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Didn't they juse go through this nonsense? Are they still selling keys on their site?
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I think that by using a stolen credit card you can fool more sites (other than tinybuild)... good thing the discovered tho... i swear , piracy is the same thing as buying on these black market sites sometimes,if not better.
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A number of indie devs have stated they would rather people pirate their games than buy from sites like g2a because at least then they don't have to worry about chargebacks from people using stolen credit cards to buy games and resell them on g2a.
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Still the best is to support the devs by doing some card trading for half an year and then buying games for "free" from winter and summer sales. :)
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true. then get cards from playing those games and sell/trade them to get more games. a good % of my library has come from that.
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Back when I was pirating, that was exactly why I would buy a game. I stopped pirating last year, which is actually how I found SG, lol. I was looking for legal ways to get the games without resorting to gray markets.
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Please do not promote this fiction.
Most pirates pirate due to the benefits of piracy--they get stuff for free.
I am certain there are pirates out there that use free access as some sort of filter to decide what "deserves" their money, but that's not the main point or draw or piracy and creating this straw man between noble pirates and selfish people who buy the cheapest key possible is nonsense.
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Apparently I am a fictional character, so I promote my fiction.
The fiction is your wording. I have no interest in trying to disprove your own claim that you use piracy as a means to decide which games are worth paying for and which are not. That is a separate discussion.
The main difference between pirates and a "legit" gamers, who are happy to buy games for as cheap as they can by any means available, is that pirates often buy the games they like with the intention of actually supporting devs.
You craft a scenario where pirates are just a group of discerning people who wish to try things out before deciding it is worth their money and contrast them with people who pay for games but look for the best deals with zero regard as to whether the purchase is legitimate.
I challenge you to actually support that implied statement that a typical pirate consumes things freely not because they wish to consume things freely but because this is their means of "demoing" games before deciding by some subjective and internal process which games are worthy of their money. And I challenge you to support the implied statement that "legit" gamers whom make purchases at sites like G2A typically intend to acquire fradulently obtained keys.
That is the contrast you make in your statement, which I believe to be an untrue generalization, which is why I described it as a fiction.
Of course there are people who think "why buy games when I can pirate them?" but those are quite close to those, who think "who cares how I got this game? I didn't pirate it and that's all that matters!".
That is not a contrast, but a comparison. Here you do not imply that one group gives more consideration to devs, you merely state that of the two varied groups of individuals--pirates, and those who acquire grey market keys--there are members of both that have little consideration for devs. Though, since I've already decided to share my feelings on your statements and the topic in general I will state that I do not believe and have seen no evidence that these two groups that you compare are equivalent in numbers or in their representation of the larger group.
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Learn russian and hang out on russian torrent trackers, the amount of comments like "uninstalled after 10 minutes" and "amazing game! gonna buy it to support the devs!" should convince you.
I said a typical pirate. Showing that pirates typically only pirate in order to decide what to buy requires statistics. Saying that pirates pirate to get free stuff doesn't; it's self-evident.
I've been around file-sharing communities for a long time. On AOL. On IRC. Topsites. P2P programs. Torrents. DC++. I've seen no evidence nor any statistics that indicate that the typical pirate is a noble pirate.
I also live in a city that is rife with bootleg media and goods. Not just bootleg DVDs and CDs on the streets now, but bootleg apparel and accessories, and prior to the proliferation of the CD and online piracy, pirated video cassettes and audio cassettes. The primary motivating factor behind people patronizing these businesses rather than the legitimate ones are obviously cost.
Similarly, the primary motivating factor behind online piracy is the acquisition and consumption of media--not a noble pirate ethic. There are no statistics to support the latter assertion.
I didn't say that "cheap" gamers go specifically for stolen games, they go for the cheapest deal, legit or not, and that also includes bundles, which I consider cancer too.
That's true. I was a bit too narrow in my challenge. But you still pitted the Noble Pirate against the Bottom Feeder Grey Market Key Purchaser.
If you hadn't tried to pretend like pirates were typically noble and somehow better than those who seek inexpensive keys I wouldn't have said anything, but that is how I read your statement. Even so, fraud on sites like G2A are a response to the opportunity to make money. The people who frequented such sites--who made them as big as they are--did not do so because of the high likelihood of a key being fraudulently obtained. If nothing else, self-interest in not having one's key revoked is a motivating factor limiting the appeal of such behavior.
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Bootleg DVDs are a huge thing here (New York City). My uncle has like 3000 DVDs. You might find a bootleg DVD playing in a medical clinic waiting room, or at the facilities at an afterschool program or day care.
You must know an overall good group of pirates. I've been in so many communities and there have always been "good" pirates, but mostly people like free stuff.
I will admit that games themselves probably have more overall good pirates than something like movies.
I just have a problem with the idea that your average pirate is just trying out stuff but will purchase if they like it for two reasons: most people consume way more than they can ever purchase, and most people just want free stuff.
I don't dispute at all that there are Noble Pirates. I don't consider myself one, but I've done a bit of noble after-the-fact purchases myself.
But after being part of file-sharing communities for years and years I easily get into disputes about ideas that are bandied about.
Although honestly, my real pet peeve are the entitled pirates.
I wasn't trying to be a hard ass or get all on you, I just disagreed with the way you worded your original statement.
Edit: I tend to be quite coarse in my arguments. I'm an asshole like that. But I like you; you're good people.
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Steam users have more games than they'll play primarily because digital distribution has changed the nature and cost of game acquisition.
The thing is I already conceded that the noble pirate exists and that gamers might be more likely to be that. You undermine that by mentioning inconveniences.
These inconveniences, as well as things like online codes, multiplayer servers, patches and updates, content available only after activation, validation, or registration online, undermines the nobility of the pirate because of the disadvantages of pirating games, as opposed to the near-certainty of a product being as good, or even better when pirating TV shows, movies, and music. A pirate whom is unwilling to put forth the effort to acquire, install, and get a pirated game to work, trust users unknown to you with the security of your system, or deal with the lack of multiplayer or other features unavailable to pirates, is making a decision based upon self-interest rather than a desire to compensate. It may be that the latter desire is stronger than the former, but invariably some of the people who don't engage in game piracy do so because they find it to be a pain in the ass, or find often that the work is stripped of too many desirable features, rather than mere desire to be a good guy and compensate.
So yeah, I'm quite sure that adequate people would prefer to buy stuff (assuming it comes with convenience, quality and affordability) rather than pirate.
This is a difficult thing, though. Who decides when something is 'affordable'? What is adequate compensation? This goes to the right to consume vs. the right to compensation, which I discuss in my answer to lizardman below. I won't get into it further because that's a different sort of argument.
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So yeah, poverty feeds piracy as well, but I think you ignored one important nuance too - the quality of the digital entertainment and means to get people to buy it and the public trust towards creators and distributors.
I didn't ignore it; it wasn't relevant to my what I was rebutting or arguing.
In the discussion below you have stated a popular opinion, that if someone creates something, puts it on a shelf with a price tag everyone is obliged to have access to it only on the seller's terms, yet people who support that claim don't take into account that more often than not creators and publishers abuse the decency of consumers.
That was "the right to consume" vs. "the right to compensation". My position on that has nothing to do with not understanding that corporations can be evil, or may artificially price or limit their product, or any other roadblock they may throw in front of a consumer. It has everything to do with that the right to compensation must supersede the right to consume per se. That's not to say that the right to compensation cannot be justifiable ignored or diminished in favor of the right to consume, but that ultimately the right to compensation must come first by rule.
For instance, what is a singularly and invariably valid reason to consume a non-necessity? Inability to pay? What about the ability to pay but low regard for the price tag? What about an interest in demoing and then maybe paying? What about that you can afford to buy it, and it is inexpensive, but it was inexplicable given away for free to a large group of people (whom generally have the means to pay) but you were denied free access for an arbitrary reason? And so on, and so on.
What about consuming a necessity, say a man dying of thirst who comes across a residence in the middle of nowhere where there is water? Can he steal it if the owner wants money and he has none to pay? Can he steal it if the owner wants $100 for one litre of water and he does not have $100, just a couple bucks? What if he has millions of dollars? Is it still acceptable to steal it?
Can you say that the person who says "I want people to pay me money for my work" has more right to get what they want than someone who says "I want to have a game that is as good as the money I paid for it"?
Generally speaking, yes.
A reasonable person, pirate or not, should consider that if he wants more games like the one he greatly enjoyed, he should vote with his wallet for it.
Absolutely.
Noble piracy is just that: poverty + reasoning.
No, it's a rationalization in a particular instance or by a particular individual that their right to consume supersedes a content owner's right to be compensated as the content owners wishes to be compensated.
That's why earlier I compared entitled pirates to people who'll wait for an absurdly cheap deal to buy "legit" copies - they both think games grow on trees.
I thought you compared noble pirates to bottom-feeder grey market key seekers in your initial statement.
The main difference between pirates and a "legit" gamers, who are happy to buy games for as cheap as they can by any means available, is that pirates often buy the games they like with the intention of actually supporting devs.
That's a contrast between 'noble' pirates and indifferent key seekers. If you had initially compared entitled pirates and indifferent key seekers I would not have said anything. I said something because you said "pirates", not "some pirates", thus asserting that pirates typically want to support devs. That's why this whole thing began. I disagree with that interpretation of your statement as accurate. if that is not what I was supposed to interpret then let me know.
Despite our disagreements it's quite a pleasure to have a discussion with you, for what little it's worth, welcome to my whitelist :)
Well, welcome to mine. I like you, you're good people. I still disagree with you, but I like you.
And I think you and lizardboy are getting the wrong impression; I'm not anti-piracy. I am against self-serving justifications from entitled pirates. I don't even know if my intellectual position is really pro-piracy. But do I pirate? Yeah. Do I want to live back in a world like before online file-sharing where the music industry ripped everyone off? No. But I do think it is their right to rip us off until we do something about it, even if we aren't able to pirate. We could not buy their stuff, we could change the laws. But do I think we have the right to get their stuff for free and then compensate or not compensate them as we individually choose? No. Do we have the ability? Yeah. Which is why I'm a pirate. I don't need any sort of 'good' reason to freely consume non-free media other than that I can. If it was extremely difficult to do so or if I were much more likely to face negative consequences for it, then I probably wouldn't. But I can do it, and no one is gonna do anything to me, or think I'm a bad person, so whatever, yeah?
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You know, it's funny when people forget that we all live in a one chaotic messy world. Those "rights" you mentioned are simply rules, to which I don't agree, and only a risk of being punished by law can make me follow them, and that is if I can't avoid the conditions where I'll have to either obey or disobey, unless I can't just distance myself from the subject, like deciding to exclude gaming from my life altogether.
I didn't ask you to exclude yourself from gaming or obey the rules. I just argued that the right to be compensated has to come before the right to consume. If it doesn't, anyone can craft any self-serving justification of why they shouldn't have to pay. It's best if everyone kinda should have to pay as a rule because that's typically and rightly how the law works.
You see, I'm kind of a content creator myself, and I simply don't see a point in being a bitch about pirates, if I could sell 100 copies of my content and have none pirated or 50 copies but with 50000 pirated, assuming those 50 sold copies allow me to make a humble living and keep doing what I enjoy, I'd be really happy that people are interested in something that I put a lot of effort into, even if only 10% of them care enough to help me create more without starving. So yeah, in my book attention and interest are worth much more than money.
That's nice, but why does your lax attitude toward people acquiring your work without compensating you have to apply to others whom wish to be compensated?
You know what I do about games that have Denuvo on them and no way to play them without paying 60 bucks or do something else I don't agree to? I don't give a shit about them, I don't even know if I should, maybe those are really good, how would I know? And you know what that means? I have no reason to pick them up on a sale. Their "my content - my rules" means as much to me as their "my money - my rules" to them.
Who says you have to follow their rules?
So why should I follow their rules and not the other way around?
Because they produced the content and should have some sort of say on its use and compensation.
And would it be better if I didn't play games and didn't buy them either for me (a regular pirate who's not a kid who's mom doesn't give him money or a fuckhead who thinks that if he can have it for free there's no reason to pay for it whatsoever), or if I'll play games when I want and buy them when I can, because if someone thinks that their content is so good that I'll bend over backwards to have it, they should think again.
I know what's better for you; I know which you prefer. The preference of someone who actually owns the content is another story. Why is it that you think that I should consider your preference on how and when and for what compensation you can consume their product more than I should consider their preferences? If your preferences, if your 'right to consume' comes before theirs, doesn't everyone's? If so, then there is no right at all to be compensated.
Same goes for necessities, by the way, I pay my bills not because I'm forced to, but because I see them as a good value for my money. I'd rather kill myself than take it up my ass for a 100$ glass of water.
You missed the point of the example.
I disagree that people pay bills merely because they're good value for their money. People pay bills because they want shelter and basic services. People order Netflix because they feel it's good value for their money. In my society people do whatever they can not to end up homeless, and that includes paying exorbitant rents in cities with high cost-of-living. The majority of people living in my city wouldn't say they pay their rent because it's a "good value for their money". But maybe that's a cultural difference.
And if you were dying of thirst and had a myriad of options available to you in a situation where someone wanted $100 for a bottle of water, killing yourself would not be one you actually took.
If there is such a thing as "right to something" then everyone's rights should be respected and upheld equally and by everyone, and since that's not possible, "rights", like any man-made rules, are a load of bullshit that don't have much weight or a point to their existence unless compromises are allowed to be made in order to make two opposing groups' interests meet in an arrangement that brings at least some benefit to both.
We don't have to uphold every right equally. Some rights are more important than others. For instance, the right to life is usually more important than the right to property, thus most locales do not allow people to engage in lethal defense of property when the only risk at that time is the loss of property. This is probably the right way to handle things. The guy who steals your bike from the side of your house probably shouldn't be killed in order for you to keep that bike.
As for compromise, when nations abolished slavery, completely ignoring slaveowner's interests in favor of the interests of slaves, by your logic the lack of compromise made emancipation a load of bullshit.
And yeah, before you call me entitled and think that I consider my views more "right" and expect devs and publishers conform to them...
You are right. I would call you entitled even though you choose to compensate--which is nice--because you don't understand what entitled means. At the end of it, either the content owner is entitled to be compensated for their product or you are entitled to access it in any way you wish at any price. These two positions are typically in opposition to each other. Entitled is synonymous to my use of 'right' previously, and you have clearly chosen to assert that you have a right to consume, even though
That's why earlier I compared entitled pirates to people who'll wait for an absurdly cheap deal to buy "legit" copies - they both think games grow on trees. My claim was merely that reasonable grown ups are quite common among pirates.
The entitled pirate is the one who asserts their interests before the content owner, not merely in action, but in principle.
I'll tell you that I don't, at the end of the day whenever I pirate games (rarely these days) I do that because I care about my convenience while when I pay for them, I do so out of my own desire to reward talent and wish to see more, not because I give a shit about someone's decision to put a pricetag on it.
