In related news, Wube recently took G2A up on their offer to refund 10 times the amount that developers lost in chargeback fees on stolen/fraudulent keys sold on G2A's marketplace. To nobody's...
I'd write up my thoughts on this here, but this twitter thread Lars Doucet posted sums it up pretty good: G2A has proven itself untrustworthy, especially in regards to game keys, and even besides...
The tool would require devs to become verified on G2A, and then input a list of game keys they don't want to be sold on the platform. After that, every time someone tries to sell a key that's been highlighted by a developer, the seller will be told that particular code has been blocked from sale.
"You, the developer, only need to get verified. All you have to do is prove that you can act in the name of the studio you’re representing, so that we can deter any impostors. Once your identity is confirmed, you will gain access to two separate sections," explains the G2A blog.
"The first of these is the 'Review keys' part. Once you generate keys to be sent out for a review to various sources, all you would need to do is select your game in our panel and paste the keys you don’t want to pop up on our marketplace.
"Once that’s done, each time anyone tries to sell a key for your game, our algorithm will check the keys you have provided us with. If there is a match, the seller will get a notification that the key has been blocked so that they can't sell it.
"The second section would be the 'Giveaway' part. This panel works in the same way as the previous one -- just fill in the keys you will be giving out that you don’t want sold before you start the giveaway. If a seller tries to sell more than three keys that match the ones in the giveaway database, our system won't allow that."
G2A claims the creation of such a tool will be "time-consuming and expensive," and although it has pledged to cover the costs of development, it will only begin work if over 100 developers express their interest within the next month.
I'd write up my thoughts on this here, but this twitter thread Lars Doucet posted sums it up pretty good: G2A has proven itself untrustworthy, especially in regards to game keys, and even besides that this reeks of a PR move wherein they specifically hope that not enough developers will accept the proposal, allowing them to do nothing while claiming they "tried."
G2A are just indefinitely scummy, they have proven themselves untrustworthy over and over again. So trusting this is incredibly difficult. And if this system were to actually be implemented. It...
G2A are just indefinitely scummy, they have proven themselves untrustworthy over and over again. So trusting this is incredibly difficult.
And if this system were to actually be implemented. It still requires that the game devs, which are often indies find out what keys are valid and what keys are stolen and what not, which they don't have the resources to do. And if they already know which keys are stolen (which they don't), then why use this system? why not just revoke the key? And they don't know what keys are stolen (else they would just revoke them), so this tool is actually quite useless. I feel some game devs would just auto enter every single key they sell into it to prevent key reselling at all.
And with how nefarious G2A are, I wouldn't put it past them to think "hmm we are being given a list of known valid keys", why don't we just sell these ourselves?
G2A claims the creation of such a tool will be "time-consuming and expensive," and although it has pledged to cover the costs of development, it will only begin work if over 100 developers express their interest within the next month.
This really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would be expensive or hard to make. All it has to do is compare keys to a database.
Barring all of the issues with this proposal which others have highlighted, this still does not address the issue of them selling keys bought with stolen credit cards or those acquired by abusing...
Barring all of the issues with this proposal which others have highlighted, this still does not address the issue of them selling keys bought with stolen credit cards or those acquired by abusing chargebacks. Not only is this a main complaint against G2A in the first place, but it's the one that hits devs and publishers the hardest--far more than sold review/giveaway keys. It makes this "solution" misdirection at best--pay no attention to that fraud behind the curtain.
At this point, not only is it clear that G2A is uninterested in doing the right thing, but I fear that all this recent press might have an adverse effect and actually raise their profile. I wonder if they welcome the criticism and strategically bat back like this simply because it's free advertising for them. For all the people who won't go to them because they're shady and untrustworthy, there are plenty who will because they win on price, which of course they can only do because of the sketchiness they are more than willing to accomodate on their marketplace in the first place.
In related news, Wube recently took G2A up on their offer to refund 10 times the amount that developers lost in chargeback fees on stolen/fraudulent keys sold on G2A's marketplace. To nobody's surprise, G2A went silent when they were sent a list of Factorio keys that were revoked due to credit card fraud and asked to check how many of them were resold.
When a developer urges you to pirate their game instead of buying a key for it on G2A, you know the system is fucked.
I'd write up my thoughts on this here, but this twitter thread Lars Doucet posted sums it up pretty good: G2A has proven itself untrustworthy, especially in regards to game keys, and even besides that this reeks of a PR move wherein they specifically hope that not enough developers will accept the proposal, allowing them to do nothing while claiming they "tried."
G2A are just indefinitely scummy, they have proven themselves untrustworthy over and over again. So trusting this is incredibly difficult.
And if this system were to actually be implemented. It still requires that the game devs, which are often indies find out what keys are valid and what keys are stolen and what not, which they don't have the resources to do. And if they already know which keys are stolen (which they don't), then why use this system? why not just revoke the key? And they don't know what keys are stolen (else they would just revoke them), so this tool is actually quite useless. I feel some game devs would just auto enter every single key they sell into it to prevent key reselling at all.
And with how nefarious G2A are, I wouldn't put it past them to think "hmm we are being given a list of known valid keys", why don't we just sell these ourselves?
This really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would be expensive or hard to make. All it has to do is compare keys to a database.
Barring all of the issues with this proposal which others have highlighted, this still does not address the issue of them selling keys bought with stolen credit cards or those acquired by abusing chargebacks. Not only is this a main complaint against G2A in the first place, but it's the one that hits devs and publishers the hardest--far more than sold review/giveaway keys. It makes this "solution" misdirection at best--pay no attention to that fraud behind the curtain.
At this point, not only is it clear that G2A is uninterested in doing the right thing, but I fear that all this recent press might have an adverse effect and actually raise their profile. I wonder if they welcome the criticism and strategically bat back like this simply because it's free advertising for them. For all the people who won't go to them because they're shady and untrustworthy, there are plenty who will because they win on price, which of course they can only do because of the sketchiness they are more than willing to accomodate on their marketplace in the first place.