My conclusion: TinyBuild is dumb for not sending valve a list of keys that were charged back and having them deactivated. G2A isn't at fault any more than they usually are for their lax oversight. They certainly don't owe TinyBuild anything.
EDIT: I feel the need to add an analogy here. Rolex goes to eBay complaining that $500,000 in stolen Rolex watches have been sold on eBay and tries to claim that eBay owes them the $500,000. Of course, eBay laughs at them. Meanwhile, Rolex doesn't bother filing a police report about the watches and instead writes a long article blaming eBay for everything bad that happened.
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Difference: keys are for personal use only, and it is strictly forbidden reselling them. Check any official reseller ToS.
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Pretty sure you're also not allowed to resell stolen watches.
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If eBay would knew those watches are stolen then Rolex could sue eBay for a big sum of money.
But eBay can't know the source of those watches, but the source doesn't care in the case of keys, since any kind of keys being reselled is forbidden, despite they have been buying legally or not.
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That's not true. There are obviously cases where reselling keys is legal. Some examples: official resellers, promotional keys without a disclaimer attached, unopened boxed copies of games that contain keys.
It's ridiculous to assume that selling a key is always illegal. Especially since, in this case, G2A are saying that the person in question is an official reseller.
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selling promotional keys and keys from unopened boxed copies probably violates the EULA (or its equivalent)
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You don't agree to a EULA before opening the box, though.
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Good point and seriously, can't believe I missed that
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I think the more important factor is that EULA is not law and will not be enforced as such. The most they can do is revoke your access with said keys for breaching the EULA.
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not quite.
It's not criminal, but it is a legally binding contract. Legal remedies for violating a legally binding contract are generally monetary damages and/or an injunction (or, in rare cases, specific performance). That means the most they can do is revoke your access with said keys AND sue for lost profits / damages related to the violation of the EULA. (from a practical perspective, the former is relatively easy, whereas the latter is much more difficult to accomplish)
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You are correct, but as you stated, it's much more difficult and you'd never see it happen over selling a couple keys.
Hell, look at Geohotz vs Sony. That was some severe EULA breach that truly cost the company tons of money and it ended with just an injunction stating any further actions will result in fines.
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Ever heard of the term "judgment proof"?
It's a non-technical term that lawyers use for someone that can't be sued, because even if you win, they don't have anything, so it's kinda pointless. At the time of the lawsuit, Hotz was 22, had not accumulated any significant assets, and had no meaningful income.
Settling out of court (which is not an injunction) for a promise to never do it again is basically the best outcome Sony could get - litigating until Hotz lost would have cost Sony a lot of money that they could not recuperate from him.
G2A is a different matter, in that they have significant assets and significant income.
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He traded his second unlocked iPhone for a Nissan 350Z and three more iPhones to unlock. I think it's safe to assume, he likely profited a bit from his work there before the PS3 ordeal.
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a $30,000 car is not exactly a huge chunk of change, especially relative to the cost of the litigation (which would have easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars)
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on the other hand on boxed copy there is usually some king of warning - just picked up first box copy next to me for Aliens Colonial Marines and on box it says translated more or less:
"Offered product requires accepting users Terms of Use, you can view these at site XYZ. If you do not agree with these terms you can return an unopened box to seller according to refund policy." and "Game cannot be used for commercial purposes" and "can be only sold by official resellers at the teritory of Poland". So even before you open the box, try to install the game and read EULA there you are already warned about box content and limitations associated with purchase.
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Is violation of copyright lawys too In Gerrmany at least, German Court: Key Selling infringes Copyright
Edit: This applies to selling keys from boxed copies digitally, presumably reselling digital keys digitally could be legal.
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a EULA is a contract, which is a binding legal agreement governed by the law of obligations
pro-tip: if a legal document has the word "agreement" in it, it's a contract
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Have you actually ever read some of those decisions?
In the U.S., the validity of the EULA is governed by technicalities, such as making the user click "I agree" rather than "ok", whether the EULA is presented right upfront or whether the user needs to click a link to access the term so fthe EULA, and whether a user must agree to the EULA prior to downloading software or only after the software has already been installed.
As for capacity:
1) intention to be legally bound - if you intend to click on the "I agree" button, it counts as an outward manifestation of intent to be bound by the EULA, which is sufficient to be counted intending to be legally bound
2) proper form doesn't really apply here. Certain types of legal documents require specific "form", such as a will generally requiring two witnesses or that contracts involving the disposition of land must be in writing. For a license agreement, there is no required form, and technically a verbal agreement would suffice (though that wouldn't work in practice)
3) lawful object means that the contract can't be for an illegal purpose, such as a contract for murder or the sale of illegal drugs
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The basic gist is that shrink-wrap is not clear, especially where physical copies are purchased. However, for digital distribution, if the vendor presents the EULA prior to purchase and download, and requires the user to manifest assent by clicking "I agree", which cannot be clicked until the user has had the opportunity to read the entire agreement (e.g. by making the user scroll down to the bottom of the page), the EULA will probably be enforceable (barring any impermissible terms).
The devil's in the details, but the concept of a EULA is compatible with existing law. note: only speaking to US law, I don't know shit about other countries
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G2A isn't an official reseller to begin with. They just provide marketplace for commoners to sell their games and obviously, those who are selling Steam keys there are mostly getting them from sources where it's stated that further distribution of keys is prohibited, like bundle sites or actually official game stores like Gamersgate or Greenmangaming. So said, there is nothing official at G2A, the whole site is functioning barely on the verge with illegal.
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Selling a key is never illegal unless the seller knows or believes the key to be stolen.
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illegal no, but usually prohibited by contract (i.e. the terms under which the key is obtained)
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Such prohibitions in a contract aren't legally enforceable.
Which is why, if you live in the UK for example, you'll see Statutory Rights not Affected on many products / t & cs.
It's a reminder, if an obscure one, that the law - not the terms of the contract that takes precedence.
That's why Apple got their arses kicked all over Europe over their 1 year guarantee nonsense in their T & Cs.
Customers may have been considered to have agreed it to it by purchasing the phone, but because the condition didn't meet the legal requirement it was irrelevant.
T & Cs can never supercede law.
This is why, despite all the complaining, that even the big publishers won't take lawsuits to close grey markets down (unless they have direct proof of criminal activity).