I know you care about your interests first. We've already covered that. Anyway, I don't think you get my point. I'm not saying you have to pay, I'm saying that in considering which should come first between "I produced a work and if you wish to access it this is my preferred compensation", and "I refuse to pay" or "I don't have/don't want to pay that much money; I'ma get it for free and maybe I'll pay" the former has to come first. I don't give a flying fuck if you pirate. I just don't want someone telling me that they have a right to pirate. I have never seen a convincing argument that elevates the right to consume over the right to compensate.
Should someone who is dying of thirst steal a bottle of water if that is the only way not to die of thirst? Absolutely. Does the person who owned the bottle of water have a right for it not to be stolen? Absolutely. Do I give a shit in this instance? Nope.
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It's best for the sellers and not those who can't afford things ;)
It's still best if that's the starting point. The one where consideration for compensating someone for the something they own comes before someone's assertion that they have the right to access to that thing.
People who claim that piracy is inexcusably bad and I have to either buy games or not play them :)
I don't listen to the advice of people who say that piracy is inexcusably bad, nor have I advocated that they be listened to. I never said you have to either buy games or not play them.
A creator is nothing without a consumer, and just the same it's my money I might spend on a product and I should have some say in what I want for it, like a game that isn't an overhyped piece of garbage that I'll uninstall after an hour tops and feel robbed of 60 bucks just because I was respectful of the creators rules of distribution.
Not every content owner creates content merely to make money. And what is a 'reasonable' price for a product? A reasonably price is one that consumers choose to purchase it at. Consider a situation where there is no online piracy. A work would sell or it wouldn't. That's it. But in a world with piracy, any particular individual can say, "that's too much money" or "the game is good but it was too short so I'm glad I didn't buy it" or "they didn't put in multiplayer so screw that" Or anything. That's a crappy starting point, where anyone can craft any reason for pirating and we just say, "yeah, that's right. Screw the content owner."
You do have a say. You have the choice of spending your money or not spending your money. You have the option of making an informed choice. No one is saying buy an AAA game for $60 blindly.
That guy might not choose to steal my bike if he'd knew that it might be the very last thing he'd do in his life, don't you think?
You miss the point of the example.
Well yeah, if I was a slaver I would be really pissed. People tend to force their interests upon other people whenever they can, and it has nothing to do how "moral" those choices are, it's a plain selfishness and nothing more no matter how much you'll sugarcoat it as morally awesome and holier than thou.
Yeah, remember when I said I liked you? When you're complaining that ending slavery is some holier-than-thou selfish thing by non-slavers, because they didn't take into account the interests of slavers, you've lost that privilege.
I do, but our definitions are different. Entitled pirate doesn't just pirate games, he talks and acts as if devs owe him something and he already gives them more than they deserve downloading their game for a torrent tracker.
No, entitled when you think you are entitled to something. You think you're entitled to play games regardless of what the content owner wishes you to do in order to play their game. That's entitled. The rest of what you said is just fluff in order to allow you to differentiate yourself from the "true" entitled people.
As for your last statement, I think if you want to keep that bottle from being stolen, guard it with a shotgun and make an example of those who try to steal it, and if not, "chill dude, it's just a bottle!"
Uh huh. Sure.
With the last couple replies you reveal yourself to be a highly objectionable individual. Take me off your whitelist, put me on your blacklist if you want, I don't care.
Thanks for a tour through the funhouse of your mind.
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Holy sh... 3000 DVDs? DVD those things that were before Blu-Ray?
And all bootlegged?
I sold my legal DVDs long ago, and my not legal ones (few anime bootlegs from Canada or Asia mostly) are rotting in the basement (selling such things is illegal and the risk is high if I'd sell it in my country and the buyer bothers).
Nowadays I download movies illegally a lot even when I can watch them legally via streaming (I pay for a streaming service) or actually could put a blu-ray in my player.
I own over 300 blu-rays (I collect steelbooks), all legal, but am often too lazy to bother with them. I download movies and the ones I like I buy on blu-ray - to pay for it at least in some legal way - but I still keep the file on my hdd because starting a file is more convenient.
Pirating games, I did that too.
Back in the days when the publishers came up with crap drm mechanics that actually installed some fishy software/driver onto your pc that kind of monitors your pc, what's on it.
I think when one of the The Sims games (my sister bought it, legally from a store) would not start because I had some clone cd software installed, which was on the blacklist of that game,... that was the day I said to myself 'fk you I'm not giving you a single penny anymore, none of your drm lovers' and downloaded cracked games that came without such drm crap.
And then I discovered online games that only wanted a login to their servers. Perfect. And I left the game pirating.
I also think that those ppl that really only leech and leech and leech are more a minority in the piracy world.
But that may depend on the country.
I don't know anyone who owns a lot of bootlegs. Some have some CDs and maybe few DVDs left... but when one grows up things change.
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I suppose 3000 is a lot. Not really, though.
These aren't people who know how to download movies on a computer, though. When DVDs sell for $1 on the street people manage to get quite a few over the years.
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And in turn, now you support the assertion "Most pirates pirate due to the benefits of piracy--they get stuff for free" with actual evidence.
It's one thing to doubt the credulity of their argument for lacking affirmative evidence, but instead you made an assertion drawn from the same well of knowledge, just with the opposite conclusion.
Apply the same standards to yourself which you demand from others.
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I don't have to apply the same standard because the example isn't the same.
Saying that people who acquire stuff freely primarily wish to acquire stuff freely is self-evident, and there are no statistics to support otherwise. Saying that people typically acquire stuff freely with the intent to later pay requires a higher standard.
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No. You made an assertive claim that most people who do a specific thing do it for a specific reason. That demands evidence.
If you're going to veil yourself in the authority of logic, then you are just as beholden to produce evidence. Claiming anything as self-evident requires a far different threshold of evident than anything relevant in this discussion---even consciousness itself being self-evident lacks a total consensus. If you think any matter so situational or one so rooted in morality as this could ever be self-evident, then you're either an absolute fool or entirely disingenuous.
You may as well claim that most who would cheat by changing one answer on a test would just as easily cheat changing every answer if they could. Maybe it sounds logical enough in your mind that you consider it given (even might sound logical enough to most people they consider it given too), but it's nothing more than conjecture and will never be evidence of anything without any data.
I don't care how "self-evident" you think your claim is. You're drawing your conclusions from the exact methods as they are, but you appeal to a higher standard demanding numbers for their rationale in an attempt to present your conclusions as being more authoritative, all while knowing you don't actually have any numbers either. And when pressed to account for your own conclusions with actual evidence, you could support your arguments no better than the same conjecture you decry. This isn't the result of logic at work here, only hypocrisy.
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No. You made an assertive claim that most people who do a specific thing do it for a specific reason. That demands evidence.
A reason that is inherent to the activity.
I can argue that most people eat food in order to satisfy their body's need for sustenance while you argue most people eat food because they like the shape, texture, and colors. One statement makes more sense, although if you want to be technical I do have to prove that people eat to satisfy their need for biofuel.
If you're going to veil yourself in the authority of logic, then you are just as beholden to produce evidence.
No, that's what you're doing.
Claiming anything as self-evident requires a far different threshold of evident than anything relevant in this discussion---even consciousness itself being self-evident lacks a total consensus.
If we're having a strictly epistemological argument, that would be true.
You may as well claim that most who would cheat by changing one answer on a test would just as easily cheat changing every answer if they could.
Nope. Your analogy is not at all like my statement. It'd be like my statement if you said that people who cheat by changing one answer on a test are primarily motivated by the fact that cheating allows you to get a better score than you would had you answered based upon your own ability or knowledge.
This isn't the result of logic at work here, only hypocrisy.
Are you sure you want to claim that the only thing at work here is hypocrisy? Maybe you like throwing stones from your glass house. That's neither here nor there, though.
Okay, lizard person.
Until and unless a content owner is compensated by a user whom freely downloaded their work without paying, the only thing known about that user's acquisition of the work is that the work had an associated cost and the user wished to circumvent it to acquire it for free. Now, this of course ignores that a user may not have legal access locally to a work, or that access may be delayed for a period--but this is of course a moot point when arguing against the idea that people pirate with the ultimate goal of compensating a content creator since in the former example it is likely not possible and in the latter example the individual could just wait for the work to be available to them.
Of course for any individual work, in order for it not to be true that a user primarily wished to acquire a work for free, they would then have to compensate the content creator for that free work. Every time. Liking the work, not liking the work, that is irrelevant. The content owner makes the work available for purchase and desires compensation. The end user asserting their ideas about how often, for how much, and when to compensate the content owner after having already consumed the work are only possible when one has the ability to consume a work for free and then later decide when or how much to compensate, if at all.
Acquiring a work in order to compensate a content owner if you deem the work worthy is the assertion of your right (or ability) to consume, which is in direct conflict with the content owner's right to be compensated. The content owner has already set forth the conditions for accessing their work by making it available for various locales, on various media, for a specific price. The assertion of the right or ability to consume a work irrespective of the conditions upon which the content owner have made it available is the assertion to consume freely, as that is usually the associated cost of online piracy for any specific work. In order for the primary motivation in acquiring a work freely to shift to some other consideration, the user whom freely acquired the work would need to compensate the owner.
Most individual freely acquired works do not meet that standard. We know this because we have the hilarious figures provided by industry lobbies against piracy, whom try to pretend every act of piracy is a lost sale.
Anyway, in order to be motivated by a desire to acquire works for free one merely has to acquire them for free. In order for this not to be the primary motivation in acquiring them for free, the content owner then has to be compensated. There is ample evidence that more often than not an act of piracy has no attendant compensation, thus the primary motivation more often than not is to acquisition for free.
Your move, Cheney Jr.
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Funny. You call me Cheney Jr while simultaneously leading us further and further from your responsibility to provide the quantitative evidence required of any affirmative claim, much less one like yours that's rooted in moral argument and simultaneously unique to the 21st century without adequate analogy or precedent. Something, something, glass houses.
You think this is something you can prove with maxims? C'mon, this isn't fucking Austrian economics here. Most humans eat for sustenance--well, do most humans have sex to procreate? I'd argue hell no. But it really doesn't matter because one situation is not relevant enough to the other to matter, and on this subject analogy and rhetorical deduction aren't going to cut it here, especially one so distanced from any of the complexities and moral implications present.
I'm going to cite your original post here so that the full claim you're proposing isn't lost from truncated quoting for brevity:
I am certain there are pirates out there that use free access as some sort of filter to decide what "deserves" their money, but that's not the main point or draw or piracy and creating this straw man between noble pirates and selfish people who buy the cheapest key possible is nonsense.
Sounds a lot like an affirmative claim of what and how many. Yet for some reason you're trying to shift back from having made any actual claims whatsoever, alternatively having argued from meaningless weasel words this entire time... as if that's somehow better?
Later on you propose your own position is as merely self-evident, which could be true if intended to be akin to an equivalent statement like "people only steal to acquire something without paying for it" that merely proves a definition and that is just as equivalently meaningless proving anything in turn.But that's clearly not the way you presented it originally, as I quoted above. The only value drawn from your claim "most pirates pirate due to the benefits of piracy--they get stuff for free" comes from any alternative implications of the idea, like, say, presenting it as a refutation of the idea that most pirates usually pirate things to demo them^..
^Not that I'm arguing one way or the other, just that one claim is not inherently better than another in veracity without any quantifying evidence to move either of them beyond pure conjecture
You draw a distinction somewhere--if "most pirates pirate to...", then 'some' do not, instead pirating for some alternative purpose, even if you leave the alternative unspecified. The immediate follow-up acknowledges that "some" use piracy to demo and cites their numbers as insignificant, which implies one as the alternative to the other. Even if your intent wasn't to establish the two groups as mutually exclusive, you still utilize the existence the first proposition (that piracy is about acquisition without payment) as somehow directly related to determining the size of the groups in the second proposition (that most who pirate do not pirate primarily to play demos), ultimately conflating you conflate a evidence of definition itself as being evidence of factors outside that definition.
You can spent lots of time trying to rebut the contents of this post all you want and then spend even more time trying to discredit arguments of inherent hypocrisy in denying the same type of evidence you demand of others to prove why "most" do something. Of course, I"m bound to reply, and then you, and then me, etc.
Alternatively, you could end the argument beyond question just by posting real numbers that support something you've argued as self-evident. It's not exactly tantamount to proving a negative or some other impossibility, and evidence supporting the notion most pirate to acquire is no differently acquired from evidence supporting most pirate to demo.
If you can support your argument, why argue that you don't actually have to instead of just support it and moving on? Otherwise there's no way of moving anything presented beyond conjecture.
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Funny. You call me Cheney Jr while...
I did that because I thought you had a sense of humor. Guess not.
moral argument
Also, my argument is not a moral argument. Looks like you misunderstood what I was saying.
You think this is something you can prove with maxims?
No? Yes? What will chill you out?
on this subject analogy and rhetorical deduction aren't going to cut it here, especially one so distanced from any of the complexities and moral implications present.
So you're unconvinced. Well, that must make me wrong, doesn't it?
for some reason you're trying to shift back from having made any actual claims whatsoever
No, my claim was expanded upon in my last reply to you.
Later on you propose your own position is as merely self-evident, which could be true if intended to be akin to an equivalent statement like "people only steal to acquire something without paying for it" that merely proves a definition and that is just as equivalently meaningless proving anything in turn.
No, I demonstrated in my expansion that absent compensating the content owner people have shown that their primary motivation is to acquire free stuff. Since we have no data that demonstrates--nor any logical reason--to believe that more often than not an individual act of piracy results in later compensation for that act of piracy we can conclude that most acts of piracy go uncompensated and ergo that the free acquisition is the motivating factor, not the compensation.
The only value drawn from your claim "most pirates pirate due to the benefits of piracy--they get stuff for free" comes from any alternative implications of the idea, like, say, presenting it as a refutation of the idea that most pirates usually pirate things to demo them^..
But that is how I presented it--as a refutation. I didn't state it just to state it. I don't have a bumper sticker with that sentiment.
Not that I'm arguing one way or the other, just that one claim is not inherently better than another in veracity without any quantifying evidence to move either of them beyond pure conjecture.
I didn't offer any qualifying evidence and yet I moved it beyond pure conjecture. If you wish to continue to be obtuse and pretend that "online piracy ends in remuneration for the content owner less likely than not" is not a factual statement because I haven't posted a source, then be my guest.
Even if your intent wasn't to establish the two groups as mutually exclusive, you still utilize the existence the first proposition (that piracy is about acquisition without payment) as somehow directly related to determining the size of the groups in the second proposition (that most who pirate do not pirate primarily to play demos), ultimately conflating you conflate a evidence of definition itself as being evidence of factors outside that definition.
