I have bought several games on the page and have never had problems, but I would like to know if the keys I buy are legal, all the following games are less than 1 dollar. (It is a store that has discounts very often).

Livelock
Alien Breed - Trilogy
911 Operator: Special Resources
FaceRig
Moot District
Don't Disturb
Containment: The Zombie Puzzler
Spirits
Super Hexagon
Demonicon
FarSky
Prime World: Defenders
My Memory of Us
Orion prelude
Wormster Dash
Hyper Light Drifter
Yoku's Island Express
Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing
GAMIVO Random Steam Game
Fallout: New Vegas EU
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Ultimate Doom
Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour
Quake
Quake 2
Internet Cafe Simulator
plunge
Worms Revolution
God's Trigger
Overgrowth
Torchlight
Party hard
Redeemer - Enhanced Edition
Niffelheim
Dungeon Rats
Steel Rats
Pool Nation & Bumper Pack Bundle
Neo Cab
Samorost 3
The Norwood Suite
Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered
SpellForce 2 - Anniversary Edition
SpellForce - Platinum Edition Steam
Party Hard 2: Alien Butt Form
Rise of The Argonauts
Legendary
The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia
Dandara
Kona - Surreal Interactive Tale of Mystery
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken
There Was a Caveman
Oniken: Unstoppable Edition
Vektor Wars
endetta: Curse of Raven's Cry - Deluxe Edition
shiness: The Lightning Kingdom
Syberia - Bundle
juanito Arcade Mayhem
Blood Knights
De Mambo
Miasmata
Sleeping Valley
Paratopic
The Atomy
Recursive Dragon
System Shock 2
SHiRO 011
The Indie Mixtape
Asura: Vengeance Expansion
Children of Zodiarcs
Hunted: The Demon's Forge
Unknown Pharaoh VR
Crayon Physics
Defective
PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist
Final DOOM
Perfect Angle
Fallout 2
Q.U.B.E. 2
Q.U.B.E
Tesla vs Lovecraft
Devil Threats
Fumiko
Arcadecraft
MetaMorph: Dungeon Creatures
Guards
Luxor Evolved
Monster Slayers
Feather - Social Zen Bird Flight
Way of Redemption
Black The Fall
Morphite
Do Not Feed the Monkeys
The Mooseman
Mystic Pillars
Audio Arena VR
Six Sides of the World
Doom 2
Ravager
Neo Cab
The Purring Quest

3 years ago

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you can ever be sure with this type or online stores , the sellers could be selling stolen keys or reviews game copies

3 years ago
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If the key works, does it matter?

3 years ago
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If you care about who released it, yes.

3 years ago
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Because sometimes a key works, right before it gets revoked?
And people are invested in their steam accounts, and don't want to risk any remote involvement with sellers/accounts that used stolen cards, etc?

3 years ago
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in whole, you still pay less if one of the keys from 100 revoked than when you buy all on steam.

3 years ago
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That'd be great if the odds were guaranteed at even 1 in 100 for revokes / bad keys. But they're not, and you have to pay for such assurances. It's still a risk, and that's why people care. If you hit a dead key, you're not likely to try buy a second one from the same place. Yeah you can save yourself money if you're willing to risk it and you don't get unlucky, but you can also draw attention to your account if a bunch of stuff you keep adding gets revoked. I mean, you do you, I'm certainly not judging especially with Covid antics playing havoc with peoples disposable income (yay unemployment) but acknowledging the situation isn't a bad thing.

My own past experience with G2A and their 'protection' fee was fine too... until it wasn't, and after unchecking the 'shield' service box twice, I still got charged for the start of a >subscription< to the shield service. It's my own fault for not bringing this up with their tech support and demanding a refund, but honestly after that happening despite actively looking out for it happening, I didn't want to waste my time (under the reasoning that if they pushed so much to try squeeze money out, they'd probably just say "too bad").

Grey markets have a shady rep for a reason. It's nice when it works in your favour, but garbage when it doesn't. I wonder if there's any correlation between people getting flagged by steam for suspicious activity and getting unlucky on such sites, tbh.

