I've been using Kinguin for quiet sometime now.All my purchases were between 5-13$ which were all successful. I mainly try to get steamgifts and choose the store with highest rating.That's why I never use that Kinguin protection.You should get it only if your purchase is above 20$.However, since Kinguin depends on community offers from Normal users and stores, mistakes can happen.For example, I had a spare speed runners key so I put it up for sale.After almost a month I gave it away to my friend and a week later I received an email from Kinguin stating that my key got sold.I'm pretty sure the buyer didn't get the game since my friend activated it first and the bad thing is that you there's no way to know who bought your item or any contact method......To sum things up,Kinguin is safe as long as you choose to buy from high rating stores & include buyer protection for purchases above 15$.......good luck
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Cryptic! Would you mind telling us why those terms and conditions turned you off, or will we all just have to assume there was an entry about mandatory cannibalism or something in there?
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yeah, I agree with the no source issue, just couldn't be bothered
talked about here
http://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/0TyWqkk
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Well, both sites are kinda shady, but they have somekind of 'buyer protection' (G2A have, or had, a one month free buyer protection for new accounts) so I think it might be worth the risk if you really want to play something but don't have money to pay full price.
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I think people should rather pirate the game instead of buying from a unauthorized reseller, if you're really that cheapass and can't pay or don't agree with their price. At least noone will be profiting from your mistake.
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How is not having enough money for games(that are over priced for years at a time.. Call of Duty cough). A mistake?
I'm not paying £35+ for a 3-4+ year old game, when I can get it for £3.50 legally. Sorry to "disappoint" you, but I'm not some rich mommas boy. Priorities first buddy.
AND how would it be better to pirate a game rather than get it this way and share it on your Steam profile so everyone can see it and potentially buy it themselves..? =/
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I never said not having enough money is a mistake, lol. A mistake is taking a wrong path to have it on your steam profile.
You're worrying about having it "legally", but actually it's not legal. You're trying to be a "legit owner", without actually giving your money for the price the publisher asks, so it's a harm to the industry nevertheless.
If you don't have enough money, or don't agree with a price, you simply should have to act as a proper citizen, and give up its value by not buying it.
You're talking about priorities? Don't bother gaming, then. It's supposed to be an expensive hobby anyway. Noone is making you spend your hard-earned money on their stuff, you do that on your free will. On something that's not necessary at all.
People seem to complain about game prices, about anual franchises, about excessive DLCs and many other bad things about the current industry, but are still pursuing and valuing their product. If we keep like that, we're their hostages, and they can do whatever they want.
Those AAA publishers know they can sell their games with huge prices, once a year, and they'll still be bought by lots of people. So, why would they not do that?
In that line of thought, even pirating a game wouldn't be an ethical decision. But still, I'd rather do that, than to give my money to a third party that's not allowed to sell that - as I usually value selected indie developers and publishers, and I'd rather give my money to them instead.
I'm not saying it's right to pirate - it's been a while since I done that for games - but I believe its wiser to do that instead of buying from 3rd-party. If you don't agree with their price, the only "legal and ethical" path would be to wait for a price drop or bundle. 3rd-party is not, you're like a corsair, a pirate with a permit, but a pirate still.
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I'm not paying £35+ for a 3-4+ year old game, when I can get it for £3.50 legally.
The key word is "legally". While there is a good chance the key you get there will work, it won't be legal. The original seller of the product, the publisher gets no money from that purchase. The grey market fuels only the individual sellers' and the site owners' pockets.
Some people are okay with it, some are not but rather have an illegal key to avoid using cracks, some are really not okay with it because morals or some other bias.
