Tinybuild claims G2A has scammed them out of $450,000

[WYP]

Tinybuild claims G2A has scammed them out of $450,000 by selling fraudulent game keys and facilitating a "black market economy".



Read more on G2A's shady practices.

 

[SeekaX]

Read more on G2A's shady practices.

I don't know why this made me laugh, probably because it could be a headline in the Sun.
Ah well, i avoid keysellers, not being able to get a refund is annoying and considering the prices you know that there's always something shady going on. A good game deserves the full price.

 

[barnsley]

shock horror company known for dodgy practices is most likely dodgy.

 

[Greenback]

I disagree with this
"Tinybuild could try to combat these fraudulent game key sellers by blacklisting suspected game keys, but in reality, this only serves to harm the consumers who purchase them and not the black market key sellers themselves."

If they block those keys then the person who bought them would need to go to G2A for a refund, which wouldn't happen, this would discourage that person from purchasing keys from sites like this in future.

secondly unless these stolen keys are sold by Tinybuild directly, then surely the chargeback goes to the partner/reseller who sold them and not Tinybuild as they should have already been paid by the partner/reseller

 

[WYP]

I disagree with this
"Tinybuild could try to combat these fraudulent game key sellers by blacklisting suspected game keys, but in reality, this only serves to harm the consumers who purchase them and not the black market key sellers themselves."

If they block those keys then the person who bought them would need to go to G2A for a refund, which wouldn't happen, this would discourage that person from purchasing keys from sites like this in future.

secondly unless these stolen keys are sold by Tinybuild directly, then surely the chargeback goes to the partner/reseller who sold them and not Tinybuild as they should have already been paid by the partner/reseller

A lot of these keys were taken from the developer directly when they sold them on their own webstore. This store had to be closed down due to frequent chargebacks.

Disabling these keys could only be applied to known fraudulent keys, which takes a while for the developer to fully investigate. Most disable keys will be for users who own the game for longer than G2A's refund policy will allow, meaning that a lot of users will not get a refund.

I remember Ubisoft doing this for Far Cry 4 keys a few years ago and it was a PR disaster for Ubisoft. Lots of angry fans.

 

[shambles1980]

i see..
One company upset that they dont have as many sales as they would like.
and another company saying.. You sold these keys to a re seller..

You would imagine that a re seller would need to be verified before being supplied with any meaningful amounts of cd keys.
So i find it hard to imagine that so many of these keys are reportedly bought en-mass and then charge backs are applied.
if they are then there is something seriously wrong with the way they verify the buyers..

Also it should be a simple matter to have a set prefix in a cd key.. IE
bac12-798xx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx to bac19-999xx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx
and sell them in sequential order.. they do it with money so i dont see why cd keys couldnt be ordered like that..

then if some one buys 1000 keys on a stolen card. they can easily just dissable all keys in the batch that was sold to the fraudster.
people would complain to the g2a web page who would remove that reseller.

yes some end users would be hit by this. but generally this would be quick enough that g2a were still able to refund them.
if this practice had been in place from the start that it.

 

[Greenback]

My simple question if I was them would be why is some one buying so many of the same game at the same time

 

[BigDaddyKong]

Also G2A has fraud measures in place. Why don't the other companies. If someone order 1000 keys, why did their system not throw a flag to catch it.

 

[WYP]

My simple question if I was them would be why is some one buying so many of the same game at the same time

Also G2A has fraud measures in place. Why don't the other companies. If someone order 1000 keys, why did their system not throw a flag to catch it.

You need to realise that a lot of people who do scams like this are done against people using bots, where it will be lots of single transactions rather than a single bulk transaction.

 

[BigDaddyKong]

Then is it G2A that is using the stolen credit card? This sounds like a straw man argument to me. Does Ebay ever get goods that was procured in an illegitimate fashion? They are taking it out on the wrong person. G2A may resell the keys, but they are not the ones stealing.

 

[WYP]

Digital goods are much easier to steal than physical goods and by their very nature are infinitely reproducible.

Credit card chargebacks cost companies money, it is not a matter of giving them money and taking away again, the chargeback has a cost. G2A also give only limited information on sellers that you are buying from, whereas competitors like kinguin offer much more information such as seller ratings and a better cashback guarantee for faulty products.

While G2A is not stealing game keys directly and only facilitating the sales they have proven time and time again that they are not taking enough action against them. Offering developers the opportunity of underselling their own goods on their store as an alternative is not an alternative.

