G2A rep does live Q&A at Reboot conference, gets blasted by developers

[Sheevah]

It's not to say that they can't at least make the attempt to prevent the sale of illegitimate keys, because they can, it's only to suggest that shutting down G2A is not the solution to a far bigger problem. So big in fact, that it's basically unfathomable that an irrelevant symptom like G2A, merely a drop in a sea of CC fraud of over 55 billion dollars annually, has become the scapegoat of the industry.

I think I could probably nitpick a bit, at which point you could nitpick on my reply, but I believe we mostly agree.

The one thing that I think we may disagree on is that G2A is an irrelevant symptom. In the macro, I absolutely agree. Fraud on G2A's marketplace is a raindrop in an ocean of crime, but in the micro (the video game sector), I think G2A (and similar retailers) plays a larger role that should be acknowledged by individuals using their marketplace.

Ultimately, it's up to the consumer to make the decision of where to spend their money. I won't begrudge anyone for making use of G2A's marketplace, but I won't make use of it for myself, because I think it makes a harmful contribution to a sector I've loved for years.

[Katchii]

I think I could probably nitpick a bit, at which point you could nitpick on my reply, but I believe we mostly agree.

The one thing that I think we may disagree on is that G2A is an irrelevant symptom. In the macro, I absolutely agree. Fraud on G2A's marketplace is a raindrop in an ocean of crime, but in the micro (the video game sector), I think G2A (and similar retailers) plays a larger role that should be acknowledged by individuals using their marketplace.

Ultimately, it's up to the consumer to make the decision of where to spend their money. I won't begrudge anyone for making use of G2A's marketplace, but I won't make use of it for myself, because I think it makes a harmful contribution to a sector I've loved for years.

I personally think G2A is just complicit in the whole thing. They have to KNOW that a lot of the stuff they're getting is fraudulent, stolen or whatever, similar to a pawn shop in a high crime rate area. They're not committing the crime, they're just re-selling what they get in their store, but holding their hands up and saying they're completely innocent and doing legitimate clean business is just bullshit. I'd wager a very large portion of their sales are from ill gotten goods, in which case it's in their best interest as a business to not stop that from happening.

Regardless, I don't understand the want or need to defend them as a company when they're shady as shit. You can get games from actually safe and legit retailers for the same or not much more without supporting them and thereby indirectly supporting the criminals who supply them.

[Protean]

Actually, no, no I didn't at all. Conversations wander. You're intentionally taking points out of context and argue against those points in a different context within the same conversation. Objectively the cost of the average NES game was ~$40. The average cost of an AAA title now is ~$60. The end. My assessment of how I value a game irrespective of MSRP and whether I'm getting the content I expect out of a game has absolutely no bearing on the former segment of the discussion. That's pretty black and white.

And the rest of your post is just as fallacious. It's like you took a list of fallacies and tried to cram them all into one post. There's no reason for me to respond to that diatribe of emotional appeals, ad hominem, and more. Oh my gosh how dare I do that! The gall I must have!

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An appeal to morality is fallacious. Me asking if you have a non-fallacious argument to make isn't based on morality, it's based on the fact that you objectively used a fallacy. Are you daft?

Acting like morality isn't an existing factor is a fallacy in itself, and there's no discussion about the relevance of morals in an argument about the law. You're completely off track and just weaponizing the word fallacy to win an argument on which you apparently have no actual ground to argue from.

Get off your high horse and acknowledge the real world.

[Sheevah]

I personally think G2A is just complicit in the whole thing. They have to KNOW that a lot of the stuff they're getting is fraudulent, stolen or whatever, similar to a pawn shop in a high crime rate area. They're not committing the crime, they're just re-selling what they get in their store, but holding their hands up and saying they're completely innocent and doing legitimate clean business is just bullshit. I'd wager a very large portion of their sales are from ill gotten goods, in which case it's in their best interest as a business to not stop that from happening.

Regardless, I don't understand the want or need to defend them as a company when they're shady as shit. You can get games from actually safe and legit retailers for the same or not much more without supporting them and thereby indirectly supporting the criminals who supply them.

I would agree in the sense that they pretty much have to know there are lots of goods coming through that are fake or hot, but from there we have to analyze what is reasonable for them to do as a business. They aren't going to close the doors, but they can up their attempts to police the marketplace assuredly.

To what extent they can up their policing activities, I'm unsure of... largely due to my personal ignorance of the world surrounding digital goods, keys, and the reselling process. I imagine that it could potentially be so difficult to do an adequate job that the cost associated with attempting to police it proactively would put them in the red financially.

On defending them... I won't even pretend to defend their practices as though they are doing something good for the gaming world as a whole, because I believe they do more harm than good. I can only play devil's advocate for where they're currently at as an established business, and offer insight on what they could potentially/reasonably do to preserve themselves financially to continue doing business.

