Do you buy from such unauthorized 3rd party retailers?
G2A is legit if you buy from the right sources, I've seen many people buy many keys with no issues.
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I have no problem with buying from Kinguin or cdkeys, as long as they offer protection for a key or gift I buy, so in the end I can get a working key or a refund in case anything happens. Either way, some of my local, legal retailers sell games cheaper on discounts than on Kinguin. I don't feel bad, I don't feel like a criminal, in the end I'm satisfied with my purchases and in case my game would be revoked I can still get a refund. Win situation for a customer.
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Bought XCOM Enemy Unknown from Kinguin way back, with all the DLC. No problems with it, and I got a good deal.
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Say you want to buy deus ex human revolution right now, check the price on legit and shady sides. Steam: 19.99€, g2a: 2.58€ then ask yourself how is this possible and which price you prefer to pay because (its your own money or maybe not), if you live in a country with minimum wage of $7 per hour you dont give a shit, in the other side ask your fellow friends in countries with $1, this person need to work 20 hours to just buy a game.
I don't support shady sellers but in the end who gives a shit... its a digital product with the same fuction in the end.
My opinion... buy it where its cheaper and let the developers and publishers find a way to fight those sellers, its not my job neither yours.
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Steam price is the standard retail price without discounts. The game was heavily discounted and bundled several times. Some people have leftover copies and sell them for a small profit over what they paid for it back then. What's shady about this? It's the very same thing happening in the Trades section of this website. Paying €20 today for DEHR is plain retarded, whether you're rich or not. If you don't like the word retarded, you can replace it with "showing a disregard for your own money and a complete lack of understanding of the digital PC game market".
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What's shady about this?
Its not my words but a community reference word for these kind of stores(trading is a different thing).
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Fair enough. I know trading is kind of a different thing (kind of, because when you only "trade" for TF2 keys or Paypal you're basically just a reseller after all. But in terms of price dynamics, the "shady" sites and trading have a lot more in common compared to Steam itself or GMG. The key difference being historical low and bundling determine the value of a game, while with official retailers there's a base full price and sometimes a discount.
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i sell games on g2a, all legit of course, but I would never buy from it (mostly because of prices though).
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Many are, but some are bargain e.g PES keys. However, for indie titles from bundles, well....
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oh..never used other platforms.only have laptop. I only bought Xcom enemy unknown and dead space steam global keys after checking those games with enhanced steam to check number of times they have been bundled and lowest recorded price
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If its something from a bundle, I'm probably going to end up buying it anyway for cheap(er).
If its some sort of AAish game, I can wait for the price to be much lower and on an approved sale. Ex: mad max is around 15, but I could wait for it to be less.
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gotcha. what do you think about mordor deal is $15 for shadow of mordor goty worth it?
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for me no, but a legit seller, bundlestars, has mordor goty for $15 anyway, so i would trust them over a grey seller
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i also found it maniqure while getting you
oh wait...
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I totatally support G2A, Kinguin and the likes because they provide people with cheap ways of buying games instead of paying the exorbitant prices asked by some developers / publishers. I hate this blaming on others, don't get butthurt because no one wants to pay the ridiculous price you asked for.
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If this wasn't a flamebait/argumentative thread, I don't know what else is.
Please remember, reselling is 100% legal.
99.9% of all cd-keys were legally bought ON SALE, just to be resold at a later date. (if you can't draw conclusion, that means a tiny ass fraction are actually stolen from publishers/owners pc via, you know, hackers?)
I beleive it is called the free market...
So, do these "shady" reseller websites specifically say all their keys come directly from the publisher/owner?
No, so they are not miss representing the facts. (you can draw the conclusion that since they do not specifically state all their keys come directly from the publisher/owner, that the keys are 2nd hand, DUH!~)
Any entity (persons or companies) trying to prevent the resale are using anti-trust/anti-competition/anti-I-FORGET tactics, and are infact breaking the law themselves.
And no, them hiding away a tiny piece of text somewhere on their site saying something like "if you buy you agree its for personal use" also won't hold up in court nor does it take away your rights.
"Personal use" = to do what you want with it: chose to not use the product, throw it away, give it away, or resell it. :P
And these bully of companies trying to prevent resale, can just limit how many copies they are willing to sell @ that sale price if they don't like to see these things resold (remeber, which is legal).
Or they could, you know, not sell their stuff on sale.
They wonder why some humble bundles sell 500,000+ copies? becaues people buy shit on sale stupid... for any reason, to use, to give, to resell... JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER SINGLE MARKET IN THE WORLD!.