It is also a known practice for some G2A sellers to send out mass emails to developers stating that they are a youtube channel and are requesting a copy to lets play or review, to then sell the codes on G2A.

There has even been reported cases of developers saying that it is better for gamers to pirate their games than use G2A to purchase them, which is frankly appalling.

While G2A is not the sole cause of this problem they do a lot to facilitate it, which is a scary though given how many gaming event and streamers that they sponsor now.

 

[Kushiro]

Wait, they would encourage pirating over purchasing though G2A? Thats a lot of dislike there.

Havent purchased anything from G2A personally, however from what I can see, its not exactly G2As exclusive responsibility. There are genuine sellers.

Maybe thr game devs should charge a slightly more affordable price for the masses and just sell directly. Games prices these days I. E COD are just plain bogus for what they are. Harder for smaller devs but hey theres always steam.

 

[shambles1980]

if end users got they keys for the same price as they sell them to the g2a sellers.. then that would render 80% of the issue fixed..

personally id prefer to make some money than loose some money.
And perhaps they should set up a 3rd party middle man situation for the en mass key sales. And that 3rd party underwrites and verifies all customers.

i dont have an issue with these cheaper key sales. "unless they are stolen obviously"
But if you can sell the game cheaper to one person because they have more money than i do and so can buy hundreds at a time. then you can sell the dumb thing to me at the same price and i wont need to go buy it cheaper else where.

Also as for the using en mass bots to buy the keys..
this is not a verry realistic scenario unless all the keys get sent to one central email which should be more than enough to warrant a cancellation.. i mean if 800 credit cards ordered 800 items from me and all of them were to be sent to the same address Im pretty sure id spot that.
And i find it hard to believe that they make x amount of separate emails to match the amount of credit cards. because that would be a logistical nightmare to retrieve all the keys for sale.
and then net time they want more keys they have to make all new emails because Obviously they would have flagged the previous ones.
so im not convinced here.

 

[barnsley]

G2A may resell the keys, but they are not the ones stealing.

They're enabling the theft though. They should really have atleast some checks in place. If Kinguin can do it..

i
Also as for the using en mass bots to buy the keys..
this is not a verry realistic scenario unless all the keys get sent to one central email which should be more than enough to warrant a cancellation.. i mean if 800 credit cards ordered 800 items from me and all of them were to be sent to the same address Im pretty sure id spot that.
And i find it hard to believe that they make x amount of separate emails to match the amount of credit cards. because that would be a logistical nightmare to retrieve all the keys for sale.
and then net time they want more keys they have to make all new emails because Obviously they would have flagged the previous ones.
so im not convinced here.

You overestimate companies. Both Ubisoft and EA have been proven to not have anything that looks for odd orders.

 

[SuB]

I've always wondered if companies/publishers sell their keys en-masse to these companies to boost their sales figures and pre-order numbers for their investors. So it bolsters the 'sales' figures without really giving them the standard retail income of a normal non-cd-key-site SKU. It's like people have said, if they can/will/do sell x^1000+ keys to a reseller for price*0.5 why are we paying the standard retail SKU price?

 

[BigDaddyKong]

They're enabling the theft though. They should really have atleast some checks in place.

How are they the enablers? They did not distribute the credit card info. They are no different than a pawn shop. Except there is no system in place for them to check for stolen goods.

 

[tolagarf]

Yet there seems to be a simple solution to this, at least to me? Just stop selling digital keys and only sell through the Steam store. Lower the price to a point so it becomes a "must have" game for its current price, and disable gifting across regions which I believe Steam already supports.

 

[DarthDudo]

Yet there seems to be a simple solution to this, at least to me? Just stop selling digital keys and only sell through the Steam store. Lower the price to a point so it becomes a "must have" game for its current price, and disable gifting across regions which I believe Steam already supports.

I don't think encouraging a monopoly is the right way to go about it irregardless of how trustworthy the company may appear.

 

[SeekaX]

How are they the enablers?

Except there is no system in place for them to check for stolen goods.

You kind of answered your own question there. If your platform can easily be used for illegal activities, you make a profit from those illegal activities and you do nothing to stop those illegal activities, that's enabling.

 

[tolagarf]

I don't think encouraging a monopoly is the right way to go about it irregardless of how trustworthy the company may appear.

It's not a monopoly if one or more companies decide to only sell on Steam. If the majority of all games were sold on Steam only, then yes you are correct. But they're not, far from it.