With the dust just about settling around the recent G2A controversy, we take a look at just how one of the biggest online gaming marketplaces hit the self-destruct button.
While G2A hasn’t shied away from controversial business practices in the past, July represented a particularly troublesome time for the digital redistribution site. With names like Mike Rose, Rami Ismail and Mike Bithell joining the chorus of indie developers hit with the fees associated with stolen key reselling, the marketplace experienced a considerable public meltdown that seemed to reach into every aspect of the industry.
Become a cyberpunk, an urban mercenary equipped with cybernetic enhancements and build your legend on the streets of Night City. Create your character from scratch and choose their background out of three unique Lifepaths. Take the role of a gang-wise Street Kid, freedom-loving Nomad, or a ruthless Corpo. G2A is a shady website that resells keys for game downloads. The problem with G2A is that it's shady as hell and has been criticized heavily for allowing fra. Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality.
The rumblings of dangerous business practices were around even in the beginning. Problems began almost as soon as G2A pivoted to a public marketplace for everyday gamers to buy and sell their unwanted Steam codes. In 2015, Riot Games banned the company from sponsoring the 2015 League of Legends World Championship for reselling stolen keys as well as offloading fully levelled accounts, a strike against their regulations. Then, in 2016, tinyBuild claimed that they had lost close to $500,000 in stolen game codes that were sold on the G2A marketplace. We’ve always known there were shady dealings going on in the grey market, but it wasn’t until last month when a simple Google Ad search blew the lid off the problem.
On June 30th, publisher Mike Rose (previously of tinyBuild and now of No More Robots fame) took to Twitter after G2A steamrolled his publisher page with their own Google Ads. Tweeting that “we make zero money on our games if people buy them through your ads,” other developers soon followed suit in asking players to simply torrent their games instead of buying them through the marketplace. For G2A, this only represented a minor headache at this point. For the developers, all the pent-up frustration surrounding G2A’s business practices and seeming unwillingness to address their concerns was about to spill out.
Rami Ismail tweeted that “these sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks.” That caught G2A’s attention. In a move that seemed to set the tone for the rest of G2A’s bizarre marketing decisions over the next few days, the company released a statement completely ignoring the cause of the problem (at that point, stolen keys) and instead focusing on the positivity of offering developers 10x their chargeback fees in repayment. Note: This was later found to be bogus, with developers only being able to claim for keys they had themselves supplied.
While they do this, they also take the chance to attempt to dispel some of the social media stink that currently surrounds them. Again, we see another early indication of just how G2A will handle the sensitive and often volatile world of social media relations. They respond to Mike Rose’s tweets with a blog post of haughty smarm and an adolescent tone that manages to remain defensive and aggressive at the same time, essentially arguing that developers who give out free keys should expect to see them on a digital marketplace.
“I’ve had to stop giving out keys so freely to potential press and influencers because G2A doesn’t care about policing their site,” Rose explains. “We’re far less inclined to get involved with Humble Bundle as we know all the keys will appear on G2A afterwards and tank our Steam sales.
“The problem is the perception of value… as an industry, we are constantly fighting for players to perceive our games as valuable. If you see that Descenders is available for cheap somewhere dodgy your brain will say ‘hmm, maybe I shouldn’t buy it full price?’.”
With all of this coming out in real-time over social media, G2A seeks to minimise the conversation, asserting that only 8% of sales made through their site are indie, and the game in question sold minimal copies on the platform. A theme emerges. G2A answer the bare minimum in response to developer concerns, before filling their own media with lofty proposals and answers to questions that developers never set to them. Rather than addressing the stolen key issue, they try to pay back for chargebacks. Rather than take a look at how their sellers can afford to list games so cheap and crash the market, they pluck stats from the vault that make such prices seem irrelevant anyway.
So only 8% of sales made through G2A are indie? It wouldn’t hurt you to get rid of them then, say the developers. Mike Rose starts a petition to stop G2A selling indie games through its marketplace. 3,000 people sign in 24 hours.
Again, we see a sarky response from whoever is running the G2A social account: “Let’s say that petition goes and G2A decides to stop selling an indie game… Sellers would move to the next platforms (there is like 20 of them) and then to Ebay and other marketplaces”. The industry takes time out for a good chuckle and then goes back to signing the petition.