3 years ago
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you are completely right. btw I hate g2a. Everybody can sell there. There are so much shady sellers than other sites because of that.

3 years ago
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If you're only interested in playing games for as little money as possible, it would be more ethical to just go ahead and pirate the games than buy from resellers. Your money isn't going to the developers either way, so just save you cash and find some torrents. At least this way you aren't helping fraudsters launder money.

3 years ago
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But the money went to the developers in the first place. They bought from the developers/publishers. Or what do you thing where did they get them from?
So your point of view better steal a for example video card than buy it used? And how weird that you pay money for something and you can't sell it afterwards. But only PC games. You can sell your physical copy of PS or XBOX games legally. And the next owner still can play game with all its features and sell it afterward. Tell me why is it legal on console but not on pc? Where do they support their developers? OH btw the next gen console will support this feature too. Poor console devs...
And where is your ethics when the publisher sell the game for different prices at the same time? So you tell me, because I born in the wrong country, I have to pay more than a damn yankee? Or I have to work twice more than a western european for a new game? Is this ethical?

3 years ago
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I'm not telling you to pay money for it. I am telling you to pay nothing for it. It is literally better to pirate a game than to buy from a reseller. it is better for you and it is better for the developer.

Not every resold key is fraudulent, but enough of them are that you run a large risk of giving money to money launderers every time you buy from a reseller.

When someone steals another person's credit card, Steam keys are a great way to launder the stolen money because they are difficult to trace. So a credit card thief will use a stolen card to buy games from a legitimate vendor (either directly from the publisher or a third-party site) then either sell them directly on G2A etc. or trade them for legitimately purchased game keys that they will sell on G2A etc.

When the credit card's actual owner finds out, the money is charged back. This means that the developer does not see any of that money. It can actually cost the publisher money in chargeback fees and in the time they waste revoking a key.

3 years ago
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+1

3 years ago
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when you a seller on these sites, you have to provide so much personal data, that only a really really good identity thief can pass through. Like in the movies good. Here is the gamivo General Sale Conditions: https://www.gamivo.com/page/general-sale-conditions . Check paragraph 11. No, I don't talk about G2a, where you need to give some personal data, but there everybody can sell. I never recommend that site.
And don't tell me a grey keys are worse than a pirated games and does not help for for devs. Grey keys still generate user data, still generate reviews, still generate profit when soo much DLC for a game that you can't buy elsewhere or ingame shop.
And what if a key revoked? If I played it through, then I will buy back few years later on sale. Still paid less. If I don't, that's on me, but there is a little chance for that or the game was not so good.

3 years ago
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I don't want to make any statements regarding most of this, but if you search online, most devs who have made a statement on piracy and third party sites like G2A have flat out stated they would rather you pirate the game then buy from gray key markets. (Of course, they'd rather have you buy the game outright then pirate) Take that as you will

3 years ago
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If I search online, I will found out the earth is flat too. Don't you think it's weird, that game companies go far beyond to protect their games from "pirates", but they do not lift a finger against these markets? EA killed a gaming community couple years ago, because they kept alive Battlefield 2 servers, for a now 15 years old game. And EA, the profit hungry gaming corp. did not try to kill these markets?

3 years ago
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Probably cause EA gives no shits
To be fair, this is something that generally applies to those who need the money
If you search online, I'm sure you'd find the earth is a square or the earth is round
If you could find anything from a dev that says they'd rather you buy from g2a/gray market over pirating, I will retract my argument as it would be a case of some devs preferring it one way over another

3 years ago
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If EA and other big corp don't give a shit, when their shit has the power to end this, why should we? Anyhow devs issued the keys. Steam doesn't sell keys. So devs have all the tools to control their product. But because devs wanna cut out steam 30% share out their revenue, they doesn't care that much to solve the problem, and because no one gives a shit, probably not a real problem from the first place.
Anyway here are your link, that devs selling on Kinguin https://www.kinguin.net/indie-valley, there are other markets doing this too. Feel free to google it a little bit thorough.