All pirates acquire freely. That they are motivated to acquire freely is inherent to the act. Whether it is their primary motivation is dependent upon whether they evince another strong motivation, such as a desire to compensate. I used that most people are primarily motivated to acquire things freely as a rebuttal of the idea that most are primarily motivated to 'demo' and compensate at a later time precisely because they are at odds. If I hold that the former group is the majority then naturally the latter group is the minority.
Alternatively, you could end the argument beyond question just by posting real numbers that support something you've argued as self-evident.
Nah. It's much more fun not to post them and see you flail in your disgust and offense.
If you can support your argument, why argue that you don't actually have to instead of just support it and moving on?
Because I don't like you. I like your name, though.
Otherwise there's no way of moving anything presented beyond conjecture.
I didn't know you wanted to move beyond conjecture. I thought you wanted to be pedantic.
Granted, I've been pedantic here, but the thing is I know I'm pedantic.
See, here's the thing: If I declare that the primary motivation for piracy is free acquisition because in order for free acquisition not to be the primary motivation there has to be remuneration, then it is incumbent upon you to ask yourself this question: are individual acts of piracy more likely to be compensated for than not, or less likely? Now, you can be pedantic and request that I find figures, or you can embrace reality and realize that rebutting a non-obvious thing ([most] people pirate because they want to try stuff out and then compensate the creator) with the obvious thing (most people pirate because they want free stuff -> this is self-evident -> in order for them not to do it because they want free stuff they have to compensate -> in most instances people do not compensate [WHERE'S YOUR SOURCE?!?!]) aren't up to the same standards unless you're having an intellectually dishonest discussion about logic and epistemological concerns. But this isn't debate class.
P.S. Don't ask me to prove this isn't a debate class. I'd hate to disappoint you by failing to prove a source that this isn't a debate class.
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Meltdown much? You are projecting hardcore, once again trying to have your cake and eat it too. Your first statements accusing me of being humorless when my response was pointing out an ironic comparison of both of you progressing your points with rhetoric distracting from the relevant issue instead of just, like, supporting your claim. Meanwhile, your writing is teething with this weird rage behind some thin veneer of being totally chill n' jk brah while presuming I"m also coming from the same weird hate and actually "flailing in... disgust and offense." And I know your inevitable response for something like that, intent on "dude I'm just kidding, obviously that's intended in jest" while simultaneously engaging in more conjecture and refusing to just... not be a hypocrite?
It's always been about holding yourself to the same standards you demand of others. Seriously, all you had to do is provide the exact same evidence you demanded of someone else for a claim just as easily supported. You may think your position is self evident, but it's not. For some reason you think your position isn't related to any moral presumption while failing to realize basing your point entirely on conjecture dependent on dozens of implicit presumptions at work here about the nature of bargaining, the meaning and weight of an idea like "free", the literal and implied contracts of exchange and their values in society. You're not declaring something self-evident in isolation, it carries the implicit subjective moral positions of the society around it..
And considering that, it seems obvious why you apparently think it makes any sense to dissect random sentences in isolation one by one, as if they're not connecting to paragraphs with context and meaning, serving an ultimate point that is being debated. But really, this isn't 24 hour news here, there's no reason for it when the only people actually reading this shit are you and me, and to be honest, I didn't bother reading most of your post when I saw you doing that, so really it's just shouting to a vacuum.
I'm pretty sure that I don't need to reply anymore, partially because I suspect you're not going to be convinced of anything and it's now some argumentative war of attrition. But mostly,I think your replies actually do a far better job than my own at showcasing your hypocrisy to anyone else bored or dumb enough to actually read this crap.
Right now we're both shouting in an empty canyon. If you want the last word knock yourself out, but I"m preemptively letting you know I'm not gonna read that either. Adios, home-skillet. I'm out of here.
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I didn't bother reading most of your post
Then we're done here. Go pick a fight with someone else, or just go home to your mum and hope she remembers to give you a hug or a lolly.
On your trike, then.
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Pirates don't ask for your money and laugh when the game vanishes from your computer.
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They don't sell there. People acquire their keys in... various ways and then resell them on G2A. It's a marketplace.
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I am trying to figure out the source since the original row between the two was peeps using cc fraud on their site. I wouldn't be shocked if it happened again, but I figured they couldn't be that stupid.
If it is via 'review' keys, that this demonstrates sloppiness on their part. Not the first time a dev have spammed 'Youtubers' with free keys without checking.
Once was understandable since it was assholes attacking their site. Twice ... I don't know ...
.
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IsThereAnyDeal shows 6 websites selling it currently, of which I'd discount Humble because of how rigorous they've been about implementing anti-fraud measures, and Steam and GOG for obvious reasons. For the other three, I'm not sure how many copies you could buy at a time without issues and what point it becomes not worth it for the fraudster. I know the guy who hit mangagamer was buying 30 copies at a time and stated he made 500$ from hundreds of fraudulent copies, so who knows what their "worthwhile" point is.
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Well if it was from a third party site, why would they just target this game? Wouldn't it be more profitable to go after the AAA games instead? Or even a more popular indie title?
This whole business seems a bit odd. /shrug
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CC fraud sellers target all kinds of games. Usually the companies just let it go instead of going through the legwork of tracing which keys went where from which batch and individually disabling them because the people who bought them thinking they were legitimate copies get angry at the dev for disabling the keys than at the seller for using stolen CCs. That's one answer. Another is, dude, a fraudster targeted mangagamer. Who knows why they don't go after bigger games.
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Ya but MangaGamer was hit the same way TinyBuild was with Speedrunners/Party Hard keys. The amount of charge backs due to cc fraud caused MG to discontinue offering steam keys on their store :/. (Also, some of their VNs on Steam sell for $40 so they were a big target :/).
I just find it odd that it is a single game that we are talking about and none of the 3rd party sites that sell the game have mentioned anything about cc fraud problems (at least none that I can find). If we knew the source of the leak, we would have a better picture of what went wrong instead of making assumptions. The fact that this is the second time in a few months doesn't help either (though it still sucks for TinyBuild).
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It's a single game we're talking about because Tiny Build only tweeted about the one game. Why would the third party sites say anything about CC fraud problems? That would make them look like they have poor anti-fraud measures, which would only make them a target for more CC fraud, which could lead to another MG situation where they have to stop selling. Humble Bundle actually put up a page detailing the anti-fraud measures they take in response to the first Tiny Build v G2A dust up so that people wouldn't suspect them or think that they're an easy target. Unless it becomes a MangaGamer situation where a third party site loses their payment processor because of the number of chargebacks, I highly doubt you'll ever hear about where the stolen keys came from.
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The most profitable games are, obviously, AAA titles and non-bundled (recently released) games, indie or not. And I suppose it is easier to scam little publishers instead of EA/Origin or Ubisoft...
Some popular indie games never get high discounts in regular stores so if you are able to steal hundreds of keys they can be very profitable as well.
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In this specific case the game has been out for less than a month, so demand is probably still pretty high, which would give good volume profits as well as higher price point because no bundles and the lowest discount until now being 10% afaik.
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The fraudsters go after what they can. If they think they can get away with buying/stealing AAA keys they will. But big publishers are harder to go after, as they have the resources to actually hire people who can check these things, and they can also afford to be more picky with where they sell their games. That's not to say that AAA keys don't end up in situations like this, because they very much do. Rebellion, Ubisoft, Bethesda & Funcom have all had similar incidents.
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That is true, though the fact that we are dealing with a single game is what has me curious. I do not feel this is basic cc fraud since they have stopped selling on their site and none of the 3rd party sites that do sell this game have reported any issues.
How they were stolen and where they came is what bothers me. It doesn't change the fact that this is a shitty thing to happen to them :/.
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It's possible that Tiny Build are just very vocal about it. Other sites & publishers just quietly deactivate the keys that they can deactivate when things like this happens, until someone else starts making a fuzz about it, at which point they explain why they did it. Being vocal about it is not always the best thing to do, from a marketing point of view. Rebellion did catch a lot of flack for mass-deactivating keys bought with stolen credit cards, as did Ubisoft.
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that poll is biased, no counter options?
Devs don't like G2A, if one would bother reading T&C I imagine they must include something about reselling? if that's the case I'm more than fine with it
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G2A is an unauthorized reseller , since the keys don't come directly from the devs.
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nvm didn't see the /s and the phrasing of the 1st option wasn't great for a fast reading my bad
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Well, actually when you sell Steam keys in steamgifts.com/trades you are behaving exactly as sellers on G2A
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G2A is a marketplace, G2A does not directly sell keys - it is all p2p and as such they are not a reseller or seller at all.
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It doesn't matter, because if a given key is actually bought with stolen credit card it's still fencing of stolen goods. And it's punishable by law in every civilized country. Also even if most of those keys are legit (acquired during sales, via bundles and such) there's still a problem of taxes. I'm pretty sure that none of those resellers pay them. You can't even determine what company is selling them. You can't just go to a market, buy some stuff and make profit like that. And even if you allow tax free income to some extend per year, the G2A platform is making huge profit out of it to them. Do they pay taxes? Where? How much? Who they really are? Where is the invoice? Where's the yearly LLC's report? If you have nothing to hide you don't register your company in Delaware and conceal your company's registration details and provide customers only with some bullshit handle or whatever you would call it.
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Boro, I am not affiliated with G2A but I let's try and tackle your post anyway:
Do they pay taxes? Where? How much? - I have no idea. According to their website, they are Incorporated in Hong Kong, Incorporation number 2088957 / Business registration number 63264201. That probably would suggest that they are not legally required to collect or remit taxes to other nations and as far as I know Hong Kong does not have an etax.
Who they really are? - According to their website, they are Incorporated in Hong Kong, Incorporation number 2088957 / Business registration number 63264201.
Where is the invoice? - You get an e-mail invoice after purchasing a product - is there another invoice that you would like?
Where's the yearly LLC's report? - An LLC, by law, is not required to share any financial information or report with anyone outside of the company. Their company is privately owned and as such has no requirement to provide information to the public (the same way a company would lawfully have to if it had outside investors)
If you have nothing to hide you don't register your company in Delaware and conceal your company's registration details and provide customers only with some bullshit handle or whatever you would call it. - I am not sure where Delaware came from - but as I pointed out earlier they are based out of Hong Kong - although I did not run their provided numbers to determine if they are legit but I don't see anything that suggests they have registered for a business license in the state of Delaware.
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They act as a platform for other traders, as you said. If I buy from "Games4U" seller then I want an invoice from them, because I don't buy from G2A itself, right? I want to know who actually sold me the game. G2A is only a tool. I have lost 2 games I got from those shady sellers, so some of them sell stolen or illegally obtained keys for sure.
Every LLC should public all company data. To create a LLC you need a notarial act of partnership and register it in Court. So all partners' data is public. You can access it via National Registry Court (or whatever it's called in a given country). Also as an LLC you have to compose yearly reports and send them to this NRC, where basically everyone can access it. But those shady ones use Delaware (a county in USA) which is providing easy registration if you don't want to pay taxes, evade detection by your local authorities and so on. And there's more of those "tax heavens". Also in many countries digital goods' sales should be reported to Customs Office (and taxed if necessary), because cross-border trade of digital materials is actually considered an export/import. Will I get a SAD for if I ased for it? If so, who's data will be on it?
Anyways, maybe G2A itself is legit, buy if they fence stolen goods they shoul be prosecuted according to the law. If I buy a game from the reseller on G2A platform and it's clearly stolen, its a criminal offense also for G2A itself. You are liable for stolen/illegal good distribution support. And if you make profit out of it it's even more serious offense. So in my opinion they should be closed, because they do not check their resellers and allow those shady ones to operate without any fear of prosecution.
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Yes every LLC has to file an operating agreement that typically names the owners of the company and where the company address is. The yearly report is an update of owners and address - it contains no financial information at all. I am not entirely sure what you think you would find in these filings other than the owners information and business address. This is important exactly for what purpose?
Again, where did Delaware come from? Nothing I have seen would indicate that G2A operates out of the USA much less out of Delaware. G2A is not liable for the taxes with cross-border transactions since they cannot possibly determine where the cd-key was purchased... you act like there is a DMV database of keys that they can just run it through. G2A makes its money through that stupid G2A shield and taking a small cut on every transaction through the site (and probably by taking giving the seller a withdraw fee - but I don't know that for sure).
SAD being? Summary of Audit Deficiencies? Single Administrative Document? Blues clues on that one.
The G2A marketplace is not even remotely legit. I would wager that 2 of every 10 sales are fraudulent (if not more). Are they fencing stolen goods? Yeah, absolutely. Do they have any way to determine which users and which cd-keys were stolen or obtained fraudulently? Not even remotely.
As per your legal assertions: It is absolutely a crime to purchase and/or sell stolen goods. However to be charged in a court of law, it has to be proven that YOU KNEW the goods were stolen before the sale/purchase took place. G2A cannot possibly know the goods were stolen until AFTER the sale takes place and the cd-key's are rescinded by their developer. If the developer does not reach out to G2A to notify them of fraudulent key sales AND supplies G2A with a list of those fraudulent keys so that G2A can take action against the users who sold them - then G2A can do NOTHING.
You would presume to punish every single legal (well not maybe legal based on your software resale laws - but non stolen / non fraudulent) trader on the site because there are a handful of fraudsters? Well then, maybe Hollywood should stop making films because some people pirate them? Why is it that other industries are able to deal with fraudulent transactions and stolen credit cards without any single issue - yet the multi-trillion dollar (now the largest entertainment segment on earth) gaming industry cannot seem to cope with it - even though they are professional programmers? LOL
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One other thing - Why would you get an invoice on a personal transaction? If I buy a hot dog from a street vendors cart - do they give me an invoice?
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Yes, every sale should be validated with some kind of a bill/invoice. Even a hot dog sale on a street. The proof of a transacion is needed for taxing purposes and for the customer to assert his rights, if the product/service is faulty. Every product a company obtains has be invoiced and added to the "warehouse". And then every sale takes from this stock (with a corelating invoice). That's how you actually trade, according to the laws. So if I don't know from whom I really buy, I can't contact authorities or fight for my rights. Currently you'd have to sue G2A, and then they should seek damages from the shady reseller using their platform (the real entity which sold you the game).
Not knowing that the user (reseller in this case) is breaking the law does not protect you from the repercussions in case of a crime. Same goes for open wi-fi for example. If you open your network and some random user will break the law using it, you are liable.
There are services out there which check who's actually selling and what kind of goods. No legit reseller will obtain shady keys from strange places. You can partner only with those established and trustworthy companies, not some ramdom Joes whanting to make a buck on the side. For example in my country we have something like eBay called Allegro. This marketplace platform is actually checking all the entities selling goods. To start trading you have to provide actual company registration documents and all this info is visible to the buyers. So if something goes wrong you can easily fight for your rights. Unfortunatelly on G2A I don't know who sold me the key. And if the key was deactivated after few months from the purchase will G2A return all your money? No way. They will say somethig like "we don't sell the keys, go find the seller and report him to the authorities or sue them". But to do that I still need their full info.