[Mic_128]

I agree that the way I'm reasoning leaves out the entire underbelly. It simply can't be supported, legally speaking, that they have a hand in the activities. In your analogy, G2A are the cops and the illegal transactions the crimes. The problem in this specific scenario is, that G2A can't see and is unable to verify in reality, technically and functionally whether the transaction was a legitimate or an illegitimate transaction. They could, and should, decrease the abuse of the system they're using, but they cannot prevent CC fraud, nor actively look for it. Even the bank, doesn't actually know that a transaction is false, until there's a report with a refund request. This can be weeks to months later.

For a start, stop letting accounts sell hundreds of the same CD key.

[Deleted]

You realize production value pretty much only has to deal with the value of the company and what they rate the value of their "time" as, right? Because that's all it takes to create video games is humans sinking a lot of time into coding and graphical design.

All the rest is copied data. They make the game once and copy it a million times for free. It'd be entirely different if they had to make every single copy of the game from scratch like say, a car.

You realise that you haven't the foggiest what goes into designing a game?

[Jaylock]

I see nothing wrong with G2A. I purchase many games from them every year.

Plus I support twitch streamers by buying games from their pages from G2A.

[Jtbrig7390]

I see nothing wrong with G2A. I purchase many games from them every year.

Plus I support twitch streamers by buying games from their pages from G2A.

Why am I not surprised.


Ontopic: I am not against a key reselling market, I am against how G2A goes about it and plays dumb.

If G2A (and sites alike) cracked down on resellers selling 100's of keys, Made the protection Free and just monitor there site a hell of a lot better then I would support it. Just like I support used games sell's in the console market.

G2A plays dumb, Does Anti-Consumer and Anti-Developer practices. To be honest I want them to do what Gearbox posted they should do. Now I know that could take some take (Longer then the stupid 24hours time limit Gearbox gave). But I'm sure it could be done without a month and be setup to support developers and consumers alike.

Let both recieve a profit from the sells and G2A take there cut as well. Also don't let people make a brand new account and be able to sell 100's of keys within 5mins.

Its stupid easy to make a account on G2A and sell shit, Its fucken hard to cancel there shield system, so hard its near impossible.


I am not against a key reselling site, I am against how G2A goes about it and how they play dumb.

[Vespian]

I personally think G2A is just complicit in the whole thing. They have to KNOW that a lot of the stuff they're getting is fraudulent, stolen or whatever, similar to a pawn shop in a high crime rate area. They're not committing the crime, they're just re-selling what they get in their store, but holding their hands up and saying they're completely innocent and doing legitimate clean business is just bullshit. I'd wager a very large portion of their sales are from ill gotten goods, in which case it's in their best interest as a business to not stop that from happening.

Regardless, I don't understand the want or need to defend them as a company when they're shady as shit. You can get games from actually safe and legit retailers for the same or not much more without supporting them and thereby indirectly supporting the criminals who supply them.

You're probably right, but I live in a world where people are not guilty until proven.

[Tech614]

You're probably right, but I live in a world where people are not guilty until proven.

That explains it, Mr OJ Simpson. Who knew you posted on MMO-Champion?

[Gray_Matter]

As a matter of fact they were practically free. My father had a subscription to a game magazine that had the entire program typed up in it and he would spend a weekend typing it up for us, the cost was a couple of bucks an issue and it had more than one game in it. Also this is MSRP, not what games actually sold for in stores.

Are you really trying to compare a game you type in from a magazine with the games you buy on Steam? That's just absurd.

There are lots of reasonably priced games. Take a look here:

https://www.steamgifts.com/discussio...earch?q=humble

This is the humble bundle bundles over the last while.

An example. They had Civ 3, 4, 5 and Beyond Earth for $15. That's just one. You aren't going to get the latest AAA game on special but you will get 1 or 2 year old games.

Still don't believe me? GOG and Steam are actually giving away Saints Row 2 at the moment and you can be sure that game is light years better than anything your dad typed in from a magazine.

My take on this G2A thing. I bought their latest 2 bundles because those were done with the developers or their publishers. I don't think the AAA guys hurt much from a place like G2A. It's the little guys that get burned. The indie developers who are selling games.

[niil945]

That's really the only way TO apply it in situations like this. If the inflation between 1990 and 2017 was 100% (arbitrary number for easy math, that's all) that means the value of a dollar was 100% more in 1990 than it is now which means that if the price of an item doesn't vary by that much over the years, like the average video games which have been ~$60 for the last 10 or so years at least, that means they are actually decreasing in value because a $60 game today has the value of $120 back in the 90's. The PRICE is the same, but the VALUE is not.

The discussion is about how far your money can go today vs back then and it can go farther today than back then. Aside from all of the digital mediums that have ridiculous sales all the time anyway which weren't a thing back then, the value of a video game today is less than the value of a video game back then. Hence the argument about why now is the cheapest time to be a gamer than it ever was.

