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G2A Steam Key Reseller Drama Thread

Mustawd

Guest
Yes, I've actually thought about this a good bit. Trying to sort my thoughts out in my head, which are basically:

1. It is the presence of payment charge backs that are causing this issue
2. A secondary market for keys is not wrong
3. The presence of websites like G2A is what is providing the motivation to engage in this scam
4. Although #3 is true, it does not mean it is G2A's fault, per se
5. G2A has very little avenues to do anything about it as they do not control the bank/payment processor policies


So how to fix it? There are some things G2A can do to slow down the incidents of harmful situations. Incidentally, these actions might hurt them a bit financially, but might be able to restore a bit of credibility to them. In addition, if fraudster key dumps are truly a minor part of sales as they say, then they should be fine. Here are my thoughts on how they would "fix" it. Let me know what you guys think.

-First, they need to limit the amount of keys of one game that can be sold from one account. Something like 5 keys per game. This will slow the purchasing of say, 50 keys at once and dumping them before the credit cards are reported. You could theoretically create many duplicate accounts, but it'd at least slow the process down as well as discourage some would-be fraudsters. Legitimate people who just have left over keys, probably wouldn't have more than 5 of them, so it wouldn;'t affect their main business if in fact fraudsters are a minority

-Second, this has to do with my observation up top for #2: Secondary markets are fine. If you are not familiar with finance, there is a concept called arbitrage.
TL;DR version is "buy low and sell high". And arbitragers are useful to a healthy market. They allow the true fair price of a product to become visible. In other words, a key (retail value say $10) is sold for $2 off, an arbitrager buys it, and sells it for $9. On average, done many times over, means that the price people are willing to pay for the key is considered what it's truly worth.

ANYWAYS, this is a healthy process for any market and for consumers (and even arguably for devs). And my first solution would utterly kill that possibility. So, my second proposal would be for G2A to create a "verified" vendor category. The process would require a vendor who is interesting in selling multiple keys on the market at once (and not fraudulently) to go through a trial period where they basically prove they are not fraudsters. the process might take a month, so as to again, discourage fraudsters. You would be allowed to sell 5 kys of one game. Then after a week, you would be allowed to sell 15 keys of one game...then 30...and finally 60 after a month.

It takes too long you say? Tough titty. If people dumping tons of keys are a minority, as G2A says, then it shouldn't affect their bottom line. In addition, not many gamers even understand arbitrage. If you have enough money, it's easy profits if you know what you're doing. So there's bound to be very little people willing to do that. Which means that waiting a month just to make easy profits with little competition is not such a bad deal.


anyway...that's what I've been thinking about yesterday and today.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
Question: If it's this easy, how come this does not affect something like Amazon vendors? I mean you can theoretically biy a ton of merchandise, have it fed exed to a location that you have easy access to but is untraceable, and sell it on the black market (out of your trunk).

Because convenience?
 

Thane Solus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2012
Messages
1,681
Location
X-COM Base
Most of the "developers" that got hit this charge back, were using third party(weak companies) or own shop scripts. Services like Humble Bundle(widgets) and similar usually have some safe systems in place because they already aware about this. The most safe bet is to not give steam keys or any keys, unless you know the site/service can handle "hackers", "scammers", etc. I mean this is the first time i ve heard about this. There was a problem at some point a few years back with Humble or others, but they fixed their problems. I dont think that even Btm had this problem, which a few years back was a popular service to use to sell indie games. Of course they were charged backs, but nothing massive.

As for G2A, bohoo! They are hundreds of steam keys sites. They dont have market places, but i assure that their keys dont come from most respectable places:

1) Cheap bought from other countries (cant be prevent if the dev changes the prices)
2) Acquired to different companies where they scam the developer for 1000+ keys (weird bundles, steam giveaways scams, youtube networks that request 1k+ keys and sells them, pay what you want from developer or when discount comes in)
3) By hacking stupid bundle sites bases (rarely occurs, they usually buy them cheap)
4) Herp a derp

And these developers in this thread, are a cancer to indie industry anyway, if any...
 
Last edited:

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
Ironically Humble Bundle had these issues because of G2A and Kinguin too. People were buying masses of keys and sold them for cheap on those sites. Humble changed how it works, but then changed it back again anyway after people complained. And now those Humble keys are still being sold on these sites.

Say what you want, G2A is a bottom feeder site. With all those other sites the keys you get are usually legit, if grey. With G2A the risk of getting scammed is so high they actually sell protection to to prevent you being scammed on their site. G2A is and remains harmful to the industry, because people use it to abuse the system. You think all those streamers or YouTubers getting keys to 'review' games are using the keys? In a lot of cases they land up right on G2A. Hence why developers have started severely limiting keys to people like PewDiePie or games review sites. Pick your poison. And now developers have to stop giving Steam keys for purchases on their sites, where many of us prefer to support them because they get more money that way.

I see people making excuses for this crap all the time, the most hilarious of which is blaming the developers for being defrauded as you just did. "Oh their payment system" and "these devs are cancer". Are you for real? Are you really so hard up for cash that you have to defend a shady site that won't even defend your rights in the case of a purchase dispute? Man, I live in Machete Rape Land down south in Africa and even we're smarter than to buy from ex-goldsellers who moved into a new industry. Just wait a year or two and get the game on sale, no risk involved. You really don't need to play overhyped, over-priced games as soon as they release.