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you have been reselling keys on SG for years. how is that different from people who sell their keys on the marketplace G2A instead? you do the same thing. you sell keys you're not supposed to sell. you are an unauthorized reseller aswell.
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Its the exact same thing. I always sell on kinguin instead of sg. I dont get crap offers on kinguin.
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Difference is, SteamGifts doesn't ask you for money for selling here and they don't advertise your keys as SteamGifts having big sales on games. (Whereas I constantly get G2A newsletters of big a discount a game has "at them"…)
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you seem to think that because money does not exchange hands that the transaction is somehow differentiated under the sales terms and end user license agreement of the game - which it in fact does not differentiate. The terms of agreement when purchasing a video game from a website are explicitly clear that any game redeemed under a cd-key and not gift link is for personal use - if you create a GA using a cd-key you are in violation of that agreement just as you would be if someone had paid you for the cd-key..... the only difference is in your own moral compass and mind.
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if you create a GA using a cd-key you are in violation of that agreement just as you would be if someone had paid you for the cd-key
So if you buy your nephew a disk version of a game for his birthday, you violate a license agreement? Really? :)
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How do you even relate the two? The difference between the two is quite simple.
When you create an account at say: greenmangaming so you can purchase games, you are agreeing to the terms of use and terms of sale. When you check out you are telling greenmangaming that you will either 1) be using the purchase as a gift and be provided a gift link or 2) that you will be using the purchase yourself and be provided with the cd-key.
When you purchase a game from walmart or gamestop or whoever else in a physical store, the receipt will spell out the terms of sale if there are any terms of sale. When you put the CD into your computer the first thing that pops up is do you want to install this game using the EULA or exit the installshield and return the game to where you purchased it.
The difference between the two is quite clear.
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And what of stores that don't have a gift option? You can buy any number of keys at Bundle Stars. No gift option. Groupees. Ditto. Funstock. GameFly. Direct2Drive. Another half dozen authorised resellers that don't have any sort of restrictions on keys bought.
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The terms of each store is probably located on their website just like:
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/terms
under point 7: Our Products it says
"By purchasing our products, you agree that they are for your own personal, non-commercial use only."
under point 11: Risk and Ownership it says
"Ownership of the products will only pass to you upon the later of: digital delivery of the product serial keys; and receipt by us of full payment of all sums due in respect of the products (including delivery charges). We will be entitled to recover payment for the products even where ownership has not passed to you."
Since the US Laws for licensing are quite clear in that you DO NOT OWN software, you only are sold the license to use the software (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.) you are not legally allowed to resell your games since you do not own them - and the license is exclusive to the purchasing party and no one else.
I understand that it is legal in the EU to resell software though so maybe if you live there you are within your legal right to do so. I (live in the USA) am not legally allowed to post cd-keys as a GA because the person who wins the GA is not legally allowed to use my license to access the game. That is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact by law.
I do not agree with the above concept nor do I comply with it - as I do create cd-key GA's and I am doing so illegally under the terms of sale and laws associated with that sale in my country.
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Yep, EU citizen. (At least for now. :)) No such thing as paying money to own a product and not being able to resell it.
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So under USA laws, the resale or gifting of your license (under the sales terms) via cd-key is not legal.
Under EU laws, the resale or gifting of your license (under the sales terms) via cd-key is legal.
But this all goes back to, selling or gifting the cd-key are the exact same thing by way of the sales terms and license agreement. The licensing language does not differentiate between selling your key for free or selling your key for $5 or any other amount. It literally is the same action as far as the license is concerned.
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Isn't that overinterpretation? In above example product you've bought is right to licence to software, you are not yet bound by licence terms. Imo as long as you meet point 7th, you can do whatever you want with the key.
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It is not over interpretation when you reside in the USA. You are not just bound by the licensing terms (which come into affect at the time or use) but you are also bound by the sales terms of the license. The law for software resale (or license resale) is quite clear and the law only recognizes the first sale. Your country may be different.
Let's run a scenario. Bob walks into walmart and purchases a pc game - starcraft 2. He goes home and installs the game on his computer. Bob uses this product for himself on his computer. Totally legal.
Bob walks into walmart and purchases a pc game - starcraft 2. He goes home wraps it up and gives it to his son Bob Jr. Bob Jr uses this product for himself on his computer. Totally legal because in a physical purchase box copy there is no terms of sale and the item can be gifted. Totally legal.
Bob goes over to humblebundle.com and purchases Dues Ex. He does not opt for a gift link and gets the cd-key. Bob uses the cd-key for himself. Totally legal.
Bob goes over to humblebundle.com and purchases Dues Ex. He does opt for the gift link and gifts it to his son. Bob Jr redeems the gift link and installs the game. Totally legal.
Bob goes over to humblebundle.com and purchases Dues Ex. He does not opt for a gift link and gets the cd-key. I remembers that his son's birthday tomorrow and so instead of purchasing a second copy he gives Bob Jr. the cd-key to redeem on Bob Jr's steam account. This is not legal under USA laws of software resale. It is legal under EU laws of software resale.
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I'm asking, because I can't wrap my head around the idea. (in regard of "unused" software - "used" ones are covered by signed licences and in general are not transferable)
The scenarios presented imply that there is special law for digital codes for software licences that allow only the buyer to sign licencing agreement. That would be one weir law, but lawmakers are well capable of conceiving such monsters (
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Same thing as steam gifts being revoked for the same thing. G2A is the same as the trading market .
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"Yeah... tinybuild is trying to make g2a look bad... they're the problem here ! /s
19(23%)"
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What does /s mean?
/S means "Sarcasm" So now you know - /S means "Sarcasm" - don't thank us. YW! What does /S mean? /S is an acronym, abbreviation or slang word that is explained above where the /S definition is given.
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lol G2A what a surprise. Those shady resellers are ridiculous.
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this site is the exact same thing as G2A except you get the keys for free when you win instead of pay for them. Technically this site (just like G2A) violates the EULA on the games.
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So, not the exact same thing, then? Also, you aren't violating any agreement if you gift games via appropriate methods, such as Steam or HB's gifting options.
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You are violating agreements when you activate a cd-key (not a gift) that you did not purchase from an authorized reseller.
Therefor purchasing games on G2A or winning games here - is the exact same thing under the EULA.
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Except that keys and gifts here are PURCHASED, not stolen. If I buy a game in the store I can do whatever I want with it, I can give it to someone if I want it. It's the problem of the purchase, not of gifting.
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Who says that EVERY key and gift here is PURCHASED? You think that there has never been a GA of a stolen game? Either by way of the stolen game was traded for and then gifted or the stolen gift was 'purchased' from a legit seller and then charge backed, or the stolen gift was 'purchased' from a fraudulent seller?
There is no way for steamgifts to verify purchases of the GA's created, therefor there is no reason to believe that every GA here was legally purchased. The GA's that you have made might have been legally purchased but that does not mean every GA was.
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Even so it's personal case for every giveaway and no one here sells anything. Selling stolen keys is the worst as it can get and especially if they act as a legitimate store. They even said something like "official keys from devs" on the bundle page. That's scam, period. Here it's all free, giving away and winning. And mind you - it would be impossible to even buy stolen keys if stores like that didn't exist, those cheap cd-keys stores in general. Here some peple may fall a victim of this, some may be ignorant about this but those re-sellers know exactly what they're doing and they're taking money for it.
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1) some game studios do sell keys directly on G2A - according to G2A.
2) it would not be impossible at all to buy stolen keys if sites like g2a didn't exist. (do you think there is a website selling stolen credit card numbers? no, but somehow people still buy them and use them.
Let me tell you why your attitude about G2A is completely stupid.
I have a stove in my house. I burn myself 10% of the time I use my stove. I should remove the stove from my house and never cook food again because I burn myself sometimes.
Does that remotely make any sense? No.
If you don't want to purchase games from G2A then don't.... no one is forcing you to. If you think their store is garbage then think that - but don't use the interwebs to make up a bunch of garbage and go on some personal bs crusade against a business that you clearly don't know much about at all. I would probably bet you never even used the site and you read a few 'articles' from people who dislike G2A. So you are taking their opinion and pretending it is your own without ever finding out for yourself.
I have never been to Italy before, but I read a few articles about vacations in Rome and now I think anyone who vacations in Rome is an idiot - makes sense huh.
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Why exactly are you telling me what to do or not to do? Also, you're assuming things that are not true. I have used G2A before but it doesn't mean I have to get MY key revoked to acknowledge that the site sells fishy keys. It's so-called grey market and I know a lot about it because I was interested in this topic a while back. If you think games get sold 70% off a few days after they hit the Steam store are legit from legit source you're naive as hell, period. The example with the stove is ridiculous. If the stove is faulty then yes, go and get a new one. Or keep burning yourself if that's your choice. It's called grey market for a reason and no matter what you say it will not whiten this topic more than it already is, which is pretty much 50/50 (hence the grey colour).
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everything that you have said up until this point has been assumptions that are not true - so why should I not be able to utilize the same tool?
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Right, I can say the same thing about everything you write. I see you're on some crusade to whiten G2A type of sites, I thought you were replying only to me but I was wrong. You answer in this thread to everyone who criticizes this site lol. Whatever you think, it's your business, I don't like grey market for reasons, period and until some things change in that area my approach to them will stay the same too.
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Im on a crusade to support truth and challenge accusations that are based in fiction!
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If you think games get sold 70% off a few days after they hit the Steam store are legit from legit source you're naive as hell, period.
sorry, but that´s not correct.
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70% off is exaggerated. when does that ever happen? i bought quite a few games from kinguin now. new games are usually 30-50% , compared to the steam store price. if you compare it to "legit" resellers, it's even less, of course. i never saw something like 70% for a new title. can't speak for g2a though, since i rarely ever visit that site.
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it makes a lot of sense that those sites offer heavy discounts compared to EU or NA prices, because their business model is to buy from cheaper regions. that is what they do (or the people and companies selling on those sites). the games are that cheap in certain countries. so the statement that those stores cannot be legit, because they sell too cheap - that's simply wrong. it is very possible to sell legit copies at those prices. steamgifts.com/trades proves that every day.
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Er, no. You cannot resell a game, but you can buy it and gift it. The winners on SteamGifts don't pay anything, sending them is the same as the standard gift options on many sites, but with a middleman (an RNG) in there.
One could argue that the trades section is similar, only they forget one little thing: SteamTrades is not commercialised, whereas G2A marketplace is.
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Er, yes. When you purchase a gift item - you are specifically telling the retailer that the product is a gift. When you purchase a cd-key it is explicitly implied it is for the purchasers personal use. When you gift a cd-key you are doing so in a manner that is outside the terms of use for the cd-key purchase - it is that simple. When you gift a gift, then you are doing so under the terms of use agreed upon during the sale.
There is no argument there. Whether or not you choose to abide by the purchasing agreement is up to you but is NO different than giving the game or selling the game as far as the terms of use are concerned. There is nothing to argue here.
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true, but that does not change the legitimacy of the trade itself (only of the middleman, which has to be discussed seperately). the steamtrades argument is meant in the way, that if someone has no moral issues with using it, then he should not have any with g2a or kinguin. since it's basically the same thing. you find a trader/seller and buy a game from unknown source. most likely a legitimate copy from a cheaper country. in very, very few cases it can be a stolen one. but this is true for both steamtrades and shady key-sites. so for the customer it's really very similar.
as for the sites themselves - yes, the commercialisation is definitely a big difference between the two. but does that really make a significant difference regarding the legitimacy of the actually transactions that take place every day? i think it doesn't. we could even argue that g2a does more to prevent scams than steamtrades. but then i would also say that g2a has more responsibility in this matter due to the commercialisation.^^
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I'm not sure G2A does so much more, other than pushes its Shield on everyone, whether they want it or not. The only difference is that since they are doing it as an official business, under a registered company, they need to provide support and have refunds; SteamTrades is just a free plaza with little to no moderation or authority, where individuals set up simple barters. It also means that trade partners are in direct contact, whereas on G2A you are dealing through an actual middleman, as the site takes the key, you pay the money for the key to the site, and after it takes its fees from both sides, it transfers the goods and the money.
So yes, in many sense, SteamTrades and G2A are similar, but there are also big enough differences here.
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I'm not sure G2A does so much more, other than pushes its Shield on everyone, whether they want it or not.
but i bought there already, without shield. it's merely an option. a pretty bad one, since they implemented it as a subscription (kinguin is way better, you just pay 1€ as a one time payment, if you want ensurance for your purchase - even for a 50€ game). question is, of course, if you really want to buy an expensive game without ensurance...
The only difference is that since they are doing it as an official business, under a registered company, they need to provide support and have refunds;
is that really so? if someone offers a marketplace where anyone can sell anyone, is he then fully responsible for every transaction and has he to offer full refunds for something he didn't even sell himself? just because he offers the platform where the transaction takes place? i don't think so. ebay never did that. i read they implemented a "money back guarantee" last year. but before that, only the seller would refund you. and if he didn't, you were fucked. unless you used paypal, of course. but only then, and only for a certain amount of money. so, i really don't think the marketplace has to offer full refunds for the product a seller sells on the marketplace. people always say that in case of g2a, because for them the site looks like GMG, Gamersgate and so on (which have to offer refunds, because they directly sell to you). but it's a marketplace, and that's a big difference.
by the way, the g2a support is generally known to be way better than the steam support. xD my personal experience with kinguin was great so far. i needed their support twice (no, it was not about revoked keys ^^), and they helped me twice. their live chat is fast and the support is nice and competent.
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but before that, only the seller would refund you. and if he didn't, you were fucked
If he didn't, you could start a long process of getting eBay itself involved, at least this is what my neighbour did back in the early 2010s.
if someone offers a marketplace where anyone can sell anyone, is he then fully responsible for every transaction and has he to offer full refunds for something he didn't even sell himself?
Actually, yes, at least in many parts of the world. If you open a public marketplace and someone gets scammed there, the one running the marketplace can be questioned and held responsible for damages.
by the way, the g2a support is generally known to be way better than the steam support
Come on, you know that is like saying "my currency is generally known to be stronger than a Zimbabwe dollar". It is 100% true, but comparing something to the absolute worst of its kind is not really an achievement. :D
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Actually, yes, at least in many parts of the world. If you open a public marketplace and someone gets scammed there, the one running the marketplace can be questioned and held responsible for damages.
i am not so sure about that. at least not here in germany. i just read something about a court decision on this topic. in this case ebay had to refund someone who got scammed. but only because of very specific conditions. it was a "platinum seller" which was reported several times, but ebay didn't do anything about it. that was the only reason ebay was made accountable. they have the responsibility to check sellers based on customer reports. they do not have the responsibility to check every single seller on their own, and they are not held accountable if the new kid on the block scammed someone, without any reports prior to that. the article is in german, so it probably won't help to link it, but i do it anyway.