I can't even count the number of times I bought NEW products from ebay/amazon/yardsells/pawnshops/goodwill/etc.etc.etc.
.
.
At this point, all this proves is that digital goods price points are arbitrary, as there are infinite/endless supply of it. (no raw goods are needed, like for say if it was an actual physical good) and as it is just communicable information (in the form of 0's and 1's that is).
(lol, I'm looking at you gearbox "this GOTY edition has over $100 in value"... to who? your bean counters?, its wrothless to me, you may as well just say the goty edtion has over $1,000,000 in value, only $29.99 for mega savings.)
edit: formating, I can't figure out how to have two returns (it takes one out)
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Commercial re-sale is against Humble terms, so it's not technically legal. Also, the article speaks about keys purchased fraudulently and re-sold by these sites, so those clearly aren't 100% legal either.
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It may be against humbles terms, but that don't make it illegal, in the criminal/law sense.
I'm pretty sure a 'terms' is not an actual legally signed contract.
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It depends on superior laws too. There are a huge debates in courts if electronic licenses are covered under First-sale doctrine.
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It depends on superior laws too. There are a huge debates in courts if electronic licenses are covered under First-sale doctrine.
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I know that what's in the terms may be not legal or at least that it's murky. But it's still legally binding, that's only what I meant.
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That also depends on superior law. In my country some clauses in the contract are not legally binding even if you agree with them.
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In terms of building legitimacy, one thing that I suspect has done more for the key resellers (and G2A in particular) than Twitch streaming is sponsoring e-sports teams. They've for an example sponsored Complexity gaming, one of the teams that participated in The International (the big DOTA 2 tournament that valve runs each year). This means that the G2A logo was seen during official Valve broadcasts of the event.
As for my own stance on the resellers, I have mixed feelings about them. When its handled well, I'm not against them (as in everything is done legally), but when its handled poorly, customers can get into real trouble.
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just personal experience.lately I have taken shine for g2a as they implemented paytm support. (I have problem with other stores as my visa debit card sometimes don't work as it's not international. usually buy from HB &BS but sometimes the $1 or 1 pound they deduct from account before actual transaction is not credited back :/ ) I have bought 2 keys of old bundled games like dead space and xcom from from g2a for $1 & $2 resp. it's mostly because of convenience of payment and low price. I always thought of g2a as ebay. other people selling keys..so you have to look for that person's selling history to check whether it's legit or not..
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I use G2Play quite often and I'm gonna add my 2 cents here.
I live in Romania. The average wage is around 250 euros for the entry-level middle-class people. If you live by yourself, it's barely enough to survive. Luckily I still live with my family and we spread the costs around the members so that everyone can have money for personal spending.
We're considered tier 1 by Steam. Yes, tier 1, where we have to pay 60 euros for a new game. A small, 2nd world country has to pay more than some large, better developed countries.
I pirated games up 'till 2 years ago because I couldn't afford shit. After getting a job and climbing up the ranks, I could afford paying for games but I could only buy 1 big game every 2 months.
Then I found out about G2Play, G2A, Kinguin and the likes. I was skeptical at first (seeing a 60 euro game on Steam being sold for 35 euros) but I gave it a shot and, after several successful transactions, I started to know what to look out for in this grey market. I also started selling the keys I didn't use and buy games I wanted to play. It's not the safest place to buy keys but, if you know where to look, it's a life-saver. Half of my owned games are from G2A and G2Play. The only big game I bought on Steam in the past 6 months is Elite:Dangerous. For everything else, I stick to G2Play.
So yeah, I'll use the grey market as long as it's not illegal.
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I use G2A and have never had problems, BUT... It in the end is a marketplace, not a store. People sell their keys, not devs/pubs. You need to have common sense to use it. Check who has a good track record and use G2A Shield, if you want to be more certain. G2A is not at fault for bad transactions, not 100% anyway. It's like EBay or Craigslist. So, for the love of god, if you are a dummy, stay out of the deep end of the pool.
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Honestly....this situation could be resolved if there was a bit more of strategic response from the publishers/makers of a game.
First easy step would be:
Making sure there is an official list of authorized resellers / way to check that's easy enough. Then any reseller not authorized / on that list would be easily spotted as fake. And people shouldn't bitch when keys bought from such a site get disabled and games revoked from an account.
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ussualy i tend to not get involved with them, but i got a key of metro ll from kinguin some months ago and some dlcs from g2a with a 1$ card that i won somewhere :))
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G2A and others are marketplaces. There's always risk associated with it like anywhere else.