I might have more sympathy for G2A if they weren't so outright shady themselves, but fuck that. They're just as bad as the people scamming you.
 

Thane Solus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2012
Messages
1,681
Location
X-COM Base
Ironically Humble Bundle had these issues because of G2A and Kinguin too. People were buying masses of keys and sold them for cheap on those sites. Humble changed how it works, but then changed it back again anyway after people complained. And now those Humble keys are still being sold on these sites.

Say what you want, G2A is a bottom feeder site. With all those other sites the keys you get are usually legit, if grey. With G2A the risk of getting scammed is so high they actually sell protection to to prevent you being scammed on their site. G2A is and remains harmful to the industry, because people use it to abuse the system. You think all those streamers or YouTubers getting keys to 'review' games are using the keys? In a lot of cases they land up right on G2A. Hence why developers have started severely limiting keys to people like PewDiePie or games review sites. Pick your poison. And now developers have to stop giving Steam keys for purchases on their sites, where many of us prefer to support them because they get more money that way.

I see people making excuses for this crap all the time, the most hilarious of which is blaming the developers for being defrauded as you just did. "Oh their payment system" and "these devs are cancer". Are you for real? Are you really so hard up for cash that you have to defend a shady site that won't even defend your rights in the case of a purchase dispute? Man, I live in Machete Rape Land down south in Africa and even we're smarter than to buy from ex-goldsellers who moved into a new industry. Just wait a year or two and get the game on sale, no risk involved. You really don't need to play overhyped, over-priced games as soon as they release.

I might have more sympathy for G2A if they weren't so outright shady themselves, but fuck that. They're just as bad as the people scamming you.

Also i have no love for G2A, the thing is that most of them are like that (which are dozens, if not hundreds). G2A wins because of the shady market place.
 

hajro

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 22, 2015
Messages
592
I live in a former Yugo country and i aint paying 60 Euro m8s, nothing wrong here :positive:
 

gaussgunner

Arcane
Joined
Jul 22, 2015
Messages
6,151
Location
ХУДШИЕ США
1. It is the presence of payment charge backs that are causing this issue
2. A secondary market for keys is not wrong
3. The presence of websites like G2A is what is providing the motivation to engage in this scam
4. Although #3 is true, it does not mean it is G2A's fault, per se
5. G2A has very little avenues to do anything about it as they do not control the bank/payment processor policies

Chargebacks are one of the banking industry's lesser known dirty tricks. Normally it's just a small cost of doing business, if you want to take card payments. In this case the combination of rapid online purchasing and bulk reselling enabled the scam, with massive chargebacks as a side-effect, at no risk to the scammers.

It's the banks' fault above all. It's only the developers' fault in the sense that they're forced to use this dumbfuck system where multiple parties share responsibility for fraud prevention. The little guys get fucked and everyone else thinks the big banks ate the cost. Typical dying empire shit.
:decline:
 

G2A_Team

Novice
Joined
Nov 30, 2016
Messages
1
Greetings gaussgunner, Thane Solus, Mustawd et al!

Thanks to all of you who participated in this conversation and we're glad to see such a constructive discussion with so many valuable arguments! Remember that you can always ask us directly about anything you consider not clear or troubling - we are always waiting for your feedback!

If you have any further questions, keep in mind that you can always find additional information on G2A's FAQ page or by contacting us in 8 languages on helpdesk@g2a.com. Our consultants are there for you 24/7.

We hope to see you soon again at G2A.COM!

Peter
G2A Team
 

Mustawd

Guest
Greetings gaussgunner, Thane Solus, Mustawd et al!

Thanks to all of you who participated in this conversation and we're glad to see such a constructive discussion with so many valuable arguments! Remember that you can always ask us directly about anything you consider not clear or troubling - we are always waiting for your feedback!

If you have any further questions, keep in mind that you can always find additional information on G2A's FAQ page or by contacting us in 8 languages on helpdesk@g2a.com. Our consultants are there for you 24/7.

We hope to see you soon again at G2A.COM!

Peter
G2A Team


Are you here to answer questions at least?
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
Yes, I've actually thought about this a good bit. Trying to sort my thoughts out in my head, which are basically:

1. It is the presence of payment charge backs that are causing this issue
2. A secondary market for keys is not wrong
3. The presence of websites like G2A is what is providing the motivation to engage in this scam
4. Although #3 is true, it does not mean it is G2A's fault, per se
5. G2A has very little avenues to do anything about it as they do not control the bank/payment processor policies


So how to fix it? There are some things G2A can do to slow down the incidents of harmful situations. Incidentally, these actions might hurt them a bit financially, but might be able to restore a bit of credibility to them. In addition, if fraudster key dumps are truly a minor part of sales as they say, then they should be fine. Here are my thoughts on how they would "fix" it. Let me know what you guys think.

-First, they need to limit the amount of keys of one game that can be sold from one account. Something like 5 keys per game. This will slow the purchasing of say, 50 keys at once and dumping them before the credit cards are reported. You could theoretically create many duplicate accounts, but it'd at least slow the process down as well as discourage some would-be fraudsters. Legitimate people who just have left over keys, probably wouldn't have more than 5 of them, so it wouldn;'t affect their main business if in fact fraudsters are a minority

-Second, this has to do with my observation up top for #2: Secondary markets are fine. If you are not familiar with finance, there is a concept called arbitrage.
TL;DR version is "buy low and sell high". And arbitragers are useful to a healthy market. They allow the true fair price of a product to become visible. In other words, a key (retail value say $10) is sold for $2 off, an arbitrager buys it, and sells it for $9. On average, done many times over, means that the price people are willing to pay for the key is considered what it's truly worth.

