Im pretty torn on the whole g2a thing. I never used it and I dont plan to, but when I look into the whole situation, I just cant see them as particularly despicable. I am not entierly sure what is the exact reason why people hate them so much. I mean, the e-bay analogy they use to defend themselves seems fairly sensible to me, honestly. I mean, I get why the devs would be hostile towards them (being able to buy codes from bundles separately devaluates your sales), but is there any, like, objectively unethical thing that they do? Is it that they are ineffective in cooperating with devs in removing stolen keys from their marketplace?
[QUOTE=WhyNott;52130380]Im pretty torn on the whole g2a thing. I never used it and I dont plan to, but when I look into the whole situation, I just cant see them as particularly despicable. I am not entierly sure what is the exact reason why people hate them so much. I mean, the e-bay analogy they use to defend themselves seems fairly sensible to me, honestly. I mean, I get why the devs would be hostile towards them (being able to buy codes from bundles separately devaluates your sales), but is there any, like, objectively unethical thing that they do? Is it that they are ineffective in cooperating with devs in removing stolen keys from their marketplace?[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1528893"]G2A is, in some cases, objectively worse than piracy in that it actively causes developers to [I]lose[/I] money from ineffective policing of stolen keys,[/URL] a problem which is still as bad today as it was then.
[video=youtube;cac0ACHux-Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cac0ACHux-Q[/video]
And here's a much more in-depth take on why they're shit.
[QUOTE=WhyNott;52130380]Im pretty torn on the whole g2a thing. I never used it and I dont plan to, but when I look into the whole situation, I just cant see them as particularly despicable. I am not entierly sure what is the exact reason why people hate them so much. I mean, the e-bay analogy they use to defend themselves seems fairly sensible to me, honestly. I mean, I get why the devs would be hostile towards them (being able to buy codes from bundles separately devaluates your sales), but is there any, like, objectively unethical thing that they do? Is it that they are ineffective in cooperating with devs in removing stolen keys from their marketplace?[/QUOTE]
People accuse them of using stolen credit cards to buy keys, if that's true that's pretty fucked up
[QUOTE=Jorori;52130412]People accuse them of using stolen credit cards to buy keys, if that's true that's pretty fucked up[/QUOTE]
It's not that they personally do it themselves, but it's trivial to put keys up for sale and they are available on the marketplace instantly for someone to purchase, so if someone has stolen credit cards and mere hours to make use of them before they start getting cancelled, buying keys for a popular game and fencing them on G2A for instant turn-around is a no-brainer.
And it's happened multiple times.
Wouldnt this be more of a problem with the chargeback/refund system rather then the g2a website itself though?
[QUOTE=WhyNott;52130525]Wouldnt this be more of a problem with the chargeback/refund system rather then the g2a website itself though?[/QUOTE]
Except for the fact that G2A is the one enabling their storefront to be used as a convenient and handy fence for stolen serials. If it wasn't easy to do, nobody would do it and the payment processors wouldn't spike the devs in the nuts for being the ultimate victims of the card fraud (since the cardholder doesn't have to pay for the fraudulent transactions).
Also, when that thread I linked above went up, an account claiming to be from G2A came on to try and spin PR. They were pbanned quickly enough. This recent kerfuffle with TB and Gearbox has caused that account to come back and request being unbanned again.
It's funny how Gearbox, in cooperation with TB, essentially handed G2A a list of specific demands to clean up their act, with specific timelines for each, and instead of, y'know, cleaning up their act, G2A decided to double down and is now going around trying to plead their case and explain why their business model isn't a scam that harms developers cross my heart and hope to die.
And G2A Shield is an even bigger ripoff, you'd have an easier time canceling an AOL account if those were still a thing.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52130557]Also, when that thread I linked above went up, an account claiming to be from G2A came on to try and spin PR. They were pbanned quickly enough. This recent kerfuffle with TB and Gearbox has caused that account to come back and request being unbanned again.[/QUOTE]
It's most definitely a fake account. It had way too many spelling/grammatical errors. Also, why would G2A give a shit about a small forum like facepunch?
[QUOTE=WhyNott;52130525]Wouldnt this be more of a problem with the chargeback/refund system rather then the g2a website itself though?[/QUOTE]
No, becauase G2A doesn't properly vet resellers and doesn't do anything to prevent this kind of behavior from happening. Instead they sell you G2A Shield TM, a consumer protect you have to BUY in the event you end up with a fraudulent or broken key and it gets revoked from you. So not only are they profiting from stolen goods, they're double dipping on the profits from stolen goods.
G2A is a fucking scum company. I don't know why Valve doesn't just 100% prevent key reselling by eliminating consumer keys. Instead of giving the user keys, make them log into their steam account for humble bundles and shit. Eliminate giving out keys to the consumer and you eliminate key reselling. Yeah that makes it a hassle to do shit, but too bad, it hurts developers and I'd rather go through an extra minute of hassle if it prevented that.
[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;52130578]It's most definitely a fake account. It had way too many spelling/grammatical errors. Also, why would G2A give a shit about a small forum like facepunch?[/QUOTE]
FP shows high enough in google rankings now and then. However apparently the account registered with a gmail account which does throw a wrench in the credibility. :v:
Hmm, youre right there is probably somehing that they can do to make theft harder whithout compromising the user experience too much. Thanks for explaining all this!
