TinyBuild claims G2A sold $450,000 worth of its keys without paying a penny - Sensationalist Headlines

Everyone should read this article, it's the article that TinyBuild wrote. [url]http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys[/url] Some gems that G2A has said: [quote]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.[/quote] "The fact that so many of your keys were stolen on our website, tells you how good our website is, and that you should use it!" [quote]Not only that, but we also invite all developers and publishers experiencing problems with chargebacks to use our G2A.Pay payment solution for their stores. It’s free and we guarantee 100% security of payments and cover all expenses associated with chargebacks, preventing any losses from our partners’ side.[/quote] "Use our service, so bullshit that happens on our website doesn't happen to you when you're on our website!" [QUOTE=Cold;50560444]That's the whole point? That they should know, but they don't? Other developer and platforms track this perfectly, big or small. You sell a key, you can draw the relation between the key you just sold, the the transactionid to go with it. when it gets charged back you have the transaction id, and you can disable the key. If you're dealing with resellers you either shouldn't deal with resellers that don't provide this info, or let them hold the charge-back responsibility, this isn't uncommon. Just because they don't know, doesn't mean they can't know, especially since they used to run their own store. Like every company has its duty to prevent fraud, but its starts with you at least doing basic tracking of fraud before you go up to the biggest unauthorized resellers and demand compensation.[/QUOTE] read this article here [url]http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys[/url] [quote]A lot of people have been asking about revoking keys. It seems like an easy no brainer solution – simply disable the keys that leaked or are being sold illegally. The problem with this is a bit more complex than you might think. In short, there is no way to track which keys leaked and where. If I make a batch of 200 keys for a giveaway, and 50 of them make it onto an illegal resale site — I can’t cancel the whole batch, otherwise everyone who participated in the giveaway would have a bad experience of the game suddenly getting deactivated. This would leave fans upset, which is the last thing we want. Take that into a more complicated situation. You have some keys which are legit from bundles, others from a bunch of fraudent credit cards, and random keys scavenged from giveaways. These would be from at least 3 different batches. How do we track which one to disable? How do we ensure actual fans don’t have a bad experience? Large corporations tackle this by having a ton of people working on tracking smaller batches, but we want to stay small & nimble. This means automating as much as possible. And even if we were to spend a ton of time on micromanaging this, it wouldn’t solve the overall problem. Awareness of the general issue is what makes an impact.[/quote] Unless you have shitty DRM, there are no ways to track these keys.

Somehow, people will skim over this just as they have skimmed over previous controversies surrounding Natural Selection 2, uPlay and Sniper Elite V2, all of which involved stolen CD keys.

[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;50564522] [url]http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys[/url] Unless you have shitty DRM, there are no ways to track these keys.[/QUOTE] I don't agree with the notion that you can't both automate or track per-key, with minimal or no manual work. Consider companies who sell giftcards, if you buy those with a stolen creditcard and they get a charge-back they simply disable the gift-card. Both companies themselves, and 3rd parties who sell their giftcards are part of this. There is no batches, or having to disable a whole batch, you create a giftcard you associate a transaction id, you get a charge-back you disable the giftcard. If you can't revoke keys/giftcards or any digital product when fraud happens you might as well be selling money, and in some industries this is actually impossible (consider bitcoin). But they have no technical reason why this isn't possible, and everything they have brought up so far is simply limitations they impose upon themselves.