ANYWAYS, this is a healthy process for any market and for consumers (and even arguably for devs). And my first solution would utterly kill that possibility. So, my second proposal would be for G2A to create a "verified" vendor category. The process would require a vendor who is interesting in selling multiple keys on the market at once (and not fraudulently) to go through a trial period where they basically prove they are not fraudsters. the process might take a month, so as to again, discourage fraudsters. You would be allowed to sell 5 kys of one game. Then after a week, you would be allowed to sell 15 keys of one game...then 30...and finally 60 after a month.

It takes too long you say? Tough titty. If people dumping tons of keys are a minority, as G2A says, then it shouldn't affect their bottom line. In addition, not many gamers even understand arbitrage. If you have enough money, it's easy profits if you know what you're doing. So there's bound to be very little people willing to do that. Which means that waiting a month just to make easy profits with little competition is not such a bad deal.


anyway...that's what I've been thinking about yesterday and today.


Or just do what Allegro (ebay like service) did in Poland. Comment system for each dude and scores.
If dude sells faulty keys then he receives negatives thus no one will try to buy anything from him.
People who sell good keys receive good comments and people decide this way that they can trust them.

It worked for Allegro which is like few bilion $ trade at this point then it will work for G2A or any other key reseller.

People will themselves curate.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.pcgamesn.com/g2a-legit-cleaning-up-their-act

G2A: How they say they're cleaning up their act
g2a%20logo_1.jpg


They know, you know. G2A are aware of how they’re perceived, and they want to fix it. This was the message from G2A’s media day earlier this month, where we got the chance to speak with staff and PRs. So let’s talk about exactly what their image problem is, how it arose, and how G2A are trying to solve it.

The business model
G2A are a marketplace for videogame keys, where third parties can post keys they have for sale and you, the consumer, can buy them. They are a secondhand market, like eBay, and in this they differ from GreenManGaming, who are a key reseller; GMG buy keys themselves and sell them on to you, trying to find wholesale products which they can sell for a small profit. Then there are direct merchants like Steam and GOG, who have developers' and publishers' approval to sell you their games at market prices.

One question you might already have is: how can G2A possibly gather enough codes to make a business out of this? According to then-PR projects coordinator Will Fox, some come from individuals, like you or I, who might get a bunch of keys in a Humble Bundle, a giveaway or some other promotion. If we’re not interested in some of those games, we could list them on G2A and make some money. PR coordinator Katarzyna Szymczak-Skalska says "the majority of [G2A's] sellers" are individuals like this, but they tend not to sell keys in large volumes.

"The sellers who typically sell large amounts of keys are businesses who distribute keys and sell them on G2A because our marketplace allows them to spread their business and sell in new regions," says Szymczak-Skalska. Fox says there are those who “scour the internet looking for bargains, looking for good discounts”, and then relist those keys on G2A to sell them for a profit.

These sound like slightly evasive descriptions of merchants who exploit regional price variations. Since game prices vary hugely across the world, games that aren’t region-locked represent a particularly good opportunity to buy low and sell higher, undercutting official, primary-source prices. It’s not illegal, though it’s typically not what devs or publishers intend, and can hurt their profits by draining money from lucrative markets. We'll come back to this.

There’s one last category of merchant who really draw the ire of anyone that’s been following G2A in the news: thieves.

According to indie devs TinyBuild, who were the highest-profile victims of theft in recent months, the business model goes like this:
  • Get hold of a database of stolen credit cards on the darkweb
  • Go to a bundle/3rd party key reseller and buy a ton of game keys
  • Put them up onto G2A and sell them at half the retail price
It’s this that has caused G2A the most reputational damage. TinyBuild lost $450,000 worth of games (if valued at full price), and these figures make a real difference to indies.

Worse, it wasn’t an isolated incident, but rather the culmination of a trend of similar, smaller stories that G2A have done far too little about, and allowed to snowball into a serious image crisis. It’s not long after any mention of G2A on the internet that they are accused of facilitating or even being scammers, fraudsters or outright thieves.

g2a%20partners.jpg


G2A’s solutions
Regional pricing and identifying fraudulent keys
At G2A’s media day, we spoke with their director of strategic development, Patryk Kadlec. Our first questions concerned the process of registering as a seller on G2A, and what measures are applied to detect fraud.

“When you start selling, you go through a lot of analysis in the backend,” says Kadlec. He says G2A use SteamSpy, their own internal database, and other sources to look for differences between the suggested retail price (SRP) of a game, and the price at which you’re trying to sell a key for it. “Let’s say the SRP is $60 and somebody’s uploading 20,000 codes for $1 or $2 or something like this, there’s obviously something wrong.”

G2A head of PR Maciej Kuc, contacted separately by email, also said "we check everything we possibly can check before we allow sellers to put a specific key on the auction, including making sure they do not match any keys that have been black-listed by developers."

To algorithms like this, G2A add “the human factor”, says Kadlec. They have experts, “people who really know what the industry looks like”, who join the computers in identifying suspicious listings, such as those which break release dates. “If the game is not released yet officially, how come we have it? So this all contributes to flagging a particular merchant if it’s a fraudster, or if it’s even suspicious or not.”