I got me once on eBay a retail boxed Photoshop. New and box still wrapped in foil. Was much cheaper than buying from other retailers. I was suspicious but re-seller seemed legit and hey, things can happen. Got it, paid the import duties (shipped from US to Europe). Unpacked and over-enjoyed got to install it. Then BANG, key invalid. Cannot activate. Long story short - I got in touch with Adobe and the seller. Got my money back, got even import duties back. But got no Photoshop and just wasted some time and nerves.
Now, from a different point, also eBay - found this good deal on Guild Wars 1 back in the time. Got it, installed and activated - all worked fine. Just some mommy selling the game she got for her "little one" and turned out to be no longer required.
G2A or eBay - it's just a place for sellers to meet with buyers.
The moral of the story - risk is part of such marketplaces. You can go to your local flea market and get something obtained in shady ways. You can go to your used car dealers and buy a stolen car.
The thing with re-selling keys from likes of Humble Bundle, that's a more like a moral thing. You don't go to your local charity shop to buy something for pennies with the sole intent of reselling it in your own high-street boutique shop, do you?
I would say NO to re-selling such keys when obtained for commercial purposes with sole intent of making money gain.
On a second thought though, I think there could be an exception to that which could be - paying for bundle keys way more than the average so devs and charities get a fair share.
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The whole thing boils down to:
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piggish, companies trying to sell you stuff (digital games) with a bigger leash and less liberties for the same price
b-b-b-ut you you agreed to all the "legit" TOS, EULA, KFC some lawyer-assistant-scoundrel drew up on his lunch-break - y. ofc. -
owning stuff, the license of digital games on terms with "legit" fantasy rules applied to reality ... being 2015 and these corporate mongrels sill have not figured how to create, manage a digital media that is worth its money and can be handled (more or less) similar to physical copies (meaning > you can lend, store, sell them legitimately - with all its merits/backdraws of physical copies)
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bundle sites, selling you a bunch crap with some gems in between > their just promo charity and mostly profit/business promo
reducing the value of games greatly to those who know about them; i'd daresay Bundle-Sites in this "unregulated" state, are a real problem/THREAT ...
Knowing dispenser,outpost, steamgifts/trades and a few other sources, i have never bought a thing on G2A or its brethren sites.
You usually can get them straight from steamgifts/trades cheaper - how legit is that? (idk, idc, nmp) Started selling on G2A
a month ago, Steam Gifts mostly MGS; MGR - and oh brother, its marvelous & effortless how well it works - in comparison
to trade stuff here or on other sites. Only thing that worried me how easy it was to start selling, and if the payout worked out,
which it did.
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devs sitll have to agree to put the game into a bundle.
resellers basicly are the bordercontrol, tolltakers of digital goods. it just doesnt end up in the pockets of the state where you bought it which desperately needs it to strengthen economy, like it would with physical goods.
it lands in the hands of a corporation. and you dont help the devs to make more games.
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Did I buy from them?
Yes, I did. Sometimes there are products you cannot find anywhere else but the grey/black market. Video games are the same in this regard.
Do I like them?
No, not by a long shot. Just because I purchased there doesn't mean I don't know what is going on.
Would I mind if they stopped existing?
No and yes. G2A and the like have their places, just like how software piracy has its place, no matter what white knights and corporate lawyers say.
This place is not in the fucking limelight, bribing poor half-knowing streamers and players and a greedy streaming site, trying to sell yourself as legit. Even the mob had enough wits to sell actual, normally functioning, clean activities and corporations as legit fronts, not their main (half-)illegal business.
If G2A would just remain somewhere under the surface and function as the shady grey market it is, we wouldn't have half of this problems. But because a bunch of poor idiots were loudly declaring their love, and because even more dumbasses jumped on the bandwagon to hoard games "cheap" (not even realising that G2A never, and I mean NEVER had the lowest price on any game, ever) and lumbered around the internet in their loud, obnoxious, dumb ways, the grey market is now reaching the point where the publishers may start their usual half-witted nuclear attack on their own users and then we players may all get fucked. Royally.
Some people say voting right should be tied to basic everyday wits. Sometimes I feel the ability to purchase video games (or anything involving digital money) should too. Of course this would put Activision out of business, but hey, small price.
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the reason why g2a never has cheapest prices is people that sell on g2a actually buy their keys and resell them for a profit. And in order to make profit they cant sell it under the price they bought it for, no ? :P
id have no problems with buying there from trusted sellers, as long as price of game in question wouldnt be lower than its historical low, but if i were to buy a game that was never in a bundle and it never sold for less than lets say $10, and g2a had it listed at $4, obviously id avoid that one.
now if people would only use common sense when buying from 2nd hand markets, we wouldnt have topics like this popping up every once in a while :P Its really no different than ebay, so there are same risks associated to it too, and its focused on games only so i for one dont mind its existence.