They know that not only would they lose, but that they'd also risk setting a legal precedent which could help accelerate the painfully slow enacting of the rights to resell 'used' digital games.
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1) you're absolutely right in that (especially in europe*) an agreement cannot invalidate or overrule laws parties can opt to be bound by the terms of the contract rather than the law, as long as it does not contradict the law; the EU is much more restrictive on the circumstances required for agreeing to more restrictive T&C
2) you're absolutely right that a party won't bring a lawsuit if they think there's a big chance of losing, especially if it risks setting a legal precedent. However, not willing to take the risk or to go through the expense is not the same as "knowing they'd lose"
They may be waiting for the perfect case
As for whether the sale of a key is permissible, it depends on how the key was obtained. Humble Bundle's ToS specifically states that reselling is strictly prohibited. If the ToS meets the legal requirements, then that would govern (at least in the U.S.) note: I'm not sure if it does meet the legal requirements to be enforceable)
In the EU, reselling keys is 100% permitted, as long as you do not retain a copy (e.g. selling the steam key while keeping the boxed CD)
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1) "parties can opt to be bound by the terms of the contract rather than the law, as long as it does not contradict the law"
But those terms can never be enforced.
I can agree not sell keys I get through Humble Bundle.
They could fax me a contract and have me sign it.
But I could still decide to sell the keys anyway and there'd be nothing HB could do.
Contracts can never supercede law. The law is beautifully simple and clear on this.
2) "However, not willing to take the risk or to go through the expense is not the same as "knowing they'd lose"
They may be waiting for the perfect case"
The perfect time is now (or arguably 5 or 10 years ago) when the judiciary were a) pretty ignorant of the digital economy and b) there was barely any legislation regarding it.
Each year that passes the likelihood of such a case ever being brought diminishes and the rules become ever more favourable to the end consumer as the judiciary become better educated about the issues.
Not before time too, for far too long customers have been at the mercy of greedy and / or incompetent devs who have exploited the digital medium.
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Well if you read their blog entry, you'll see that it doesn't seem to be that easy to identify the "good" keys and the "bad".
As their site is down, see the bottom of this image.
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It should be extremely easy to know which keys went to which purchaser and which purchases were charged back. If they can't tell which purchase goes with which key, there's no way to recover your key later if something goes wrong. And if they don't know which purchases were reversed, they're not keeping financial records and they're going to be in a lot of trouble when they file taxes.
The only reason they wouldn't have the necessary info is if G2A is right and one of their partners screwed them over. If their own store sold the keys and they can't identify the transactions, they are grossly and criminally incompetent. And if it was one of their partners, then they got paid what they asked for the keys and they're making a huge bullshit fuss over being undercut. And either way, they're blaming the wrong people.
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Developers sell batches of keys to official resellers, they don't have any data about the final user...
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That's not what TinyBuild is saying, though. They're saying that through their own store, someone bought and charged back a huge amount of keys, then sold those keys on G2A.
G2A are the ones saying that it's the official resellers. And if TinyBuild's official resellers are screwing them, that's still not G2A's problem.
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That's not entirely correct. They said that they did run their own store for some few months and stopped it then. Nowhere does it say that all charge frauds (and thus "lost keys") were related to their own store.
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It actually does. http://i.imgur.com/lK2HNFb.jpg in here. And I don't understand how they can't know which ones are leaked. I mean don't they know which keys they sold? That's weird.
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I linked the same image above and it does not. Nowhere does it say that they didn't manage to revoke the fraud related issue from their own store. Instead they mentioned that their distribution partners experienced similar charge back and fraud problems.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that they are in a better position to judge what their options are and what not. Not that it would matter, as they obviously found the appropriate keyless solution for their business.
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Just to be clear i am asking this if i understand right or not. English is not my native language Aren't they say what GauRocks said? http://i.imgur.com/XX1HxdD.png
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Yes, they experienced charge backs and keys appeared at the same time at G2A.
But their blog explains general business issues. This isn't about a single event in their store that they didn't manage to handle. By the given information you can't tell what they managed to revoke and what not.
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You are right and they look like they don't want to revoke either. But saying there is no real way to know is still a bit weird for me.
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Agreed, it is. But I have experienced weirder things. ;)
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"There's no real way to know which keys leaked or not, and deactivating full batches of game keys would make a ton of fans angry, be it keys bought from official sellers or not."
It's not the first time a publisher hasn't revoked keys for that reason (and not surprisingly, since the times publishers have done so, they've inexplicably been blamed rather'n the duplicitous sites at fault), so that's nothing unusual.
As far as the 'not knowing' bit, all they're sure of is that a high volume of keys appeared on G2A, and they don't know where they came from. Their official resellers would have had to notify them of the sale (which they wouldn't legally have been allowed to do in the first place), so they know the keys aren't legal.
Likewise, I believe high volume resale is always considered commercial resale, so you aren't allowed to sell like that as a 3rd party (at least with liquidation and the like not applying to digital goods).
In any case, regardless of that being accurate or not, the eula present when purchasing would have prohibited that, and if you didn't get it through something with a eula, right of first sale wouldn't apply to your reselling.
tl;dr: The keys were definitely posted on G2A illegally, and TinyBuilds thus far seems firmly in the right of things.
Meanwhile, G2A is claiming an official reseller deliberately and illegally sold keys under the table through G2A, which Tinybuilds scoffed at. They asked G2A for actual validation of the authenticity of the keys, to which G2A told them they had to become an official partner before G2A adhered to their responsibilities of actually making sure they weren't hosting illegal goods (Or put another way: You know how sites have to take down copyrighted works their users uploaded, when asked? Yeah, G2A should provide the information here, under the same principle, but by claiming the keys weren't illegally obtained by them, they're evading that responsibility).
Tinybuild hasn't given any indication of wrong-doing, and G2A is screaming that they have. It's pretty one-sided in where the blame appears to lie, at the moment.
Add in that G2A has done this exact thing countless times before, and it's highly unlikely this isn't as it appears on the surface.
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But if I go to a Pawn Store with a stolen watch, they are obligated to report it to the police.
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And I assume when the police stop by to take that watch, the shop is required to reimburse you- not yell at Rolex that it's their fault that they let their watches get stolen in the first place.
As always, G2A dances freely in their super-skeevy absurdity.