AND how would it be better to pirate a game rather than get it this way and share it on your Steam profile so everyone can see it and potentially buy it themselves..? =/
With pirating you are not giving away your money for something you are not actually purchasing legally anyway. In this regard it diverges from the physical good market. You buy stuff at an actual black/grey market because the only way to get them "free" would be theft, which is a crime in the sense it robs somebody from the original product while transfering it to you. Software piracy has no financial benefit for the crackers/uploaders, nor are you actually committing theft. (Especially since buying a game doesn't actually give you a product you own, you buy an indefinite amount of using rights for something owned by another entity.)
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Pretty sure it's not illegal, at least in the US. Look up "first sale doctrine". Businesses are technically prohibited from interfering in the sale of something they've sold to someone else. Once a company sells something, they have no say in anyone else's right to sell what is now their property. (It's not 100% dead-set certain yet in the case of digital goods, granted, but general legal precedent has been gravitating towards treating intangibles in a similar manner to hard goods.) But if there were a strong case against it, I'm willing to bet retailers and/or game companies would have already torn them to pieces. Regardless, all property transactions are a chain of transfers of ownership. Buying a game key directly from someone instead of a retailer is just a version of that chain with one extra link. It's as valid a purchase as buying a used car (and probably a lot less risky, honestly) or a used book.
Some of LordDarkness' arguments also ignore that there are reasons to seek a valid copy of a game besides the validity itself. It's more than just getting the ability to play the game and having the satisfaction of "legit" ownership. For a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples:
So, factoring all this in, no, a game bought via an online marketplace is actually quite a bit different than a pirated game. There's a heck of a lot more to it than just whose hands your money passes to. Long story short: There's no reason to say someone might as well just pirate such a game.
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Pretty sure it's not illegal, at least in the US.
Pretty sure it is, this is why the site was registered in Asia instead one of the target market countries.
Once a company sells something, they have no say in anyone else's right to sell what is now their property.
Yep, here starts the problem, as the UbiSoft scandal has shown us: these are keys the company didn't exactly "sell" in some cases. Sometimes they are review keys, sometimes they are promo keys, sometimes they are bundle keys, sometimes bought with hacked accounts, stolen credit cards, or just managed to create a keygen. But none of the keys G2A and co. sell come from any publisher ever, nor do they see a cent of it.
It's not 100% dead-set certain yet in the case of digital goods, granted, but general legal precedent has been gravitating towards treating intangibles in a similar manner to hard goods.
There was an article about this whole thing sort of blowing up when some Hollywood celebrity (I think Bruce Willis?) realised he doesn't own any of his digital goods. Same thing with online accounts. They were ruled to be not a thing that can even be inherited as any property of a person.
Also, just read the Terms of Services. They phrase in a very roundabout way that you are purchasing a lease, in short; a service, not a product.
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The Ubisoft point is irrelevant, because those were not goods the company sold. You would have no more right to resell those than you would to resell a stolen car. Also, to say that "none of the keys G2A sell come from any publisher, ever," is... a pretty dramatic claim, especially with no substantiation. It's like saying Walmart shoplifts everything it sells from Target first. (Okay, not quite as extreme as that. Of course there's no denying shady deals do happen.)
Fair point that digital goods are definitely in a legal grey area at the moment as far as first sale doctrine goes, fair enough, but that isn't the same thing as being illegal. Has anyone ever been sued/criminally tried for selling intangible goods?
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Not drastic, simply true. No publisher was ever affiliated with them. Publishers even went as far as warned people that they never sold any keys, even through an third party, to them.
And why is the UbiSoft thing irrelevant? it was a clear, proven case of G2A selling stolen keys. Is it irrelevant because it cannot fit into your arguments? o.O
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"No publisher was ever affiliated with them" wasn't your initial claim, or if it was, it wasn't my reading of it, at least. That isn't the same thing as keys not coming from a publisher. If a seller buys a thing from the person who made it, and then sells it again, that's the exact same thing a retail store does - in fact, your average retail store probably puts any given item through quite a few MORE pairs of hands from manufacturer to customer. No, the game company didn't sell the goods to G2A - much the same way the factory that makes lawnmower engines didn't sell those engines directly to the store that sells the lawnmowers. It's a supply chain.
