Murky world of PC game key reselling exposed by indie developer

[Jtbrig7390]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ndie-developer

One indie developer claims a popular PC key-reselling website sold nearly half a million dollars' worth of its games - and didn't receive a penny in return.

2
tinyBuild's PC game hit Punch Club is cheap as chips on G2A.com.
In an email sent to Eurogamer Alex Nichiporchik, boss of Punch Club and SpeedRunners publisher tinyBuild, accused G2A.com of selling $450,000 worth of its games.

G2A, which acts as a retailer and an online marketplace for video game key selling, sort of like an eBay for PC games, is perhaps the most well-known website of its kind, and even sponsors streamers and game events.

G2A is popular because it offers an easy way for people to sell off keys for games they don't want, and in the process customers get a cheap price.

Nichiporchik, however, described G2A's business model as "fundamentally flawed" and said it "facilitates a black market economy". He accused G2A users of using a database of stolen credit cards to buy game keys in bulk from a bundle or third-party key reseller, then putting them up on G2A to sell them at half the retail price.

In tinyBuild's case, it attempted to sell its games from its own online shop, but it was crippled by chargebacks associated with fraudulent credit card purchases.

"I'd start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days," Nichiporchik said. "Moments later you'd see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop."

Nichiporchik spoke with G2A and believes he has worked out the financial impact the marketplace has had on his business. The total value of the transactions on G2A was around $200k, he said. Meanwhile, if these transactions happened at retail price, it's closer to $450k.

Nichiporchik asked G2A for compensation and was told, flatly, no. Here's the response:

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.

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.

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.

It sounds like Nichiporchik has hit a brick wall with G2A - the website suggests tinyBuild's distribution partners are scamming the developer, and it should take up the matter elsewhere. Perhaps that's why he's taken the step of contacting press to complain and pen a blog post.

"There's no real way to know which keys leaked or not, and deactivating full batches of game keys would make a ton of fans angry, be it keys bought from official sellers or not," he says.

"Make your own conclusions."

Update:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-getting-ugly

The row between G2A and tinyBuild over PC game key reselling is getting ugly, with accusations of blackmail and ultimatums flying around.

1
TinyBuild's Punch Club is cheap as chips on G2A.
To recap: earlier this week tinyBuild claimed G2A, a popular PC key-reselling website, sold nearly half a million dollars' worth of its games - and didn't receive a penny in return.

In an email sent to Eurogamer Alex Nichiporchik, boss of Punch Club and SpeedRunners publisher tinyBuild, accused G2A of selling $450,000 worth of its games.

G2A, which acts as a retailer and an online marketplace for video game key selling, sort of like an eBay for PC games, is perhaps the most well-known website of its kind, and even sponsors streamers and game events.

G2A is popular because it offers an easy way for people to sell off keys for games they don't want, and in the process customers get a cheap price.

Nichiporchik, however, described G2A's business model as "fundamentally flawed" and said it "facilitates a black market economy". He accused G2A users of using a database of stolen credit cards to buy game keys in bulk from a bundle or third-party key reseller, then putting them up on G2A to sell them at half the retail price.

There's also the issue of chargebacks from credit card companies, which obliterated tinyBuild's own online shop.

"I'd start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days," Nichiporchik said. "Moments later you'd see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop."

After tinyBuild's complaint hit the internet, G2A hit back with a bizarre ultimatum: provide us with a list of suspicious keys within three days.

G2A called on tinyBuild to provide a list of the keys considered "stolen" and thus should be taken down from the G2A Marketplace, and called the $450,000 figure into question because, it said, tinyBuild referred only to the highest price point of its games in arriving at the figure.

Here's the statement:

TinyBuild should connect back with us and provide us with the list of suspicious keys for further investigation. Thereafter, G2A will be happy to publicly release the results of the investigation of this case with tinyBuild.
G2A.COM calls for tinyBuild to provide their list of suspicious keys within three days from the date of this transmission.
It's not clear why G2A has set a three-day deadline for tinyBuild - or what it'll do if tinyBuild fails to comply.

Now, tinyBuild has responded to G2A's response in a statement titled: "Our response to G2A's statement: you have 3 days to fix this."

2
G2A guarantees a safe environment and good experience - if you fork out for G2A Shield.
In an email sent to Eurogamer, Alex Nichiporchik called G2A's statement "aggressive" and accused the company of trying to "discredit" tinyBuild.

"So _now_ they're willing to help with keys, but instead phrase in the same blackmail way - you have three days to send us keys to verify," Nichiporchik said.

"Previously it was 'we're not going to help you unless you sign up working with us'."

Nichiporchik said he refuses to provide G2A with a list of keys that may or may not be stolen because of the likelihood of creating false positives.

"The way our business works is we work with a ton of partners, and tracking down individual key batches is an insane amount of work," he said.

"Everybody knows their reputation, so why would anyone even consider giving them a list of keys to 'verify'? I believe they'd just resell those keys and make more money off of it."