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Not usually. Pawn shops have to let police come in and look for stolen goods, but they have no way of knowing what's stolen. If they did know something was stolen, they wouldn't buy it in the first place. Because yes, if the police take it as evidence and give it back to the owner, the pawn shop has to go after the thief to get their money back.
Difference is, G2A doesn't ever own the keys, they only provide the location for the sale to take place. They're a lot more like a convention center or eBay than a pawn shop.
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ed- This first part responds to the question about watches, and is used to provide comparative transition to the next paragraph, and has no direct relation to the main topic.
It's a Rolex. They all have unique serial numbers. A pawn shop is supposed to run a check to see if the item matches any stolen item reports before reselling it. If they don't confirm the item's authenticity before reselling it, that's on them.
As I understand it, any time a market takes a cut off each sale [versus a flat service fee to the merchant], they become partners in the sale, meaning they're liable for each purchase- and for suspicious, high-volume offerings, they really ought know they should check authenticity (assuming they cared about their obligations to begin with).
[Online auction sites are a bit weird, legally, ed- and thus often avoid the usual legal considerations but in contrast to that I believe flat-rate market sites like G2A would still fall under the usual liability for a purchase, to a customer. If not, it'd theoretically fall under the same vein as how claiming 'I didn't know copyrighted material was on my upload site' doesn't always save you from some degree of liability.
And even if it isn't outright a legal issue, the real complaint about G2A is that it operates without adhering to normal conventions of responsibility- whether those are based in legality or simple social convention.]
In any case, they clearly didn't confirm authenticity, given that they're trying to strongarm Tinybuild into paying for the right for that check to be made. That's the tidbit that gives the best indication of which party is at fault ed- in relation to that particular component of the matter / since this is a standard legal obligation that G2A is trying to loophole out of, even if G2A didn't have a long-standing reputation for this kind of behavior to begin with.
ed- All the remaining points below are addressed simply both by reading up on the topic, and not trying to excuse one company's seemingly definite misdeed with another company's potential mistakes or accidents.
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"It's a Rolex. They all have unique serial numbers. A pawn shop is supposed to run a check to see if the item matches any stolen item reports before reselling it. If they don't confirm the item's authenticity before reselling it, that's on them."
Sorry, but even that wouldn't be sufficient to check if the watch has been stolen.
Maybe the watch hasn't been reported stolen.
Maybe it has but the serial number wasn't known.
Maybe it was reported stolen as part of an insurance fraud.
But how are G2A supposed to check keys?
Where is the database of stolen keys?
You're also confusing a tangible product with an intangible product.
As for online auction sites, you'll find that actually if you're scammed with a stolen / bogus key most of them will be fairly indifferent unless the purchase side was fraudulent.
" If they don't confirm the item's authenticity before reselling it, that's on them."
Not legally, especially not if there's no method of verifying authenticity.
Were G2A provided with a list of the stolen keys? Because if not there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
"In any case, they clearly didn't confirm authenticity, given that they're trying to strongarm Tinybuild into paying for the right for that check to be made. That's the tidbit that makes it fairly clear which party is at fault, even if G2A didn't have a long-standing reputation for this kind of behavior to begin with."
You're editorialising.
You're also absolving Tinybuild of their failure when it was their failure, and the failure of their partners, that made this whole debacle possible (not to mention the criminals too).
Clearly it's easier to check if a credit card is stolen than a steam key for a merchant - a simple call to the payment processing company would suffice and if you're in any doubt then surely it would be better to place limits on presumably first-time customers or request further verification.
Heck most ordinary websites would have fraud measures to detect such abnormal purchases ($450,000) in what presumably was a short space of time (because otherwise Tinybuild look even more hypocritical for not detecting / acting earlier).
Tinybuild processed payments using stolen cards, how many and over how long - we don't know, then bleated about another company not checking to see if the keys purchased on their own website using the stolen cards were indeed paid for using a stolen card.
I can understand Tinybuild being miffed, but to single out G2A is cheap.
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I can understand Tinybuild being miffed, but to single out G2A is cheap.
The problem is that G2A is not cooperating. If you run a pawnshop, and it turns out that you've bought stolen goods, you're expected to cooperate with the authorities and share what information you have (if you have any information about the identity of the perpetrator, you can't say that you don't want to share it). G2A is willfully obstructing TinyBuild, and that's what makes them the bad part here.
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Tinybuild are not the authorities.
Please point out where Tinybuild claim to have notified the Police and that G2A have refused to co-operate with the Police.
Because if G2A had, that's a matter between the police and G2A.
Not an opportunity for Tinybuild, who were unable to stop fraud on their own site, to push their own self-interested agenda.
"G2A is willfully obstructing TinyBuild"
You don't seem to get it.
If Tinybuild genuinely suspects that G2A is complicit in a crime, then it should man-up and report them to the authorities.
G2A may well have a very good legal reason not to hand over the data to Tinybuild.
Depending on where G2A are based, it might be considered a breach of the data protection act and potentially a crime in itself.
You might not care about companies trading your private details without permission, however many people do.
There is no obstruction because Tinybuild has no authority, no right to demand the data it wants.
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G2A is based in Poland.
And by digging through some texts I could find, under Polish laws, they would have to actually help here. I could find nothing about if they should, or would be allowed to, hand out any information that would allow Tinybuild to directly identify the perpetrator, but they would have to cease selling the goods. Something that they have not. But the fact that G2A more or less said that they would only help with the case if Tinybuild become a partner, that seem to be not really alright, possibly illegal.
You might not care about companies trading your private details without permission, however many people do.
You're making very far-fetched assumptions here.
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"G2A is based in Poland."
Then it will be subject to EU protections on data.
"And by digging through some texts I could find, under Polish laws, they would have to actually help here."
You're wrong.
Completely wrong.
Polish law would not force one company to co-operate with another company.
Poland is an EU member state.
" I could find nothing about if they should, or would be allowed to, hand out any information that would allow Tinybuild to directly identify the perpetrator, but they would have to cease selling the goods."
Then you really didn't look hard:
"Under EU law, personal data can only be gathered legally under strict conditions, for a legitimate purpose. Furthermore, persons or organisations which collect and manage your personal information must protect it from misuse and must respect certain rights of the data owners which are guaranteed by EU law."