If a merchant is flagged as suspicious, then a procedure for further investigation is triggered. “We might ask for the invoice of purchasing those codes,” says Kadlec, as an example, to determine if the seller’s source is legitimate.

To get the other side, we reached out to Scott Hartsman, the CEO of Trion Worlds, an independent but large studio. One senses he has a different idea of ‘legitimacy’. Hartsman says that whenever his company saw a batch of keys go up on what he called “the fraud sites”, they bought one. “Once we have the key in hand we know exactly which partner we issued it to, when, and what the price should have been. And then we can see what actually happened with it. Invariably, that key was purchased with either a hacked paypal, stolen CC, or region exploit.”

And Hartsman really does mean that word, ‘invariably’: “Every key we’ve audited that was being sold for under-market price was obtained by either payment fraud or regional pricing fraud,” he says. “The mythical ‘dedicated gamer who just wants to sell a spare key’ doesn’t appear to exist. It’s a smokescreen that’s not happening at any scale.”

This is somewhat at odds with G2A's assertion that "the majority" of their merchants are individuals, but it could just mean that a smaller number of region exploiters (or thieves) are listing an overwhelming number of keys.

For his part, Kadlec claims “there was not a single case when a developer came to us, or a publisher, saying ‘the codes are not from a legit source’ and they had real proof of that.” Some examples he offers of “real proof” are police statements to the effect that hacking or theft were involved in acquiring the keys, or even a report from the payment service provider. G2A include Hartsman in this, and said in response to his comments that he never made any attempt to contact them or share his findings (and also that they "highly doubt" their truthfulness).

So Hartsman says every bargain-priced key for a Trion game which his company checked was obtained with payment fraud or by exploiting regional pricing. G2A say no developer or publisher has been able to prove their listed keys were sourced illegally. If neither is mistaken (or lying), the conclusion would seem to be that most keys on G2A are listed by large merchants looking to pocket the difference between regional prices.

Note that Hartsman mentions this practice in the same breath as payment fraud. It's hasty to conflate the two: they are very different, and while regional pricing exploitation can be criticised, it isn't illegal (though, while we're on the subject, don't ever buy a key from anywhere that asks you to use a VPN to get around a game's region lock - that would be illegal, and it'd be you committing the crime).

Asked for their position, G2A's PR team point out that they "in no way decide what region a key is for. Only the developers, publishers, or IP rights holders of games have the power to decide what region their product is for," and "if a key is region-locked, all sellers using G2A.com have to provide this information, and it is always clearly shown on the product page." If a game is marked 'global', then G2A "do not see any problem selling global keys in the exact way they are meant to be sold - globally."

So if developers or publishers have a problem with G2A merchants exploiting regional price variations, they can also do something about it by region-locking their keys. If a key is marked 'global', G2A don't see any ethical (much less a legal) obligation to ensure its listed price matches those of the region in which it was originally purchased.

g2a%20direct_0.jpg


G2A Direct and G2A Pay
This brings us back to payment fraud, and so to G2A Direct, the developer partnership scheme which was announced in July this year, several weeks after the TinyBuild scandal. Developers who sign up can sell their games directly on G2A, much as they would on Steam, but they can also query any keys listed on the G2A marketplace which they suspect of having been obtained fraudulently.

The implication is that this feature is exclusive to Direct, which Hartsman compares to a protection racket. Contacted for response, G2A head of PR Maciej Kuc says no developer needs to belong to Direct "in order for G2A to help them track down any stolen keys. They just have to actually cooperate with us, and provide us with the keys in question... if the key was never black-listed by the developer, nor reported, how can we - or anyone for that matter - know not to sell that specific key?" Szymczak-Skalska says that "we do not want to leave anyone in the dust but if you claim there are stolen keys on our marketplace, and then give us no further information, then there is little we can do to help you."

G2A Direct simply makes the querying process easier by giving partners access to the G2A database. G2A say they’ve been overwhelmed by applications, and are having to streamline their onboarding process to handle them all. Direct has signed up 50 developers in the four months since its announcement, including some big names in the indie scene, such as the SuperHOT team; Hi-Rez, who make Paladins, Tribes: Ascend and Smite; and Playrise Digital, who make Table Top Racing.

Whether the queue of applicants is due to the perks of Direct (which include an 89/11 revenue split compared to Steam's 70/30, among other things), or because it makes it easier for devs to query their codes, is moot. Membership is free, at least; all the developer has to do “is basically decide to join”, says Direct account manager Mario Mirek. (Anyone interested should send an email to developers@g2a.com.)

One of our readers made the point that the query feature could be abused to kill legitimate codes by developers who simply don’t want their keys relisted on G2A, so we asked Mirek about that. Here’s what he said:

“Developers have the right to cancel their keys but cancelling legally obtained keys may backfire. Imagine a customer purchases a key on another platform and decides to re-sell it on our marketplace. If the developer cancels such a key without valid reason, and the customer can provide proof of purchase, then the developer will be charged back by their original payment provider. This will result in a financial loss, in the long run might generate bad publicity for the developer and confirm the lack of oversight on developer’s end."