As more and more developers join Rose’s petition and Twitter becomes more and more overwhelmed with the voices of angry developers and consumers alike, G2A panic. That’s when this email lands in the Indie Game Website inbox.
“Hello,
My name is Adrian and I represent a global digital marketplace called G2A.”
Yep.
“At the moment, we are trying to improve our brand awareness and public image.”
Okay.
“We have written an unbiased article about how ‘Selling stolen keys on gaming marketplaces is pretty much impossible’ and we want to publish it on Your website without being marked as sponsored or marked as associated with G2A. It is a transparent and just review of the problem of the stolen keys reselling. If you are interested in publishing the article, please provide me with the pricing and details.”
Oh, Adrian.
This email was, it turned out, sent out to ten independent gaming news organisations, and reignited the flame fuelling developer incredulity. In one fell swoop, G2A had grounded any previous semblance of credibility. They duly issued a curt Twitter apology and continued on their way.
It’s not the first time the company has reached out to potential influencers to straighten out their public image, however. With streamers coming forward to explain that they were being offered cash for spouting G2A’s marketing lines on camera previously, it’s obvious that the marketplace relies too much on outdated content marketing tactics that have since evolved out of existence. It’s a repetitive story, though; when G2A panic they make stupid decisions and it’s something we’ve seen throughout this adventure into the grey markets.
G2A’s latest move came just last week when they announced their new plans to develop a key blocking tool, one that would allow developers to enter codes that had been bought illegally into a system and remove them from the storefront. That’s all well and good if it was the responsibility of the developers to ensure G2A isn’t selling stolen goods, but it’s not and G2A know that. That’s all well and good if it’s actually stolen Steam keys that are the problem, but it’s not and G2A know that.
We’re going to need to back up a little now. G2A know it’s not the Steam keys that are the problem, it’s the dodgy Steam Gift workarounds that have been causing real financial harm to developers. G2A wants you to know that it’s difficult to sell a stolen Steam key, because it’s not just the Steam keys that are costing developers thousands in chargebacks and lost revenue.
When a person buys a game from G2A, they are often asked to add a bot as a friend on Steam, who will then gift them the key. This is a shady practice used only to keep the transactions separate – seller sells a game on G2A, buys the key from a cheaper Steam region, gifts the player the key, then cancels their own purchase. It’s why consumers often find that they can’t access these games after a short while, and why publishers and developers don’t get a cent of the deal.
Mike Rose comments on the new developments coming out of G2A: “It’s nice to see them finally taking a step in the right direction – however, notice how they still completely ignore the actual problem of sellers using dodgy Steam Gift links… it’s just yet another example of G2A publicly making some positive sounding noise to glaze over the fact that they’re not actually addressing the issue at all.” In other words: ‘Keep looking at this big flashy Steam key blocking tool we’re giving you developers, just don’t look over there at the Steam Gifts that are causing the real problems, otherwise we’re done for.’
So what’s actually happened here? Well, the difficult questions of ownership and digital distribution seem to be finally reaching maturity. Relationships between independent publishers and developers and the digital distributors they rely on are already taut around these issues, and we’re seeing the first eggshell crack. G2A have been knowingly running a sketchy service that turns a blind eye to the scammers and places responsibility for avoiding theft on the developer for years, and it can’t be ignored any more.
A defensive and petty social response and an ill-advised content marketing attempt later, and G2A are haemorrhaging credibility. Painting over the real cracks in their business model with flashy blog posts and headline-hijacking empty promises and puppeteering sent G2A on an incredibly publicised road to hell. With Mike Rose’s petition gathering traction every day and more consumers being alerted to the harmful practices at play here, it’s not long before G2A sees considerable damage. It’s not the first rumbling of virtual ownership malpractice we’ve experienced, but it’s a new chapter in what is becoming one of the biggest stories of the digital age.
In the meantime, Factorio developers Wube have taken G2A up on the offer of their 10x chargeback payout, though their radio silence on the topic hasn’t come as much of a surprise. Mike Rose’s advice? “We just have to keep highlighting the issue whenever we can. I have future plans that’ll do just this.” While that’s all Rose had to say on his next move, we’ve been assured he’ll be tweeting it all the way.
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G2A is often the centre of debate in the games industry. On the one hand, a marketplace where players can resell their unwanted games is not inherently controversial -- yet controversy dogs the company's every step.