Come on, you know that is like saying "my currency is generally known to be stronger than a Zimbabwe dollar". It is 100% true, but comparing something to the absolute worst of its kind is not really an achievement. :D
true. ^^ i just wanted to say that they at least do the support part. you demanded refunds and support.
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The thing is: is G2A actively banning those scammers which buy games with stolen credit cards to resell there or are they looking the other way because they normally are the most profitable sellers of the website?
This is the key point.
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the problem is, g2a can not check before if a key is stolen.
i guess if they find out that someone sell stolen keys the will ban this one. (still they can create a new accout)
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I'm talking about after this kind of events happen. They perfectly know it because they receive lots of complaints from buyers accusing the same seller for the same scam.
Yes, they could create another account but we are talking about sellers with tens of thousands of positive ratings. Take a look at that screenshot posted in Twitter. Sellers with very positive ratings hoard most of the sales from that website. If you create a new account to start again you will not sell a shit until months or even a year has passed.
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Theoretically, but that might be why some fraudsters target more niche, lower profile games. There aren't already bunches of bundle sales or high discount copies on g2a, so the choices people have are limited. Plus, at that point they can also charge closer to the normal price without worrying about being undercut by more legitimate sellers.
I remember looking up Stardew Valley when it was new on g2a and there were only a few people selling it, at only a few dollars off base price. When your choices are a few dollars off from someone who has low seller feedback or buying at regular price point, some people are going to take that chance. Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of lower profile games and you could get probably a few hundred sales per month. Also, I saw on twitter that when you buy a game on g2a, it automatically gives the seller a thumbs up, and you have to go back and manually change it to negative or neutral. So unless the buyer is paying attention to that, those sales directly translate into positive reviews. The more positive reviews a seller has the better chance of people buying less niche games, and the lower chance g2a bans the account.
Again, this is theoretical, but it would explain why fraudsters target more niche/lower profile games.
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Interesting thoughts. I understand your point but in Stardew Valley's particular case (and others who sell only on Steam store) they can't cheat because it is imposible to do a chargeback in Steam without facing the consequences (have those licenses instantly revoked).
In this case, I suppose they do it to get lots of positive ratings from those sales and then start the real scams.
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Ah, I didn't realize Stardew Valley wasn't sold anywhere other than Steam/GOG. My bad, lol.
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According to g2a, they ban those sellers "when they receive proof of fraudulent activity".
There's a few issues with that, first of which being that that means they don't do any investigating themselves to prevent fraudulent sellers.
Second, the seller TOS states that when g2a bans a seller, they seize any funds remaining in the sellers g2a wallet. So there's no downside to them, and they in fact profit from the banning of fraudulent sellers.
Third, the bans are, last I read, only account bans, with nothing preventing the banned sellers from simply creating a new account with a different email and starting again.
Fourth, g2a hasn't given any standard for what constitutes "proof of fraudulent activity". Considering the number of negative "my key got revoked" reviews some of the top sellers have, it's obvious that customer feedback is not proof to them.
Based on that, I'd say the second option is far more likely than the first.
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Second, the seller TOS states that when g2a bans a seller, they seize any funds remaining in the sellers g2a wallet. So there's no downside to them, and they in fact profit from the banning of fraudulent sellers.
So G2A is making a lot of profit from scammers because in those cases they don't have to give them their part. Scammers are a key piece of their business. Interesting :)
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Yep, they profit coming and going. They profit off the sale if the seller isn't/is never proven to be a fraudster, and if they are they seize that seller's portion of the sale and profit even more.
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that would imply a very significant portion of their business comes from stolen keys, and i highly doubt that. in fact, i am sure they lose more money due to the bad publicity than they gain from a few scammers...
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Well, it depends on each case, imagine a scammer with $20,000 a month in sales. If you ban his account you will get all the money, "legally" (according to their own terms) and laundered.
They will definitely get a lot more profit from banning big fishes rather than from those little $1/key legit sellers.
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At this point, G2A cannot get more bad publicity. Those who really want to believe in it will continue to believe in it. You could see people even on this site stating that they would continue buying there even if games get deactivated, because i is still "cheaper".
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"There's a few issues with that, first of which being that that means they don't do any investigating themselves to prevent fraudulent sellers."
What investigating do you think that they should be doing?
Tinybuild has previously thrown a fit about G2A asking for the stolen CD-Key's which Tinybuild refused to provide. So if G2A is not told which CD-Key's sold on their website were purchased fraudulently then what exactly do you think that G2A can do to investigate?
Don't bother saying 'they should investigate negative feedback' since anyone who has ever TRADED games over the internet knows there is always a risk of a traded game key being invalid - and it is reasonable to assume that some people are listing traded games.
If Tinybuild was serious about their fraud issues - then they would have worked with G2A to sort them out the first time instead of going on a crying spree like a bunch of 5 year olds! If G2A was having this issue with .... EA games... then I bet EA would have sent them the fraudulent key listing to ban the users.... but lets all sit here feeling sorry for Tinybuild - who refused to help themselves when G2A asked them for the fraudulent key list! What more do you want?
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Tinybuild was at the time negotiating with them to be a partnered seller. G2A sent them a message saying "We'll work with you on this stolen key thing, but you have to be partnered with us first." Granted, that could have been a miscommunication or misinterpretation by Tiny Build, but if I was running a marketplace and people I had been talking to about partnering said "Hey, we've had a number of stolen keys linked to your site, we want to make sure we aren't going to get screwed by some of your other sellers," I wouldn't tell them, "Well, we'll look into that, but you have to agree to work with us first at a lower price than any of your other resale partners". That's essentially saying that you care more about getting low priced keys to sell than running a trustworthy business. Why should Tiny Build give them a list of fraudulent keys when G2A told them they have to sign a contract undercutting their other partners?
EA wouldn't send them the fraudulent key list, they'd just revoke the keys and not give a fuck, as they've done in the past. Ubisoft went with the nuke option with Sniper Elite keys fraudulently sold on g2a, but they hit enough legitimate buyers that the backlash made them backpedal.
And why would the traded keys be invalidated unless the buyer was either using a stolen CC or challenged the charges themselves? That makes no sense. If the trader has hundreds of negative reviews saying the key was invalid, that tells me either a) they are using stolen CC to buy the games or b) they are challenging the charges themselves, and since no CC company is going to keep a customer that habitually challenges charges, it's most likely option a.
If you want to use g2a, go for it, it's your decision. But don't try to white knight a shady grey market because you don't want to admit that they either through inaction or through deliberate action - g2a shield - allow and encourage fraudsters to use their store front and profit from fraudulent sales.
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Slow it down for a second bro because I want to point out one simple thing.
http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys
I can tell you that no compensation will be given. If you suspect that these codes where all chargebacks aka fraud/stolen credit card purchases I would be happy to look into that however I will say this requires TinyBuild to want to work with G2A. Both in that you need to revoke the keys you will be claiming as stolen from the players who now own them and supply myself with the codes you suspect being a part of this. We will check to see if that is the case but I doubt that codes with such large numbers would be that way.
That is copy/pasted from tinybuilds own wolf cry - they copy/pasted it from the G2A reply - or advertise it as such anyways.
They further went on to say "In short, G2A claims that our distribution partners are scamming us and simply selling keys on G2A. They won’t help us unless we are willing to work with them. We are not going to get compensated, and they expect us to undercut our own retail partners (and Steam!) to compete with the unauthorized resellers."
Yet, I did not see any such correspondence from G2A nor did Tinybuild copy/paste that portion of the e-mail response they received yet we are supposed to take this at face value? Please. This is the internet. Pics or GTFO.
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That's funny. You "don't see any such correspondence from g2a" but the paragraph above the one you quoted is from the same email and says "So the issue you have pointed to is related to keys you have already sold. They are your partners that have sold the keys on G2A, which they purchased directly from you. If anything this should give you an idea on the reach that G2A has, instead of your partners selling here you could do that directly."
And this is the paragraph right after the part you quoted "Honestly I think you will be surprised in that it is not fraud, but your resale partners doing what they do best, selling keys. They just happen to be selling them on G2A. It is also worth pointing out that we do not take a share of these prices, our part comes from the kickback our payment providers."
Pics or GTFO? How about realistic quoting instead of cherrypicking?
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Yet in the entire e-mail posted by tinybuild there is nothing to suggest that in order for G2A to look into the fraudulent keys that tinybuild has to sell their products on G2A for less than anyone else. Please point that part out otherwise when you say "Why should Tiny Build give them a list of fraudulent keys when G2A told them they have to sign a contract undercutting their other partners?" you are making this accusation up out of thin air.
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Timeframe for the email:
"Coincidentally, this is when we were having discussions about partnering up with G2A and how that’d work. I really wanted to find out what kind of financial impact this marketplace can have, and after asking for sales stats in 3 separate discussions, I finally have them."
Directly from the email:
"instead of your partners selling here you could do that directly.
I can tell you that no compensation will be given. If you suspect that these codes where all chargebacks aka fraud/stolen credit card purchases I would be happy to look into that however I will say this requires TinyBuild to want to work with G2A. Both in that you need to revoke the keys you will be claiming as stolen from the players who now own them and supply myself with the codes you suspect being a part of this. "
So, Tiny Build was negotiating with G2A over a partnership, they find that a number of keys have been bought with fraudulent CC, and at the same time a large number of copies of those same games pop up on G2A. They tell G2A that, and G2A says "I would be happy to look into that, however, I will say that this REQUIRES TINYBUILD TO WANT TO WORK WITH G2A"
As I said, it could have been misconstrued by tinybuild, but if I'm looking to partner with someone, and I notify them of something like this, and they tell me "Oh, well, I don't think that what you're talking about is actually happening, but I'd be more than happy to look into it for you. You just have to agree to work with me and give me a list of all the codes you think are part of this," I'm not going to trust them with that, and I would view that as a strongarm tactic. "Partner with me, or I won't do anything about this."
You obviously believe g2a is a perfect company that has nothing shady or questionable about them, so this conversation is pointless.
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I never said g2a is a perfect company - what i said was you are making connections in your own mind that were not explicitly stated.
"I will say that this REQUIRES TINYBUILD TO WANT TO WORK WITH G2A"
That is correct since G2A would need the fraudulently acquired cd-keys. Nothing of that statement is incorrect or states that tinybuild has to sell their products on G2A.
I do agree that the conversation is pointless when in your mind you have already drawn connections that do not exist.
If you want to say that g2a has people listing stolen goods - that is a factual statement. I take issue with the conversation where you further imply non factual information.
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I'm not going to quote the same paragraph entirely but, to me, this is read as "You need to help us figure out which keys are fraudulent by revoking the ones you believe to be illegitimate that have been activated and provide us with a list of the unsold keys that are also believed to be stolen."
Since the keys are handed out through the site it would also be reasonable to assume they could vet keys if they had a list of the stolen keys and reject giving them out if are known to be stolen from the list of keys tinybuild (apparently refused to?) provided them with.
It appears to me the "partners" is referring to the massive amounts of bundles tinybuild puts their games in. So G2A could be implying the bundle sites are buying their own keys and reselling them which could be a big scandal if it was proved to happen. Whats more likely is people buying massive amounts of bundles to resell on G2A.
I have a feeling there was probably some sort of negotiation going on that tinybuild didn't feel was in their favor either due to prices being so low on G2A already (tinybuild gives out keys for their games all the time and bundles drop prices to pennies) and brought this up publically as a way to get leverage and claim they were being "scammed".
There is nothing wrong with a marketplace asking somebody to provide information to stop fraud. I believe what tinybuild wanted G2A to do was remove ALL tinybuild keys from their site during negotiation of the deal which wouldn't entirely make sense for G2A because, as a business, they make money from things being sold and to suddenly stop selling certain things with promises of "future money" doesn't make sense from a business standpoint. This would be similar to Sony talking about a deal with Ebay to not allow 3rd party sellers of PS Vita memory cards and Ebay instantly not allowing the cards to be posted before the deal is done. "But the 3rd party sellers on Ebay bought the actual product" isn't really valid because a lot of them buy the cards where they're cheaper and sell them as imports due to the region free nature of the Vita. The same thing can be done on G2A with ROW keys.
The actual issue is that G2A has no way (or possibly actual drive) to check if keys are stolen by themselves and tinybuild using the situation to try to gain a foothold.
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I agree with everything you just said SamChaplain.
If you as a consumer have an item that is fraudulently charged on your credit card, you the consumer have to work with the credit card company to remove the fraudulent charges. The credit card company is not requiring you to add your products to their store in order to help resolve the situation. Why people continue to lump them together is beyond my understanding.
I think tinybuild games are crap. But that isn't really the point here. I also think G2A has a lot of stolen goods listed for sale. Again, that is not the point I was making though.
There seems to be two groups of people in this topic - the ones who want to differentiate bullshit from fact and the ones who do not care about facts and want to bad mouth G2A with unsubstantiated claims byway of emotional discharge over an issue they seem to clearly not want to understand to begin with. There must be a villan and that villan must be G2A... grab the pitchforks!
Personally I do not even shop at G2A (I did purchase 1 game to see the process at work and have an understanding of its business). That said I am just a proponent of truth. I see this as simply tinybuild's attempt to gain free advertising for their company by starting a fight inside the gaming communities. This to me is much like the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson making money by exacerbating racial tension issues in the USA.
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Yeah I've purchased one game at G2A and didn't care for how it worked (mostly the thinly veiled "maybe these keys aren't real wink wink protection fee). I'm not sure how the stores the stolen keys were from actually paid out but I believe steam actually only pays out twice a month. This is actually perfect because most people probably see fraudulent Steam purchases before payouts happen so nobody really instantly "loses" money if funds/keys are revoked.
For a lot of people I tend to think it's a bit of idol worship. They are incapable of separating their own opinion from someguy420 on Youtube. It's a significant problem that needs to be fixed but is literally impossible due to how humans work.
The issue people are having is sensationalism mixed with not reading/poor comprehension.
G2A does partner with some devs to sell their stuff directly. The issue is specific publishers and developers don't like G2A because keys are sold for less there and they don't get a cut because they don't partner with G2A. They don't take into account that in some markets the "equivalent currency conversion" they're doing is sometimes equal to several months of pay (and obviously some people really like to save that 5$).
I think, as a developer, tinybuild only has some flash game under their belt but as a "publisher" (which apparently means "we need to give away 50k free keys a week to get buyers) they have (after a quick steam search) around 30. This, to me, says they may as well just be only a publisher and publishers make money with partnerships. They obviously didn't like the deal they were getting and wanted to pin it on G2A because they were already the "bad guy".
