Before tinyBuild reached out to G2A, we identified more than 200 tinyBuild product auctions on the G2A Marketplace and suspended all of them because they violated G2A.COM Terms and Conditions and security procedures.
In other words: they suspended 200 sellers for a single game while acting like it wasn't a big deal.
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G2A offers award-winning protection solutions with G2A Shield.
Yeah, that's basically what every single legit store out here does anyway, but without charging an extra.
Also take a look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4m63i5/my_experience_of_deactivating_g2a_shield_stay/
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I mean, charging extra for basic consumer protection is fucking illegal in the first place. So, this guys are shadier than a dark Detroit alley.
I'm glad I never bought anything from them, because that subscription process is a fucking joke.
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I mean, charging extra for basic consumer protection is fucking illegal in the first place.
are you sure about that? they offer this service for games other people sell on their market place. eBay will not refund you if you buy something and it turns out to be broken*. i don't know if G2A Shield is also necessary for games you buy directly from them (in that case you're right). but i find it understandable if they take a fee for protection for third party sales. i don't agree with the subscription model, but a fee seems reasonable.
'* paypal offers customer protection, if you used it for the payment. but this is also not free, they charge their fee.
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But Paypal's fee is more of a transaction fee than a protection fee, I am not a 100% sure, ianal, but here in the EU these kind of things I think fall into consumer protection laws so you cannot be charged extra so that you ensure you get what you paid for. I also think that if you buy something and it's on a condition other than advertised, you are entitled to a refund/a similar or better product.
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the question is, if this is like ebay (and it essentially is), who is responsible for your refund? g2a? or the actual seller? i would guess it's the latter.
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I'd say it's a combination of both, the actual seller for selling the stuff, and G2a for providing a place and a means to do so. The thing is that the selling of digital products are rather badly regularized.
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yeah, i'm not sure. i guess ebay would be a good reference. i assume ebay is not responsible for failed deals (but thery have to make sure there isn't any illegal stuff sold on the site and so on).i just can't imagine ebay has to replace any broken or not delivered goods. so i would say it's the same with G2A again: if they offer this Shield service for keys they sell themselves, this is indeed a shitty move and probably illegal. but for third party sellers this seems fine to me.
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"We're sorry, but not really, that our business is screwing with people making games, I mean fuck riot that banned us for selling accounts, right? Fuck this indie devs that want to get paid for their work, amirite? We totally don't serve as a money laundering business"
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All G2A asked, was to cooperate with tinyBuild to rectify the issue, which is the list of the keys they deemed without
any verification, as stolen. Only then can G2A compare these keys against the confidential G2A marketplace database
and report those findings back to tinyBuild. Unfortunately tinyBuild never came back with the answers to resolve the
issue.
This matches with the original email from tinyBuild's complaint:
I would be happy to look into that however I will say this requires TinyBuild to want to work with G2A. Both in that 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.
G2A's definition of "work with us" is "send us a list of stolen keys," not the complete bullshit people have been spewing about business partners
G2A is a terrible site and nobody should buy there, but tinyBuild is wrong here. They're blaming the low value of their games on G2A, when the real reason their games are so cheap is because they've been on huge sales, in bundles, and given away free by the thousands. If they had just published a complaint without naming G2A as a scapegoat, we'd be making fun of them. Of course the games they give away for pennies in a bundle and spam copies of on facebook aren't selling for full retail price. Heck, we have topics here that are full of their giveaway keys that people just dumped for the ninjas, because the games weren't even worth keeping. But because they blame G2A, suddenly tinyBuild is the victim?
Bullshit. People need to stop talking about tinyBuild and go after G2A for the things they actually do wrong, like their "Shield" program where you pay money for the basic legally required protections.
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If I recall correctly, tinyBuild gave an estimation of what the retail cost of all the "stolen" keys (fraudulently adquired? I dunno) was. I mean, retail price is the set value of a product by the vendors, it's true that the perceived value or the real value on a trading market is nowhere that high, and I don't argue that tinyBuild would have never gotten the amount of money they say to have lost.
However as an estimation of the financial hit (plus chargeback fees and so on) is a good way of painting the picture of the effect this kind of sites have on independent stores.
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It has a vague relation to what you posted about the value of the games, but actually I am just having my own discussion in my head, I think I kinda thought I was answering to something I read on reddit.
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Ah, gotcha.
My main point was just that they killed the value of the games themselves with all the bundles and giveaways. G2A's prices are actually a lot higher than the price tinyBuild was willing to sell the game at. And for them to demand "compensation" from G2A because they sold a game in a dollar tier of a bundle and someone flipped it for five bucks? That's ridiculous.
Imagine if you bought a collector's edition of a game on clearance for $10, resold it on eBay a month later for $60, and then the devs went to eBay demanding their cut of the $60. That's basically what's happened here, and yet everyone's painting tinyBuild as the hero in this story instead of the village idiot.
There's a mention of chargebacks on their article, but if they're too lazy to revoke keys involved in chargebacks, that's incompetence, not something that deserves sympathy. And if they did revoke the chargeback keys, then they've already been compensated for the ones that G2A has and trying to double dip is ridiculous.
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Yeah, I agree. TinyBuild may think they're getting good promotion out of giving away thousands of keys but all they're doing is enabling resellers and devaluing their games to the point where many people will refuse to buy games from them at full price or even at heavily discounted prices. I personally don't buy their games because I know there's a 99% chance of their games being free or bundled in the future.
Not defending G2A or anything, I avoid buying from them whenever possible, but it's hard to take TinyBuild seriously when they're devaluing their own games to the point where most of them are near worthless. Doing mass giveaways and bundling everything you publish many times is just lazy and sloppy. It's sad, because I really like Speedrunners and think it deserves more appreciation.. but that also has been victim to their mass giveaways lol.
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I think it's funny how the guys behind G2A think they do a total legal and legit thing, like they are so convinced from not doing anything wrong..
Recently watched a clip about them, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jcPhj6ESb8
(starts with german moderation but after that, most of it including interviews are english)
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Cmon even the Boobs streamers started refusing contracts from G2a ,..
Everyone should know that using that site is just begging to get in trouble .
Selling keys obtained via stolen credit cards , new users flat out getting scammed by more trusted ones ...
Reselling stolen stuff in general ... stuff goes on and on ...
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Post with context: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/Wh0qd/g2a-in-hot-water-with-speedrunners-dev-team-tinybuild-games
The statement issued by G2A
https://www.g2a.co/tinyBuild-fraud-allegation-g2a-statement
Top kek.
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