Actually that's false. Look up Inflation Fallacy. It's not a logical debate fallacy classification, it's an economic principle. If you're looking at inflation through the lens of "but the dollar had more buying power 10 years ago!" you're actually using a very dumbed down version of inflation improperly to make an argument. Because inflation doesn't just impact what you can buy with $1, it also impacts wages, which in turn is comprised of employee value and time. Inflation doesn't act on everything equally either, so $1 of food or gas is impacted more by inflation than $1 of entertainment as one easy example. To put it simply, the premise of the argument using inflation is wrong because it's blatantly demonstrating that you don't actually understand what inflation actually is if you just use the basic figures and apply it to the MSRP of a good 20 years ago and say that's what it should cost now. That's not how inflation works.

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Are you really trying to compare a game you type in from a magazine with the games you buy on Steam? That's just absurd.

Yes, yes that point is absurd. Good thing it wasn't the point I was making or even remotely close. Are you trying to compare games on Steam to flying cars in the future? Omg that's ludicrous! See how stupid it is?

[Gray_Matter]

Yes, yes that point is absurd. Good thing it wasn't the point I was making or even remotely close. Are you trying to compare games on Steam to flying cars in the future? Omg that's ludicrous! See how stupid it is?

Ok, what was your point in bringing it up then?

[niil945]

Ok, what was your point in bringing it up then?

To put it simply that there were a plethora of ways that aren't available today to get games cheap or free. That specifically was referencing games when I was 5 on a Trash 80 in the late 70's and early 80's in the Atari 2600 era of gaming and they were actually games that were comparable to what people could buy for the Atari. Fast forward a half a dozen years until what...around 2000 maybe?... and you could find Hollywood Video and Blockbuster and rent games for a couple bucks, beat them, and return them. Now many games are account locked since the bulk of them aren't physical copies anymore, whether you're talking Steam, Origins, or console accounts, and you can't share games with friends or rent them like could easily be done in the past. The point about this being a time where games are cheaper isn't true when you look at MSRP or if you consider the many things that have changed or the many ways developers try to force each person to buy content instead of us passing a cartridge or a pack of disks around to our friends. Hell, many games that are single player still require people to create accounts and login to play them and the sole purpose is to force more people to pay retail price for games.

[Vespian]

Why am I not surprised.


Ontopic: I am not against a key reselling market, I am against how G2A goes about it and plays dumb.

If G2A (and sites alike) cracked down on resellers selling 100's of keys, Made the protection Free and just monitor there site a hell of a lot better then I would support it. Just like I support used games sell's in the console market.

G2A plays dumb, Does Anti-Consumer and Anti-Developer practices. To be honest I want them to do what Gearbox posted they should do. Now I know that could take some take (Longer then the stupid 24hours time limit Gearbox gave). But I'm sure it could be done without a month and be setup to support developers and consumers alike.

Let both recieve a profit from the sells and G2A take there cut as well. Also don't let people make a brand new account and be able to sell 100's of keys within 5mins.

Its stupid easy to make a account on G2A and sell shit, Its fucken hard to cancel there shield system, so hard its near impossible.


I am not against a key reselling site, I am against how G2A goes about it and how they play dumb.

I would say we're on the same side then. Though I have yet to figure out why we're shooting at them with nukes, when these are the sum of the issues...

[Jtbrig7390]

I would say we're on the same side then. Though I have yet to figure out why we're shooting at them with nukes, when these are the sum of the issues...

Because they play dumb, They act like there isn't issues when there is. I mean just look at the video in the OP and you can see that.

If they made there business more Consumer/Developer friendly then I would have no issues. This is something they have shown time and time again they don't want to do.

[Tommi]

I always buy my games from G2A and Kinguin if multiplayer, or just pirate if single player.

[niil945]

Acting like morality isn't an existing factor is a fallacy in itself, and there's no discussion about the relevance of morals in an argument about the law. You're completely off track and just weaponizing the word fallacy to win an argument on which you apparently have no actual ground to argue from.

Get off your high horse and acknowledge the real world.

Laws are not always moral. Morality is not always codified in law. Value systems are subjective, as is obvious by the varied discussion of intellectual property rights and piracy. Your position is a non-argument that defaults to an authority of morality (you) that isn't actually an authority on the matter. Next?

[Protean]

Laws are not always moral. Morality is not always codified in law. Value systems are subjective, as is obvious by the varied discussion of intellectual property rights and piracy. Your position is a non-argument that defaults to an authority of morality (you) that isn't actually an authority on the matter. Next?

That's a lot of words to say "I have no argument but I'm still going to act like I do"

Your claim was that morals are irrelevant, I'm saying they matter. You asking "Next" when you haven't provided anything of substance speaks volumes about your character.

[niil945]

That's a lot of words to say "I have no argument but I'm still going to act like I do"

Your claim was that morals are irrelevant, I'm saying they matter. You asking "Next" when you haven't provided anything of substance speaks volumes about your character.

Your position was fallacious based on moral authority. Morality is not an objective position. You claiming it is a valid position to take doesn't make it objective. It just makes it obvious that you don't understand what objective and subjective actually mean. And my point about morality and law is that using law is just another appeal to authority. You can't defend a law by pointing at the law. You subsequently can't defend morality by pointing at said law. You can't defend a law by claiming it's moral either. It's circular logic. My opinion is the only right opinion! That's basically the gist of your position.