As to why UbiSoft is irrelevant: Because it has no bearing on the legality of first sale doctrine as applied to digital goods. To point to UbiSoft shutting down the resale of stolen game keys as evidence that digital goods can't be resold would be like pointing to the shutdown of a stolen car ring to try to argue that it's illegal to sell used cars. No one's arguing that it's legal to resell stolen goods, digital or otherwise. All that being said, though, I probably need to cave a little bit on the first sale doctrine thing. Though I personally think it's going to go in the direction of including digital resale under the doctrine's protections, it hasn't yet, so that's probably not a valid point for me to raise. It doesn't mean such resales are ILLEGAL, however - it just means they haven't been protected and guaranteed legality.
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But "some of these may, possibly, have been stolen" doesn't make the entire system inherently any more corrupt than "some of these may, possibly, have been made in sweatshops". Granted, getting goods from sweatshops isn't illegal, but I think most people would consider those pretty ethically objectionable.
And here we are again. This is the grey/black market. It is as safe as the real grey/black market, only it tries to hold a pretence of being a completely legit store that just happens to make you pay– in an unethical nature, by the way, with only being available to opt out from renewal of a sometimes unwanted service in a certain, tight time window, which would be another basis of legal action in a Western country– for fraud protection.
Buying at the black market in itself is not illegal. Buying at the flea market is not illegal. But to use an old example I still remember: if you buy a 1 TB external hard drive and you find a 32 MB USB key in the case with a custom firmware set to send all data to /dev/null, along with a large metal nut to get it weight… then you have nobody to complain to but the one you bought it from. Maybe the boss of the black market will give you your money back so you don't spread the word and make people not go there. Since these places all live by their fleeting reputation. If the plebs flock there and most of them find goods that work more or less, they will return. If many of them are scammed, it's not good for business.
Nothing is different on the digital grey market.
No, the game company didn't sell the goods to G2A - much the same way the factory that makes lawnmower engines didn't sell those engines directly to the store that sells the lawnmowers. It's a supply chain.
Again, to use a counter-example: okay, but what if the engine of the lawn mover has no receipt of ever leaving that factory, what if they are just listed as missing inventory or not even listed as such? Will the lawnmower company who installed them held accusable? Probably not. Will it still be ethical and perfectly legal though?
Or another example. You are a journalist for a magazine about cars. For example, Toyota gives you a car to keep but only if you make an article about it. Your first order of business is selling the car. Then the sold car ends up at a used car lot. And it gets sold again. Will the final buyer care that it was handed out as a promotion and never intended to be used by anyone else? No, they won't. Was it ethical from the journalist?
To point to UbiSoft shutting down the resale of stolen game keys as evidence that digital goods can't be resold would be like pointing to the shutdown of a stolen car ring to try to argue that it's illegal to sell used cars.
That wasn't the argument. The argument was a simple case of fencing. To continue the analogue, is it legal to bust people who bought used cars which in turn were bought with stolen bank accounts/credit cards? To my knowledge in most countries the cars will get confiscated.
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I know it's tangential, but as far as I've been able to tell, opting out of their fraud protection consists of unchecking a single very visible, colorful checkbox. Unless there's some weirdness that happens after you use it once or something, that doesn't really seem too shady unto itself (even if, ultimately, it is meant to protect you from shady deals). Also, I'm no longer really sure why UbiSoft came up, considering the initial question was whether digital resale was legal (I said yes, you said no).