Clauses that could affect such a case:
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Even if sharing is allowed (however legitimate the data controller thinks this is), the directive currently prohibits personal data from being transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA) unless the controller assures an adequate level of privacy protection (the adequacy requirement).
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The regulation will allow users to claim damages in the instance of data loss as a result of unlawful processing, including collective redress, the equivalent of a US-style class action lawsuit.
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The regulation affects every global organisation that may have data on EU citizens and residents. Reputational damage is also a key element of a data breach and the new regulation is likely to harmonise ‘naming and shaming’ policies across each country.
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Under the new regulations, controllers must inform and remind users of their rights, as well as documenting the fact that they have reminded them of their rights. In addition, users should not have to opt-out of their data being used, they must opt-in to your systems.
So G2A could potentially put themselves in a far worse position for gratuitously co-operating with a hostile company.
Also, you're still ignoring the fact that Tinybuild haven't provided G2A with a list of stolen keys.
That's all G2A would need.
"You're making very far-fetched assumptions here."
No, I'm not.
In fact that's exactly what you're arguing that G2A should do.
If I resold keys legitimately on G2A, why the hell should G2A gratuitously share my details because Tinybuild asked them to?
"Something that they have not. But the fact that G2A more or less said that they would only help with the case if Tinybuild become a partner, that seem to be not really alright, possibly illegal."
Not illegal at all. There are zero circumstances in which one company could be criminally prosecuted for not giving data to another company without being instructed to by a court.
There's a reason due process and criminal law exists.
There is no law in any country that I've ever heard of which criminalises the refusal to hand over its private database to another company.
You seem to be confusing the law with what you believe to be morally right.
Tinybuild are a company for argument's sake (they may not be), they have no legal recourse to demand such information.
If you actually read the EU Data Protection Regulations, then it's far more likely that co-operating with Tinybuild which would incur legal penalties.
If Tinybuild are unhappy with G2A's response then they have a clear avenue for recourse, report G2A to the respective law enforcement agencies.
That they choose not to really raises questions about how strong a case Tinybuild believes they have.
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No, I'm not.
In fact that's exactly what you're arguing that G2A should do.
No, you're reading far more into what i said than what I actually said.
And under Polish laws, they are still allowed to force G2A to freeze all sales of their products due to suspected illegal activites. If they actually want compensation for any illegally sold goods, they'll have to go through a court, but by continuing to sell the stolen cd-keys, G2A are still committing a potential crime here.
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I'm not.
You're fundamentally misunderstanding how laws work.
Under Polish law, Tinybuild have right to petition a court to take action, just as anyone does.
The court would make a decision based on the evidence presented to it.
Tinybuild has no authority.
They cannot force G2A to do anything.
Only courts / law enforcement can do that and Tinybuild have chosen not to pursue that course.
And only the police can determine whether a crime has taken place.
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That should be reason enough to steer people away from the shady business practices of grey market resellers.
When they'll finally have no more customers, their only option would be to cease operations.
But I fear that won't happen anytime soon, as some people are just that cheap...
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When you have the option to pay $5 for a game or $20, which one do you choose? It's not being cheap, it's having limited funds at times.
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But you don't have to use G2A for that… every key they have was cheaper at some place before that, they just sell the same thing with their own profit. You are paying double or triple distribution fees with them.
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With that point I agree, but what you have to understand is that G2A has a standard price way below the listing up price all year round, whereas steam sales or sales from other distributors are occasionally. Therefore, if I want to get GTA V right now, buying it from G2A would be cheaper than buying it on Steam right now. (as it is not on sale).
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not trying to play the devils advocate here but the differnece is that many times you can get x and y game at cheap price right now, instead of having to wait for sales
also if you use g2apay+ you choose the 0 tax part
then again, Im not trying to endorse what they are doing in any shape or form.
or for example Atari Vault is 8 dollar, please show me where you can buy it for that much
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You cannot avoid overpay: listing any item and cashing out from G2A carries fees, and they also add on their own profit for every key sold on their marketplace. Sometimes it is small: if you pay 30 dollars, it is around 3-4%. If you pay $1.50, it is over 50%.
or for example Atari Vault is 8 dollar, please show me where you can buy it for that much
For that much, legally, I don't think anywhere. It is for 10 bucks on D2D right now though.
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I took one for the team as they say and bought it (if anything then out of sheer curiosity)
it was in form of key, I got it activated just fine. Then again it could be very much deactivated the following days. So far no issue
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My main question is: How the heck did someone manage to sell that many keys on g2a?! Like holy hell!
What TinyBuild needs to do is send Steam a list of keys to deactivate.
G2A is not at fault, they are just a middle-man. GauRocks' analogy is good.
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G2A is not at fault
Hmm... Ever heard of "quality control"?
If your bank was robbed, who would you blame for losing your money?
The thieves who stole it, or the bank who couldn't protect it?
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except, in this analogy G2A is not the bank ... they are maybe the bags holding the money? The bank would be equivalent to from wherever the keys were stolen.
EDIT: to be clear, I'm not defending any business practices, just clarifying your analogy
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Yeah, yours is a more correct analogy.
Should we make a deeper comparison, we could compare their site to ATMs, while the banks who put money in it are the third-party resellers, the customers who take money from it are... well, the customers, and they're the company tasked with the maintenance.
In this case, they didn't do the routine maintenance, so the "banks" could put recicled money in the ATMs, and the customers who unwillingly took it, are now guilty of theft themselves.
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just commenting on your analogy i dont really care for the future of g2a in that situation wouldnt you blame both and the thieves and the bank ?
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Although I do agree that the quality control can be better at G2A, how would they know if the keys are bought with stolen credit cards? Unless the seller says to them "right, I bought these keys with a stolen card, mind if I sell them here?" they just can't know that.
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Yea, I agree.
Which is why g2a is a grey/black market and the buyer takes the risk when they buy the stuff.
However g2a has the g2a shield , in which they take 1 ‎€ for each item and promise 100% guarantee (which is a lie actually). There are people who have used the g2a shield and not got their money back when their game is revoked.
So in the first case g2a wasn't really in the wrong, because the buyer knows the risk before purchasing.
But in the 2nd case, g2a should take responsibility because they promised the 100% guarantee.
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Actually, what G2A shield does (at least, what I think it does after reading on it a bit), is guarantee that you will be helped by support. That doesn't mean that you will get your money back or something all the time. It also doesn't mean you won't receive help if you don't have it. Basicly if you use it, you will get priority over those that don't use it.