3 years ago
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I guess it is an opinion thing, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48908726 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190709/09390242543/indie-publishers-tell-gamers-to-pirate-instead-buying-keys-through-reseller-g2a.shtml https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-07-02-developers-call-for-players-to-pirate-their-games-rather-than-buy-from-g2a
This is what I had found
Alright then, I'll leave it at some prefer, some don't. Thanks for the link
PS: There are a few statements in there that are against all key resellers, but most of them are G2A. Maybe it's 80% G2A's fault lol

3 years ago*
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Eneba, as well as Kinguin has official publishers there. Look for Blasphemous, for instance on Eneba. It is sold only by Team17 there.

3 years ago
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g2a is a shitty site. There are better, cheaper, safer ones.

3 years ago
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The Factorio case is one where we actually got some numbers. And I have to say, the problem doesn't seem as big as the devs and publishers want us to think. They said they had 300 fraudulently bought keys. 198 of those were sold on G2A as they stated after an investigation. Those 300 copies cost them 6600$ in chargeback fees. I think Factorio sold around 1 million copies at that time. The game is 25€ now, but I believe it was 20€ during EA. So they had 20 million in sales, minus the 30% Valve takes. That's still 14 million in revenue.

This tells me two things. First, the number of actually fraudulently obtained keys is absolutely minimal and pretty much irrelevant. 300 compared to a million copies. 6600$ compared to 14 million. And second, I would assume, given that G2A is the biggest of the grey market sellers, that they sold many thousand copies of Factorio (a shame we don't have an actual number here). Maybe a high 5-digit number? And for every sale except those 198, the dev actually got money.

I usually don't want to defend G2A and others like them. But I can't help but feel that the devs blow this out of proportion. What the grey market mostly does is resell keys from cheaper regions. And I totally get that devs want to prevent that. But they act like the grey market is full of stolen keys, and that doesn't seem to be the case. And all this makes me believe that statements like "better pirate than buy on G2A" are honestly BS.

3 years ago
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3 years ago*
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well what if they get revoked ?!! specially if its a 60$ game and some people dont like the idea of buying stolen games

3 years ago
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First thing first, You don't buy 60$ game for 60$ dollar. You pay 40 bucks top. When you buy 100 games this way (I bought 500 this way, check my acc) and they revoke 1 ( no revoke me btw), you lose 40 bucks, but spare 1960$.
Oh btw I'm from EU. We pay 60 euro for a game, not 60 usd. 60 euro is 70 usd. So we pay more for the same game.
Second, Revoke titles that I found or heard, was new titles. Nobody stole 1 year or more old games. So If you scare from scam, buy old titles

3 years ago
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but are you ok with buying stolen games ?!!

3 years ago
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You really think they stole that much games and you only heard rumors about it?

3 years ago
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They even do short mini sales with 90% off once a while on games <1 euro.

Mostly its stuff that comes from bundles, so should be legit in most games, if you find reselling legit.

You put in Neo Cab twice, not alphabetized makes it a bit hard.

The Atomy is a removed game, for anyone interested.

3 years ago*
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The Atomy banned game not delisted or purchase disabled

3 years ago
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i don't think that's a store, seems more like a market.

3 years ago
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https://www.gamivo.com/about-us

GAMIVO - Who are we?
A revolutionary marketplace for digital products run by gamers for gamers!

so it's same as kinguin etc
and therefore you can't be sure for anything

3 years ago
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I used to buy from that site, but I deactivated my gamivo account cuz they force into you the subscription on the paycheck and you can not chose to not pay it.

3 years ago
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And how exactly can they 'force' you to do anything?

3 years ago
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3 years ago*
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Grey marketplaces tend to have reputations of being somewhat shady, with the worst offenders casting shade on other similar sites. There was a practice of offering 'protection' for a small fee, where they would guarantee a refund or new key if the seller gave you a used / revoked one, which is something that honest sites tend to organise by default, for free. Which then escalated into protection subscriptions for a discount, and then into those checkboxes re-ticking themselves after you unchecked them, or quietly signing you for recurring subscription charges despite specifying not to. Maybe some grey marketplaces don't do that, but last I used one way back / last I checked, it was still a thing.

