![]() ![]() The idea is simple: developers just need to prove such a thing actually happened on their stores." Advertisementįactorio developer Wube was the only company to take G2A up on that offer, the retailer said. We will pay developers 10 times the money they lost on chargebacks after their illegally obtained keys were sold on G2A. So we come to last year, when G2A made a limited time offer that it said was " all cards on the table. These include G2A Direct-a program that gives developers additional monitoring capabilities and a 10% cut of each sale-and G2A Pay-a retailer-controlled payment processor that offers "chargeback protection." But these solutions have gotten little traction with developers who still don't trust the site and are wary to work with it more closely (and offer it credibility) just to be protected from fraud. In the years since TinyBuild's accusation, G2A has offered a few potential solutions for developers to deal with alleged fraud problems. "These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more." Wube “satisfied with the results” Vlambeer founder Rami Ismail summed up the general industry consensus around G2A in a 2019 tweet: "If you can't afford or don't want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller," he wrote. These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more. If you can't afford or don't want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller. "Why would anyone even consider giving them a list of keys to ‘verify’? I believe they'd just resell those keys and make more money off of it." That reputation was a big part of the reason Gearbox ended its partnership with G2A in 2017. ![]() "Everybody knows their reputation," he told Polygon in 2016. And Nichiporchik said he didn't trust G2A enough to work with them on the case anyway. G2A responded strongly, asking Tiny Build to provide "the list of the keys they deemed without any verification as stolen." But TinyBuild said it would take "a ton of time on micromanaging this" to separate out all the illicit keys from legitimate keys purchased through bundles and giveaways. "Websites like G2A are facilitating a fraud-fueled economy where key resellers are being hit with tons of stolen credit card transactions and these websites are now growing rapidly due to low pricing of game keys," TinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik wrote at the time. The issue of stolen-key reselling started gaining prominence in the industry in 2016, when indie game developer TinyBuild said it had lost $450,000 in sales to fraudsters abetted by G2A. While G2A pockets a portion of these illegitimate sales, the original developer is stuck paying for the credit card "chargeback" fees associated with them. These users then allegedly use G2A to sell those keys for cash (usually at well below the going rate), effectively laundering the purchases before the illicit charges are discovered. ![]() But developers have long said that many of those games' keys come from purchases made on other platforms with stolen credit cards. ![]() G2A allows its users to take game keys obtained from outside sources-such as bundles or third-party online stores-and resell them for a price they set themselves. G2A says it will pay Factorio developer Wube 10 times the "bank-initiated refund costs" it incurred for those fraudulent purchases, or roughly $40,000.īut the discovery and confirmation of the fraudulent keys in this one specific case come only after years of controversy and argument over the role of the marketplace. In a blog post yesterday, G2A confirmed that 198 copies of Factorio sold on G2A in early 2016 were indeed obtained illegitimately. After years of controversy, gray-market game key marketplace G2A has admitted to what it has long been accused of by angry game developers: profiting from the sale of illegitimate download keys-at least in one specific instance. ![]()
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