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Developer fumes about keyseller G2A, but admits he was wrong about blaming them for $30,000 of chargebacks on Natural Selection 2 keys
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- Authors
- Cecilia D'Anastasio
- Published
- Aug 14 2019
- Word count
- 807 words
Subnautica's devs did not help the situation. They fired off a quick "Gotchya!" that ended up muddying the situation and creating more doubt. That's too bad to see, and I hope it hasn't meaningfully shifted the narrative away from all the legitimate criticisms of G2A.
This has been a bunch of weird drama, but the developer later told Kotaku that he was wrong about the $30,000 being G2A's fault: https://kotaku.com/developer-fumes-about-keyseller-g2a-but-admits-he-was-1837252091
This GamesIndustry article has some good info overall too: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-08-14-g2a-fudges-own-history-in-response-to-developer-complaint
It's a confusing mess.
Edit: I changed the link to the Kotaku one since I think it's the most understandable one for someone new to the situation, since it was written after everything. The other articles have a lot of outdated information and scattered updates that make them hard to follow.
Hah, welp, you beat me to posting these by just a minute thirty seconds. Guess next time I should use the content box for the post!
But yeah, this is definitely shaping up for an interesting mess of a situation. Still leaves Factorio's claims to be answered though. Wonder if that'll go anywhere.
As for the link, feel free to edit it if you think it'd be better. The GamesIndustry article definitely does have better information in it; probably should've linked to that one to start with if I'm honest.
This is continuing off the original tweet which was spurred by G2A's offer to reimburse developers ten times what they lost from chargebacks. Some other articles relevant to this situation:
G2A fudges own history in response to developer complaint
Developer fumes about keyseller G2A, but admits he was wrong about $300,000 complaint
Can't wait to read this. I was a huuge fan of the original Natural Selection mod (net fraggers clan represent!) and I pre-ordered Natural Selection 2 on the first day they accepted pre-orders. I have up hope when they were almost a year late and posting updates that they had written a game engine from scratch. Tried playing a few rounds shortly after the alpha was released and it was literally unplayable. I'd give it another shot now but it's been something like a decade. I grew up, graduated college, had kids. I can't play games like I did anymore. Interested to hear what the developers have to say about things.
I play from time to time, it's a truly unique game and a very smooth experience now. Most of the players around now are either really good or really just love the game.
Yeah, the original Natural Selection was an absolute blast to play, but being commander could sometimes be tedious and was almost always a thankless job. But to play kind of like Starcraft, where the humans and aliens are all being played by people, and then you can also join the "ground-level" action, was (is) really amazing.
Resource management, exploration, map control strategy, siege tactics, tech trees, all in a first person shooter? Really, really amazing game.
I was 18, enlisted, and dating my future wife when Natural Selection came out, and I probably played 4 hours a day. I was 28, married, just bought my first house, and in grad school when 2 came out. It was just too long between the two for me to be able to give the sequel much attention.
Here's the video I was talking about, where I knew development was sunk. The game officially released four years after that, on Halloween 2012.
:edit:
I totally misread the article. Left the video above for anyone interested, but otherwise would like to retract my earlier statement as it's not a comment about the article.
It's not refunds. These were keys that were bought using stolen credit cards and sold on key-reseller sites. The $30,000 were chargeback fees from the owners of the credit cards disputing the charges. This blog post that Unknown Worlds made at the time explains it.
Ah okay, I misunderstood the post. Read the article in the middle of a 30 hour trip halfway around the world, and apparently my reading comprehension wasn't up to snuff.