3 years ago
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dont know what site u are talking about but in general those protection things exist but they normaly dont force you to use them and deselecting it once atually means u dont buy it

3 years ago
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G2A in my case. In general, if they're charging you for a guarantee of pursuing a refund or replacement where any remotely reputable site would do that without a 'protection fee', then you shouldn't be surprised when they try other methods of getting money. In my case, I unchecked the protection when adding an item to my basket, but then when I pressed to purchase, the checkbox had re-enabled itself in the purchase summary (right before you click to finalise the transaction). I then followed my instinct to double check my paypal afterwards, and it had in fact charged me extra, but not for a single instance of protection, but for the first period of a recurring protection subscription.

I didn't just write my other reply for the random fun of making stuff up, y'know. :P
Deselecting it once didn't stop them from defaulting it back in, and then somehow managing to perhaps sneak another option in the checkout process. Yeah, mistakes happen, but this occurred even when I was actively looking for the tiny font fineprint "are you sure?" approach. The shady reputation is there with a reason. It's not all just random freak happenings from people who don't grasp how checkboxes work. I would always advise heavy caution.

3 years ago
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Ah yeah I have never used G2A cause its the worst of the worst imo the site I use most often when it comes to gray market is probably kinguin as I don't have nearly as many problems with them as with most of the others.

3 years ago
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Gamivo has the lowest prices of all grey marketplaces, bought around 70 games from them so far.

3 years ago
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3 years ago
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Grey market, but like very grey market. Keys buyed from shady russian gray markets for a few rubles and resold there at higher price.

3 years ago
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I would like to know those websites where the games like OP listed are few rubles.

3 years ago
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there are quite a few of them but they are shady as f plus they only allow those crappy russian payment systems

3 years ago
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I know there are games for a few rubles there, but those are pure garbage and asset flips, not some good indies OP had mentioned. Wouldn't add them to account even if they give them for free.

3 years ago
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i buy Titanfall for $0.58
i think you need see the seller...

3 years ago
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Does anyone know if there is a way to check Gamivo prices of games on my wishlist without doing it manually? I don't see Gamivo as an option on isthereanydeal.com or gg.deals. There might be some old bundled games I am interested in playing that I would be willing to take the risk on if they are less than $1.

3 years ago
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Check allkeyshop.com. It is a price checker site for trusted keyshops. There is a feature where you can upload your steam wishlist. You just need to make it public first ofc.

3 years ago
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Thanks :)

3 years ago
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Let me tell you how these sites works. Except G2A and maybe Kinguin where everybody can sell. I'm selling my bundled keys on G2A, Small profit, but it is enough to get those games from bundles that I want for free or really cheap.
The other side of the story are the gamivo, hrk etc, where you need to be self-employed or small corporation for tax purposes. They are selling bulk keys, not one or two. They are legit. They buy their keys their home country on wholesale price, mostly physical copies and scan the keys from inside and sell them for much more profit than at home. Because games in different countries are selling different prices. For example Do you know that a new game in th US is 60 usd and in the EU is 60 euro? Same game, still you pay more if you pay in euro. Everything is cost more in euro. You can check the different steam prices on steamdb. Back in the day you can buy steam games for your account on steam much cheaper with VPN, but not anymore far as I know sadly.
The 3. side are the developers selling their own keys, because steam got 30% of the selling price, so it is much cheaper to sell the keys themself.
The only thing on steam side, that you can try out a game and get full refund if you don't like it and don't play 2 hour or more. When you buy a key, you only get a refund when the keys don't work. I had one game from gamivo where the key don't work. They ask for couple of screenshots and then refunded full.

So these keys are 99% legit, but big corps don't like when you buy them, because they lose profit. Personally I will buy almost all my games from key shops until they make the price of games worth the same in usd as in euro.

3 years ago
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Vast majority of games there don't have physical copies - indie games basically. Majority of those are games that were already featured in a bundle, it's easy to add 2 and 2.