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Their statement for the g2a shield is "buy with 100% satisfaction guarantee or money back - that’s our promise."
Interpreted by a few of my friends were that you would either get your game or your money back because why would you be 100% satisfied if you were refused a refund or didn't get your game. (And one of them paid for g2a shield all the way until he was refused 1 time)
But g2a might be able to argue their way out of it with their shady wordings though [Also did you know, there are 2 layers of g2a shield (that is auto checked) when you try to purchase any item on g2a? The first is the 1‎€ per item g2a shield at the cart page, and when at check out page there is the 30 days g2a shield at 2‎€ per month. <Paid 2‎€ extra 1 time cause I didn't read carefully. >.>]
Btw having used g2a for awhile, i think it isn't really getting priority to support if you use g2a shield, it is whether you get to talk to support or not. (If you do not use g2a shield, regarding the product, you can only talk to the seller then after 3-4 messages the message log will be locked and the support will decide who to award the claim to. [normally the seller wins the claim, i.e buyer won't get refunded])
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Just read the blog and it says that it wasnt just speedrunner keys but punch club and party hard.
And the 450k was the money that tinybuild would have gotten but in reality they didnt get a cent while g2a got 100k+ from the sales.
After discussing with tinybuild, g2a proposed that tinybuild can work with them to sell on g2a instead, which tinybuild seem reluctant because they would need to compete with other black market sellers and g2a would ultimately earn the most again.
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That's not true, when a developer affiliates themselves with G2A they block other sellers.
VERY few developers are affiliated with G2A.. I've seen it with like 2 games.
Faeria and a humble monthly game 1993 space machine, blocked anybody else from selling either game.
While the profit would be much lower, it doesn't say anywhere that it's an official key from the devs so everybody isn't flocking to black market for the game. Devs would be getting all the key sales still, so it kind of is in their best interest to affiliate with the marketplaces like g2a imo.
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I don't really know how the stuff works. So I was only basing what I said from i read on the blog where tinybuild said "they expect us to undercut our own retail partners (and Steam!) to compete with the unauthorized resellers."
Since they were the publishers that talked to g2a themselves, I'll believe what they say for now
You can read it yourself here:
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Please don't be so naive.
As a veteran seller on G2A, I know for a fact that G2A themselves sell with certain accounts. I can explain in detail if you want, that's a fact I know. And in my opinion, G2A is to be blamed here because they absolutely don't care about the source of keys. If you've sold a certain number of keys, they invite you to join their weekly sales in which you can sell thousands of keys.
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Wow G2A. Trying to force tinyBuild into their so called Partnership to get an unfair cut for profit and disregarding any legal facts.
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depends...
I'm just waiting for enough small devs to team up together for a lawsuit against G2A; not to prohibit reselling, but for lax policing. The same way that ebay ostensibly filters for counterfeit goods they don't. It's like the DMCA - if there's a complaint, they take down the listing, but they're not proactive about it
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They would get laughed out of court.
Especially in the EU.
That's even before you consider that the devs are often complicit in the lax policing.
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The EU is more open to users being allowed to resell, but less open to flagrant abuse by dominant market participants, so I'm not sure whether it would be better to bring this suit in the US or in Europe
The main thing is, if it's just users reselling legitimate keys, there's little to be done; if it's predominantly market abuse and illegal copies, then there's a good chance of getting it shut down (think Napster or MegaUpload). Of course, G2A isn't on the extreme ends here, but somewhere in the middle.
No idea about the outcome, but it certainly won't "get laughed out of court" (if the lawyers do their jobs properly)
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So your competitors send in false reports of your fraudulent keys to remove you from the marketplace? Oh wait, you're assuming that every developer on the earth would hop on board and provide proper contact information so G2A could verify the legitimacy of the claims, right?
Seriously, how do you screen for fraudulent keys? Please explain.
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I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
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I didn't realize both replies were to you! :p
How would you screen or determine that the takedown requests were from the developer/publisher and not another seller trying to remove competition from the G2A marketplace? Also, how would you determine keys were purchased fraudulently? (like eBay stopping stolen goods) Until reports come in of wrongdoings, it just looks like another person selling keys.
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I don't know. I have some ideas that might work, but haven't thought them through But I'm sure that if the people involved (mainly G2A) thought about it, they could come up with a solution.
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Of course there are solutions, it's just the ease of implementation and the feasibility. They could make it volunteer, collect contact information of everyone who wanted to participate and use that. The issue then is, why would G2A bother? Putting time and effort into something to appease developers, but likely won't lead to any increased profits. You could argue it could lead to better relationships with developers, possibly become official and as a result, increased sales.
I do want to apologize, I meant to remove that 'worst idea ever' (comic book guy voice) after I posted it, but simply gapped. As we've discussed, it's not a bad idea, it would simply require a bit of work and planning to implement.
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No need to apologize.
As you said, G2A won't bother unless forced to; not only would it cost them money to design and implement a solution, they actually profit from not having one. That's why a bunch of devs need to join forces and bring a lawsuit (it'd be too expensive for an indie to do; too bad Ubi didn't do it when they had the chance), to force G2A to do it.
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in here too...
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/?blog_id=275379
not going into the g2a thing, but his math is wrong, assuming that those games would sell for retail price. it wouldnt sell at all. its money gained, not lost.
after all, how mane people only have so much games because of giveaways/bundles/resellers?
i, for one, would have less than half, so the devs didnt get less money, they actually got some money.
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Which is why they made a blog post instead of actually doing something about it. They know they don't have anything so instead of taking action, they'll simply create a huge fuss and try to damage G2A's reputation.
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I'm pretty sure they can't worsen G2A's reputation
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I'd be curious to see how many people truly know about G2A's wrong doings. We hear about it on SG as the site revolves around Steam keys and I imagine certain subreddits would cover it, but other than that, I can't see the information spreading too far.
It would be a neat little experiment to see how many people on SG are aware of the /r/GameDeals and GMG controversy. They don't allow any GMG links as they allegedly aren't authorized resellers for certain companies, yet you never rarely see it brought up.
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It has been brought up a couple of times here but never with its own topic.