There is a reason G2A is part of a sector called the "grey market" There is nothing inherently evil from reselling keys you purchased legitimately even if a company's ToS state otherwise. Obviously theft is still theft even if you give the shit away and reselling stolen keys should be stopped.
tinybuild definitely just took the path of quick outrage when they went after G2A. It's such a polarizing topic because you have the people who think buying from anything other than the three or four developed marketplaces means you may as well pirate and you have the people who want the best deal without looking at why or how games are priced certain amounts(both consumers and publishers).
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"Well, we'll look into that, but you have to agree to work with us first at a lower price than any of your other resale partners"
Where is the proof of this ever being said to Tinybuild? They copy/pasted the e-mail from G2A and this was conveniently not present at all - yet it keeps getting thrown around as fact.
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I don't want to say that g2a isn't bad or something like that but...
Again tinybuild?! It's a bit strange. Why other publishers don't find out about things like that?
And why do scammers buy so much tinybuild games? They are not thaaat good and I would think you could make more money with other games...
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It happened with ubisoft, origin games,the arma franchise on their website and happened with steam too when there wasn't any region lock on steamgifts... tinybuild games were easy to get and resell with stolen credit cards it looks like.... just like what happened on the ArmA website. G2A in itself is a website in which people sell their games.. it's not g2a in itself being the "scammer" , but it is the site that hosts them,so it gets negativity... and rightfully so.
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It looks like they're taking some steps to improve their reputation. We'll have to see how it goes though, if they'll actually be willing to sacrifice some profit to keep the scammers of their site, or if it's just for show, now that a lot of people have their eyes on them.
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I know g2a...
I also remember the Ubisoft thing. And I still remember in the end it was also a problem on the site of ubisoft and not only because of fraud.
Region-Locks where mostly not scam but abuse the system. Same you could see in the tradearea on this page.
And like someone said before: if tinybuild have a second time such a big leak of keys (because of fraud or whatever) they should think about how the scam could happen. Steam is not selling keys, Humble should be more or less save...
I would say maybe 5% of all keys on g2a are stolen. A lot of people from SG sell keys on that page and now tinybuild act like everyone who is selling on g2a is a scammer...
Again: g2a could do more against scammers, frauds and all no questions asked.
But that it's again tinybuild and g2a is a bit strange... why not kinguin, cdkeys, mmoga and all that?
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They're not saying that every key on g2a is stolen,they're saying (ALSO to get more profit) that g2a is a grey market and not all the keys might work , people just buy the game where's cheaper and the devs are making them know that they're not trustworthy sources overall.
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I've seen this "maybe 5%" number thrown around a lot, is that something g2a said or something that people are just pulling off the top of their heads?
Also tinybuild is targeting g2a because g2a sponsored a lot of Youtube and Twitch streamers, which lends them both a higher profile and a greater air of legitimacy than other gray market resellers. I don't know about mmoga, but cdkeys sources their own keys, they don't provide a marketplace, so there's no reason to target them unless stolen keys are traced back to them. Since I've heard all of cdkeys games are from boxed copies in lower priced regions, that is unlikely.
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They do. There has been similar incidents with several other publishers, some big, some small. TinyBuild is just one of the more vocal ones.
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Honestly, bigger publishers have a lot to lose and very little to gain. A few hundred stolen keys are a small write off, but giving G2A etc more publicity is a lose-lose. I think Sniper Elite devs also spoke out against them? And guess what, customers blamed the Devs not G2A for the revoked keys. They got so much hate for it =|
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Tinybuild isn't getting hit harder than the others. IndieGameStand has been complaining about this for ages, and GOG gets "why did the game I bought from G2A get revoked?" complaints constantly. The carders cast a very wide net and buy as many different things as they can, but collectively they do it in enormous volumes.
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I wonder how many people bash G2A and then buy bundle keys or old gifts off others for paypal / keys.
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If that happens on steam/steamtrades/groupbuys/any other decent platform or website then we can blacklist and report the scammer , making his account even trade banned.... with g2a you can't do it.. you need to pay in case your key doesn't work to get a refund ( when the system itself should be free like any other serious website) and if the scammers get banned they just create a new account and start from there...
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so on ebay, if you buy something and the guy doesn't deliver (or it's broken or whatever), ebay actually pays you the complete sum? no, it doesn't. only if you use paypal for the payment. and only up to a certain amount. paypal takes its fees, of course. the difference here is that the seller has to pay those fees. but it's still more or less the same. unless you use a special service, you won't get anything from ebay. it's 100% your loss.
the system you say should be free is not something you see on marketplaces like ebay. it's something you see on websites that directly sell their stuff to you. that doesn't happen on g2a. so you can't really compare this marketplace situation to say greenmangaming. gmg is responsible for a key that doesn't work. you basically say if gmg sold on g2a, g2a would have to pay for gmg's bad keys. ^^
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Ebay also doesn't offer "insurance" against your items being found to be stolen and taken by the authorities. That is exactly what g2a shield is. I agree that they shouldn't be held responsible for the replacement/refund of lost or stolen keys. If they didn't sell g2a shield, then I would have a lot less of a problem with them. The fact that they essentially sell "stolen goods insurance" puts them in a lot worse light because it means they're profiting not only from the allegedly stolen goods being sold on their marketplace, but from customers' fears of accidentally buying stolen goods and losing access to the games they paid for.
Depending on whose numbers you trust, up to 40% of keys could be fraudulently obtained, and g2a would still make a profit if all sales included g2a shield. I doubt half that many keys are fraudulently obtained, but it's not a good look for the company, because it makes both buyers feel safe in ignoring that some of the keys ARE fraudulently obtained, and it tells fraudulent sellers that there's more profit to be made on g2a because people are less likely to worry about keys being revoked and thus more likely to buy from g2a.
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IIUC, G2A Shield isn't even "insurance", really, it just prioritizes you for dispute resolution. I had no problem getting things sorted without it.
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I've read that from some people, I've also read from other people that support told them they didn't have g2a shield and they weren't going to get anything. Additionally, g2a is automatically selected with every purchase, and if you have ever "subscribed" on purpose or by accident, it's a 6 page 16 part process to get completely unsubscribed doing it from the website. The only time I've seen people say differently is when they disputed the subscription charge with paypal, in which case paypal denied the charges and g2a dropped the subscription. Some people have said they had it in the past, unsubscribed, and found out months later that it had mysteriously re-activated, but as with anything on the internet, it's all hearsay so take it for what you will.
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There's so much heat around it that it's hard to know what's true, so I'm only stating what I've seen myself. TBH, their support has been quite a bit better than Humble Bundle.
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I have had them refund me without shield. I also tried it for a month free (by mistake) and canceled it fine.
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Tinybuild are cunts. They've been a special kind of cunt with my company in particular.
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I have mixed feelings about tiny build i also had trouble with them, still i dont consider them as digital homicide (at least not yet). Could you elaborate what happened to you? im curious.
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Not really. This should be 100% leaked keys (or they were betrayed by one of their partners, in wich case those keys shouldnt be revoked). If they were bought with stolen cards, they would know wich keys are the stolen ones, and they would match those operation numbers that got charged back with the proper keys and revoke them immediately.
I personally distrust tiny build on this kind of claims sience the last time they made such an accusation they said that keys from speed runners were too cheap there, and that it was impossible (wich was a lie, sience they gave that game for free at alienware arena and also it was on bundles), and they assumed they were obtained with stolen cards, even though they couldnt link those keys to any cancelled card operation. Back then they demanded G2A to tell them wich keys they were so they could revoke them, wich would have been unfair to the honest sellers (probably almost all of the sellers). I know that because i got one of those keys at alienware (i have already purchased that game before) and sience i couldnt give it away here (because it was on a free giveaway, the one that explains the low price), i sold it on G2A at the price of arround 5 euro.
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How is a leaked key fraudulent? If the developer or someone on the developers team leaks a bunch of keys then they are moronic and that hardly constitutes fraud. I think Tinybuild are a bunch of idiots personally and I also find it hard to believe that anyone would go through the trouble to fraudulently obtain their crappy game keys. Think about it. The retail price for Tinybuild games are already low (since they're crap to begin with) and then the fraudster would have to cut the price around 80% to get sales on G2A - you would have to sell tens of thousands of fraudulent keys to make it worth your time/effort to have obtained the fraudulent keys to begin with. No one is going to go through all that trouble for $25 especially if the fraudsters have to purchase the stolen CC #'s from the deep web to begin with.... it just doesn't make sense at all.
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Leaked keys are not fraudulent. Somehow keys get leaked, dont ask me how, but it also happened to big companies (cant remember now wich game from ubisoft went through that not that long ago, and there was something about origin too, maybe the same title). Companies usually revoke them as soon as they realize because those keys flood markets like G2A and the games go down in price. You might think its unfair to the honest buyers, and you might be right, but according to the EULAs and such, any dev is allowed to cancel any license without giving you any reason. Sucks, but thats what it means to "own" a game these days.
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The way scammers do it is buying from a legitimate seller with a stolen credit card number, usually obtained from a dark web site. They buy in bulk, the charges get reversed, the legitimate seller is hit with tons of chargebacks and lost keys. Fraudster sells on g2a or another gray market, and gets all the profit minus the sites cut, because they invested 0 money in the keys.
Tracking which keys are fraudulently obtained requires going through the entire batch of keys and finding out which ones are linked to the fraudulent transactions. Usually these keys are generated in 1-100k batches, so it can be a huge task for the dev to go through and only deactivate the frauds, so a lot of them write it off unless they feel the cost of lost sales is worth the consumer ire and time. Tinybuild already got into it with g2a earlier in the year, so they've already committed to the fight.
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I'm passing on what multiple devs have said on several different occasions. If you've dealt with this personally and have different information, I'd love to hear it.
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Tiny Build was one of them. IIRC, mangagamer was another. There was another, I think the Action Henk dev? I'd have to go research it again to give you all the names. Did way too much reading on this over the past couple of days, lol. Tiny Build was indeed doing their own store, as was mangagamer, but the other devs weren't.
The thing is, the re-seller has no authority to revoke keys, they can only pass on that the keys were fraudulently obtained and give the devs the list of transactions that got charged back. Then the dev has a choice. They can either a) track and deactivate each individual key, or b) nuke the whole batch. The mangagamer fraudster did a number of different transactions of 30 games each before they caught on to him. That's a lot of keys to go through and individually deactivate.
It's not a matter of verifying each transaction, it's a matter of deactivating only the keys that were fraudulently obtained. Could this be made easier by writing a program to automate the process? Sure, but as the Tiny Build dev said, that's man hours going into writing a program and making sure it won't accidentally hit any legitimate buyers, so it's still not a simple process.
Lots of reseller sites let you add multiple copies of a game, with each one having a different limit before they mark you for "manual authorization", which is a polite way of saying "One of our employees is going to look over this purchase and your purchase history to see if we think you're a fraudster." Humble Bundle has actually put up a page that details all their anti-fraud measures, though it is broad strokes, not specifics. It's an interesting read.
The CEO of Trion Worlds, a publisher, also commented on this stuff a few months ago, and had this to say:
-“We’ve built up what's likely the industry's best fraud protection for online games sales and microtransactions. It's not a problem that can be solved in software alone - it's a combination of data, software, and human effort, with multiple checkpoints along the way for every single transaction. We even pass partners' wallet transactions through our system when we can. It's surprising how many bad actors we catch that they don't. It's not ideal when we have to invest huge amounts of developer and service staff time into efforts other than ‘create and run good games,’ but it's a part of the reality of running a publisher today.”
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Personally I think the system is stupid, but I could be wrong, I'm not a game dev. Basically, from my understanding, the dev generates keys from Steam in 1-100k batches, then gives the reseller access to - or a list of, again, not a dev - the batch, which is where they pull keys from to give to the buyers. If a key has to deactivated because of fraud, the reseller has to give it to the dev, because the dev is the one who has to contact Steam and let them know that key is no longer good and needs to be deactivated.
The dev only has the list of transactions that the reseller gives them, which can happen anytime from a minute after the transaction goes through to up to 90 days later depending on the compromised CC or account and the terms between the company and the consumer. Who knows, some CC companies might give even longer. So a seller can have some transactions get charged back after 5 days, more after 11, and more at 70. Each time they might pass that on to the dev, but the dev still has to take the time to plug each key into Steam and deactivate it, or tell Steam that the whole batch is bad and deactivate it en masse. Obviously the devs aren't going to want to do that because they would hit a lot of legitimate consumers, but then they have to manually enter all the keys.
Now, in the Mangagamer case, the fraudster that got interviewed - I believe it was by kotaku, but I could be wrong - said that he made "about $500" from what he did. Considering the games were primarily more adult games, he probably didn't sell them for very much, but let's put a theoretical $5 price point on it. At minimum, that's 100 keys needing to be disabled, and there are games that get sold for less on g2a. Some fraudsters - not sure if the same or a different one - claim to make 3-4k per month doing this. That's a lot of games. That's a lot of keys.
Now, if a compromised CC gets flagged quickly, they might be able to deactivate the keys before they are sold, but here's the key point with regards to this specific game: The seller won't know the keys are deactivated. So they can still sell the key, and when the buyer goes to activate it on Steam, they are told the key is duplicate or deactivated or whatever error code Steam gives those. In this Twitter message Tiny Build is essentially warning people that they might buy a key on g2a and it will not be good because it's been tracked to one of the fraudulent transactions.
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They do pass that on to the dev after every charge back because the dev is the one who pays the charge back fee to the distributor.
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Right, because the dev has to pay the storefront for their CC processor's charges. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
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I'm not quite sure what you meant with this post - if you were agreeing with what I had said or not. I assume that selling game keys on the internet is like selling retail products in a store like walmart. Walmart pays the cost of all the inventory up front but does so with the understanding and agreement that any unsold product is returned to the manufacturer at the manufacturers cost. Any type of fraud related activity is also passed back to the manufacturer - walmart is not liable for those transactions. If online digital goods distributors have adopted the retail distribution channels, then the charge back fees are sent back to the developer. I could be wrong about digital distribution model using the retail model although it seems like Steam would not be dumb enough to innovate digital distribution for gaming and be stuck with unsold inventory!
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If you think Walmart can make manufacturer's pay for goods that are bought from them with fraudulent credit cards, I've got a lovely toll bridge in the middle of Manhattan I'd like to sell you. They use it as a tax write off - business related losses - or if it is large enough they have insurance companies that they contract with, though a physical business that deals with physical goods is so different from a digital store front that the comparison falls apart at that point.
You see, you have a fundamental logic flaw in that you are treating keys as something that costs money to produce, and so the seller has to pay for them up front. Digital keys are free to produce and can be generated in an instant. Hell, Steam is the one who generates them for the developers in this case. There is no "unsold inventory", because they don't buy from the dev, they pay the dev according to the units sold.
Second party resellers like Humble Bundle or Bundle Stars or GMG gain access to the pool of keys or to a certain number of keys with the agreement that as they are bought they will pay the developer a percentage per sale each pay period. Those pay periods are usually monthly, but they can be quarterly, depending on the contracts agreed on. In the case of fraudulent charges, the seller will tell the dev, and whether or not that affects previous or further payments I really have no idea.