He continued: "We're not really talking about solutions here, only symptoms. And the cause of everything is really that they're not verifying merchants, not acknowledging the scope of their problem, and blackmailing us into working with them (saying they'll only help us if we work with them)."

Nichiporchik said he refuses to provide G2A with a list of keys that may or may not be stolen because of the likelihood of creating false positives.

"The way our business works is we work with a ton of partners, and tracking down individual key batches is an insane amount of work," he said.

"Everybody knows their reputation, so why would anyone even consider giving them a list of keys to 'verify'? I believe they'd just resell those keys and make more money off of it."

He continued: "We're not really talking about solutions here, only symptoms. And the cause of everything is really that they're not verifying merchants, not acknowledging the scope of their problem, and blackmailing us into working with them (saying they'll only help us if we work with them)."

Nichiporchik issued G2A a three-day ultimatum of his own: provide a solution for developers and publishers to benefit from the marketplace.

"As everyone knows, there's currently no way for a company like ours to benefit from the marketplace without undercutting actual retailers," he said.

"If we have solutions to set minimum pricing, getting revenue shares, and/or flatout not allowing sales of our keys on the marketplace, the tides could turn into a positive direction for the industry as a whole."

G2A has yet to respond to tinyBuild's response to G2A's original response to tinyBuild's accusation (still with me?), and the whole row is getting increasingly bitter with no end in sight.

[unholytestament]

TLDR: Developer believes correlation equals causation and inflates the figures they believe they lost.

http://archive.is/tLs2H#selection-2587.0-2627.80

The figure of 450k was arrived by taking their 3 games and finding how many had been sold on G2a and putting the current retail price on them. Which works well provided the games have never been on sale or in a bundle. if they have then we need to look at the lower price as that is the lowest potential loss figure.

Punch club was 1,251 copies @9.99 = 12,497
Party Hard was 890 copies @12.89 = 11,472
Speedrunners was 24,517 @14.99 =367,509

Punch club has been sold for 4.99 from bundlestars so we need to half that one.
Party Hard has been as low as 4.84 from bundlestars so that is slightly over 1/3rd the quoted loss.
Speedrunners has been 2.49 on steam. so we need to drop that to 1/8th

The new figures are 6,242 + 4,307 + 61,047 which comes to 71,596.

There's more...Punch Club is the only one that hasn't been in a bundle. Party Hard and Speedrunners have been in the same Humble Bundle (Orbyt play). Speedrunners was one of 3 games in the $1 tier and Party Hard was in the $8 tier. This changes our figures again.

Speedrunners was effectively sold for $0.33... 33cents. Giving us a new total of 8,090 in lost sales for speedrunner.

So the final figures are actually 6,242 + 4,307 + 8,090 which gives us a minimum loss of 18,639. A figure 24 times less than the original post.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry that they feel there were significant loses due to G2A, however the prices they've sold speedrunners in particular, suggests that they had written it off as a loss leader already.

tl;dr Actual losses are 24x less than headline figure due to bundles and sales.

[Jtbrig7390]

TLDR: Developer believes correlation equals causation and inflates the figures they believe they lost.

The amount isn't really the point, its the fact its so easy to do that's the problem.

G2A just sits there and handwaves it because they are not the seller they just host the selling site.

[gegalfo]

claims, yet has no proof

[Super Kami Dende]

regardless I will still buy cheaper games over overpriced shit.

[unholytestament]

The amount isn't really the point, its the fact its so easy to do that's the problem.

It doesn't have to be the point for it to be a bald faced lie and cast doubt on their actual point.

G2A just sits there and handwaves it because they are not the seller they just host the selling site.

They can hand wave it because the developer has no proof.

[Raiju]

I thought it was already known that G2A does nothing to stop this (as they should be as a marketplace) and therefore shouldn't be encouraged

[Jtbrig7390]

I thought it was already known that G2A does nothing to stop this (as they should be as a marketplace) and therefore shouldn't be encouraged

The funny part is so many will rag on EA,Ubisoft and then support a site like G2A that is far worse.

[Zogarth]

I thought it was known that G2A is a piece of shit semi-illegal website long ago. In many cases I think piracy would be better, even for the developers than buying off a website like G2A. But people want to save those 2$, so what can you do. Just don't fucking pretend you don't know.

[ParanoiD84]

Have been using sites like G2A for along time with no issues so far. Last games i got was Batman arkam asylum and city both GOTY editions for 8$, now if someone would sell them cheaper i would use that site unless it had tons of negative reviews.

[Jtbrig7390]

I thought it was known that G2A is a piece of shit semi-illegal website long ago. In many cases I think piracy would be better, even for the developers than buying off a website like G2A. But people want to save those 2$, so what can you do. Just don't fucking pretend you don't know.

Right. But then those who defend G2A will bring up the used games argument and ignore the fact in order for a game to be used it must be sold new first. G2A takes no responsibility for anything.

