G2A is promising to pay back developers for chargebacks on illegally obtained games ten times over, with a catch of course

Want cheap games? With a little bit of patience for sales, there are plenty of official sources for the latest and greatest new titles hitting the block, and then there’s G2A. The seller of digital keys has been in the news lately for grey market practices that have been tinged with the brown of crappy and predatory business pursuits that have not exactly won them any fans in the wider gaming sphere.

How bad is their reputation currently? So bad, that developers would rather have you pirate their games than purchase from G2A as sales on that platform don’t benefit them in any way whatsoever. The brouhaha started with publisher Mike Rose earlier this week, explaining that recent adspace on Google purchased by G2A was driving people towards that website.

In the latest episode of Fuck G2A:

G2A has taken out sponsored ads on Google, which mean that when you search for our games, you get G2A popping up above our own links — and we make zero money on our games if people buy through the ads.

And when you try to turn their ads off… pic.twitter.com/hSiIkaOLle

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) June 29, 2019

The problem here? G2A has a notorious history of selling game keys from people who use stolen credit card information to purchase them on Steam, leading to credit card owners to cancel said cards and institute a chargeback which the game developers are responsible for. Long story short, a vast number of keys sold on G2A don’t just provide zero income to hardworking developers, it usually ends up costing them cash in the process.

G2A wants to fix that, and they’ve noted on their website that if any evidence of such fraudulent activity pops up, they’ll refund developers up to ten times the money lost through credit card chargebacks. “Let’s lay all cards on the table.We will pay developers 10 times the money they lost on chargebacks after their illegally obtained keys were sold on G2A. The idea is simple: developers just need to prove such a thing actually happened on their stores,” G2A said in a press statement on their site.

To assure honesty and transparency, we will ask a reputable and independent auditing company to make an unbiased examination of both sides – the developer’s store and G2A Marketplace. The cost of the first three audits is on us, every next one will be split 50/50. The auditing company will check if any game keys sold on G2A were obtained using stolen credit cards on a developer’s store compliant with card scheme rules from Visa and Master Card/payment provider rules.

If so, G2A guarantees it’ll pay all the money the developer lost on chargebacks… multiplied by 10. We want this process to be transparent, so we will publicly report every step of the procedure. Meaning, you will get information such as who came forward, and what the verdict was, all of which will be published for everyone to see.

It’s a noble effort to fix the website’s ailing reputation but it has a few catches of course. As mentioned above, it’s up to developers to do the legwork here and prove that a theft has taken place instead of G2A rather directing their efforts towards verifying the game keys that they purchase and negating any potential damage that will be done to developers. As for Rose, his response towards G2A’s lack of policing has been eye-opening to say the least:

G2A have written a lengthy post responded to my tweets https://t.co/L9ywk7wNvM

So here's my response:

– They're lying. I did get in contact, and talked to them at length. I have all the emails, so I guess I'll have to post those soon
– I never mentioned chargebacks at any point

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) July 5, 2019

– They say I have a "pretty good at handling the keys they don’t want available on the free market". Yes I do! And that's because G2A exists. I've had to stop giving out keys so freely to potential press + influencers because G2A doesn't care about policing their site

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) July 5, 2019

– Because of this "pretty good handling", it means that we're far less inclined to get involved with things like, for example, a Humble Bundle, as we know all the keys will appear on G2A afterwards, and tank our Steam sales from that point onwards. *This* is the issue with G2A

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) July 5, 2019

– They say "Just join G2A Direct!", but this is nonsense, as they then sell your game alongside all the illegitimate keys. Why on earth would any developer want their game sold officially alongside a grey market? Do they think we're idiots?

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) July 5, 2019

I have so many more thoughts on their bullshit, but the tl;dr is:

G2A do not care about the people who make games, no matter what spin they keep frothing out. Do not fall for it. Plenty of devs have tried to reason with them, but they are not to be reasoned with.

— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) July 5, 2019

The ball is in G2A’s court, but as long as there’s money to be made from a grey market of illicitly obtained download keys for games, it sounds like the company believes that a cure is better than prevention of the illness that currently plagues it.

Last Updated: July 5, 2019