G2A also argue that issues with fraudulent keys on their marketplace originate with the sources of those keys - often, developers' own online stores. "Unless developers secure their own websites, they will continue to fall victim to credit card fraud, and it has nothing to do with G2A," says Kuc. This is why G2A developed their own payment system, G2A Pay, which offers 100% chargeback and fraud protection. "We have a lot of experience in securing game key sales because of our marketplace, and this is exactly what Pay was created to do. We do not offer G2A Pay (nor G2A Direct) to developers as some sort of ultimatum that they will never be secure and that we won’t work with them until they use our system; it really is just the best solution we can offer."

g2a%20shield_0.jpg


Customer guarantees and G2A Shield
It’s perhaps a tacit admission of the limitations of their business model that one of G2A’s earliest products was Shield, which began life as a kind of insurance against keys that don’t work, for whatever reason. Kadlec says “in every marketplace you can have wrong or fake stuff, when you have thousands of merchants and buyers, you cannot control ultimately all of it.”

Shield drew G2A some more negative publicity when a redditor posted a thread about how difficult it was to cancel, and G2A’s CEO admitted this was a problem at his company’s Winter Party, where guests included Polish politicians. So it seems G2A will be making Shield more user-friendly, and they’ve recently announced a new, premium version with more features.

Its essential role remains the same, however: if you, as a consumer, subscribe to Shield for one euro a month, or pay three euros to apply Shield to a single purchase, G2A’s ‘100% satisfaction guarantee’ means you either get a working game or your money back, no questions asked.

Again, one might wonder why G2A only feels able to extend that guarantee to people who subscribe to one of its products. We asked Kadlec whether G2A promised to refund customers with or without Shield. This was his reply:

“Yes, because it’s also for us, if for some reason such a situation happens, it’s also not a good situation for us, because if you as a customer are not happy then you claim back to your payment service provider and we get hit anyway. So we place the customer in the first place always, but even from economical thinking, it’s justified for us to work in favour of the end user, of the customer.”

That’s good from a consumer perspective, but why the payment for Shield? To Kadlec, this is compensation to G2A for policing transactions on its own market. As online marketplaces move away from escrow systems and toward refunds or chargebacks in the case of a shady transaction, Kadlec says “we know that this process is taking a lot of time for the consumer, so we wanted to make this process faster, more smooth, so we take this, let’s say, hassle of finding out who’s wrong and who’s right on ourselves.”

It also turns out that that ‘no questions asked’ part of the guarantee may be important. According to a piece by Polygon, “There are absolutely different regulations between marketplaces and retailers. We are obliged to ask questions when customers come to us with a return policy - except with G2A Shield - because there is a seller who needs to know why a customer wants to give the product back.” So Shield may also be a legal dodge: its price is tokenistically low because G2A need to be able to say they’ve sold you something, otherwise they have to put you through some hassle before they can offer you a refund.

G2A%203D%20Plus%20printing_1.jpg


Regulation and the future
Technology moves quickly, and politicians move slowly. Digital distribution is still unheard-of in certain parts of the world, and the regulation of it is barely adequate even in the developed world. The fact is that G2A operate in many of those developing markets, and you can take different perspectives on that fact.

Kadlec pleads for the charitable perspective, arguing that no-one knows yet how to do what they do without encountering the problems they have. “We want to open a kind of dialogue with the industry first, and secondly with legislation, about what is good practice,” he says. “Sometimes we need to ask for some interpretations of good practice, law and other stuff, to be really in line in what we are doing… when you are really leading some business, especially in technology, the law doesn’t always follow it. So there might be gaps, there are many unregulated markets.”

Essentially, G2A are saying: ‘Ok, if we’re doing this wrong, tell us how to do it better.’

Hartsman offers the uncharitable view. “Fraud and pricing exploitation is what they’ve intentionally built a business on top of,” he says. “The only thing that keeps them out of jail is that they’re operating in countries where there’s no ability for law enforcement to touch them.”

Hartsman’s advice for G2A, if they’re sincere in wanting legitimacy, is to “exit the business for secondhand keys. If they want to sell keys in a way that helps ensure developers can afford to keep making games, they should become a primary source partner only and compete on their merits.”

G2A's head of PR, Maciej Kuc, was defiant in response to this suggestion. "Re-selling things, whether virtual or physical, has always been part of the free market, and it will always be part of the free market - there is absolutely no way around that. You cannot ban something that is completely legal."

Nonetheless, G2A Direct is a move toward primary source, and their many new products (G2A Gear, G2A 3D and 3D Plus, VR game development) open plenty of revenue streams beyond their marketplace. If regulation ever clamps down on the grey market for game keys, G2A will probably have something else to offer.

blunt%20force_1.jpg


The verdict: are G2A 'legit'?
“We really want to improve, and to contribute to the industry,” says Kadlec. G2A are working very hard to appear legitimate, and they insist that all they want is to deliver value to the consumer and to be a good partner for the industry. In response to feedback, they have changed their systems and designed new services, such as Direct and Pay, to protect against some of the hazards of a grey market.

If they’re still screwing up, they claim it’s because no-one knows any better yet, and because people are still reluctant to work with them to help them improve. They’ve unveiled many new product concepts which, to be fair, do sound pretty cool, and which I as a gamer would happily make use of (I’d love to rip a figurine of Knight Artorias straight out of Dark Souls if it came at a decent price). Kuc points to all these services and asks why G2A would bother creating them if they were only interested in making money off of fraudulent goods.

From a consumer perspective, if all you want is a cheap game key, we believe G2A sincerely wants to give that to you without it failing. And we believe they can, especially if you’re willing to get Shield.

