Comment by maccard
3 months ago
I work in games.
Please don't buy games from g2a and the likes. In the best case, g2a make money and the developer doesn’t . in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts.
Please, just pirate games instead.
> in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts
Maybe this is just a hole in my knowledge but I don't see how this could be the case.
Regarding stolen accounts: Once I activate a Steam key, I can't deactivate my copy to get my key back (I don't think anyways). How would a stolen account generate steam keys?
Regarding bogus keys: If the keys primarily didn't work I suspect that we would see deplatforming of the site by payment processors. They generally don't like when all their customers issue chargebacks.
I think there is some risk that keys sold in a grey market are purchased by stolen credit cards but I can't imagine that this is too prevalent. I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and Steam would deactivate the key.
> Regarding stolen accounts
A good number of these sites sell accounts, not keys. You buy an access to an account that you log in to, with the key enabled on it. Again, best case it’s a region swapped key between 5 people and g2a get paid and the devs get nothing. Worst case it’s a stolen credit card purchasing a single key.
> I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and steam would deactivate the key.
Yes. Chargebacks are painfully expensive for the vendor. One chargeback for a $10 game likely undoes 4/5 sales.
https://www.tinybuild.com/single-post/2017/04/28/g2a-sold-45... This story did the rounds a few years ago explaining how much it cost a small publisher
You've twice asserted that "the devs get nothing". Can you please explain that?
Edit: I tried reading that link, but it loads and a few seconds later it is replaced with a "widget failed to load" error that removes all the text. Fun.
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> I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and Steam would deactivate the key
There's a real issue for both Valve and the game dev if this happens. The public isn't going to take this key doesn't work or worse my game stopped working after I bought it and blame nebulous credit card fraud, they're going to blame Valve and/or the dev
> There's a real issue for both Valve and the game dev if this happens. The public isn't going to take this key doesn't work or worse my game stopped working after I bought it and blame nebulous credit card fraud, they're going to blame Valve and/or the dev
It's actually worse than that. G2A have a "consumer friendly" approach whereby if your code doesn't work, they'll basically just take your word for it and give you a new one. In effect what it means is they don't really care if the codes are stolen/duds, they'll just go through _more_ to avoid them having a chargeback against them.
Ouch! I got one or two games from a key seller some years ago. I never knew these sites were such a shady act. I really, actually thought they just bought the keys in bulk during a sale to resell them later. TIL :(
I'm a firm believer in letting bygones be bygones. I bought from them too (cdkeys back in the day) before i learned the truth!