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Mostly true. The difference between G2A and eBay is that eBay never tried to advertise and sell itself as an official store for, for example, Apple iPhones but as a digital flea market.
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eh i didnt know about that part of g2a but i pretty much visit it only when a topic like this one pops up :P yeah thats a bit odd, but i doubt they are doing it without publishers acknowledge so even if there are like 3 publishers they have deal with, they are able to call themselves official store as long as they list publishers names on their site.
but still they should make it clear how marketplace has nothing to do with publishers and its user selling keys, if they arent doing that already. Eiether way, ive got a few friends who bought latest fifa from g2a for like 33 euros and so far i dont think they have complained about it :P I had to pay close to 40 on gmg but thats not really such a big difference especially since its a game im probably going to play all year long (on and off) so i always take that into consideration which makes 40 euros a steal for something thats going to last that long :)
on the other hand, id be hard pressed to pay 40 euros for 5 hours long cod games, so i wouldnt mind getting those elsewhere :P
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Don't mention FIFA… I have permabanned at least four dozen G2A spambots from Twitch last night alone that advertised their "sale" on it.
Because this is another part of them that is rarely mentioned: they advertise themselves in gaming communities with spambots that put store links behind URL shorteners, just like common scammers and low-grade porn sites.
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I bought only once on G2A and have no problems, but i read a lot of bad things
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its just publishers talking out of their $#" trying to keep current situation intact (which is a win win situation for them, you buy the game for $60, in digital format, but practically they keep the rights on it and might as well remove your license if they feel like it).
practically speaking, i wouldnt actually mind owning something i pay for, so i couldnt care less for publishers really. Its not like they are acting nice either, just look at all the dlc, preorder, prepreorder bonuses and $100's worth of dlcs for $60 games. But regardless, if i pay for something i feel like i should be able to use it how i see fit, regardless if publishers eula is trying to put itself above EU consumer rights, EU laws, or not.
thats why i dont actually mind sites like g2a and i think its a godsend, and while i dont buy there because i dont really need more games but if i was able to get something cheaper, for my money, why shouldnt i do so? I do it for everything else, we all do, why should we be forced to pay more for digital games then?
and one last thing, all that crap about "we got no money from g2a sales" is, well just not true. For a game to be sold, it had to be bought. And there is where devs/publishers get their share. Or maybe they want another piece of the cake from g2a or person who is selling it? Eh? Because you know, getting their share just once wont cut it anymore. What they understand, but chose to disregard is how if someone couldnt buy their game at g2a price, that person might as well not buy the game at all, adn thats actually a lost sale for them. But hey, its pretty much the same thing as publishers screaming omg 2 million people pirated our game, thats 2 million lost sales, at $60 each!!! Yeah sure.
And dont even start with but but what if it was bought in kazahstan!, because there are region locks all over the place now so yeah, no.
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You are seriously mixing up things here.
For starters, it's not the big publishers that have problems here. UbiSoft is so far the only one that was a victim, and when they did the legal approach of revoking stolen keys, the fanboys made them out to be the bad guys. Sure, they have a lot of anti-consumer decisions as a solid reason to hate them, but actually following the goddamn law is not one of them.
The problem is with indies. And they get no cents out of it. They give out some promo keys, some journalist keys, some giveaway keys, a lot of promotional bundle keys for different sites… and look here, these mostly free keys suddenly fatten the pockets of unknown Russian and Chinese businessmen behind a shady reseller site. Who get away with roughly… 100% of the profit.
And guess what is the majority of G2A and Co. keys consist of? Yep, these indie games they sell the poor fools for a lot more money they could have gotten from the makers of the games themselves who now never see money but others did from their work.
Consider this next time you fire up Terraria.
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so they should stop giving keys to those people, end of? Why not make giveaways on sites like this one, im sure indie devs know about steamgifts and other steam groups that are not made of people who would sell their keys?
you are telling me they cant do a research on their own and they just blidly give keys away? Eh dont think it works that way, if lets say famous streamer named chuchuchuchupikachuchuchuchuchuchu is known for selling his keys, just stop supplying him with free keys. end of.
same goes for journalists and such. Dont think its that simple really, and i highly doubt most journalists or promotional bundle keys sites are selling their keys, and even if they were i dont think anyone gives like 50 keys to single journalist :)
saying how majority keys on g2a and such sites consist of journalist or promotional keys is pushing it, imo. I dont think its that simple really, i mean if i wanted to buy 100 keys from indie game that was given to 50 different journalist, id have to contact 50 people, and im sure like 2 of them would agree to sell me their keys.