Out of all the key seller sites, G2A is one of the worst. The problem with G2A doesn't revolve around them being a key seller, its that they are an open market with absolutely no regulation. Top this off with the management of G2A being lazy, half arsed and overall fuelled by blatant, intentional greed to fuck over its users. G2A Shield is the best example of this money grabbing shit they pushed out, the system is automatically set to not allow you to remove it until 5 days before renewal, first purchase [I]always[/I] forces you into using Shield and to top it all off, what Shield provides is entirely at the control of them, meaning they can just dismiss your claims regardless if you signed up to it or not. Sold a duplicate key and got Shield? Eh should be easy to get a replacement then as that says it covers me right? Depends if the "staff" member feels like actually filing a claim against the seller and getting them to re-issue you a new key, good luck on that. Well if you can't get a new key, what about a refund? Depends if the "staff" member feels like being generous and putting it through the system, god help you if you file a chargeback though, their system will automatically ban your account, ip and delete all record of your account. Shield doesn't protect you, its a money grab by essentially a Shark on a unregulated market of sellers who can join and sell keygen made keys or straight stolen keys in quick batches then fuck off to never be seen again due to no background checks or proof of where the keys come from. This is where Kinguin and G2A differ, Kinguin is better managed and they regulate who sells on their sites, this is why you see a lot of partner sites for Kinguin like G2Play which were key sellers that were acquired into the Kinguin collective of sellers due to their trustworthiness. Plus Kinguin doesn't fuck around when it comes to refunds or re-issuing keys and lastly, their Shield equivalent isn't a forced subscription and they actually follow through on that 77p extra you pay for the ability to have an instant re-issue of a non-working key as Kinguin controls what keys are given out, not the sellers like on G2A. To cut short, G2A is a shady site with little to no management or regulation, they entrap you in subscription based systems and force you through loopholes to get out of it, Kinguin doesn't do any of this shit. Basically, stop using G2A and use another seller or just buy straight from the developer/publisher. On an additional note, Kinguin has actual developers and publishers selling game keys through them, really says something when this never happens on G2A or other key sellers.

[url]https://www.g2a.co/tinyBuild-fraud-allegation-g2a-statement[/url]

[QUOTE=TheJoker;50567285][url]https://www.g2a.co/tinyBuild-fraud-allegation-g2a-statement[/url][/QUOTE] Reading this irks me in the wrong way, like there's something weird with this statement. Can't put the finger on it.

[QUOTE=FezianEmperor;50567439]Reading this irks me in the wrong way, like there's something weird with this statement. Can't put the finger on it.[/QUOTE] It comes off as incredibly aggressive propaganda

Honestly, after reading this statement and trying to make sense of what looks more like an accusation towards TinyBuild against their somewhat legitimate website that somehow has thousands of developers, yet everything I've heard since G2A came around is that developers and publishers have to stop giving out Steam keys through their stores because of fraud purchases and have a real sour relationship with these grey key selling sites. Okay they try to justify that they did take initial action against 200 sellers, fair enough. I suppose we have no facts about that. So we can't be for sure they're telling the truth. They then try to originally source it to a piracy case even though that has nothing to do with anything, since G2A is a key selling site and not a warez site?? Uhm, okay. This is weird, why would G2A offer assistance into making sure that TinyBuilds know about how piracy ACTUALLY works when G2A is a key selling website and has nothing to do with piracy? Why was their email conversations initiated based on piracy? Understandably G2A can't give any lost revenue or removal of merchants stock of their illegally bought keys. Fair enough, but what does this have to do with piracy? 450,000 USD of keys mailed back. Good luck finding them all. It's hard to find every fraud bought keys and shut it down. Which is why a lot of developers and publishers have stopped giving Steam keys when people purchase their games in their store. It's also why Graphics Card no longer have game keys with their purchases too. The whole argument that because TinyBuild can't claim 450,000 USD worth of Steam CD Keys were lost, because their games were sold in a bundle during sales sometimes. Is the dumbest argument, I've ever seen. By the way none of those links actually give any proof to their statements. Either way, it's the stupidest claim ever. "Yeah, your game was on sale sometimes. So your projection of lost revenue is really not the case anymore". Fraud keys aren't even bought on steam. They're bought from the developers site or other actual legitimate key sellers at full price via fraud then resold onto G2A. The reason they didn't come back with a list of fraud bought keys is that having to go through thousands upon thousands of fraud purchased keys is going to take a lot of time to gather them all. Also, these fraud bought keys can be from other sites entirely making sure they have to check several digital distributers to find every single key. In conclusion, we are here to promote our trustworthy and great service, we provide all these things to fight against this even if it probably doesn't exist and we also have G2A shield which happily charges you monthly even though we never tell you about it and it's very, very annoying to remove too. Also, Tinybuild you have 3 days to try and get all these fraud purchased keys which I'm sure you can do it in the matter of three days. Thank you. :sick:

This is why I say NEVER buy from a key site.