Why do company's want to give out less and less review codes? Because people throw them up on G2A and sell them.

Like I said people rag all over Activision, Ubisoft and EA while defending G2A... Its fucken priceless.

[ParanoiD84]

Right. But then those who defend G2A will bring up the used games argument and ignore the fact in order for a game to be used it must be sold new first. G2A takes no responsibility for anything.

Why do company's want to give out less and less review codes? Because people throw them up on G2A and sell them.

Like I said people rag all over Activision, Ubisoft and EA while defending G2A... Its fucken priceless.

- - - Updated - - -

You may have no issues but the devs do seeing how they get little to nothing off those sells.

But hey I guess they are not entitled to anything off there work are they.

I get most new games from steam, like warhammer. Or if there is a company that deserves my money i buy it full price, but with so many awesome games out and is comming out there is no chance in hell i can/will buy them all at full price.

[Ishayu]

As tough as this is to say: This is the developer's own fault. You should ban CD keys bought with stolen credit card details. I mean how obvious does that have to be? Keep a database of salt + hash of transaction details and relate it to a list of CD keys. If you receive a charge back, hash it again with the saved salt. If it matches any CD keys, ban and/or invalidate all those CD keys.

Problem with G2A solved.

[Paula Deen]

The problem with this whiners theory is that it would mean thousands of people who buy the keys would be losing the games (and possibly be banned) on Steam for the purchases. They aren't. I have heard of 1 case of that happening and not only did G2A Refund my friend for what happened, they made sure to tell him that Seller was on a "list" to be "monitored.' G2A cares about the shit they sell. Greenman Gaming cares about the shit they sell.

What I find funny is you don't see this hack bitching about the fact that GoG literally resells games, keeps most of the profit for themselves AND they (in the case of most older titles) bundle the games with Cracked .exe's to make playing them without a disk possible. No complaints about that though... I wonder if its because GOG is giving them money...... nah couldn't be that

[Jtbrig7390]

I get most new games from steam, like warhammer. Or if there is a company that deserves my money i buy it full price, but with so many awesome games out and is comming out there is no chance in hell i can/will buy them all at full price.

So because you can't offord all the games coming out devs should lose money?

[Super Kami Dende]

I thought it was known that G2A is a piece of shit semi-illegal website long ago. In many cases I think piracy would be better, even for the developers than buying off a website like G2A. But people want to save those 2$, so what can you do. Just don't fucking pretend you don't know.

Heh, $2. I got Premium Edition of Arkham Knight for 30% of the Steam cost.

Feelsgoodman. G2A has always been good to me, the only time I had a hiccup was when my Elder Scrolls key was revoked because it was bought with a fake credit Card, but they banned the seller and gave me a full refund.

[unholytestament]

So because you can't offord all the games coming out devs should lose money?

Are you going to attack everyone who buys games on sale now?

[Ishayu]

The problem with this whiners theory is that it would mean thousands of people who buy the keys would be losing the games (and possibly be banned) on Steam for the purchases. They aren't. I have heard of 1 case of that happening and not only did G2A Refund my friend for what happened, they made sure to tell him that Seller was on a "list" to be "monitored.' G2A cares about the shit they sell. Greenman Gaming cares about the shit they sell.

What I find funny is you don't see this hack bitching about the fact that GoG literally resells games, keeps most of the profit for themselves AND they (in the case of most older titles) bundle the games with Cracked .exe's to make playing them without a disk possible. No complaints about that though... I wonder if its because GOG is giving them money...... nah couldn't be that

If I bought a stolen CD key that didn't work from G2A because the key was stolen with a stolen credit card, I would chargeback from them. If it happens frequently enough G2A will close. I wouldn't blame the developer at all. I would blame the seller.

This is all about developers having to make sure that they have received money in exchange for every CD key they give out. Simple as that.

I mean what kind of logic is this? Do you sell your goods to people with counterfeit money because they had no idea it was counterfeit? No, you wouldn't.

[Jtbrig7390]

The problem with this whiners theory is that it would mean thousands of people who buy the keys would be losing the games (and possibly be banned) on Steam for the purchases. They aren't. I have heard of 1 case of that happening and not only did G2A Refund my friend for what happened, they made sure to tell him that Seller was on a "list" to be "monitored.' G2A cares about the shit they sell. Greenman Gaming cares about the shit they sell.

What I find funny is you don't see this hack bitching about the fact that GoG literally resells games, keeps most of the profit for themselves AND they (in the case of most older titles) bundle the games with Cracked .exe's to make playing them without a disk possible. No complaints about that though... I wonder if its because GOG is giving them money...... nah couldn't be that

Maybe because that's a authorized seller and they get money from the original sell. Now it couldn't be that at all could it.....

[ParanoiD84]

So because you can't offord all the games coming out devs should lose money?

Pretty much, they will need to slow down putting out so many great games if they expect me to buy them all at full price.