Animosity towards G2A has been building among publishers and developers for years, most recently resulting in a petition to stop the site from selling any indie games.
Each time the company responded -- whether offering to repay ten times the amount developers lost on chargebacks or proposing to build a keyblocking tool -- has been met with everything from apathy to derision and angry tweets of, 'You're missing the point.'
Allegations that G2A allows the sale of stolen game keys, or keys that have been purchased with a stolen credit card, or Steam Gift links that don't actually work, have seen the site widely dubbed a 'grey marketplace.' The company has previously insisted detractors simply don't understand its business model, and continues to assure how seriously it takes these accusations -- yet confusion around it remains.
'We really want to talk,' says head of communications Maciej Kuc. 'We're willing to explain everything because we know we've made a tremendous number of mistakes in the past and of course we admit that. But we've changed in a big way. Right now, we have some of the best practices in the industry -- we can easily compare to eBay.
'Lots of people say we don't verify sellers. Where do they get this information from? Come to our website, become a seller, try to sell something. A few years ago, it was possible to sell something without providing personal data before cashing out. But right now on our marketplace, if you want to become a seller, the procedure is so strict we can assure you we're perfectly aware of who our sellers are.'
This at least is true. GamesIndustry.biz went through the process and were asked for a business registration number, tax number, date of incorporation, plus verification for the identity of each person who would be selling through G2A via their driving licence, passport or ID card. We also had to upload images of a certificate of incorporation or business registration, a document confirming our identity, another confirming our address, and (optionally) a certificate of VAT -- plus a bank statement and SWIFT or BIC code. Even if registering as a sole trader.
Herein lies one of Kuc's key points: this is far too much effort for your average user. Over 90% of sales on G2A are made by large businesses, with one having sold 4.7 million products since the site started. Total sales for the past five years are now at 37 million, with the number of sellers at around 400,000.
'There's no place in a business like that for any kind of shadiness or fraud because this wouldn't work,' he adds.
Even if someone successfully makes it through this process, Kuc emphasises that G2A cannot prove where a product sold on its platform comes from, but is confident the vast majority are codes won in giveaways or bulk sales to distributors and resellers (more on that in a moment).
'We know we've made a tremendous number of mistakes in the past and of course we admit that. But we've changed in a big way'
Despite the anger from the indie community, Kuc reminds us that G2A's top-selling games for the past five years have been Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League and Grand Theft Auto V respectively, with an abundance of other AAA games often dominating the site. Keys for these titles are sold by the thousands, which raises the question most commonly leveled at G2A: where are those keys coming from?
G2A's own screenshot of sellers offering keys for the No More Robots-published indie racer Descenders -- intended to show how little impact these sales had on the game's performance -- revealed that some users were selling more than 100 keys at a time. The publisher's founder Mike Rose questioned why this wasn't an immediate red flag, but Kuc tells us sellers shifting large numbers of keys is actually commonplace on G2A. On the site's page for GTA V, he shows us sellers who have sold between 7,000 to 73,000 keys in the last twelve months (not all for Rockstar's title, mind you).
'Putting hundreds or thousands of keys on sale for one game is something most sellers are doing every day,' Kuc explains. 'So there's no flag there -- a bigger flag would be if someone sold only one key.'
Fine, selling keys in large quantities is -- in G2A's eyes -- not enough to raise suspicion, but it's still not clear where those keys are coming from.
'I don't know,' says Kuc. 'You can go onto the site, you can ask them straight away.'
So we did. GamesIndustry.biz reached out to three sellers: Gamingimperium (who has sold 64,532 keys in the past year), World_of_Games (43,015) and Keysell2431 (24,466). All three replied, although the oddities of G2A's messaging system means we're unable to know who each response belongs to (messages are accessed with a verification code issued via email, and the user you are speaking to becomes anonymous).
One said it can vary from seller to seller but assures that its own keys 'originate from wholesalers / distributors / resellers worldwide.' Another refused to provide any information. The third simply said 'Steam.' All three closed the conversations, preventing us from following up.
Kuc insists key theft is 'purely impossible', adding: 'Just out of plain common sense, do you really think you could illegally obtain 100,000 keys? How? In what way?'
