So for those who don’t know, G2A has had a little bit of scandal this week.

For those who don’t know, G2A is essentially ebay of game unlock keys. You can buy and sell keys from all consoles through this third party member at a (usually) cheaper price than from Steam or other official services. This leads it to have the term ‘grey market seller’ where is isn’t an illegal practice, but something that companies like Steam would like to avoid.

The reason why G2A is in the spotlight? Indie developers tinyBuild, who made the game Punch Club,  has said that G2A had sold about 26,000 copies of PunchClub that had been bought with stolen credit cards, and that tinyBuild hadn’t recieved a cent of any of these purchases. So why is  this such a big problem? G2A still got their cut.

G2A buys and sell keys at a lower rate than the official sources, this is why they are so popular. But when someone buys a key with a stolen credit card, and then sells it to G2A, the thief gets a profit, as they don’t own the card. G2A then sells that key at a higher  price, and takes a chunk from the cost, gaining their profit. The owner of the stolen card can then notice the credit purchase, force a chargeback, and the person who bought the game from G2A is out of pocket.

So unless you fork out extra money to pay for “G2A shield” which will cover such events, then you’re shit outta luck.

The reason why tinyBuild is getting so upset over this is because thousands of people have been buying their game from IndieGameStand with stolen cards, then gone and sold them to G2A. tinyBuild are asking for money from G2A because they weren’t getting a cut, but G2A isn’t willing to give the 450k that tinyBuild want, as they believe the numbers are incorrect for their market, and will only help them if they are incorporated into G2A’s ‘payment solution’ and provide the list of keys that tinyBuild have sold so that G2A can remove them from the market.

I find this mildly concerning. On one hand I can see where G2A is coming from. They can’t control how keys are obtained, or if other sites have security breaches, so they can’t be expected to be held responsible. But on the other hand, if royalties are only going to the developers if they’re incorporated into their system (presumably at a cost), to stop this kind of thing happening anyway, then it seems like a bit of blackmail.

When you have game developers asking players to pirate their game instead of using G2A, you may have a disgruntled userbase.

G2A have since started revising a few of their policies, including gamers being able  to give direct money to developers, giving G2A Pay free to developers, and giving developers ability to monetise micro-transactions of their game on G2A.

Better than nothing I suppose.