better pirate games than use grey reseller sites

Yea well, I'll stop buying from resellers the day they finally reduce prices on digital games. Turns out I don't want to spend my hard earned money on 60 € digital games.

Years ago they lied to us saying that digital was the future because it had a lot of advantages like lower prices and few disadvantages. 2019 and the cost of the game is still the same.

I think the real question is if you'd rather be a reseller of virtual games or a pirate

I love this thread, people defending grey markets and blaming developers with no real argument while other people try to explain them how it actually works like they would care about it.

Who knows, maybe Gray markets and pirating are just wrong solutions for a bigger problem, but yet, people still supporting them because of there no real alternative solutions. Even if you are buying from dev websites, they still need to pay for platforms for you to activate on (Epic, Steam and etc). Why don't we improve income inequality so people have more purchasing power and also ask Steam nicely not to take 30% every sale and maybe devs can lower game price and still hit a breakeven or whatever we can think to help solve this problem?

If could start helping to solve the problem now by changing Steamgift policy to only able to gift in Steam gift format. What do you guys think?

Wouldn't like 90% of the issue be fixed by not bundling their games or giving out keys? Or have the bundle sites directly link with the Steam account.

If a game isn't popular especially then putting it in a bundle just gives resellers thousands of keys and tanks the price of their game. I don't get how that's so hard to comprehend.

This makes me think, where does Kinguin get their free games they give away each weekend ? Just a curious question seeing as they are a grey market

Can't be bothered reading through this entire thread - just woke up.

I believe it's more of a joke, as in: we'd rather you pirated our games than bought them from grey market sites like g2a & kinguin, etc. The reason for that is because developers/publishers don't make any money when a grey market site sells their games.

From my understanding grey market sites like g2a acquire a lot of their keys by mass purchasing bundles, or buying none-region-locked keys from countries where games have a much lower retail price due to the economy of said countries, or they mass buy keys from other stores while games are heavily discounted during a sale. Now depending on how they bought the keys they can wait until the sale has ended or just markup the keys they've acquired back to full price bar a 20% discount or whatever to make a profit.

The grey market is shitty because they are essentially buying cheap, then reselling at an higher price, & the developers/publishers see none of the profits from that. Then again key reselling is basically like those antique shows you see on tv, buy cheap, try & auction off for more money.

As a game developer myself I don't really agree with grey markets. I've even bought from them myself a couple of times in the past, but these days I tend to buy bundles or directly from steam & legit stores when games have a decent discount on them; or full price/slightly discounted if it's something I really want to play there & then - most recent purchases being resident evil 2 remake & mordhau, both of which I bought on launch.

We all know this is complete bullshit right?
It's well known where G2A sellers get their keys - from Steam-key sales and bundles.
So the publishers already got their cut when they sold the game to the resellers, and now they're trying to prevent anyone else from making any money off it.
Talk about greedy...

This just in:
Publishers: You're better pirating the game than buying it for anything less than MSRP (bundle, sale, etc.)!
That way, we're making much more money!!!

lol,
💀
the pirate way...

I have a couple games on Steam, and I'm okay with G2A reselling keys.

If you buy it from there I have been paid, either 1 or 2 cents if they got the key from a bundle. Or 70% of the price they paid on a third party site like itchio.

I think the trade is worth it for games that have been out for a year or two. Some keys end up on G2A, but a payout from Humble Bundle is usually around $100,000. Even smaller bundles are worth $200-$2000.