[QUOTE=FezianEmperor;50567568]Honestly, after reading this statement and trying to make sense of what looks more like an accusation towards TinyBuild against their somewhat legitimate website that somehow has thousands of developers, yet everything I've heard since G2A came around is that developers and publishers have to stop giving out Steam keys through their stores because of fraud purchases and have a real sour relationship with these grey key selling sites. Okay they try to justify that they did take initial action against 200 sellers, fair enough. I suppose we have no facts about that. So we can't be for sure they're telling the truth. They then try to originally source it to a piracy case even though that has nothing to do with anything, since G2A is a key selling site and not a warez site?? Uhm, okay. This is weird, why would G2A offer assistance into making sure that TinyBuilds know about how piracy ACTUALLY works when G2A is a key selling website and has nothing to do with piracy? Why was their email conversations initiated based on piracy? Understandably G2A can't give any lost revenue or removal of merchants stock of their illegally bought keys. Fair enough, but what does this have to do with piracy? 450,000 USD of keys mailed back. Good luck finding them all. It's hard to find every fraud bought keys and shut it down. Which is why a lot of developers and publishers have stopped giving Steam keys when people purchase their games in their store. It's also why Graphics Card no longer have game keys with their purchases too. The whole argument that because TinyBuild can't claim 450,000 USD worth of Steam CD Keys were lost, because their games were sold in a bundle during sales sometimes. Is the dumbest argument, I've ever seen. By the way none of those links actually give any proof to their statements. Either way, it's the stupidest claim ever. "Yeah, your game was on sale sometimes. So your projection of lost revenue is really not the case anymore". Fraud keys aren't even bought on steam. They're bought from the developers site or other actual legitimate key sellers at full price via fraud then resold onto G2A. The reason they didn't come back with a list of fraud bought keys is that having to go through thousands upon thousands of fraud purchased keys is going to take a lot of time to gather them all. Also, these fraud bought keys can be from other sites entirely making sure they have to check several digital distributers to find every single key. In conclusion, we are here to promote our trustworthy and great service, we provide all these things to fight against this even if it probably doesn't exist and we also have G2A shield which happily charges you monthly even though we never tell you about it and it's very, very annoying to remove too. Also, Tinybuild you have 3 days to try and get all these fraud purchased keys which I'm sure you can do it in the matter of three days. Thank you. :sick:[/QUOTE] People can sell steam gifts on g2a, and other key distributors have sales and regional discounts as well. The price of SpeedRunners was 2 euro's on the humble store 9 months ago, as well as 1$ in a humble weekly bundle. So yeah they are an unauthorized resellers so their price is going to be closer to the average/median price paid per key, rather then the current steam price, that doesn't directly equate to fraud. If you look at gmod you have an average sales price that's less then 50%, then you add all the Humble Bundle bollocks, giveways, and all that will get you impressively close to matching the G2A price. That's still bad for developers because it means your discounts have much longer lasting impact then expected, but that doesn't directly account to fraud.

[QUOTE=Cold;50567840]People sell steam gifts on g2a, and other key distributors have sales and regional discounts as well. The price of SpeedRunners was 2 euro's on the humble store 9 months ago, as well as 1$ in a humble weekly bundle. So yeah they are an unauthorized resellers so their price is going to be closer to the average/median price paid per key, rather then the current steam price, that doesn't directly equate to fraud. If you look at gmod you have an average sales price that's less then 50%, then you add all the Humble Bundle bollocks, giveways, and all that will get you impressively close to matching the G2A price.[/QUOTE] The keys were bought via fraud and most likely were sold at a flat price with loss of revenue. Whether or not the G2A price is the same as the humble bundle price for the key or sale price of it. Isn't really relevant. By the way most time after a Humble Bundle the prices for the games key are still above the actual price of the Humble Bundle itself. So yeah, everyone wants to turn a coin. When fraud purchasers -> buys key from developer or other legitimate keyseller/humble bundle -> sells on G2A -> key bought -> purchasers chargebacks on their stolen CC -> buyer loses key and contacts G2A if he has Shield (Which most have) -> G2A and fraud purchaser continue their scam and people don't bat an eye.