3 years ago
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Thanks for the info <3

3 years ago
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Thats not completely true like i said many keys are out of stock in the russian gray market after a gamivo sale..That alone speak a lot.

3 years ago
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Care to share that russian gray market link?

3 years ago
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mostly game forom bundles if not all. i have bought some games like 1 year ago and still there on my account

3 years ago
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There are some people from Steamtrades who bulk buy Humble Bundle Gift Links from bundles and resell the keys on here.
I have a friend who does the buying and passes them on to someone with the account. So they are mostly legit in that case, but still against the TOS of Humble Bundle.
You're better off paying a few dollars etc to be sure of your key...

3 years ago
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it's shame that they add 0.5$ comission with payment, it makes less reasons to buy cheap keys by 1-2 units per buy.

3 years ago
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It's not "legit" in the sense of having agreements with publishers. It's kind of a marketplace that resells (mostly) bundle keys and bulk keys purchased in cheaper regions.

That said, I've never had problems with them, looks like most traders there are reliable. I purchased like 20 games there and keys worked perfectly.

3 years ago
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I've only bought from them during the 90% off items less than 1eur..
Great deals since they don't charge those high payment provider costs.
They're flash deals though, usually don't last longer than an hour or 2 and are very rare

3 years ago
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I moved this to off-topic, as it's not a deal. And it's not even allowed to link to deals from re-seller sites.

You may be lucky 50 times, and then you will find scammy seller that get keys in illegitimate way, and it will be revoked due to payment problems. Fact they ask users to pay for protection speaks for themselves. Same as big G2A promises they will compensate any dev who will prove there were illegally sold keys on their platform, and then they try to act like good guy that "did investigation", after it was already proven they sold stolen keys. Too bad they don't have this kind of investigations on a regular basis, after users keep reporting keys they bought were not working...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-05-21-g2a-admits-it-sold-stolen-game-keys

That's my opinion about them:

View attached image.
3 years ago
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It honestly depends on what you define as legit...

There is a reason why they aren't listed on ITAD, neither bundle reselling, reselling keys from lower price countries or most importantly, how they facilitate the sale of stolen products is a good thing for the game industry.

Reselling bundle keys - It's a grey area, you bought it knowing the TOS, if this was an actual physical disc before the digital age, it would've been normal to borrow/sell the game, but nowadays it isn't.

Reselling keys from lower price - this really screws people from lower income countries example, the political instability of these countries lead to currency instability, I have heard locals say that they can't buy games from HB and similar sources because of the huge gap in currency discrepancy.

Stolen products - It's known that these platforms facilitate the sale of stolen products, sometimes, the true reason why a game is so cheap is because of examples where, a stolen CC is used to buy multiple copies and sold cheap for a quick cashout, meanwhile, the theft is reported and the money is chargedback - and it is the developers who pay the fee for the chargeback. examples

It's true when they say that the devs would really much rather people pirated the game rather than giving money to these shady markets.

My husband is a lead programmer for a game company, the games made are popular, yet he is paid like shit and plans to leave - many kids, including him, fancied the idea of one day making the games they play - but the reality is that the price of games remained the same (60 euros) for over a decade without changing, and yet we are still looking at alternative markets and reluctant to pay the asking price, it's just not a feasible situation and many of these games are developed at the cost taken out of the programmers, artists hides - these people could've made double, triple or more of their current salary if only they plied their craft in any other area rather than gaming.

That said, I completely understand everyone has different economic and life situations, it's not a black and white thing and actually, very complex for both sides.

3 years ago*
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Pretty much this.

3 years ago
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Very insightful post 👍

3 years ago
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Pretty much what I think

3 years ago
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Yes 60€ over a decade but again every year of that decade there is more and more gamers/buyers/sales. And more games published every day. Today is hard to stuck to one game and play it over and over like before. Largely due to lacking of content or short gameplay which is not worth it to replay the game and pay 60€ for it. Not to mention alpha state of published games under the name Early Access.

