Is it safe to buy games from sites like G2A and Kinguin?

The worst that could happen is getting your key already used or your game revoked

I don't remember if it was in kinguin or another place where they asked you your steam login info to activate gta v, which is wrong

And also, they aren't official retailers, so everything is kind of shaddy, Ubisof revoked a lot of games that came from those places for example

Well crossing the road with traffic can be safe but it is not a wise idea.

I would say i would not use them for obvious reasons can they be safe i suppose so,but being safe and actually safe are not one in the same.I am just saying is it worth supporting what they do to save a buck?

You are free to do as you wish with your money,but as i said i vote no because where they get there keys is not always in the best of ways and so on.I also must note a site that has to up sell you protection just so you are protected from shopping with them should be the biggest red flag of them all.If they are such a "safe site" why do you need to buy shield just to feel safe with your purchase?They should cover it and do a better job of screening the market,but nope they are to busy printing money and selling ill gotten keys and sometimes stolen keys just to make a buck.

It is not an authorized seller, so it is not safe. You can risk your money if you want, even pay the illegal insurance, its your money after all. My advice is to buy from authorized sellers (Humble, GMG, etc) only, and ignore these shady gray-market keysites (g2a, kinguin, and basically any other site with "key" in its name).

inb4 "HEY I'VE BOUGHT 5 GAMES AND NEVER GOT SCAMMED, G2A IS THE BEST" comments

I wouldn't trust shady resellers, but it's your money. You're account should be safe, but it's not guaranteed that those keys are legit. Good luck!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/2yhlw4/key_resellers_and_what_they_mean_for_you

I have a huge amount of purchases on both those sites under my belt. Even gamecards, pre-payed cards etc.
Not A once i had to contact the support.
most deliveries are within 5 minutes.

Oh and, -note- g2a prices are without VAT. They add the VAT in you basket depending on where in the world you live.
Kingwing are the exact prices (might stil add a small payment fee depending on your payment method, but I never got charged any this far.)

never have problems with both of them

Pretty split audience...

You can get Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion for £3 - £4 on these sites. Yet it's on sale on GMG for £17:49... Sins has been overpriced for way too long.

I bought 3 games in G2A and one of them didn't work.

It's as safe as getting all your goods from the black market. They have to deliver some of the real stuff, but you can just as easily be ripped off even by a "trusted" seller.

It all boils down to this: would you risk your money on getting something that doesn't work, or pay more to be 100% safe with the product? As I said, essentially the classic setup between black market and official retailers.

Some people are lucky and never run into troubles there. Some probably don't run into trouble so they can feed the mouth-by-mouth marketing these sites heavily rely on. Some form entire forums/subreddits on how were they ripped off. Throw of a dice, but it seems you only lose there if you throw a 1 or maybe a 2.

Still, keep in mind, that the money you pay never reaches the makers of the game. Ever. This part is important for some people.

its safe as long as you pay attention to the rating of who you are buying from

In my experience, I never got a problem buying steam keys in g2a. But my friend telling me to stay away from uplay or steam game who use uplay drm. He has a trouble when activated steam uplay games.

Nope.

never had problems with g2a

Usually, yes. The thing is, it depends on the vendor. I've ordered about 15 games through Kinguin, and I haven't had any issues... except for my MGSV preorder, which has not yet been fulfilled and the vendor seems to have just dropped off the face of the earth. I have buyer protection, and I just started contacting Kinguin support. Let's see if I can finally get a key.

Edit: after about five minutes with support they refunded my original payment and gave me a 10% discount. While it's not the best situation, since I had to pay a bit extra to get MGSV versus the original preorder, it works out for me in the long run.

All the keys I purchased on g2a were good (and I never buy the insurance). But having said that, use some common sense and only buy from sellers who have 100% feedback and 1000+ sales under their belt. Also, make sure you are buying keys and not steam gifts.

A simple answer. No.

Never had problem with Kinguin
Never had problem with G2A... Once i recieve portal 1 insted of portal 2... In 6 hour ill get money back :)
Your choose. (I see this question many times... Dont know why agin and agin same qestion about this ^^)

G2A got a money back thingy. Never had any problems with them but some people may have.

They scammed 30$ from me :(

Never had any issues with G2A, that being said I am always careful about checking reviews and only buying from trusted sellers.. Never used the other site though.

A friend of mine got Minecraft revoked from Kinguin, if such a thing happens just contact support and they'll give your money back.

Guys, there is two type business in e-commerce for selling key.

The first one is B2C (Business to Customer), such as indiegala, humblebundle, bundlestar, green man gaming, etc ...
The 2nd one is C2C (Customer to Customer), such as G2A, Kinguin, etc ...

And yes there is more risk when we buy in C2C type, but there is also trusted seller. The site like g2a is only portal for seller to selling their product.

I buy some steam keys from G2A, i use a method to pay in local currency (PayU Latam), 24hs later (or less) i recived a email saying the payment was aproved and the order is ready to be claimed.
Even when all my purchase were OK, i never risking to buy big AAA games or expensive ones. Usually i buy keys under 10 USD, just in case ;)