By the way, the "demands" that gearbox gave to g2a all seem pretty ridiculous to me, honestly. Designing and implementing an API for game developers to allow for taking down stolen keys seems like the most sensible proposition, but not when they give them only 30 days to do what is a gigant undertaking. Also, wasnt one of the demands that all their customers must have a free basic anti-fraud protection, when they claim they already have that and owning shield just makes you get processed faster or something (this does sound like shady bullshit now that I think about it)?
Imo banning them because we "condone their buissness practices" is just plain dumb and its good they made this appeal. If you think that they are scumbags and you have good arguments, let them explain themselves and argue their point, and only ban them once their degrade into fallacies and dumb bullshit or give up (which is enevitably going to happen if they are wrong, right?). When you ban them just because "they are g2a" it only makes you look like you are participating in some kind of a circlejerk witchhunt for no good reason. If they werent banned, then there would be no need for me to even argue about this here, I could just watch people wrestle with them and see how well they are doing to see who is in the right.
[QUOTE=F.X Clampazzo;52130579]No, becauase G2A doesn't properly vet resellers and doesn't do anything to prevent this kind of behavior from happening. Instead they sell you G2A Shield TM, a consumer protect you have to BUY in the event you end up with a fraudulent or broken key and it gets revoked from you. So not only are they profiting from stolen goods, they're double dipping on the profits from stolen goods.
G2A is a fucking scum company. I don't know why Valve doesn't just 100% prevent key reselling by eliminating consumer keys. Instead of giving the user keys, make them log into their steam account for humble bundles and shit. Eliminate giving out keys to the consumer and you eliminate key reselling. Yeah that makes it a hassle to do shit, but too bad, it hurts developers and I'd rather go through an extra minute of hassle if it prevented that.[/QUOTE]
How would that work with physical copies though? You can't get rid of keys.
You have to be very misguided or uninformed to still think G2A deserves to be defended.
They make big bucks off grey market keys and credit card fraud, creating devastating issues for developers to which they offer a solution if you make a deal with them, and then spin it like they're doing everyone a favor. It's a literal protection racket.
All the shady shit going on with their payment process and G2A shield is just the icing on the cake.
[QUOTE=Kljunas;52130705]How would that work with physical copies though? You can't get rid of keys.[/QUOTE]
When was the last time you actually bought a physical PC copy? Why? Probably just special/collectors edition yeah? Just reserve them for special and collectors editions then and problem solved. If someone is going to try and buy 300 collectors editions of a game fraudulently then you're looking at a much easier to address problem.
[QUOTE=F.X Clampazzo;52130579]Instead of giving the user keys, make them log into their steam account for humble bundles and shit.[/QUOTE]
Humble had this for a short time but apparently the way Steam's API works changed and it removed the ability to auto-redeem keys on Steam.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;52133511]I buy physical pc games all the time so I dont have to wait for my raggedy ass internet to dl them again if I want to reinstall[/QUOTE]
They still put the game content on disks? I honestly could swear I bought a game via a physical disk a few years back that required me to download it via steam and the disk was literally just a steam installer and otherwise empty. I'm 100% sure I did too, because I was really fucking pissed about it and was like "What the absolute fuck was the point of me buying a disk then?" Because up until then like 99% of games still had their own installers as steam wasn't a major platform yet.
[QUOTE=F.X Clampazzo;52140427]They still put the game content on disks? I honestly could swear I bought a game via a physical disk a few years back that required me to download it via steam and the disk was literally just a steam installer and otherwise empty. I'm 100% sure I did too, because I was really fucking pissed about it and was like "What the absolute fuck was the point of me buying a disk then?" Because up until then like 99% of games still had their own installers as steam wasn't a major platform yet.[/QUOTE]
Depends on the game. Fallout 4 had about 2/3rds of its files on the Steam servers and the balance on the disc. GTA V on PC, if bought retail, has all of the content on-disk but needs a bjillion updates before itt'l let you play. It's up to the publisher how much you get on your discs.
[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;52130578]It's most definitely a fake account. It had way too many spelling/grammatical errors. Also, why would G2A give a shit about a small forum like facepunch?[/QUOTE]
To follow-up on this, the guy gave a g2a.com email address in his RC thread, and he claims that they use Gmail to communicate with each other internally. His flagdog is also Poland, and nobody said G2A were great at customer service or masters of English, they're great at reselling keys and enabling a black market for stolen keys. :v:
[QUOTE=F.X Clampazzo;52140427]They still put the game content on disks? I honestly could swear I bought a game via a physical disk a few years back that required me to download it via steam and the disk was literally just a steam installer and otherwise empty. I'm 100% sure I did too, because I was really fucking pissed about it and was like "What the absolute fuck was the point of me buying a disk then?" Because up until then like 99% of games still had their own installers as steam wasn't a major platform yet.[/QUOTE]
yeah, you actually have to force steam to install using the disk though. Had to do that with Napoleon: Total War, was the game I originally got Steam for.
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