3 years ago*
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More games in the market only means saturation and competition which actually lowers the gains for any individual game.
The debate of "the worthiness of a game" is an independent and very subjective issue.

10 years ago I bought Metal Gear 2 for 60€, 10 years later we are still paying about the same price for the newest entries to the series despite significant raise in cost of living in average, technical improvements for the game and the fact investments for games haven't changed much. All this means that what the people who actually make the games get is reduced.

If you were trying to argue that games make more money, some do - some don't, but the fact we are paying the same or less for them is the truth, and if you want quality products, you have to pay for it - which we aren't when we rely on these shady markets and I understand you have your reasons for thinking the way you do - you could also just pirate the game, as many devs have expressed that it would be less damaging to them rather than the grey market but the reasons for doing one or the other are your own.

All I'm saying is, behind the scenes, it doesn't matter if the company is EA, average or indie, the struggle for the people that actually make games happen are very real and grey markets don't help.

I personally think the reason so many games hiccup during development is in part due to the lack of veterans, programmers can do their work in any area, a veteran game programmer isn't restricted to the game industry and what many will do in time is just leave to anywhere else - this is the evidence the game sector has severe problems with retaining talent, because just about any other area pays these people immensely better.

3 years ago
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"independent and very subjective issue" I think many gamers would agree with me that there is lot of unfinished in alpha state maybe beta state games. Published as finished product. Publishers mixing words alpha /beta in to one to hide the real state of the game. I see very few games in a year that really deserve 60€. And today's "quality products" mostly contain skins and microtransactions so you can pay more for something that should be in the game. Not to mention dlc s.

I can understand frustration if you or someone close to you develops games and don t get pay much for it. Companies are likely to pay more for advertising than programmers . And if you really think the price increase will get higher salaries for people who actually make games you are wrong. Most companies will just make more money.

3 years ago*
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I personally refrain from early access games as well, partly because I dont have the time to play various iterations of a product until it's finished and pitfalls that you have mentioned.

I don't disagree with your examples of problems in the game sector, as a gamer myself I have seen all of that too. But I feel grey markets are an independent thing - at least we should recognize that when people spend money there, they are definitely not supporting the game makers but rather a marketplace that facilitates region price abuse and stolen products, no? There are "legit" sales there but when problematic products are mixed within, the market itself is damaging the game sector in the end.

I have heard devs say that they prefer people to pirate the game rather than giving money to grey markets, but the reason is self evident why people still do the latter.

And it's not really frustration, more like acceptance of the general state of things. I don't think salaries would rise with increase in game prices and only meant to say that part of the issue is that the product has never seen a raise in pricing.

3 years ago
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Reselling bundle keys - It's a grey area, you bought it knowing the TOS, if this was an actual physical disc before the digital age, it would've been normal to borrow/sell the game, but nowadays it isn't.

Mind explaining what changed if we talk about European Union?

EDIT:

My husband is a lead programmer for a game company, the games made are popular, yet he is paid like shit and plans to leave - many kids, including him, fancied the idea of one day making the games they play - but the reality is that the price of games remained the same (60 euros) for over a decade without changing, and yet we are still looking at alternative markets and reluctant to pay the asking price, it's just not a feasible situation and many of these games are developed at the cost taken out of the programmers, artists hides - these people could've made double, triple or more of their current salary if only they plied their craft in any other area rather than gaming.

Your husband is paid like shit not because "people don't want to pay for games", but because everything can be done remotely by some Indian(no offense guys) 10x cheaper.

3 years ago*
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I'm not sure I understood your question for the first.

About the latter, if the investors give you X amount for a project, you work around that amount, it's not a question of finding cheap labor elsewhere and at least the companies my friend and family work in, I have not heard of such a thing.

And I don't think your suggestion can explain how every other sector is able to pay better than gaming - I have seen people leave for other fields (still programming) and they all pay better - certainly those other fields could also outsource to cheap labor if all we are talking about is programming, art etc.

3 years ago
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I'm not sure I understood your question for the first.

Why is it not normal to sell a purchased game in European Union now? EU allows anyone to resell product they bought.