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There was a lot of talk about the wrongdoings of GMG on two occasions that I can remember. The first one was when they sold GOG keys for The Witcher 3, something that they had no rights to do, and the second one was with their mystery keys, where some people got CoD keys. So I suspect that people who were watching those threads are well aware of how shady GMG can be.
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I'd be curious to see how many people truly know about G2A's wrong doings.
Probably not a lot. Before I joined SG, I didn't even know there were such things as official sellers and the grey market. I just assumed that it was (kind of) legit, since I got the stuff I bought.
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+1, as usuall for keyshops.
The math in the post is bad tho, and I am just wondering why there was no number of charback's [unless all keys sold by G2A were same as numbers of chargeback for tinyB]
![calculatin on retail price when there were so hughe discounts] is kinda invalid](http://i.imgur.com/lHhKcCh.png)
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Deleted due to being wrong. Sooth explains it quite well, so read that :)
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Nothing you just mentioned is remotely contained within the linked article.
They list the G2A pricing, they list the retail pricing- for reference.
They then note that they didn't get any money for the keys, because they were obtained fraudulently.
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Deleted due to being wrong. Sooth explains it quite well, so read that :)
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The part you're quoting is standard referencing. It's completely normal for that kind of documentation.
I discuss that a bit more, here..
They never correlate it to their point of compensation, and they're clear to refer to it as retail price- which makes sense, as establishing retail price is a fundamental part of these kinds of things.
You're extrapolating a lot of things that not only aren't intuitive to the phrasing, but are in contrast to the usual expectations of this kind of documentation.
Let me try rephrasing it for you:
"Here are the total sales we recorded on G2A. Here's the equivalent retail value, for comparison.
Regardless of the sum, we didn't receive any of it, so we asked if any degree of compensation was to be expected from G2A."
TinyBuild may not be faultless in this matter- but so far, they haven't done anything visibly wrong, either; to the contrary, they're behaving within the expected professional format. Meanwhile, if Tinybuild's assertions are accurate (and seeing as they match to previous incidents, we have no reason to believe they aren't) then G2A is willfully obstructing the rights of TinyBuild to be informed of the origins of the keys, and trying to coerce them in turn, to boot.
Put another way: TinyBuild asks "Will we get any sort of compensation?" "No." "Will you tell us where the keys came from, so that we can pursue compensation there or consider key cancellation without too many problems arising from it?" "If you pay us and give us sole rights over your future game sales."
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I see. Honestly: Thanks for a well-written response and a good explanation.
Apparently I did indeed extrapolate way too much stuff that was irrelevant to this particular case. aka going off the deep end in my blind ambition to post comments against one of my pet peeves
So: my apologies. I edited my earlier comments to remove some of the 'wrongness' from this thread. :)
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More disreputable activities from the black market? Say it ain't so!
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Grey market, technically-
The black market has the good grace to acknowledge that what they're doing is wrong.
:P
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imo. Publishers are stupid to not revoke keys. This just ensures cycle continues.
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I think they don't know which keys were from the fraud and which were legit though. (Their server/ site was down during that time)
Although I think they could just remove all the keys during that time period and request those with prove to contact them so they can get new keys for those, they are afraid it would anger the fans (which is understandable).
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Yeah, that would probably end up costing TinyBuild more than the keys, considering all the badwill it will generate, and the amount of work it will require to go through any support requests for new keys.
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If they don't know, they should be fixing their system.
They just don't want to because of bad PR
Case Ubisoft
Case Sniper Elite 3
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After seeing the comments it seems they might be able to revoke the non-legit keys only after all.
I feel they should do it, some gaming website will probably cover their story too, so when people search for the reason, they will know it is the fault at g2a part and not tinybuild.
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League of Legends creators Riot Games have a long-standing ban on any G2A sponsorship of their teams or events.
Long-standing must be a really interesting term as I am somewhat sure I saw G2A logos around LoL all the time, probably even early last year too. Looks like they didn't have any problem getting sponsored then.
And the funny thing is that G2A is officially "Chinese", and so is Riot Games.
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Prohibited in case of professional teams. Individual streamers get what money they can, often featuring G2A / Kinguin logo
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Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. A simple web search shows this post, for example, where G2A branding is all over the place at a tournament as recently as December '15. (I haven't been following these things though, so no idea if this was sanctioned by Riot in any way).
As for Riot Games, I just wanted to say out that they originated in Los Angeles and still have their main office there, as well as offices all over the world. They initially received funding from Chinese IT giant Tencent, which later went on to buy a majority stake in the company, then bought them out outright later. So technically, Riot's parent Tencent is Chinese, but the company itself is still headquarted in L.A.
With that said, there's nothing funny about two companies with their respective parent companies hailing from the same country opting not to cooperate. Would you find it odd if Activision Blizzard wouldn't want their StarCraft or whatever tournament to feature the Valve/Steam logo?
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It was a subtle poke at how Riot is on a high horse when they sold out at the first available moment to a Chinese company that showed them even more cash, and how G2A is registered in HK through a Singapore shell company, even though it is run by Polish and their actual office is in Poland. So it's a sellout talking to a tax evader. Business world is fun sometimes, in its own sardonic way.
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It wasn't clear to me what you meant in your original post, but I get your point now.
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I dont see the problem, TinyBuild has given out thousands and thousands of keys for FREE more than once... now they cry because they are sold?
This just shows the true skills of publishers.... all games bundled or given for free soon after release... CRIII TinyBuild
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What do keys given away for free have to do with keys bought with stolen credit cards?
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If you give it for free, you can't complain if it's taken by force.
..wait..
That aside, I'm not sure what TinyBuilds' key practices have to do with the matter, unless the assertion is that G2A only did wrong because they knew of that fact. In which case the wrong-doing is blatantly deliberate..
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Apparently "If you've lost your virginity voluntarily, you can never be raped" is the philosophy this user uses.
To which I say..." Whaaaaat?"
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ah yes good old throw blame on someone else... even if story of stolen credit cards was truth... chase and blame persons who did it..
I saw a lot of people having 300-1000 bots and multiple accounts and that stolen credit cards excuses dont drink watter anymore.
IF it was credit card fraud do you really think they would buy stupid Speed Runners and not DOOM, Mafia 3, GTA 5... and rest of AAA titles
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Those are published by corporations that could swallow G2A as a whole from pocket money. The biggest money laundering using the video game market is going through indie games, it is a known fact. Much more difficult to trace and they have a lot less money to throw into legal battles.