and once again, i know indie devs crave for publicity, but you can also get publicity by giving away like 5 keys to each of famous stremaers, or even 10 and ask them to play your game and make a giveaway with another 9 copies, for their streamers. And giving away your game on sites like steamgifts... they could make a bit higher level giveaway (i think lvl 3 or so is pretty safe point) so people who enter their giveaways actually end up activating it.
there i solved both problems in 2 mins, without thinking about it too much really :P
ah and one more thing, speaking of laws... most digital games eulas are considered to be anti consumer and are actually violating quite a few EU rights (no idea about US though) so i could pretend like i care, but yeah id have to try really hard to make it look convincing though :)
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Why not make giveaways on sites like this one, im sure indie devs know about steamgifts and other steam groups that are not made of people who would sell their keys?
They do. Hence the Developer member status and the frequent featured giveaways here.
you are telling me they cant do a research on their own and they just blidly give keys away?
Not blindly, semi-blindly at worst with Greenlight promos or very consciously by giving it to them to reviewers, streamers, Steam curators, known people in the video gaming community. They distribute the keys to their follower base, usually in an automated manner. And Russian and SEA bots are constantly looking for keys on game-related pages to fish them and put them on the grey market. This is the reason you see that the free giveaway key thread has people posting keys with some sort of mini riddle format, because the bots are searching these forums too.
saying how majority keys on g2a and such sites consist of journalist or promotional keys is pushing it, imo.
Practically all indie keys are promo keys and bundle keys. Non-indie keys are always Nuuvem keys, bundle keys, and high-level sale keys, and in rare cases stolen/bruteforced ones.
there i solved both problems in 2 mins, without thinking about it too much really :P
No, you just crudely sketched up how this goes and from where the G2A indie keys originate from. So you prett ymuch solved the issue by doing what is already being done. :)
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tbh i dont find the prices on these sites that attractive, as long as you are not searching for a brand new game to save some 10 bucks, there are mostly better deals out there.
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Thank you for the nice read.
Never bought from them, my backlog is big enough with key from official sites, no need to make it bigger with keys from gray market.
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I bought a couple of games for myself on g2a, no issues so far knocks on wood
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Heree are some excerpts, quotes and stuffs from the site:
Fast2Play, Kinguin and G2Play are sites which are all owned by a company called 7 Entertainment. Fast2Play is a store where keys are sold to customers, whereas Kinguin is a “marketplace” which allows users to sell keys between themselves. G2A are a separate entity: their business also has both store and marketplace components.
All of these sites had listings for the game but were unable to supply any proof that they were genuine copies that we had authorised. We had never received a share of sales from any of them.
Fast2Play immediately responded to our enquiry by saying simply, “Product has been disabled on the store.” I asked them if this constituted an admission of illegal activity, to which I received no reply.
Frozen Synapse remained on sale on the rest of their sites until several days later, when more unanswered emails prompted its short-term removal.
It was at that point that Game Informer decided to write about the story, interviewing Ed Key and I about it:
7 Entertainment then responded to the article:
It was at that point that I decided to leave things. We’d achieved a commitment from them to stop selling keys from Humble Bundles for profit, a concept which was pretty much universally panned by customers and developers alike. The traditional indie response to situations like this is to spend our limited resources elsewhere, specifically on things which directly benefit legitimate customers.
However, some recent developments have caused me to renew my interest.
G2A and 7 Entertainment have taken out some very high-profile sponsorships, with a particular focus on esports and Twitch streaming. This kind of activity can be profoundly powerful in establishing the legitimacy of a brand; it seems to partially explain G2A’s rapid growth:
It’s not just indies who have tangled with the key resellers. Ubisoft got into a difficult situation with Far Cry 4 keys which were purchased with stolen credit cards and then resold via Kinguin and G2A. Kinguin responded by effectively blaming EA and then appealing to gamers “who simply don’t want to pay publisher suggested prices”. As many players had bought their keys via reselling sites, believing that they were legitimate, Ubisoft were then forced to backpedal.
Polygon published a comprehensive look at the matter and revealed the confused, chaotic nature of key marketplaces. Apparently, nothing has changed since the original Game Informer article: publishers and developers ignoring the situation has simply allowed these sites to grow.
I found it to be an interesting read while getting my manicure (=
For the record, I've never used any of these unauthorized sites for games. However I am curious on everyone else's opinions / experiences with them.
Click to read the article
Additional Reddit Article provided via BearBear
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