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G2A Steam Key Reseller Drama Thread

Infinitron

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...game-key-reselling-exposed-by-indie-developer

Murky world of PC game key reselling exposed by indie developer

One indie developer claims a popular PC key-reselling website sold nearly half a million dollars' worth of its games - and didn't receive a penny in return.

jpg

tinyBuild's PC game hit Punch Club is cheap as chips on G2A.com.

In an email sent to Eurogamer Alex Nichiporchik, boss of Punch Club and SpeedRunners publisher tinyBuild, accused G2A.com of selling $450,000 worth of its games.

G2A, which acts as a retailer and an online marketplace for video game key selling, sort of like an eBay for PC games, is perhaps the most well-known website of its kind, and even sponsors streamers and game events.

G2A is popular because it offers an easy way for people to sell off keys for games they don't want, and in the process customers get a cheap price.

Nichiporchik, however, described G2A's business model as "fundamentally flawed" and said it "facilitates a black market economy". He accused G2A users of using a database of stolen credit cards to buy game keys in bulk from a bundle or third-party key reseller, then putting them up on G2A to sell them at half the retail price.

In tinyBuild's case, it attempted to sell its games from its own online shop, but it was crippled by chargebacks associated with fraudulent credit card purchases.

"I'd start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days," Nichiporchik said. "Moments later you'd see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop."

Nichiporchik spoke with G2A and believes he has worked out the financial impact the marketplace has had on his business. The total value of the transactions on G2A was around $200k, he said. Meanwhile, if these transactions happened at retail price, it's closer to $450k. Here's the breakdown:

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Nichiporchik asked G2A for compensation and was told, flatly, no. Here's the response:

So the issue you have pointed to is related to keys you have already sold. They are your partners that have sold the keys on G2A, which they purchased directly from you. If anything this should give you an idea on the reach that G2A has, instead of your partners selling here you could do that directly.

I can tell you that no compensation will be given. If you suspect that these codes where all chargebacks aka fraud/stolen credit card purchases 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. We will check to see if that is the case but I doubt that codes with such large numbers would be that way.

Honestly I think you will be surprised in that it is not fraud, but your resale partners doing what they do best, selling keys. They just happen to be selling them on G2A. It is also worth pointing out that we do not take a share of these prices, our part comes from the kickback our payment providers.​

It sounds like Nichiporchik has hit a brick wall with G2A - the website suggests tinyBuild's distribution partners are scamming the developer, and it should take up the matter elsewhere. Perhaps that's why he's taken the step of contacting press to complain and pen a blog post.

"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," he says.

"Make your own conclusions."

(TinyBuild's website is currently slow to load, the result of a DDOS attack launched shortly after the blog post went live, according to Nichiporchik.)
 

Mr. Pink

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If true, they should sue g2a for what they lost + more.
 
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If true, they should sue g2a for what they lost + more.

Not sure that there's an adequate causation chain that passes through g2a re the entire loss. But...they should certainy sue g2a for the loss of sales resulting from the reselling of fraudulently obtained game keys (it's the direct loss from the fraudulent charge-backs that doesn't seem to be adequately linked to g2a - you'd need to build a case that the individual fraudsters wouldn't have acted unless g2a was there for them to sell through, and that g2a ought to have known there was a risk of this happening under their current terms of use, and whilst that might all be true it seems like a very difficult case to mount).

Yes, it brings up the old piracy argument of 'how do you know what % of the people buying fraudulently obtained game keys would have otherwise bought the game'. But courts (and insurance companies, for that matter) make those assessments all the time. They won't assume that each fraud was a lost sale, but they'll have no issue with drawing a very rough line and saying 'our best guess is x%' and giving that % payout.
 

Unkillable Cat

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(TinyBuild's website is currently slow to load, the result of a DDOS attack launched shortly after the blog post went live, according to Nichiporchik.)

Cause and effect. You rat out the rats, they gnaw at your toes.

As for me, I've never used a site that offers any services of this kind...and I never will, by the looks of it.
 

Spectacle

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The root cause of this problem is the shitty payment processors like Visa and MasterCard who refuse to implement effective security to their payment solutions, instead leaving it to merchants to deal with the inevitable consequences of rampant fraud done with easily stolen credit card numbers.

How the fuck is it possible to pay for something with just a number? It's ridiculous that there's more security for trading hats on Steam than to buy stuff with real money on the web. It's way past time that "credit cards" are replaces with some kind of cryptograhically signed payment solution that can give much greater assurance that it's actually the owner that's spending the money.
 

Dexter

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Cyw0Jb.png


Another developer whining and using copyright-logic to justify selling their games for pennies in Bundles.

There's absolutely nothing wrong about what G2A is doing, neither about buying Retail games in like Thailand and reselling them in Europe pissing off publishers because they love outsourcing to Asia/India/Eastern Europe but don't want people to be able to acquire games at their local prices, nor about allowing people to sell unneeded keys. Could just aswell facilitate this kind of exchange on any forum like the Codex if say the begging was instead a selling thread.

