk of buying keys from their re-sellers (they give trust to their clients). But in the other hand, they also don't care if a key has a fraudulent source, so their service gives a quick way to credit cards robbers in order to sell what they bought with the stolen information (resell speed if another key factor for credit card fraud).
The real value of their company is the trust that they have with their costumers; that is what would be very difficult to gain to any other G2A replacement that gets into the market. So, if G2A closes or adds fraud countermeasures then the game keys fraud would definitely be reduced due that without their market the fraud operation would become harder to exploit.
From my point of view, there many fishy moves from their side and right now is quite obvious that their only purpose is to extort indie devs so they sell their keys on their market.
I leave here some interesting articles regarding the way the reselling scam works (it also gives some numbers regaring on how this fraudulent moves affects indies):
https://kotaku.com/g2a-scammer-explains-how-he-profited-off-stolen-indie-g-1784540664
https://kotaku.com/notorious-game-key-reseller-g2a-gets-torn-to-shreds-in-1791943348
Now try to guess fraud rates at eBuy before you google them.
Last edited by cprn on 9 July 2019 at 9:42 pm UTC
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