However, if you're considering using them, keep aware of the implications. Whether it is or isn’t G2A’s intention, a grey market for game keys will, by its nature, hurt some people in the industry.

Despite their best efforts to reassure, it’s still not certain that G2A can consistently identify fraudulent keys, especially if the non-compliance of developers is as big an issue as they say. We're not at all sure that anyone else would be able to do a better job, but that doesn’t change the fact that some fraudulent keys will probably continue to slip through.

Then there are the cheap keys that exploit regional price variations, and if Hartsman is correct, these two types of keys make up a huge proportion of G2A’s inventory. Region-exploiting keys move consumer spending toward the lowest prices available worldwide, and though we understand games are getting more expensive these days, so is development.

So when it comes to indie games at least, consider buying from primary source partners. If that's G2A via their Direct scheme, then fine, but between chargebacks for theft and fraud and loss of revenue from regional exploits, indies need and deserve better. G2A may be trying to make working with them as hassle-free as possible, but from our perspective as consumers, the easiest way to give indies our support is still to buy direct.

As a final thought, it does seem futile to simply wish away the existence of any and all grey markets; Kuc isn't wrong when he says they are, and ever have been, legal. "We believe the best thing we can do is all work together to ensure that this part of the free market is as secure as possible," he says. "G2A are absolutely willing to hear more feedback about how we can improve, so please talk to us".

Developers have the option to protect themselves by region-locking their keys or moving away from keys altogether (as Trion Worlds has tried to do). But unless this happens across the industry, someone will always offer what G2A are offering, and they may be less receptive to advice. With Shield, Direct, and 100% chargeback and fraud protection for sellers, G2A are doing more than most to protect merchants and customers from the intrinsic harms of a grey market. Maybe one large company who are trying to clean up an inherently dodgy business model is better than the alternative.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/g2a-legit-payment-fraud-regional-price-fraud-scott-hartsman

"Where do you see the fraud here?" say G2A in response to Trion Worlds CEO

Original story December 23, 2016:
Scott Hartsman, the CEO of developer/publisher Trion Worlds, savaged videogame key marketplace G2A when contacted for a story by PCGamesN. Citing audits carried out by his company, Hartsman said that ‘legitimate’ keys essentially don't exist in G2A’s inventory - at least, among the bargains. He then went further, saying that G2A is only spared incarceration by the lack of worldwide regulation of grey digital sales.

“Every key we've audited that was being sold for under-market price was obtained by either payment fraud or regional pricing fraud,” says Hartsman. “The mythical ‘dedicated gamer who just wants to sell a spare key’ doesn't appear to exist. It's a smokescreen that's not happening at any scale.”

This is obviously a pretty strong accusation, so we asked how Hartsman could be so confident. He explained that whenever Trion saw a batch of their keys go up on what he calls “the fraud sites”, they bought one. “Once we have the key in hand we know exactly which partner we issued it to, when, and what the price should have been. And then we can see what actually happened with it. Invariably, that key was purchased with either a hacked paypal, stolen credit card, or region exploit.”

By “region exploit”, Hartsman means a key is bought from a region where local prices are lower than they are for many of G2A’s customers, and relisted for sale on G2A at a price that’s appealing but still sufficient for the merchant to profit, especially if sold in volume. This is very different from selling keys that were purchased fraudulently.

G2A insist they’re doing everything they can to clamp down on fraud, but as far as we’re aware, they haven’t specifically addressed the ethics of regional price exploits, or their prevalence on G2A. We’ve asked them for comment on the matter, but Hartsman is confident that this is the basis of G2A’s business model.

“The fact is that it's what they have created by design. Fraud and pricing exploitation is what they've intentionally built a business to on top of. And a very high margin business at that.

“Those streamer and channel sponsorships you see everywhere don't come cheap,” says Hartsman. “An hour of a moderately large streamer's time can go for $50,000 or more now that talent agencies are involved. How much do you imagine full time, permanent sponsorships cost?

“The only way to afford that kind of exposure, at the scale that [G2A] do, in a business where you're primarily taking cuts of transactions is if that business has a nearly unlimited volume of inventory, at next to no cost of goods. The only way to have a transaction fee-based business with unlimited inventory at almost no cost of goods is for the goods to be digital and obtained fraudulently. It's the same model we've seen in MMOs with gold sales sites for over 10 years - direct monetization of fraud.”

G2A are clearly doing very well for themselves, purchasing major sponsorships of the kind Hartsman mentions as well as preparing new products such as G2A 3D and 3D Plus, G2A Gear, and their own VR game. We’ll leave you to judge for yourselves whether there are enough ordinary gamers with spare codes to fund these enterprises. For Hartsman, the only explanation is millions of key listings, coming from both fraudsters and regional price exploiters.

“The only thing that keeps them out of jail is that they're operating in countries where there's no ability for law enforcement to touch them.”

As an indie dev (albeit a large one) who has had fraudulent keys for his games listed on the G2A market, Hartsman has spoken out against G2A before.

For their part, G2A have assured us that they will have a full response to Hartsman's comments by Tuesday. Come back then for a comprehensive feature on G2A's marketplace.

Update December 27, 2016: G2A have responded to Scott Hartsman's comments.

Following Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman's comments a few days ago, G2A's head of PR Mariej Kuc has responded on behalf of the game key marketplace. He denies that G2A's listing of global game keys is any kind of fraud, even if bought cheap in one region and relisted at a higher price - a trick many G2A merchants use to make money. He also bemoans Hartsman's decision not to work with G2A to solve the issues he identifies.