You didn't notice how rapidly Poland became #1 in Gaming Industry? It is because their salaries are way smaller, than for instance in England and still the quality that is getting produced there is higher. For Poland gaming industry is ideal for every programmer now, as well as for any other country where average salary is not more than 10 eur/h.

If you are getting "underpaid" in one country, it doesn't mean developers in another country are also struggling to "survive".

3 years ago
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I do think they are doing a good thing in Poland, from the looks of it. I just meant the same isn't happening in what looks like to be most other places. Just like how everyone is applauding for cd projekt and cyberpunk, I think one of the reason they are so lauded is that what they are doing is rare in the industry.

Not every company has the stigma of being greedy, corrupt and inhumane, we have many other decent, average, good companies in between but the issues aforementioned are there. The companies I know of, don't have inhumane work environments/crunch times but the pay isn't good, so it's an ongoing struggle for the sector at large when only a minority seems to have things in order, as the example you pointed out.

About the EU thing, I can see your point - it's a complex issue as one can think back to before the prevalent digital age when reselling and sharing is commonplace and nowadays we have "family share" and HB making a fuss about gifting keys on SG. I personally don't agree with people profiting from these bundle deals, specially the HB ones meant for charity...but there are many layers to an onion.

3 years ago
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I am not talking here about stigma of being greedy, corrupt and inhumane, but overall capitalism.

Look at tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Why do you think they produce their phones in China and not in US? It is obvious that their devices would cost 10x more if it will be produced in Western World. Same with games, it is just not viable for most gaming companies to sell games for 60 euro price tag and hire programmers with a salary of 100$/hour.

3 years ago
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Yes, that's one of the layers of the onion. Many companies shift their operations to China - the most known is the manufacturing sector. I don't mean to say the price of games remaining the same is the only issue - but that it is one of them - it's feasible to have such low costs when things aren't regulated and exploits are rampant - just like how we like to pay dirt cheap for clothing - because in truth, humane, properly regulated items would cost 10x times that.

This convo reminded me of a scandal in China many years ago, about a brand of blankets using dirty/used cotton from hospitals to make their products xD but I digress...

We see many real life examples of these things with their own variations, my local supermarket sells eggs for 1 euro a dozen or 3 euro a dozen, there are people who will buy the 1 euro one despite being aware or not that the origins for those eggs were not so good instead of buying the brand 3 times the price that are more ethically correct.

The cheap labor in your previous mentions are akin to that, exploitation makes it difficult to compete across all sectors - but the fact we pay for the cheap labor means we are condoning the exploitation aswell.

Btw, thanks for the chat so far, it's always interesting to hear others points of view, specially when conveyed in a logical manner xD

3 years ago
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You too, thx for the input :)

3 years ago
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You boght Internet Cafe Simulator for under $1, it's a steal. That key came from stolen CC for sure.
But most of the time, it won't be charged back, so enjoy it asap xD

3 years ago
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Except it's not. They buy this bundle for $4 and then selling each game for $1-$2, easy money
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/IfAhZ/fanatical-nemesis-x-bundle

3 years ago
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Oh, thanks :)

3 years ago
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Forgot to check barter.vg xD

3 years ago
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I use https://augmentedsteam.com/ which tells lots of stuff including lowest price recorded, current best price, which bundles includes/included the game in the past etc.

3 years ago
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Great, thanks for the tip :)

3 years ago
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Got a few games from them, most recently I got Catherine cuz I couldn't win it here :3

Only had a problem with a non working key once (for Witcher 2 I think), but it was resolved within 2 days with their
customer support (and the free kind, not the +extra money kind), and I was refunded and got the key again from
a different reseller, this time a working one.

Their paypal fee irks me a bit and how their discount codes work (eg if you activate it but don't proceed with the purchase it is still considered invalid).

