So I decided I was going to take a $3 educated tour of the G2A experience. This was my first purchase through them and after reading all of the bad threads strung around the internet I was sure it was going to end in a spectacular disaster. I of course would never allow G2A to get their grubby little paws on my credit card so I paid by credit card to PayPal who then paid G2A. It seemed like a 'safe' thing to do.

So I selected my game from the list (a really old game BTW that steam wants 39.99 for - PFFFFFFT get real Gabe Newell!) and selected a guy who was selling the game for like $2. I paid some dollar fee for some g2a guard or w/e nonsense (again just to try out the full experience) which is supposedly supposed to protect me from a bad key or w/e.

So there I am, game in cart, checking out. Hit that submit button and BAM. E-mail comes in to claim my new game. So I click on it and all of a sudden I get a gift notification from steam. Some weirdo has just sent me a gift of the game via steam. No game key, actual gift. So I think to myself... this does not seem like the 'risky business' people have talked about on the forums and on Reddit. It seemed pretty legit. (Again, this was a super old game - the game studio doesn't even exist anymore)

So has anyone else had good/bad/ugly G2A stories because I feel like my purchase was a complete success. Full disclosure the game in question was: Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 Steam CD-Key Global (but it turned out being a gift and not a key - does that make it safer in regards to 'keys' being revoked?)

Update 1: I can only imagine the risks are 1 of 2 things - 1) the seller sells a game key and sells the same key multiple times for a duplicate key (purchasing the steam gift would alleviate this risk) and 2) the seller purchased the gift/key on a stolen (or their own) credit card and the charges will be refuted at a later date - ensuring the seller got his money from you and your key/gift was revoked by the game publisher (which you could only alleviate by not partaking). Of course you run the exact same risk when you trade games over forums or barter or wherever except you only lost a game and not 'cash'.

Update 2: I bought a game on kinguin for $7!!!! Had the same deal, steam gift sent post purchase. Now I got me some C&C which makes me happy since no one would trade me the damn games on barter.

8 years ago*

Comment has been collapsed.

What people fail to understand is that Kinguin and G2A mainly RESELL KEYS/GIFTS.And ANYONE CAN SELL THEM/SET UP A VENDOR.

If you buy GTA V from those sites for 2 dollars from a user that has 0 reputation and new account,you are a MORON.

But almost every single vendor out there has like 99% reputation and have a monopoly on almost every game.

Just check the reputation of the user/vendor and also keep in mind that those sites sell their games at a very low priced compared to the Steam shop.You can get BF1 preorder for 39.99 and the vendor that sells it has 100% reputation.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

If one knows what he's doing, it should be safe.
My main issue with the grey market aren't prices but morals.
For example: Civ Beyond Earth Rising Tide: F
that bs got it on the grey market quite cheap. Superhot, even though G2A has an excellent offer, I'm gonna wait 'til legit sales get to a price I'm ok with paying.

*(they aren't as good as they seem: and there's always 10% on top at checkout, and more often than not they're not better than the best sales prices)

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah 99,9% of people are not being scammed so no worries.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I bought 4 keys with them already and never had one single problem. The first one was a really big shot: Overwatch preorder, it went well, i received a picture of the game key card, it was strange but the code worked just fine.
The second one was a indie game, that was being sold really cheap (Rogue State for U$1,35), it went well too, received the key instantly.
The third one was a LATAM (Latin America Only) key for COD BO3, a really good deal, U$7,78 I'm from Brazil so the key works just fine for me
The forth and most recent one was once again Overwatch (bought it to my brother), another good deal, where everything went well.

So i have no issue to report here, only normal transactions.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I've had 1 bad accident with G2a and several good purchases. The bad case was Star Citizen. I could get the game for about 25 euros plus some ships, where it would usually go for about 100 euros for the same package. They were keys from some NVIDIA package that you got when you bought some graphics card. So I bought the thing (with G2A security thingy) and tried the key on their website (yes you had to claim it on the Star Citizen webpage). Key didn't work. I contacted G2A support with a picture of the message saying "Key not working". G2A support answered me and told me to go contact the Star Citizen support, so I did. I told them I bought a key somewhere and that the key was no longer working even though I paid money for it. The Star Citizen support told me the key was revoked or something and that I should contact the place where I had bought the key. So I went back to G2A support. Told them what the other support told me and after some waiting time they told me it was getting handled. About a week later I got my money back. This entire ordeal took about 2 months. Yes. It took me 2 months to get my 25 euros back, but I DID get it all back.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Closed 5 months ago by FateOfOne.