Hartsman's first allegation was that, according to Trion Worlds's research, practically all bargain-priced keys on G2A are either fraudulently purchased or bought via a region price exploit. On the question of fraudulent purchases, Kuc says "Mr Hartsman didn't provide us with any evidence, nor did he ever contact us. If what he says is true, why didn't he make any attempt to solve this problem with G2A?" Kuc also claims to "highly doubt" what Hartsman found when investigating the provenance of his company's keys.

On regional pricing exploits - which Hartsman desribes as "regional pricing fraud" - Kuc says G2A do not control the region locks, or lack thereof, on keys listed in their marketplace. Only those with the rights to generate keys are able to do this, and "if the keys have not been locked to any specific region, that means the keys are to be used without any limitations in the entire world. And people can sell them everywhere, including on our marketplace, to anyone, anywhere. Where do you see the fraud here?"

Finally, Hartsman suggests G2A knowingly built a business based on fraud, to which Kuc replies "there are many marketplaces around the world that only operate with third party sellers, like eBay. We have over 12 million customers and over 260,000 sellers selling over 50,000 different products - that is what we make money off of." Kuc then lists G2A's many new products and services, asking why they would bother if all they were interested in was making money from fraudulent sales. Some of these products were developed specifically to respond to industry criticism about the dangers of G2A's grey market: "That is why we created things like Pay and Direct - to try and work on the feedback we have received from the gaming industry."

You can read Hartsman's original comments below. We originally contacted him to contribute to an in-depth feature on the G2A marketplace and its impact on the games industry. If you'd like to know more about the implications of buying games from G2A, we hope it tells you all you need to know.
 

BlackAdderBG

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Do they work for g2a's PR or just stupid.While the most shitty of the developers complain against them people will even support g2a.Ubi,Trion,some indie hacks...how about lower the price of your games, it's obvious they are expensive enough for people to risk been scammed.
 

hajro

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60bucks for ubishit game feels like theft tbh, just fuck me up the arse will ya.
 

gaussgunner

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This is pretty harsh.
Finally, Hartsman suggests G2A knowingly built a business based on fraud, to which Kuc replies "there are many marketplaces around the world that only operate with third party sellers, like eBay.

Yup. All full of scammers too.

P.S. nice name, codex will love it.
 

FeelTheRads

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Messages
13,716
Here's my guess: Most of those keys are actually from regional shit and humble bundles, but since those are not illegal or at least in a grey area they're trying to push the credit card fraud ones as being the most common.
In translation: waaah every cheap key is a lost sale for me waaaah

Well, this is what you get when you have shit like Steam and bundles where you can get games for pocket change (while, of course, saving PC gaming, supporting developers and even helping mankind get to Mars), your products will have shit value and will be traded and treated like the shit they are.
 

gaussgunner

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It's true 99% of games in question are shit, but if it was just lost sales the gamedevs wouldn't be this butthurt. They gotta be gettin' reamed by chargeback fraud.

Also note that they said in no uncertain terms, please just pirate our games instead of buying from key resellers. I second that.
 

pippin

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Well at least they are answering the questions in a civil manner.
 

Infinitron

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Recent drama: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...after-game-key-reseller-fails-to-meet-demands

Gearbox cuts ties with G2A after game key reseller fails to meet demands

Gearbox is withdrawing its partnership from G2A, the game key reseller it allied with to distribute the fancy Collector's Edition of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition.

G2A has been under fire for some time now after multiple allegations of the site selling game keys obtained through stolen credit cards. In other words, developers never received payment for these, yet the key were still out there and being sold on G2A. According to SpeedRunners publisher tinyBuild, G2A sold $450k worth of its game keys obtained through such nefarious means.

Backlash against Gearbox partnering with G2A for the Bulletstorm Collector's Editions was swift and strong. Gearbox took the criticism to heart and assembled a list of demands that it required the auction site to implement in order for the business relationship to continue.

You can read that full list here, but basically Gearbox insisted G2A curate the codes on its marketplace better and not charge people additional fees to protect themselves from fraudulent transactions.

G2A did not meet this criteria ahead of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition's launch today, so the deal's off.

Gearbox head of publishing Steve Gibson offered Eurogamer the following statement on the situation:

"As there has been no public movement from G2A by the time Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition launched now on PC, Gearbox Publishing will be doing their part to not directly support a marketplace that did not make the new public commitment to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing. We do not control G2A's marketplace or where they may obtain keys from parties outside of Gearbox Publishing, but we can confirm that today we have begun executing on our extraction process."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-20-g2a-rep-roasted-by-developers-during-live-q-and-a

G2A rep roasted by developers during live Q&A

Controversial PC game key reseller has endured a PR nightmare in recent weeks. Today, the nightmare got worse.

During a session at the Reboot conference in Croatia today, a representative of G2A - which has been accused of operating a protection racket - defended the company's divisive policies, and faced tough questions from an audience made up largely of developers.

The session, chaired by Dan Pearson of Eurogamer sister site Gamesindustry.biz, began in combative mood, with G2A senior account manager Mario Mirek insisting his company did not operate within a grey market. This, as you'd expect, did not go down well.