3 years ago
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As a registered seller let me explain something about most of the grey market websites.
Right now there are 4 big ones which i will go into one at a time: G2A, Kinguin, Eneba and Gamivo

G2A:
G2A is probably the most well known grey market site of them all with the biggest customer base. Anyone can register to sell there, but once you reach 1000 euro's sold they will block your account unless you give them your certificate of incorporation. So unless you have a registered company you wont be able to sell there anymore after a certain treshold. Since G2A is the biggest of them all by far products there sell incredibly fast. The thing about G2A however is that a couple of months ago they increased the fees for sellers by an insane amount. If i sell a game for 50 euro's on there id get around 35 euro's with the remaining 15 going to all kinds of weird fees. Because of this prices tend to be higher then most other grey market sites. All bigger sellers there are legitimate businessowners so they should be trustworthy, but even we sometimes have to deal with used codes every once in a while. There are a lot of low or unranked sellers on there, who can be unreliable, so just check who you're buying from :)

Kinguin:
Where to start with this one...... Kinguin used to be one of the best sites there was, but two years ago they made a couple of bad investments and started to have financial problems. They never told any of us sellers anything except that they didnt know when they would be able to pay us again. A couple of big sellers are still waiting for thousands of euro's from games they sold over a year ago. I too have had to wait months to finally get my money back. Half a year ago they made a system with new tiers offering most sellers special "deals". If you started selling with them again they would try to pay your old money soon, but everything you would sell from then on would be paid out a week from when you requested the payout. Of course not a lot of us trusted this since they basically kept us in the dark and stole our money for over a year. I personally did start selling there again because it had the lowest fees and second largest userbase. So far it has not let me down but amongst sellers its reputation is terrible. On Kinguin you can register as a community seller but everything you sell will go to your Kinguin wallet and wont be available to payout. Im not sure but i believe you can register there as a business seller without actually having a registered company, so same advice as G2A: Be sure to check your seller, their products and their rating. Kinguin tends to be far more reliable then G2A though.

Eneba:
Pretty much the underdog of them all. Eneba is for registed business owners only and charges us sellers very low fees. The only problem with Eneba is that it has a much smaller userbase then G2A and Kinguin, so you wont your games as fast as on the other two. Eneba is definitely the most reliable grey market site because it its the least grey of them all. Im a big fan of Eneba, even though the sales there are quite low since most people don't know about it.

Gamivo:
The main site of the thread. Gamivo has been trying to deal with its huge amount of unofficial sellers. They have recently added the same system as G2A where you can only sell up to a 1000 euro's untill you have to register with a business account, but that hasn't stopped Gamivo from having a craaaaaaapload of undercutting low level sellers. Its prices are often the lowest compared to the other three sites i mentioned but that is because practically anyone can register and start selling there, which (unfortunately) a lot of people do. This means that Gamivo has a lot of sellers with low ratings and if you buy a key from any of the sites i mentioned, a key from Gamivo has the biggest chance to have issues with it. Not to say prices on gamivo are scams, a lot of us on there are legitimate sellers and most keys will work, but most of the games gamivo uses in its sales are either from individual sellers who just resell random bundle games which tend to have issues every once in a while. The action where you get a 90% discount is actually a rather nice sale since Gamivo pays for the discounted price. We still get exactly what we'd get if it sold for the regular price so they're basically paying us out of their own pockets with those sales. For all grey market sites but ESPECIALLY gamivo, its important to check your seller. Dont be fooled by over a 1000 sales because as soon as you start selling there Gamivo adds a 1000 sales to your account. Any sale after that is legitimate, so if you see someone with 1001 sales they could be legitimate but id recommend buying it from a seller with 10001 sales for a few cents more expensive.

All by all Eneba is the most reliable. Then Kinguin. G2A comes third and Gamivo last.
If you ever get a duplicated key on any one of the sites be sure to contact the sites support team. They send us sellers a ticket so we can work it out with you. Try to make good screenshots of the key, the message its duplicated and your library. Dont take us for fools though because we can and will ask steam/origin/uplay's support team when the key was activated and we know if something is fishy.
Be sure to check allkeyshop for your best price and if its 2-3 euros more on Kinguin then on Gamivo that just might be worth the extra euro's since it would be a lot more secure

3 years ago
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Closed 3 years ago by paco7533.