What I do know is that the payment processors - the credit card companies - will charge the seller, not the dev for it. The dev in this case didn't have any communication with the payment processor that is imposing the chargeback fees. I don't know of any logical contract that would allow a seller to tell the developer "Hey, we didn't have good enough fraud checks in place, so you need to pay these chargeback fees for us." That's just ludicrous. Tiny Build - and Mangagamer - brought chargebacks into the conversation because they had a storefront they were maintaining on their own and the chargebacks hit them personally. I know from Humble Bundle's page on it that any chargebacks that occur for their storefront cost them, not the devs.
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I dont get one thing... if they found a stolen group of keys, why dont they just deactivate them? That way, when a user buys it, he can get the insurance and rate negative the seller. Why wait for people to buy those keys and rate the seller positive if they know those keys were stolen?.
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Chargebacks can occur up to 30 or even 60 days after the transaction. I had a Discover card that I could dispute transactions up to 90 days past. It all depends on when the person whose card was stolen finds the fraudulent charges.
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If those keys werent charged back yet, then where´s the crime?
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They were charged back, that's how they've identified them as stolen. Note I said "up to", not only at 30/60/90 days. It could have been charged back five minutes after the transaction, but the fraudster still has the keys at that point.
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Then, back to my original point. If they know wich operations got charged back, why dont they revoke those keys, but instead threat with revoke to those buying cheap from G2A? If they revoke them immediately, they allow honest buyers to claim back their cash and give negative reviews, damaging the original criminal. Instead, doing this, they let the guy keep selling stolen keys and making cash out of it, while spreading panic among G2A users.
Dont get me wrong, i have no clue on what happened here. When they complained about their speed runners game, i read about it for months, and lots and lots of info came up when i dig for it, and i realized, from my point of view, their claim that G2A was selling fraudulent keys was false (at least on a massive level, while i agree that there might have been a few keys obtained ilegally, those were not the 24k keys they claimed). In that sense, i am a bit biased right now to distrust them.
In this case, im watching this minute by minute, and all ive seen was that they are saying those keys are stolen. I also notice that the price is low, wich is suspicious, and i still havent confirmed that this game was not on a giveaway or a bundle. There might have been leaked (as it did happen a lot of times), of maybe they got backstabbed by any of their partners, or it could be that they got massively chargedback. But their reaction seem totally ilogical to me right now, sience all they will achieve is to cause panic on G2A users. Normally, when a game goes through that scenario of leaked keys or charged back keys, they find out the keys involved, they revoke them, and its done. They can´t trace who is selling wich key, and hence, i dont see how can they finger point. Again, i have no clue on the details of this situation, maybe the guy sent them a mail saying "hahaha, i got this keys ilegaly and i am selling them under this alias at G2A". But right now, any of the scenarios i can think of in wich they know wich user is selling stolen keys and they dont know wich keys they are (or that they know, but dont want to revoke them yet) seem not plausible.
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See my above post to ladeeda. If they deactivate the key, it doesn't take them away from the seller. They're warning people that they have deactivated stolen keys, and it maybe that keys they buy from sellers on g2a will not work because of that.
EDIT: Also, I agree Tiny Build inflated the numbers because they were working on partnering with g2a at the time. I think there was a lot of miscommunication on both sides, but there are a lot of things that make me distrust g2a more than Tiny Build, especially the commentary from other devs.
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Yup, i know what you mean. But i think most of the hate against G2A from devs comes from the fact that they re sell keys obtained cheap (at bundles/sales) or even free (giveaways), not that those keys are fraudulent. You can see some cases where game prices went down the toilet at G2A, but it wasnt because of some kind of fraud or anything weird. I dont think its just G2A, because it is as good as a second hand key market could be, but if it was closed, people would start selling keys at amazon/ebay or a new website with less security, and this problem would be even worse.
As a positive side, i think some devs are learning. Instead of blaming sites like G2A, i believe its a better attitude to do as they did with tropico 4´s giveaway at HB, they revoked all the keys after a period of time, BUT they warned everybody that those keys were going to be revoked before they were aquired. If they revoke in less than a week, then they make sure re sellers at G2A get their money locked and a bad rep. Another good example is valve himself, they didnt let you buy their games with discount as tradeable gifts last sale. About credit card fraud, some publishers are small and naive, so they messed up and that costed them a lot, but the lesson should be that people must know what they are doing before trying to publish a game (specially sience devs can publish their games through valve). In that sense, the only publisher that actually complained about that also said that they knew how to avoid it now. The truth is that if you take certain precautions (those required for card companies), the credit card takes all the damage (and that´s why big companies get charged back a lot, and yet they dont even revoke the keys, cause in the end, for them it was more games beeing sold).
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So you believe the guys who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by continuing to allow fraudulent sellers to continue selling on their platform with little to no identity verification that they are the good guys. Obviously all the devs who made the games and have to deal with chargebacks and lost sales because of fraud are whiny, jealous and just bad at business.
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First, it is not the devs who deal with chargebacks, its the publishers. Second, i dont think the hate towards G2A has anything to do with chargebacks, but with low prices there (that, in fact, affects the devs A LOT). Third, and most important, Yeah, the publishers shouldn´t be bad at business because they will keep destroying devs, it is not a matter of whats fair or what we would all wish for, it is how things are.
Lets assume that the problem is chargebacks (i believe they may occur, but you have to be crazy paranoid to think every key at g2a was obtained ilegal)
Identity verification is pointless. Card thefts usually sell stolen stuff in amazon, and create new accounts every day. How they do that? well, they already paid for personal data, card numbers, bank account info and all they need to bypass their security. If you want to avoid them at G2A, not only you need a better id verification, but you need something better than amazon and ebay uses. No way that´s going to happen. Also, they are a company, they are in it to make money, not to solve the publisher problems, so you cant expect them to lead the battle against card thefts. Its pretty amazing they actually made changes in that line.
To me it is important that if you have a second hand key market (wich is a fair thing to ask when you purchase something), then there will be profit for card fraud when posible. It is not inherent to G2A or any website in particular, but to second hand key markets. Whatever website that takes the place of G2A (and for sure some site will) will act the same for a simple reason: they are companies, and companies care about profits, not about fixing up someone else´s mess. Its sad, but if you believe like i do that (at least) we should be allowed to purchase and sell keys obtained legally before activating them, then sadly this door will be open. Does this mean that publishers will disapear and the whole industry will go down? Of course not. If card fraud is profitable when possible, then make it imposible. Its actually easy, all you need to do is follow the protocol suggested by the card companies, and done. Are you afraid this cant be done? well, dont be sad, if small publishers cant handle this, devs could use big publishers, that doesnt mean they wont be indie anymore. One example is Valve. They could sell their game just through steam. We will keep getting fresh new indie games.
I think its childish to complain about how mean G2A is and to threat people saying stuff like "if you buy at G2A you risk deactivation" (specially when publishers are also companies that would kill us for just a few more cents, and that even today have lied to us again). The measures they can take are not impossible, every other business online takes them and do fine. All this assuming the whole issue is chargebacks, wich, again, not even for a second i would consider it is.
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First, I agree that there should be a second hand market. I also believe that that market should be very careful to regulate itself to keep itself above board and above reproach with regards questionable sellers like scammers and fraudsters. That being said, there is so much wrong with what you've written it's either deliberate trolling, or so delusional as to be ridiculous.
Saying that "it's childish to ... threaten people saying stuff like 'if you buy at G2A you risk deactivation'" is facepalmingly stupid. TinyBuild was alerted by one of their stores that a number of keys were fraudulently obtained. They traced which keys were related to those fraudulent transactions and deactivated them. Some of the keys they traced from the batch were on or were sold from g2a. So they told their customers who follow their Twitter that it happened, and that they risked deactivation because they have no way of taking the stolen but deactivated keys away from the g2a seller. It's not a threat, it's "hey, we found this out, and did this, you're taking a risk if you do that." Or do you think they shouldn't have the right to deactivate the stolen keys?
I've presented facts sourced from devs and publishers who work in the industry, all of which is a simple google search away. You've responded with "I don't think" this, "I think" that, and baseless statements like "card thieves usually sell stolen stuff on amazon", which to anyone who has looked into the process of selling things on amazon is patently ridiculous. To sell stuff on Amazon or Ebay they require multiple forms of identification, including address verification and you to link either your bank account or have a merchant verified Paypal account. All of those are traceable and difficult to obtain. G2A, on the other hand, requires an email address to set up a new account and start selling. If you can't see the difference in that, and the deterrence that identity verification provides against actual thieves, this conversation is pointless.
Your whole argument can be boiled down to "I don't want to believe the devs or publishers who have talked about this publicly and in depth. I want to believe that G2A is great and doesn't do anything wrong. I'm going to insult the publishers and devs who have spoken out against it by calling them childish, say they're bad at business, and that all of this is just jealousy and not wanting to sell things at low prices." There is no conversation left to be had.
As I've said before, if you want to buy from G2A, go ahead. But don't pretend it's somehow this great champion for the poor gamers against the evil publishers and devs who try to screw you out of every penny they can get. Call it what it is. It is a second hand key reseller that doesn't require any form of identification to start selling keys en masse, and so it is a gold mine for fraudsters and credit card thieves to make money. If you buy there, you take the risk that the key you bought might get deactivated at some point because of the dev or publisher tracking the keys related to stolen transactions to g2a and rightfully deactivating them.
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When i say it is childish, i just mean that the proper thing to do is just to revoke the keys without any threats (or "warnings") of something that doesnt represent a risk to anybody (sience if you buy a revoked key there, you instantly get your money back, even without paying insurance).
Also, i dont think G2A is anybody´s hero, as i said, they are a company that has for an objective making money out of you. On the other hand, it seems like you are the one who thinks small publishers are somehow some sort of heroes that deserve blind trust. Just the fact that they say or post something doesnt mean it is the truth. If i though everytime a small company gets into trouble they are right, i would be defending digital suicide right now, and asking for the heads of those users who did bad reviews at their games. All i want is a good place to buy and sell second hand keys.
I if you read my post, youll see that i agree with you that card fraud benefits from G2A. The part we dont seem to agree is that i think whatever market (even amazon) of second hand keys will offer the same benefit to those thieves. Also, not to troll, but from my own experience. I bought over 25 games there, another friend bough over 200, and we NEVER got any key revoked, just one time we got a dupped, and another time we got a key missing the last letters. In that light, i have to disagree that everything there is games obtained through card fraud. I agree, again, that it is possible, but i dont think thats the usual case. All the oposite, i think chances of buying those keys are real low (still, it is possible), and close to zero if you follow common sense.
I usually buy bundle leftovers (for instance, this week i will probably buy contagion) or free giveaways i didnt catch on time (i will also buy super fighters for a friend). By doing that, i am close to 100% sure they were not obtained with card fraud, and the fact none ever got revoked from me or my friends proves im right. Of course, you dont have to believe me, but you cant accuse everybody who buys there of pretending most of the sales are not ilegal, because out of our experience (wich may have been pure luck, of course), they were. I am not that stupid as to lie to protect a site that costed me cash in games that always get revoked. If i say what i say, its because i never bought a stolen key yet. If i see a game like Overwatch for 15Usd, yeah, dont buy it, something must be rotten. But i dont see anything wrong in buying games there when you know the reason the price is so low. I would never buy a game i suspect was fraudulently obtained, cause i know it ends with that game beeing revoked, and im not paying half its price for just a couple weeks of use. Asuming everybody there is a scammer seems a bit too much for me. I would, of course, use another site if they had better security and publishers were more confortable with that, of course, i would use it. Sadly, i think even the safest markets online cant offer such a guarantee, so i stick with G2A, beeing carefull, of course.
Also, i never insulted the publishers. All i said was that they should be more carefull at their business, and i said it in a respectfull way. I never called them stupid or anything, and from there you jumped to the conclusion that i said they were whining and jelous, when i never used those words. I also said i dont trust them because personally i had a key from speedrunners that i sold at G2A at the price they were complaining about (im not a regular seller, just sold 2 or 3 keys to see how it worked on the other side), and they said the only way we, the sellers, were selling that cheap was because we must have commited fraud, when i actually got that key at a giveaway at alienware (i could post a screenshot if you want, or you can just google it) and also it was already bundled at humble bundle (if not, some other bundle site). I admit i may be a bit biased about this case because it involves this publisher, but whenever i hear someone complaining about G2A (except maybe one or two exceptions), its either them, or someone copy pasting something from their original complain about that speedrunners thing.
Anyway, last post on this issue, i think i´ve said enough, and of course, feel free to coment it.
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I only use G2A to buy WB games, mainly because WB is one of the developers that spits on PC gamers... It's not our fault your games are poorly optimized and PC gamers hold developers to a higher standard than console gamers..
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lol it's funny cause :
1) almost every WB game got bundled
2) if you change "g2a" to a random torrent download site it would be the same thing :D
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the few WB games I've bought haven't been bundled.. a few of the newer Lego games, and Batman Arkham Knights (although this has been on Bundlestars for like 15 or something)
As for torrents... nah brah I have these games on steam to easily download and delete as I please, plus I get the added benefit of not having the cool viruses all those Torrent games seem to love hiding in those large .exe files.. Not that I would know because I don't pirate games..
WB has numerous times proven they don't care about PC gamers, like their decision to exclude DLC content from PC gamers and not release future games for the PC because we expect them to release optimized console ports... The horror of expecting the games we pay full price for to actually work half way decently..
Check my inventory over 6k games, you don't have to pirate games when you have a job and know how to budge money.. Only kids and cheapo's pirate games..
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if you don't have a job you shouldn't be worried about play video games, but instead in trying to find a job..
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Yeah,forget about university dude,it's not like it exists.
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sorry to hear that, but Video games are a luxury item, if you can't afford it, then find something else you can.. No excuse exist to pirate games... I understand if you're in a university, but I went to College/university as well, and I had priorities in check.. without having to steal stuff..
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yes it is, you can slice it however you want, but it's taking something you aren't entitled to and using it... IE stealing..
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No it's not, people keep bringing this up but it's not. I myself don't pirate but not because it's stealing, because I like steam etc. You're just playing a game, stealing is taking away something, you don't take anything away from the dev, if you wouldn't have pirated it you probably wouldn't have bought it either.
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You refuse to pay for something you have used. At this point difference whether it was a car, doctor's advice or movie is relevant only for selecting of correct paragraph from codes of laws. From morals pov it falls under general rule of "do not steal"
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Well, it's not stealing, they don't get anything anyways. If you pirate it you don't pay but 95% off the pirates won't pay for it anyways.
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LOL.
Good to know. I'll barge into language courses now. I'm not willing to pay for it and the teacher won't lose any of his knowledge from one more studend - so I'm not doing anything wrong. /s
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Well I think knowledge should be free anyways, education I mean. (Please note that I don't pirate games).
