Another G2A Thread

revoked by the sender or by steam? I have never given out or received a gift before today :p

It just full circles back around to Steam. If Steam offered a game traders and resellers a free market to conduct transactions then those transactions could be regulated and verified as legitimate purchases and not fraudulent. Is it the fault of a business (G2A) for opening up in an unserved market only to be exploited by fraudsters? Steam could easily put G2A out of business and remove fraud from the 'gray' market - and yet they choose not to - because it doesn't hurt Steam's bottom line, it only hurts the developer. If anything people should be just as mad at Steam for allowing this to continue to happen as they are at G2A for allowing fraudulent keys to be sold there.

+1 Happened for the tinybuild developer. Cryaotic (Twitch streamer and Let's Player) no longer sponsors them due to their black market and sketchiness.

Any system in the entire world can be abused. Dishonesty and fraud will always be in this world. A locked door only keeps and honest man honest. G2A didn't invent fraud, it probably wasn't created with the intent for fraudsters to thrive. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People are inherently dishonest (apparently). A place where I can sell my bundle trash for a few coins seems like a legit idea to me.

I could do the same thing to walmart that people are doing with G2A. I could go buy 100 ps4 games from walmart, sell them on ebay and then dispute the transaction with walmart and claim that my cc was stolen or even use a stolen cc. Yet you choose to turn G2A into a villan and would give walmart a pass. There is no logic in that.

I read the post about the tinywhoever developers - and G2A is right. In order for G2A to take action the developer NEEDS to work with them and give them the list of keys that they suspect were part of fraudulent activity.

Again, steams refusal to allow a verifiable free market for game trades and 3rd party sales is what created this in the first place. Steam wont do it because they cant profit from it yet people talk about how awesome steam is and how shitty G2A is. Really? Maybe people should start pointing the finger at the correct party for once instead of placing blame on a scapegoat.

FRAUD ASIDE - G2A is an awesome place that exemplifies the free market (in my opinion).

I see 1.8$ is pretty cheap indeed

we are talking about this, but I am in the USA so my regional pricing is different than yours.

http://tinypic.com/r/jakyhg/9

I understand the fraud part - which is why I started the comment with 'fraud aside'.

When you buy at G2A, you dont buy from the sellers, its pretty much like amazon. You pay G2A, and they pay the seller. The original seller never access your credit card data. The original seller is the one beeing accoused of comiting credit card fraud, not G2A. It sounds weird for a big company that makes its cash as G2A does to risk it all using their clients credit cards, and it also seems like something the credit card companies would find out in just a couple days. TBH, from all the people i know using the site, i never heard that they had any trouble with their cards after using G2A. To be sure, you can still pay using paypal, or (at least at my country) you can even pay with physicall cash.

By beeing scammed i mean that. The only bad thing that might happen is that your key gets revoked. The 10% fee i mentioned goes to the devs (if they ask G2A, of course). It doesnt mean you will be buying the game 10% more expensive. If you buy at G2A, it will probably still be way cheaper. I dont know for sure if that 10% is taken from the purchaser, the seller or from the original G2A fees.

Is there any way to tell by percentage how many game keys come from credit card fraud? Every time this is discussed I've seen the same back-and-forth you and Oczilla1 are having. And every time I'm interested to know the facts of the matter, but I never see numbers.

My impression, from outside reading, was that a lot of keys for a few titles were obtained through fraud or exploits, but that keys for most titles were more legitimately obtained. (This impression is bolstered by the way prices on G2A and Kinguin don't significantly undercut ordinary store prices a lot of the time.) But I'm not saying this is so, as I don't have great evidence for it. I'm very open to correction.

Yeah, i know what you are talking about. Let me tell you why i dont trust them.
If you check their stats, youll see the game in question is speedrunners (sold 24k keys, against the other games, that sold around 1k each). Their argument goes like this: We had lots of chargebacks, and G2A is selling games cheap, hence, they are stolen keys. Their claim is that G2A gives them a list of the keys they are selling, so they can revoke them.
First, they dont need that list, sience the credit card will tell them wich number of operation was chargedback, and they can match the key with that operation and revoke them without G2A help. If they say they dont keep track of that, then either they are lying, or publishing games is not their main skill.
Second, they say those keys are from fraud, (and they want G2A to tell them wich ones they are so they revoke them!!!!!) because of their price. Remember what i said, the main game (24k copies, speedrunners). So right, i would say "yeah, no way someone would pay 15 euro for a game to sell it for 4 euro". WRONG. They forgot to mention that they did a massive giveaway (at least 4 in europe) with that game (at alienware arena), wich perfectly explains why it sells for such a low amount of cash. I obtained a game in that giveaway, and, as a matter of fact, was one of those selling one copy of that game because i wanted to try how G2A worked. I would have been furious if they revoked my key and falsely accused me of beeing a scammer. The other two games in question were sold just a bit higher than their price during sale.
Third, as one of their sources (and i read them all, from their original post a couple months ago, i think), they cited an article titled something like "The hidden truth origin behind the cheap keys in the gray market" or something, that would totally make you think "omg, this article will end up with people dying because of G2A". I read that looooooong and boring article. I´ll spoil it for you: they tracked down the origins of a key, from reseller to reseller. They couldnt find it. So they asked the dev, and she checked her registers, and realized that key came from a giveaway made by a youtuber that got the key from her (in fact, the game came with 2 keys as a pack, he used one, and sold the other).

Finally, the initiative they finally liked was the one where they ended up beeing partners with G2A and now they get 10% profit on each sale.

My conclusion on that issue was that yes, G2A hurts devs and publishers, but mainly because they made a bad choice to give the game away for free, wich killed it. Sadly, we see that happen again and again week after week (free giveaways or wrong choices to bundle games), and yet some publishers dont seem to get the lesson. In this particular case we have a publisher who killed a game by giving it away for free, and as a solution tried to find out wich keys were beeing sold so they could revoke them. In the end, they ended up partners with G2A.

I do agree, there are illegally obtained keys there, but i dont think its being done massively. Most of the keys comes from bundle leftovers, free giveaways, kickstarters, pre-order discounts, etc.