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I agree, atleast in Speedrunners case I believe good majority of copies are from bundles. That is what you get from devaluing your own product...
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It's far easier for the grey market sellers to go after indies. Not only don't they really have the resources to take G2A (or similar sites) to court, but they also seem to have worse security checks in place. Grey market sellers have gone after bigger companies in the past (Funcom, Rebellion, Bethesda) and it's resulted in mass-revoking of keys and a lot of media attention.
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I obviously can't check if that story is true, however there have been multiple instances in the past of keys bought with stolen cards sold en masse on g2a. Big titles ended with lots of users screaming bloody murder because their keys have been revoked and demanding refunds and/or new keys from g2a and the developers/publishers. While I agree that the amount of money mentioned is heavily exagerated, it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.
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While I agree that the amount of money mentioned is heavily exagerated,
Not exactly. :P
There's a lot of false information floating in this thread about TinyBuild ( all initiating with users I have marked as disreputable, so there's that ) which makes me wonder at the agenda, there.
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I don't appreciate the insinuation here that I am disreputable and have an agenda that should be wondered about just because I'm not on the side of the dev here.
To be clear, G2A are a bunch of scumbags and I don't recommend that anyone ever purchase there for any reason.
But in this particular case, I find it completely absurd that TinyBuild can't track down the keys on their own. They are certain that their resellers are not the issue, so I'll take them at their word that it's "some keys which are legit from bundles, others from a bunch of fraudent credit cards, and random keys scavenged from giveaways."
Disabling the ones from fraudulent credit cards is a no-brainer. If the fraud was via their website, they can easily track those keys and tell Valve to disable them. If one of their partners got the chargebacks, the contracts should specify how those are handled. And given who their partners are (bundle sites), it should be easy to get a list of those keys and revoke as well. Meanwhile, the "legit from bundles" keys are ones that they already got paid for, and the "random keys scavenged from giveaways" were given free. In both of those cases, they devalued their game even more than shady G2A half price sales, and they got the specified amount of money they were asking for those keys.
Is it shitty that bundle keys and giveaway keys end up on G2A? Absolutely. But if the keys on G2A were obtained via methods other than chargebacks, the game was already devalued before it ever appeared on G2A. And if they were stolen, TinyBuild is legitimately stupid for not revoking them. Either way, I don't see how they think they should "get compensation" (their own words) from G2A. It's not like the bundle and free keys would stop getting resold just because one website went away. They're just an easy target to throw a tantrum at because they're the biggest of the shady dealers.
Plus, you know what G2A told them? "You need to revoke the keys you will be claiming as stolen from the players who now own them and supply myself with the codes you suspect being a part of this. " That's what they meant by "work with." In fact, that's what they said immediately after "work with." They suggested that TinyBuild should partner with them, but they never made it a requirement. All they asked was for common sense. Revoke the chargeback keys, give me a list, and I'll look into it. That's pretty far from "become an official business partner"
TL;DR - If they hadn't brought up G2A, we'd be saying "Of course their games aren't worth shit, they were in multiple dollar bundles and they give thousands of copies away free all the time." But because they brought up G2A, they're the victims now? You don't have to support G2A to call bullshit on that.
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Not approving the way G2A/Kinguin work, but obviously the best way is to make sure every illegal key gets revoked every time. If people buy from G2A 5 times and their key is revoked 4 times I guess most will get the message...
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Too many publishers are afraid of negative customer reaction to doing that- namely since the last few publishers that did do that, got blamed for it instead of the duplicitous sites actually at fault.
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But that means the problem is unsolveable. If sites like G2A keep getting away with it without repercussions...
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And that's why G2A has not only managed to stick around for so long, but thrive through it.
There's just not good protections in place for this kind of thing, and G2A has managed to manipulate consumers into taking their side, giving them enough influence to bully their way along without concern.
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+1
A recent example (although not really chargeback causing the revoke) would be Drunk wizards (http://store.steampowered.com/app/479170/), where the developer liaised with a giveaway group to giveaway the game, but it was done too early. So the developer revoked the keys and promised to give new ones at the appropriate time (because he already promised a bundle site that he would put his game in the bundle, and not giveaway before a certain date).
But in the end he still got downvoted into the ground
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In fairness, both the dev and the person posting the gib on sg were total goofs about it.
The dev seemed totally clueless about everything, and the sg poster was the one that let the gib finish in the first place, and communicated poorly about it to everyone [and was completely nonsensical in his communication with the dev].
https://i.imgur.com/n4eK3ml.png
https://i.imgur.com/MDBj4eM.png
It's a totally different thing to say "Hey, we were stolen from, this site scammed you, we're terribly sorry but we can't support this kind of thing, we'll try our best to help our legitimate purchasers out" and to say "hurr hurr we done goofed".
so, in that sense, the drunk wizards thing was worse (the developer was clearly at fault)- but given that the keys were free, the whole thing becomes ridiculous in the other direction quite quickly.
From what I hear, drunk wizards was unplayable in its buggyness and design flaws, anyway. :/
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I agree with what you said (gave the drunk wizards example cause I couldn't think of other examples) The developer was kind of new and clueless about anything.
Mainly wanted to bring across the idea that most people don't care about any details, and only the fact that their game was revoked by the developer (even if the game was free) and they will bash the developer just for that reason alone.
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Who the hell has a credit card with a $450,000 credit limit?!?!
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(Adding to your comment, since so many seem to be misinterpreting that section:)
Likewise, the publisher never even mentions retail except as a reference- "here's the total sales we found on G2A, and here's that total converted to retail pricing". They never at all indicate they feel they lost that full amount- in act, as their article continues, they relate their comments to the G2A sales (and thus pricing) instead.
Or more clearly put: since there's no way to evaluate the actual pricing, they list what values they do have available to them, noting they (presumably) didn't get any portion of the profits [which could value UP TO that point of reference].
Likewise, from a legal standpoint damages would be based on the retail pricing- so that's a fair point of reference to establish.
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Where did you read that they only bought data for one stolen credit card?
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Keys for 450k bought in a short time? That is around 10k keys at least, probably more if they grant discounts for bigger orders. For orders this big they maybe should verify their buyers first unless the criminals did split the transactions between hundreds of credit cards.