I think I see where the disjunction is cropping up here, though. You keep providing examples of illegal transactions, and sure, no disagreement they're illegal. (Well, maybe not the automobile resale one. I'm not even sure I'd call that unethical, if the journalist held up his end of the bargain, as it's not hurting the company, but that's arguable and also a digression anyway.) But it looks like you've then extrapolated that one step further to asserting literally that everything the site sells is stolen/illegal. I'm willing to assume it wasn't meant to be taken as literal as some of the wording implied, but your intended meaning still seems to be that it makes up some huge, hulking majority of their trade, wildly disproportionate to regular, valid retail. The thing is, I don't think there's any proof of that. Of course it'd be just plain incorrect if I said that stolen goods are NEVER sold via G2A. But it seems like the frequency with which it happens, relative to other markets, is one you've pinned on a hunch rather than on any kind of hard data. Is it possible 99% of the goods they sell are illegal? Sure, I can't say that's absolutely impossible. But how probable is it? That's really not something that's easily pinned down, and you seem to have assigned it a probability just on this side of certainty. No marketplace is absolutely spotless, and there's really not enough information to lead to the assumption that any given purchase made in this one is going to fund some illegal transaction. To bring in yet another analogy in this analogy-riddled conversation, if I buy a bit of fruit at the store, I'm taking the risk it came from some questionable deal with some seedy farmer (pun not intended) and is tainted with something. But unless there's something like a warning out about fruits of this species, there's not much sense in just assuming it to be the case. G2A/Kinguin may definitely be more akin to flea markets than Targets in terms of their susceptibility to illicit goods, but I wouldn't say flea markets should be entirely written off. (That story about the hard drive is pretty crazy though, I gotta say. I believe it, it's just one of those things that's bizarre and awful in a way that wraps around to being strangely funny.)
I hate to do the "last word and bolt" thing, but I have to get my day underway. If you have a reply you want to fire off anyway, I promise to at least read it when I have the chance later. I've enjoyed this talk, though. Hope your day goes well!
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But it looks like you've then extrapolated that one step further to asserting literally that everything the site sells is stolen/illegal.
Not illegal. Based on the stuff they sell, especially the random key part, makes it almost sure that the large part of the stock come from the use of alt accounts, proxies (as in people) and dupes to get loads of free key from open promotions or they resell cheap 1-dollar bundle keys en masse for 3-1200% profit.
As for the AAA games… that is where the questions pop up. How come the keys are often even cheaper than as how the publishers sell them?
That story about the hard drive is pretty crazy though, I gotta say. I believe it, it's just one of those things that's bizarre and awful in a way that wraps around to being strangely funny.
Yeah, it was also in the "colourful" section of an online news site. They got it from a tech web page, but it was so bizarre, yet the firmware machinations so clever, it stuck in my head.
Also, have a nice day too. I'm off for the whole weekend, but may see if I get internet. :)
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Well said, having the game on Steam carries quite a lot of benefits indeed.
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It's pretty much like eBay (at least G2A is), but for digital downloads. You're only as safe as the person you are buying from. If you buy from sellers with hundreds or thousands of positive feedbacks, you are pretty safe. If you buy from sellers with no or few feedbacks, then it is more of a gamble. In either case, if you pay with a credit card and the key gets revoked or does not work, you can always open a chargeback dispute with the CC and get your money back. For these reasons, buying G2A insurance is a waste of money imo.
Obviously it is not as safe as buying retail, but then retail prices are usually much higher too. I doubt you can run into any problems with your Steam account (at least if you buy non-region restricted games and NEVER use VPN to activate games). Worst case, you'll lose some money and not get the game.
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yes it is, looks like an official retailer. prices are similar/equal to other retailer's sites and steam.
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bought keys from them and never had an issue, though I know that it's a bit risky, and i'm not sure whether it's just because keys can be already used without they can know or they deliberately sell used keys while knowing it
they also got some " shield" a while ago that costs money so you can be "given" an other key if the key they sold was already used.. so that's pretty much a lottery and i find the overall system pretty scammy and unfair
but when it works it's good
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G2A is pretty safe, just don't buy keys from the marketplace (they provide a platform to sell your keys). Buy from the store.
https://www.g2a.com/key-clarification-g2a
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that clarification pretty much says - we have no store :-D but not that i'd care about it
(+ GA2 selected offers = cheapest market seller + g2a-cut)
with the rare exception of sometimes having something that resembles a store - but i've nevee used
one for buying heck, even trying to google "G2A Store" gets you only their site in your language and nothing else
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There isn't a separate page for it, but there are some keys that are owned and sold directly by the site rather than by users. Their prices are usually not as good, but one might consider it a little safer to deal with them directly.