[QUOTE=FezianEmperor;50567905]The keys were bought via fraud and most likely were sold at a flat price with loss of revenue. Whether or not the G2A price is the same as the humble bundle price for the key or sale price of it. Isn't really relevant. By the way most time after a Humble Bundle the prices for the games key are still above the actual price of the Humble Bundle itself. So yeah, everyone wants to turn a coin. When fraud purchasers -> buys key from developer or other legitimate keyseller/humble bundle -> sells on G2A -> key bought -> purchasers chargebacks on their stolen CC -> buyer loses key and contacts G2A if he has Shield (Which most have) -> G2A and fraud purchaser continue their scam and people don't bat an eye.[/QUOTE] They don't just keep chasing the charge-back date, you don't hear stories about people getting new keys through shield, and then having that disabled over and over again. They either they get a legitimate key eventually, or the publisher/developer doesn't disable the keys. Either way, at least from G2A side of the argument, it makes sense they see some proof, or need to get keys disabled, else they don't know and can't act on anything.

[QUOTE=Cold;50567984]They don't just keep chasing the charge-back date, you don't hear stories about people getting new keys through shield, and then having that disabled over and over again. They either they get a legitimate key eventually, or the publisher/developer doesn't disable the keys.[/QUOTE] Well either they play domino and give the user a new key that might be fraud bought or they have their own little database with non fraud bought keys to keep their reputation up. Of course, that's getting into severe conspiracy level. But who knows what dirty tactics they employ.

[QUOTE=TestECull;50567827]This is why I say NEVER buy from a key site.[/QUOTE] Green man gaming is a good key site, they're not grey market, all the keys come from the developers of the games.

[QUOTE=TheJoker;50567285][url]https://www.g2a.co/tinyBuild-fraud-allegation-g2a-statement[/url][/QUOTE] Going to point out anything weird with this statement. [quote]The original source of this case goes back to March 22nd of 2016. The official tinyBuild Twitter account posted a tweet containing unreliable information regarding the piracy rates of their latest title Punch Club. Naturally our representatives reached out, to educate and offer assistance to the developers.[/quote] I find it incredibly hard to believe that G2A would initiate conversation over piracy rates, assuming they're refering to a tweet that contained [URL="http://tinybuild.com/punch-club-has-been-pirated-over-1-million-times"]this information that contained no mention of G2A.[/URL] Unless, of course they were saying "ARE YOU A VICTIM OF PIRACY? USE OUR SERVICE 100% PIRACY FREE!" [quote]In conclusion, G2A has an open door, gives full support to developers with prompt communication channels, uses advanced tools (exchanging blacklist, identifying suspicious merchants and auctions and ‘KYC’-Know Your Customers procedures), and offers award-winning protection solutions with G2A Shield.[/quote] Again with the advertising, this shit is incredibly suspicious. Do companies normally shoehorn an advertisement when issuing a press statement about corruption?

[QUOTE=hoodoo456;50568275]Green man gaming is a good key site, they're not grey market, all the keys come from the developers of the games.[/QUOTE] Greenmangaming is one of the more ironic and hilarious key sites around. GMG when it was originally made was a pirate game community that also did key reselling, they hosted a lot of non-steam game servers in the past. Now they are pretty much legit and have partnerships with developers, GMG is more like an actual online game store like Steam than a marketplace now.

I can't wait for the counter message from G2A after the reply that Tinybuild gave them.

[QUOTE=hoodoo456;50568275]Green man gaming is a good key site, they're not grey market, all the keys come from the developers of the games.[/QUOTE] I still don't trust it and won't buy from it. I don't care how many people come out to defend it. I'm only buying from Steam directly, or from Newegg if I need a boxed copy(Like for GTA 5 which is too big to download in a reasonable timespan on my internet).

I don't get how people can still justify purchasing anything from G2A after all the shit that the site has been doing. G2A is pretty much made for fencing stolen goods and if you think that that's okay then fuck you. You will do less harm to the developers if you just pirate the game.

[QUOTE=TestECull;50591537]I still don't trust it and won't buy from it. I don't care how many people come out to defend it. I'm only buying from Steam directly, or from Newegg if I need a boxed copy(Like for GTA 5 which is too big to download in a reasonable timespan on my internet).[/QUOTE] Are people getting mad at you for having a platform choice that doesn't hurt developers. Absolutely nothing wrong with choosing one platform to buy games from