G2a Cyberpunk 2077 Steam
He continues: 'Who can generate keys? Only publishers and developers. In the vast majority of cases, the keys come either directly from them or from distributors. Some people wonder why developers would sell keys to distributors when they could sell on Steam. But if you're a company and you need to meet your KPIs, having the possibility to sell 100,000 keys straightaway to one distributor for a discounted price... absolutely [makes sense]. Yes, if you sell on Steam, you can sell for €30 but if you sell in bulk at €10, you have €1 million instantly. It's far better to invest that in making new games -- especially if it's a long time after release.'
Since it's more common for people to sell keys in bulk through G2A, why was the opposite not flagged, i.e. the number of people selling just one or two copies of Descenders? Kuc says that while it's less common, it's still possible for users to sell a single key but emphasises they still have to go through that rigorous checking procedure.
'Games can be cheaper. That's exactly what we do. But we're not saying that games are not worth your money'
'It can happen - people buying bundles and selling single games, people winning keys in competitions or giveaways,' he says. 'We are totally fine with that... However, we treat them in the same way as we treat businesses that are going to sell large quantities.
'What's also worth remembering is that the vast majority of games sold on G2A are AAA titles, and these are almost always acquired in wholesale. With the smaller titles the number of keys available isn't big. If a developer doesn't sell keys in wholesale, there are only few available on our marketplace, and they usually come from bundles and giveaways.'
During the Descenders dispute, Mike Rose also claimed that many of the games sold on aren't actually Steam keys -- they're 'dodgy Steam links' further muddying the process. When asked about this possibility, Kuc said he didn't believe this was the problem as it's 'probably more complicated for people to use them.'
'There are only a few sellers who use Steam Gifts on our marketplace, and they are rated Excellent sellers -- if they are Excellent Sellers, the number of negative comments needs to be really, really low.'
Kuc also reiterates that customer satisfaction on G2A is at 99%. In other words, if no one has complained, it's not an issue. We followed up with Kuc for further clarification on the sale of Steam Gift links, but again were told to ask the sellers.
Finally, a major point of contention around G2A is the fact that games are sold well below the retail price. The company openly says it thinks games can be cheaper -- a sentiment Kuc believes developers and publishers might misunderstand.
'If you're 30-something and you have a stable job, you can afford to pay standard retail price and not care about discounts, sales and so on -- G2A is not built for that person. G2A is for someone who is actually struggling with money, who has a choice of whether they buy the game on the marketplace or they pirate the game instead.
G2a Cyberpunk Wallpaper
'For some people, it's either G2A or piracy. So over the last five years, we have done a lot of good for the industry'
'This is something we really try to encourage -- please buy legitimate products. [Ours are] legitimate products you can have, but far cheaper than the usual price. We know that for some people it's either G2A or piracy. So over the last five years, I think we have done a lot of good for the industry because we actually introduced the idea that games can be cheaper.'
Rose, however, argued during the Descenders incident that the site is actually damaging the perception of value. Why would consumers buy from Steam if they can get everything for less at G2A? Kuc counters this by pointing out that most indie publishers offer a discount around launch -- while No More Robots limits this to 10%, some offer bigger price cuts.
'And yet it's G2A's fault that the perception of value is...? Come on. You have full control [over the price], you can generate as many keys as you want, you can sell the game on Steam for a price you set. But it's G2A's fault the perception of value is worse?
'Our goal -- and we're not hiding it -- is we want to raise awareness among people that games can be cheaper. That's exactly what we do. But we're not saying that games are not worth your money. If you're discounting your game the first day... People who missed that, what do they do? Do they pay more, or do they wait for discount?'
Kuc reiterates that G2A wants to address any issues developers or publishers have with its business, but it's hard to do that when responses to its solutions are limited. Only one company has so far taken up the offer of ten times chargebacks, and only 19 studios registered interest in the key-blocking tool.
He concludes: 'Everything bad in the industry [seems to be] G2A's fault. Everything someone doesn't like is our fault. What is G2A going to do to solve this issue? We're getting questions all the time -- imagine eBay being asked about how to stop crime in certain areas because we know there are bikes being stolen there and these bikes are ending up on your platform. What could eBay do? It's a platform with security of its own. It's down to the police and the people who own those bikes to prevent that from happening.
G2a Cyberpunk
'Our position is a bit better, because we can easily help our partners, distributors and developers because the keys are unique and we can check very easily a certain key that has been obtained in a shady way appears on our marketplace. All it takes is to contact us'