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There isn't a separate page for it
Speaks for itself if you ask me ... but i know, like that Mad Max Paypal
special offer or other Pages embedded in their background (like SPAM).
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Embedded background links like that are a pox upon humanity, no arguing that.
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I don't have a credit card, and had trouble buying stuff (HumbleBundle doesn't accept webmoney) , so I used plati.ru (something like g2a) to buy things for cheap, like bundled games. I had once a game that was stolen, and Steam took it from me, but I got my money back from the site. Retailers may be a bunch of shady scammers, but if the site guarantees you no trouble, you can give the site a try.
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I only used g2play and never had any problem. One of my friends bought BF4 from them, got the key revoked, contacted them and recieved another key - that was the first and last time he bought games from them. I would say that they are pretty safe, but not official retailers.
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I've had a pretty consistently good experience with G2A. I did have one game I bought through it revoked. I checked in with support, and they sent me to a complaint department who asked for screenshots (one of the revocation notice screen, one of my games library, and one of this obscure page of game licenses or something I probably could not find again without being pointed that way). It might have led to trouble if I'd clicked out of the revocation notice screen without taking a screenshot, but with that in hand, and taking the other two on request, everything was fine. After I sent in the screenshots they refunded my money a few days later with a polite apology. Still kind of a shame, as it was the cheapest I'd ever found that particular game for, but I didn't end up losing out, and it wasn't the site itself's fault. And this was without their "G2A shield" thing, too. So yeah, while it's not risk-free, I feel pretty comfortable with G2A. No experience with Kinguin though.
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Out of curiosity, are you saying that the keys are almost always bought with stolen credit cards or something? Or are you opposed to buying things from anyone but the manufacturer/creator?
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It's more like unethical because only the site owners profit from this, the creators and publishers never. You are paying people of unknown past and backgrounds, running a site registered as far away as US and European consumer laws as possible money instead of those people who made the product, even if they normally receive only a very small amount from legit seller purchases.
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I assume you don't shop at stores, then? They don't go and hand over their profits to the companies they bought their stock from, and quite a few of even major, mainstream retailers buy things manufactured by shady third-world sweatshop industries. So if shady acquisition processes and not forking over a cut to the original manufacturer are both unacceptable business practices, that would basically rule out shopping just about anywhere.
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They do. At the start of the chain the wholesaler buys it from the manufacturer. But these keys are often not bought from the wholesaler, they "have fallen off a truck". Or "got misplaced why handling the stock at the warehouse". There is a reason that G2A even offers you a purchasable protection against fake keys. No legal seller does that since they know their keys are legit. G2A doesn't so they make you pay to have some protection against it. And nobody questions why would you need fraudulent protection at a store? Or, to follow your analogue, when you go to a store to buy milk, does the store ask you to pay a little something on the side in case there is some industrial waste water in the carton?
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Nope. Yet, strangely, product recalls and tainted/defective/tampered-with/technically-unfit-for-sale goods still happen. Remember the Chinese toy lead paint debacle? Maybe they SHOULD start offering that. ;) (I know, we've got the right to sue. I'm kidding.) But "some of these may, possibly, have been stolen" doesn't make the entire system inherently any more corrupt than "some of these may, possibly, have been made in sweatshops". Granted, getting goods from sweatshops isn't illegal, but I think most people would consider those pretty ethically objectionable.
Mind if I take this to the thread further up instead of continuing here? This two-conversations-at-once thing is getting kind of annoying.