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I don't accuse you of it. Phrases like "when one...." just don't roll off the tongue smoothly )
Noble, but completly unrealistic. How many people would pursue knowledge for the sake of doing so? (Hint to begin with: why education of children is mandatory?)
If using my knowledge and skills is to be paid in the form of goodwill donations, then it would become my hobby activity. Because I need reasonably stable sources of supporting myself and those close to me. Translating that to gaming: no AAA games - hobbyists don't have enough resources
Oh, don't try bringing government as a solution. I've expirienced this first hand and that was one time too much.
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Well the goverment used to pay for education in my country, they don't really anymore but you can lend money for a pretty low interest rate. My family is pretty well off so I don't have any real problems, but of course there are people who can't follow a good education for this reason.
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You can lend only because education opens up possibilities for job that brings income allowing for repayment of the debt. If knowledge doesn't guarantee income, there will be no loans available at any intrest rates.
Also, when right to compensation is not protected, anyone with half a brain will demand upfront payments. For non-hobbyist games this means kickstarter preorders. I can see those masses flocking to fund next TES/Fallout/DeusEx/Whatevers /s
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you are gaining access to something you didn't legally purchase, it's stealing, you can just to justify it or say it's not stealing if I wouldn't have bought it anyway.. If you wouldn't have bought it anyway why are you playing it. People who justify thievery are nearly as bad as the actual thieves themselves. Also I'm almost 100% sure if you hold the opinion that piracy isn't stealing you pirate games yourself.
Your argument of it not being stealing is akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and stomping your feet saying, it's not stealing, it's not stealing it's not stealing. Have a very entitled attitude like you deserve whatever you want whenever you want it.. pfft, hard working people like myself are sick of entitled people who think they should have whatever they want just because.
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Well of course there are some pirates who would buy it, but if you're poor and you don't have money for video games they aren't going to buy it anyways you know. Of course you could say find another hobby etc. it's a luxery yeah of course it is, but alot of hobbies cost alot of money.
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That's how hobbies work: you put money in and get enjoyment out :)
Tbh, piracy is not something people with no money for entertainment of any kind are involved in. It is no money for games because money were spent in the pub kind of situation.
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As someone without a job, I play video games. I look for work, sure, but can't spend every hour I'm awake checking job sites and walking into places with my CV. Games and reading happen to be what I do in my free time to relax.
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if you can't afford to buy things legally then find something that is free.. Plenty of free games exist out there to occupy your time without having to steal them..
Plenty of RPG maker games of very high quality are free, plenty of MMO games are F2P.. plenty of other games are F2P.. you can find Free games in almost every genre of games you may enjoy... you choose to steal games by pirating them and thusly get no sympathy from me..
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Excuse me? Where the **** did I ever say I pirate? I legally own my games. My Steam library is mostly through cheap bundle titles, trading profits (sadly, this has slowed down in recent months) and SteamGifts. I also have games on other systems because of sales and used games.
I'm unemployed, not penniless. I have enough coming in to pay rent in a shared apartment, along with bills, and have a bit left over for games after.
My comment was because I assumed your post was along the lines of someone without a job shouldn't have fun or a break, rather than being about money (as clearly that isn't an issue for even all unemployed people).
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you posted to my response about people pirating games by saying you didn't have a job.. IE making me think you were trying to justify piracy. Whatever you do with your money is your own business, I won't tell you how to spend it, nor would I say someone shouldn't have fun with things they legally purchase.
My only thing is.. if you don't have a job, that isn't an excuse to pirate games, I plainly said that in my post. Where you got the idea I said people without jobs shouldn't have fun I don't know.. Unless stealing games is what you consider fun, in that case, I totally and fully said you shouldn't.
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I was responding solely to this, rather than previous comments about piracy.
if you don't have a job you shouldn't be worried about play video games, but instead in trying to find a job..
I took that as a comment along the lines of what I've mentioned. There are unfortunately some people that think the unemployed should be as depressed and miserable as possible until they find a job, as apparently simply feeling useless for being unemployed isn't enough.
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I don't think someone unemployed should be depressed or miserable.. everyone needs a release, my comments were more in regards to someone pirating games, a person without a job should be less concerned with pirating video games, and more concerned with putting in applications so they can buy games legally, rather than steal them..
I don't buy the whole I can't afford games but still want to play them reasoning or logic behind alot of people's game piracy. I see someone with a nice TV I can't afford, I don't have the right to go steal that television from their home.. or the ability to go inside their home and watch that television.
Also as I mentioned, if a person is so broke they can't afford games so many good/great games are Free for all to play without having to resort to piracy/stealing..
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Don't worry, I agree with your views on piracy. Besides, there are always cheap options. Wait for sales, buy used games, bundles, etc.
Besides, if I'm unemployed and have thousands of games, they can't really use that excuse themselves. :P
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Stolen, frauded, duplicated keys on g2a like sites ? No way it's not possible !
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Lol this thread is full on popcorn material.
Need to melt a gallon of butter. :X
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Im surprised they ware still selling TinyBuild games on G2A >.>
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Steam keys from G2A getting deactivated - The reason why WILL SHOCK YOU!
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I dont get the hate with G2A, sure there are scammers, but those are everywhere. Ive had 1 game revoked so far and I screenshot the message steam put up and they refunded my G2A account within 5 minutes of my email/ticket/whatever to them. Honestly I dont remember if I went with a high seller or cheapest price. I know ive gotten from several 0-10s (not smart but they were cheapest)
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how the hell people still connect g2a business with criminals that are not even related with or work for g2a?
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If you let criminals use your marketplace, you are also to blame. Other places like this get the same treatment, like eBay (only with the difference that eBay doesn't try to hide from the law by registering itself at remote location, far away from US and EU jurisdiction, despite relying on those two regions for their business…)
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Wait... far away from US and EU? What's the matter?
I don't think a country neither a continent rule the world. I also don't think both rule someone elses business.
Besides the fact that US or EU doesn't rule the world, they have an registered office on USA (with no need at all may I say).
G2A.COM – the company G2A.COM LIMITED with its registered office in Hong Kong, 36/F, Tower Two, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong or the company G2A LLC with its registered office at 8275 South Eastern Avenue 200 Las Vegas, NV 89123, USA depending on which of them is a party to the agreement in accordance with further provisions of this Terms and Conditions.
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And they have a support office in Poland as well (where the actual owners live, by the way). They still like to treat themselves as a HK company. (Or a Singapore one, since they should be officially owned by one, with the Polish owners sitting behind gods-know how many offshore companies.) The US address wasn't even displayed for a good while. (Although funny enough, neither the HK one. When I first met them, they only displayed the address of the European support center.)
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about let criminals do whatever and wherever they decide to do, I honestly don't see how that works. if you blame the "place" or the "people" that they use to do their criminal things, you are blamming innocent people. you buy a car that its numbers has been voided and sell it to someone else without nobody ever noticed it yet, will you be the one who should be blamed? it is like take out the criminals full responsibility and share with someone or something else.
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If a drug dealing ring moves into your apartment building, who do you complain to: the previous owner who sold the flat or the building manager? If they are evicted and a new similar groups moves in there, who do you complain to again? G2A is their "place", they manage it. If they don't even atempt to weed out the riff-raff before they settle in, then in an apartment building the residents usually go and try to find a new manager. Only in this case the manager is the owner, so they need to harass him through the authorities to do something, which he only does when the press is also knocking to report on the story.
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terrible analogy since one fills out an application and is theoretically vetted prior to being allowed to sign the lease. in the USA anyways, they do previous tenant checks and pull your credit report to determine if you will be a valuable tenant or not before approving your lease application.
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Theoretically. Yes. Here, theoretically tenants have to sign a contract and the owner has to report them to the tax agency.
In my 32 years I'm yet to meet someone in the country who did this. Authorities don't really care about even when you change your temporary address, they consider you a resident there just the same.
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I am not sure where you live but I have lived in several different apartments in several different US Cities and I had to fill out applications at each apartment complex and provide them with a copy of my credit report (or they would do so for an additional fee) and they also supposedly pulled my previous renters history. That is done by the apartment complex office and not any authorities (which we refer to as the police).
It would not be a surprise that in some areas of the country they do not do any checks at all. Considering that illegal aliens live somewhere and they would not legally be allowed to sign a lease agreement as a foreigner.
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in your example, using previous logic, I think if a drug dealer moves to my apartment building, it is my fault (if someday you get arested because your roommate was drug dealing, you will pray for people listen what I'm saying to you). same logic goes to a stolen weapon of yours... if that stolen weapon eventually kills someone, it is your fault because you share responsibility for being part of the crime (in that case you provided the object to kill). this blame extention to people, things and places not related with criminals and their crimes doesn't exists. if such thing exists, weapon sellers should be responsible for killing and innocent roommates will be drug dealers. think again: if a criminal use a party to do drug deal, that doesn't turn that party into a drug dealer place (sorry, I don't know the name in english)
g2a it is not "their place", as much as ebay or apartment building or any other (potential) market place. criminals are criminals. they do their things among us and this should never blame us. there's no share. there's no part of the crime.
g2a is responsible from what they sell because they are deal with buyers money. that's why they are obligated by law to refund if something goes wrong (like any other costumer buy in the world). this has nothing to do with criminals doing whatever or wherever they decided do or use to do.
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And it gets plenty of shit for doing it. You don't see armies of mindless drones barging around forums stating that Valve is not at fault here. Quite the opposite, you see people continually demanding them to do something about the obvious cash.grab titles, the obvious money laundering titles, the vast amounts of borderline or actual criminal activity that their CS:GO item market spawned.
(Although, come to think of it, the first sentence wasn't entirely true. There are vast armies of mindless drones defending the CS "economy"…)
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Well G2A also gets plenty of shit for doing it don't they?
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Not nearly enough if they can still casually afford to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars around for "sponsorship", and the vast armies of mindless drones doing their damndest to do free media work for them by stating everywhere how great a place is and everyone should buy thing only there. (They never really think into the fact that since G2A marketplace sells keys bought somewhere else, then where would the damn keys come from, magic?)
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- I'd like to rent a stall at your market. I have no id on me though..
- Of course, I'm sure you are honest man, (wink, wink), and all your goods have proof of purchase (wink, wink)
^^That's what is happening at g2a. Enables operation of fences. So even if legal charges cannot be pressed, moral opinion can and is.
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that's, basically, how every single market place in the world works. ebay doesn't check if who is selling is the owner. by the way, who is selling doesn't even have to be the owner or prove property. same goes with big stores that open their place to marketplace. everyone is a honest man, unless they prove me wrong or give me reason to believe otherwise. if you have reasons to distrust the seller, distrust the seller, not the place the seller is selling. (as I said before to talgaby, if you decide to be a criminal and sell drugs in a party, that doesn't turn the party into a drug dealing place...).
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or give me reason to believe otherwise
And this is whole point why there is made connection between g2a bussiness and criminal activities. Basically they do what they can to not see anything that might rise suspicions. Imo this by itself is enough to distrust both market operator and the sellers
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I see they doing exactly the opposite. I logged in today and I had lots of obligatory new things to do (like link to facebook or maybe proof that you bought the key) because security improvements. things that doesn't exists before.
I honestly believe that most people that talks about g2a business don't know how they work, how marketplaces works, how g2a specifically works or how criminals works. they all tend to confuse different things putting them in the same bag. did you ever heard about allegory of the cave presented by plato? talk about g2a matter on steamgifts feels like that...
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That might be surprising, but engineers heard about Plato :). Ehh, I'd feel the same if we were to talk about things within my professional area )
Sometimes you don't have to be an expert. If I go to a pawnshop and see owner buys bunch of wedding rings from a bum, no questions asked, I've every right to assume some items in the shop were stolen. Slight change in practices won't change bad rep - only total overhaul can. (For simplicity I'm ignoring existence of anti-fencing laws)
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Meh. Here on ST people get scammed too but no one says ST are scammers. I don't care, if grey market resellers offer better prices why should i pay more?
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at this point don't pay at all if you're gonna support scammer and crack the game for free.
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I'm not pirating games and i don't support scammers, one must be an idiot to support them. You just love to accuse people without any reason?
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If you're buying keys from the grey market you're not supporting the developer , that being said make your own considerations.
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Well they can always lower their prices and not selling game / dlc 10y-15y old for 20$ /20€
Or at least to finish the fuc**** game before publishing
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Honestly it's very possible someone went rampant and bought a big quantity at a nice discount from them with a stolen CC. It could of also been a chargeback.. that's stealing as well.
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I see OP is reselling bundle keys himself and he says he's against unauthorized resellers.
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Ok then,that''s totally scamming isn't it? lol i don't get your point... i PAID a bundle site which pays the developer .... meanwhile in grey market you CAN'T KNOW THAT.. and besides as i said already G2A IS NOT as safe as trading with someone with high rep on here. Stop being butthurt man, making multiple comments and accusations won't make your point stronger.
EDIT 1 : By the way,i'm pretty sure the only bundled game i sold here was rust , that's literally it,for the rest i'm using groupbuys and whenever i can't sell them there i put a thread in here. But sure,compare me to a 1/10 scamming site.
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Hypocrite haha.
I'm not buying from scammers, how many times i need to say this?
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You might be buying from scammers anyway since you don't care how your games are bought , you just care to buy the cheapest one without wondering why it is that cheap and that the devs might have been screwed. But sure,call me an hypocrite.
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"I don't care, if grey market resellers offer better prices why should i pay more?" from your previous comment.
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I don't care if someone got scammed, this not gonna stop me from using grey market/steamgifts.
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Yeah paying for games and developers getting their money is worse of course lol
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Developers don't get money if you buy the games from grey market lol
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So you are hurting developers reselling their games?
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Are you playing stupid or you just can't understand ? If i buy their game legally and sell it to someone else i can do that , since it's legal AND whenever that person plays the game it gives the game more exposure than me having it in my bundle leftovers. However in G2A they sell UNBUNDLED games for the price of BUNDLED games, by what you've said before you've proven to be a scumbag of a pc gamer so i'm gonna assume everything else you say has no importance and doesn't make your point stronger and let you die in a hole of this thread (figuratively ofc)
Stop Dm'ing me.
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Same applies for grey market resellers. So what's the difference between you and a guy selling games on g2a?
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I've already answered to the question " is steamtrades = to g2a ? " in this thread... when g2a finds out you're a scammer they take all your money but they don't refund , most of the times, the games to the costumers ... no legal action is pursued by g2a for fraud and they only ban the account of the scammer... but they can create other ones ... it's profit for the scammers and g2a , but the fair costumers get screwed by this system.... just cause you don't get scammed it doesn't make the site good.
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Some of the " The final station" steam keys in g2a.com got deactived by tinybuild for being ..guess what... stolen !
Source
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