More interesting would be to know why they don't have a system to revoke specific keys if the payment bounces or Fraud protection as commonly used by many other platforms. My best guess though is that those are Humble Bundle keys or similar and the developer is just butthurt about choices made.

Same developer was already :butthurt: in the past about :ehue: and :russia: doing what :ehue: and :russia: do: http://tinybuild.com/punch-club-has-been-pirated-over-1-million-times
 

Angthoron

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Ahhh, gotta love the indies. Same people will scream about freedom of expression, cry over overpriced software, talk about oppressed minorities, and at the same time try to recklessly penny-and-dime their products in every way possible, scream piracy and foul, and pull all sorts of shenanigans. Never even heard of Punch Club until now, and after looking it up, well, I can totally believe it was so popular that a key reseller site hanged up their payments with stolen credit cards. Yep! This is what happens every fucking time! It's not (sort-of against ToS) resold bundle keys! It's not products we've sold at huge discounts already! We're literally losing billions of dollars here guys.

I don't really like key resellers, mind you, but in the end it runs down to the simple fact of regular outlets overpricing their shit by about 30-50%. Yeah I totally want to pay 20 dollars for another "pixel art" 5-hour indie. Absolutely.

While at it, I'm sure play.com and others that sell boxed games cheaper than Steam's digital-only stuff at launch also uses a database of stolen credit cards.

Fucking key reselling rings EXPOSED.
 

tormund

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AFAIK large part of popularity of these key reselling sites comes from the fact that, while countries like Russia, Ukraine or Brazil have pricing adjusted for their regions, for bunch of other eastern European and south American countries prices are still same as in US, or in Germany, Austria, etc for yuropean ones (which should equal 60 euros for average new AAA release) despite those countries having similar (or worse) average salaries and living standard as Ukraine or Brazil.
 

Jasede

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Let me get this straight - they are complaining about a company buying those games in bulk when they are cheap on sale or in a bundle, then selling the keys at a higher price?

Umm, excuse me, but isn't this how trading worked since the beginning of time? Being a merchant is about buying when it is cheap, patiently waiting, and then selling when the price is higher than what you paid for it. I see no wrongdoing here.
 

Vault Dweller

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Let me get this straight - they are complaining about a company buying those games in bulk when they are cheap on sale or in a bundle, then selling the keys at a higher price?

Umm, excuse me, but isn't this how trading worked since the beginning of time? Being a merchant is about buying when it is cheap, patiently waiting, and then selling when the price is higher than what you paid for it. I see no wrongdoing here.
He's complaining, or at least claiming, that some people use stolen credit cards to buy as many keys as they can and then sell them to or on G2A:

"I'd start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days," Nichiporchik said. "Moments later you'd see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop."

It's not something new either:

http://blog.indiegamestand.com/featured-articles/steam-key-reselling-killing-little-guys/

The bigger problem killing the little guys is when scammers use stolen credit cards to purchase games from online retailers to resell Steam keys.

Here’s how the scam works: You get a bunch of stolen credit card numbers and then go to a legit Steam key reseller site and use the stolen info to buy the digital codes. You grab as many codes as you can and then go over to one of these gray market resellers and turn your keys into real money since you bought them with stolen cards. Meanwhile, the website and/or developer that you purchased the key from gets a credit card chargeback or other dispute 30-60 days later.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/800...ose-mysteriously-cheap-gray-market-game-codes

For both G2A and Kinguin, the fallout from the fraudulent credit card transactions on EA's Origin service has been severe.

G2A told Polygon that around 2,000 customers were affected and that their customer service team has been inundated with requests for help, leading to significant delays in problem resolution, even for members of their preferred customer program called G2A Shield.

Kinguin went into substantially more detail about the effect on their business, posting on their blog that more than 4,600 customer service tickets were received in a short period of time, requiring the refund of the equivalent of $170,000 to customers. While G2A declined to comment on how many of its sellers were involved, Kinguin says that only 35 of its 3,400 merchants were involved.
...
Online, he goes by a handle designed to put some distance between his storefront and his real-world identity. We'll call him "R". In reality, he's a young entrepreneur living in Italy. Polygon's key for Gravity Ghost was one of dozens of keys he has up for sale at his page.

R told us that he makes between 1,000 and 1,500 Euros in total revenue per month on his store, or between $1,100 and $1,700. During the holidays, he says, that can rise to more than $2,200 per month. We asked if this was his full-time job, to which he responded, "Something like that." We can't really be sure if his store on Kinguin is his primary source of income.
 

hivemind

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imo people who use these second hand market-places for singleplayer non-denuvo games are autistic

like why not just pirate ?

either way you are giving basically no money to the developer and pirating is the cheapest choice if you base your game buying decisions entirely on getting the best price for your buck
 

Zdzisiu

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Yeah, people were complaining about shady key on G2A for quite some time now. But they are immensly popular since they have a sponsorship with a lot (Nearly all of the major) twitch streamers who get a small kickback from all purchases through G2A.