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Yeah and same goes for G2A. If someone suddenly tries to sell that many keys, they should at least check to see if there is any evidence that it might not be obtained the right way (of course they might not find any evidence of it and still let them sell it).
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TinyBuild Games are valuing SpeedRunners at $15 per copy while the game have been bundled 5 times and was even on Humble Bundle lowest tier ($1 for a few games). In the real world its value is about 30 cent or even lower than that. Here is a quote from a comment by melnificent at Eurogamer which sums it all pretty well:
The figure of 450k was arrived by taking their 3 games and finding how many had been sold on G2a and putting the current retail price on them. Which works well provided the games have never been on sale or in a bundle. if they have then we need to look at the lower price as that is the lowest potential loss figure.
Punch club was 1,251 copies @9.99 = 12,497
Party Hard was 890 copies @12.89 = 11,472
Speedrunners was 24,517 @14.99 =367,509
Punch club has been sold for 4.99 from bundlestars so we need to half that one.
Party Hard has been as low as 4.84 from bundlestars so that is slightly over 1/3rd the quoted loss.
Speedrunners has been 2.49 on steam. so we need to drop that to 1/8th
The new figures are 6,242 + 4,307 + 61,047 which comes to 71,596.
There's more...Punch Club is the only one that hasn't been in a bundle. Party Hard and Speedrunners have been in the same Humble Bundle (Orbyt play). Speedrunners was one of 3 games in the $1 tier and Party Hard was in the $8 tier. This changes our figures again.
Speedrunners was effectively sold for $0.33... 33cents. Giving us a new total of 8,090 in lost sales for speedrunner.
So the final figures are actually 6,242 + 4,307 + 8,090 which gives us a minimum loss of 18,639. A figure 24 times less than the original post.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry that they feel there were significant loses due to G2A, however the prices they've sold speedrunners in particular, suggests that they had written it off as a loss leader already.
tl;dr Actual losses are 24x less than headline figure due to bundles and sales.
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Sellers responsibility - i don't get why there isn't a way to secure the payments, if that is
not possible with credit-cards' then the problem lies somewhere else. (' shitty system)
- +MAX attention-whoring/exaggeration as usual ... SpeedRunners @ FULL retail price ... lol thats a joke
- g2a sellers wouldn't pay anywhere near that selling price (6.26)
- g2a buyers don't buy steam retail prices ... having not to, that's the point of g2a
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Tell me, if a ferrari gets stolen worth 2 million and it gets old for 500k somewhere else... do you think the damage is 2m or 500k. Apparently you go for the second. Even though that's total bs, and the only way it's that low a price is since it's known to be illegal.
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So GTA V is worth nowhere near $60? Do give me a legit $1 copy since, well, that's their obvious worth, overextended... right?
(no, that's not how it works)
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Tinybuild didn't really claim they lost the 450k though, they only stated the data.
Which I assume, they wanted to show that g2a resellers undercut their prices by a large margin, thus getting most of the sales (while tinybuild didnt profit from those sales at all).
Also the problem isn't that the people buying from g2a resulted in tinybuild earning less. It is that when people buy those copies from g2a, tinybuild didn't even get a cent (because the keys were gotten through fraud).
So it's sort of like the GTA V retailed at $60, people value it at $41, so developer should get a cut of the $41(assuming the person bought from developer for $34, so developer maybe gets $30+, while the person earns $7 and dispenser earn $1?), but instead the developers get nothing.
(So using the analogy before; person bought game from tinybuild for $9.99 > sell on g2a for $6.75 > g2a gets $0.74 from fees > person gets $6 > person chargeback > developer gets $0 > developer creates a blog to complain.)
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Yep, complaining helps relieve some stress.
Cause they are caught in a dilemma of either to let g2a get away without repercussions or revoke all the keys (legit and not legit) and incur the wrath of the fans and damage their reputation. To which they went with the latter but still feel sore about it
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Or in this case more likely copies were sold for sum x for promotion. And part of these from promotion was grabbed by few entities and now sold. And then claimed losses is full price of these from promotion...
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Well I read through the blog and the article and there is a 3rd option that appears to not have been taken which is to kill the unused keys. This is a route that both Ubisoft and Manga Gamer (the last publisher to get hit by cc fraud) took. It allows those who bought the game for themselves to keep it while killing off the scammers from making any more profit. This is unfortunately a case of a publisher opening their own store front, but being ill prepared to combat the problems that comes with such endeavours.
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After reading this im like wow how dumb tinybuild can get? they were the ones who gave out free speed runner keys, and these keys ended up selling on g2a and now they are complaining hahahahaha omfg what a bunch of stupid people
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It wasn't about the free speed runner keys. [The Tl'dr is a little wrong and misleading]
It was about fraud from punch club, party hard and speed runner keys (i.e people used stolen credit cards to buy the keys sell it on g2a, then gained the profit while tinybuild got nothing but tinybuild didn't want to revoke the keys because they were scared of the fans)
To make it easier to understand:
Many people with stolen credit cards bought tinybuild games > These people sold the games on g2a > They get some money, g2a get some money (fees) > Credit cards declared fraud, so money taken away from tinybuild > Tinybuild get $0 while g2a and bad people get money
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tinybuild even has to pay the chargeback fees i think
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If those keys were sold through their own website, then it shouldn't be too hard to keep track how many keys have been charged back, and actually get accurate numbers.
Rather weird though, this number isn't mentioned anywhere, instead they shit chat with G2A and ask how many units went through their marketplace, then claim "lost profits", which is absolutely misleading and far from the truth. It's like listing attempted downloads of some random cam ripped movie, then claiming all of those would have been actual moviegoers.
tinybuild didn't want to revoke the keys because they were scared of the fans
Or their claim is actually really far away from the truth.
So, quite simply: how many fraudulent purchases actually happened?
It's their store, how can they not know how much money has been charged back?
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http://www.pcinvasion.com/tinybuild-games-g2a-facilitating-fraud-fueled-economy
My original source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4p0tia/g2a_stole_from_speedrunners_developers_they/
TL;DR ~ Someone on G2A sold Speedrunner keys that were bought with a stolen credit card, totaling in 450 000 USD worth of keys. G2A stated the fault is on TinyBuild Games' distribution partners, but TinyBuild Games says otherwise. No investigation will happen unless TinyBuild Games becomes business partners with G2A.
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