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A huge number of the keys on there were never purchased at all. There was a big story somewhere a few months ago where a journalist traced a key from one of those sites all the way back to its origin and it turns out it was a review copy (on an unrelated note the key even passed through this site).
People requesting "review" keys, promotional giveaways from events, keys bought on stolen CCs (or even people using chargebacks on the original purchase after reselling it), etc. None of these keys should be sold since there is no money going to the correct party and knowing that makes purchasing them unethical.
In the rare case, with these sites at least, that the key was purchased legitimately and then is being resold then I don't have an issue (e.g. How Greenmangaming got their first set of Witcher 3 keys) but given the prices you have to know that they weren't ever purchased retail. Buying a humble Bundle for the $1 minimum and then reselling the keys doesn't count as legitimate in my book either.
TLDR: If you can trace the correct share of money back to the dev/publisher then it's fine, problem is with the vast majority of cases you can't at these sellers.
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I have about 30 purchases and 5 sales on that site. No one has had problems with my keys, I have had no problems with anyone else's keys. Now, still, I will warn you. There are people who sell shoddy keys, what you can do about it is check their record, if it's 100% with a lot of sales (1000+) then they're almost 100% safe. The thing is, with more expensive games, I suggest the G2A Shield, since they'll fix your problems, like i.e. the ESO scandal, where they just paid everyone back for the revoked keys.
tl;dr G2A is a good site for cheap games, but as always, you have to be a wary consumer about the sellers. It's like going to a farmer's market. DON'T BUY ROTTEN POTATOES!!!
I always tell Aunt Shirley about that!
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Of course its not safe. Also, why you people create hundreds of literally identical topics instead of using search feature ?
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Because sometimes new conversations can yield new information, due to having new participants, new information, or whatever else. It's same the reason that any given topic gets talked about more than once in human history.
By the way, what search term(s) did you use to get "hundreds of literally identical topics"? I tried searching "G2A" and got ten, which is one-tenth of one fraction of "hundreds", and only half of which were even similar to this topic. And the last one of those was from over two months ago.
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Every few days up to 1 a week at worst there is new conversations about sites like this. There is almost hundred topics with "G2A" in topic and couple times more without it about similar reseller sites. And you will find all informations you need there. Cheers.
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Aha, I see what happened. My search was restricted to "General" only. When I made sure to search All, that was quite a few more results.
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I bought some games on g2a without protection and everything was good , games worked , didn't got scammed. The thing is , some people got scammed.You can do whatever you want with your money for example : you can buy something from steam and get a working game or you can try buying it from a shady website and risk less of your money for the same product so decision is all yours:
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I bought a lot of games, never had a problem except once. I bought arma 3 for a friend and the seller revoked the gift after 2 months. I opened a support ticket and got every single cent back within the next 5 days. I didn't even have buyer protection. I highly recommend g2a. Like I said it was a gift, not a key. Keys can't be revoked or reported for whatever reason so it's safe.
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Yup, never buy gifts on g2a...it's definitely riskier.
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The one time I did get screwed (though only until the company refunded me) was with a seller who'd had 100% positives previously. There's a first time for everything. That is a good first step, though. Plus, evidently it was a mistake for me to buy a gift rather than a key, since the latter apparently can't be revoked the same way.
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About as safe as buying your games from other traders. You might never have any issue, but there's always a risk involved.
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If you're concerned with it, don't use it. That said: if you pay with PayPal or a Credit Card you have all sorts of protections against being scammed (even in the US, so probably more in EU). G2A will respond on Twitter pretty fast and (at least publicly) stand by their products. Usually what happens is people buy keys on sale or in bundles (or non-region locked keys in low priced markets) and resell them there for a profit AND you get the key for cheaper.
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Some of the games on there are more than half the price... of a half the price sale. Just wondering if anything could happen to my account if I bought a cd-key from there? >-<
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