The tough line of questioning continued, with Mirek reiterating many of the points his company made in a recent statement issued after Borderlands company Gearbox broke off a business partnership with G2A following a public complaint by YouTuber Total Biscuit about a G2A-exclusive edition of the Bulletstorm remaster.

The session went downhill as the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions. It's fair to say Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell got stuck in.



At one point Mirek "announced" that 40 per cent of G2A's workforce was female, in a response to a question about why it takes the company so long to change the way it works.



But the standout moment of the panel was a question from Bithell that crystallised the general feeling that G2A simply does not have the interests of developers at heart. Here's his question (we've captured the exchange in the video, below):



"You charge the customers who want to avoid fraudulent stuff with the Shield system. You ask us to contribute our time and energy to detect fraud on your system in exchange for 10 per cent. I'm interested what the 750 people - 40 per cent of whom are women - are doing to earn the 90 per cent of the transaction?"

"There are people working in marketing...," was Mirek's response.

"Is it mainly marketing?"

"No. IT and security."

"Good job."

Although Mirek doesn't commit to any new policy on the part of G2A in response to questions, or explain existing policies in any meaningful way, it's worth watching the session to get a sense of the animosity many within the development community hold for the company. Clearly, G2A still has much work to do.


UPDATE: G2A has sent Eurogamer a statement in response to the disastrous Q&A session one of its reps held with a room full of developers earlier today, clarifying some of the more controversial comments made.

G2A's head of PR, Maciej Kuc, clearly unimpressed with today's events, addressed the comments made around the controversial PC game key reseller's status as operating in a "grey market", fees and the fact 40 per cent of the company's employees are women, the latter of which was "announced" during the session. For context, check out the original story, below.

Over to Kuc:

"Grey market, despite the Wiki definition, works as a negative label and people who throw this name against us just want to damage our business - we cannot agree to that. Resale of keys is perfectly legal, it brings a lot of benefits to the gamers community as it introduces competition and prevents raising prices to unreasonable levels.

"Those who want to stop it act against free market and property rights that are essential to modern economy. If something is to be called grey or shady, these are the practices of making 'suggestions' aimed at hurting legally operating marketplace. If you call G2A grey, try doing the same with respect to eBay, Amazon and basically all the marketplaces - it is obvious that today we are simply a part of normal, legal market.

"Fees. We want to quickly explain our fees regarding developers and sellers, since there seems to have been a misunderstanding during the Q&A. There are two separate revenue streams for developers on our marketplace. The first revenue stream is from regular sales made directly by the developers. G2A only takes a General commission of 10.8 per cent from these sales - the remaining 89.2 per cent of the sale goes directly into the developer's pocket (which is way above the industry standard of 70 per cent).

"However, thanks to G2A Direct, developers are given a second revenue stream - they can make an additional up to 10 per cent on all third-party sales. This is an extremely attractive offer as no other marketplace gives developers a chance to make any money on third-party re-sales. Imagine that someone purchased a LG TV, and then went to re-sell it on eBay - eBay does not offer LG, or any other company, any percentage of this sale. We are the only marketplace in the world that offers this to developers.

"Neither our number of employees, nor what gender these employees are, are any reason to treat our company any differently. We are proud of our employees - especially since we work as one team despite that we come from over 30 different countries and have vastly different areas of expertise - but again, this is not a reason to treat our company any better or any worse."
 
Last edited:

Perkel

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15,810
ELI5 about G2A drama (not just gearbox stuff)
whole drama summarized:

In case of most of keys :

1. hurrr durr i am developer i make gamezzzz !
2. publisher contacted me he wants to buy my gamezzz ! hurr durr !
3. i sold 20k keys to gamestop ! They will pay me for what they will sell ! I am the best !
4. Amazing gamestop sold 1000 of my keys for 30$ !!!!!! I am rich !
5. Uhhh.... Gamestop started selling my keys for 10$ ? Hey wait !!!
6. Gamestop said someone contacted them and bought 28k keys for 1 dollar each ! Fucking gamestop !!!
7. What is this !!! Why is G2A selling 20k of my keys for 5 dollars !? Fucking G2A !!!
8. Proceed to write on various boards G2A stole their keys or that they do not have rights to sell them.

In case of stolen/CCfraund case :

1. hurrdurr i am developer !! i make gamezzzz !
2. huh someone CC fraud me on 100 keys batch.
3. Find some of them used on steam/whatever sold through G2A or other sites
4. What to do : A - ban them, which will stop G2A and other sites from selling stolen keys and they will have to give back money to users or increase verification system ? B - not ban then and complain G2A sells stolen keys. C - complain to Visa/Mastercard to change their fucking old rules ... that will never work...
5. Opens up reddit...

Meanwhile after few months our ex-developer (he works in mcdonalds now) bought expensive vinyl from EBAY he opens up package and he sees huge red fucking brick.

"I should've checked who i was buying from !!! " It finally hits him something that he did few months back and he understands that G2A isn't problem but he was the problem from start.
 

Lyric Suite

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Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,166
I like G2A because modern devs deserve shit and on the extremely rare occasion i need to get something that isn't available on a steam sale or somethin' i'd rather not give the devs any cash. If the key was stolen, i'm all the more happy.

Fraud my ass. The real frauds are modern developers, pumping out shit after shit while expecting us to pay premium prices for their dumped down garbage. As for the indie faggots. Learn to make a game that isn't shit you fuck wits.

Moral of the story: when all you make is shit you deserve shit.
 

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