Also, customers dont really give a fuck about the origin of the key. All that matters to the customers of G2A is the price and if the key works or not. Hell, if the key/game stops working/Is deleted from library after a few months when all the complaints and legal stuff is comming into effect? People will not give a fuck then because they probably already finished/abandoned the game and have 10 new ones.
 

pippin

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There's actually quite the number of youtubers using g2a affiliate links, and actively encouraging their audiences (mostly teens as we know) to buy games there.
That's a more interesting case to focus on imo.
 
Self-Ejected

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How the hell it's the reseller's at fault in this?

imo people who use these second hand market-places for singleplayer non-denuvo games are autistic

like why not just pirate ?

either way you are giving basically no money to the developer and pirating is the cheapest choice if you base your game buying decisions entirely on getting the best price for your buck
When you pay for the game you feel more obligated to finish it.
 

Dexter

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Let me get this straight - they are complaining about a company buying those games in bulk when they are cheap on sale or in a bundle, then selling the keys at a higher price?

Umm, excuse me, but isn't this how trading worked since the beginning of time? Being a merchant is about buying when it is cheap, patiently waiting, and then selling when the price is higher than what you paid for it. I see no wrongdoing here.
They're basically complaining that Marketplace sellers on G2A are supposedly selling stolen keys. Supposedly, because this is the same horseshit you often hear from publishers as justification for banning valid keys from other regions because they don't like people in Western Europe or the U.S. buying cheap keys from abroad. It's not like it doesn't happen, but the truth is likely closer to what the other developer outlined above with the majority of keys being from bundles. It's also like complaining about Ebay or Amazon because some people using their Marketplace features are selling stolen goods, even though they respectively have no idea about it and no way of checking whether they are or not.

How G2A works is they are selling Keys themselves like:
https://www.g2a.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-cd-key-gog-global.html
https://www.g2a.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-steam-cd-key-global.html

The "G2A Selected offer" to the right is by G2A themselves and guaranteed to work, it's usually either retail keys acquired from lower price regions (Thailand, Brazil, Russia or whatever) and resold to Western markets or keys from Sales.

There's also "Marketplace Sellers" if you look below, where basically anyone can resell keys, which is generally cheaper but you'll have to trust the seller.

The most retarded thing about this is apparently that their shop doesn't have a way to link a CD Key to a bounced/fraudulent payment and they say they can't ban just these specific keys, the only reason why this would be is either stupidity or sheer incompetence/negligence.
 
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DwarvenFood

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The root cause of this problem is the shitty payment processors like Visa and MasterCard who refuse to implement effective security to their payment solutions, instead leaving it to merchants to deal with the inevitable consequences of rampant fraud done with easily stolen credit card numbers.
This.

Problem is the use of fraudulent CC's and not anything else. Also, fuck Punch Club.
 

Mozg

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Is there not some system where you can cancel a key that's connected to a chargeback? It's not like you are gonna run out of copies. Seems like a Steam-end problem if the stolen credit card line isn't bullshit. Even if you can't cancel a redeemed key easily you could at least make sure that G2A's keys can "spoil", and if half their keys are duds they'll lose the legit-key-site cred they've accumulated.
 

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Is there not some system where you can cancel a key that's connected to a chargeback? It's not like you are gonna run out of copies. Seems like a Steam-end problem if the stolen credit card line isn't bullshit. Even if you can't cancel a redeemed key easily you could at least make sure that G2A's keys can "spoil", and if half their keys are duds they'll lose the legit-key-site cred they've accumulated.

You can cancel keys. For example, inXile Kickstarters allow you to swap an Early Access Steam copy for a GOG copy on release, which cancels your Steam key and removes the game from your library.
 
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Mozg

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Maybe there's a problem associating one key with one particular purchase, so when you get the chargeback you don't know what key it bought?
 

Kutulu

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Games are overpriced as fuck... I dont give 2 fucks about who hurts who financially if companies try to sell me their shit for 79$, 79$ for
a fucking normal/not special edition of a game @amazon.de.... Honestly fuck them where- and whenever you can.
 

Mustawd

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Completely agree that this is a key/fraudulent cc thing. There's nothing wrong with reselling keys. I have a ton of indie shit keys I wish I could get rid of for a bit of $, and the reselling thing seems like a great way to do it.
 

ghostdog

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Murky world of second hand trading exposed !

It's unheard of ! Oh teh horror !

6f9baf8575b5d597e443484e4652ecde7942236f7b5c0940f58fae1bef426ae7.jpg


shitty article, shitty thread.
 

Mustawd

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You would be the plaintiff in this situation. Some lawyers will work on a % of future rewards, but I don't think punitive damages would apply here and a porion of $200k or so is probably not enough for a case that sounds like it would go nowhere.
 

sser

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I'd imagine if G2A were up to such shenanigans a much bigger stick would've come down on their heads already. Resellers by their nature use roundabout ways of making money, but I don't think G2A does anything illegal. At least, I don't think they'd have to if they just wanted to make money.
 

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