Indie Publishers Tell Gamers To Pirate Instead Of Buying Keys Through Reseller G2A
from the lesser-of-two-evils dept
We of course talk a great deal about video game piracy here and nearly all of the commentary from the gaming industry centers on how piracy is destroying an industry that only seems to continue growing. Were you to take only a brief look at the history of our posts on the subject, you would come away with a clear picture that game developers see piracy as the greatest of all evils.
It turns out that for many developers there is a greater evil, however. An evil so great, in fact, that game developers are actually pushing the public to piracy as a remedy.
G2A, the grey market purveyor of game keys, has once again drawn the ire of game developers less than keen for their games to feature on G2A's digital shelves. It's previously clashed with TinyBuild and Gearbox, and a recent ad push has seen it condemned by more developers, with some even saying they'd rather players torrent than buy from G2A.
Publisher Mike Rose noted that a search for his games placed G2A ads for them above the publisher's own link. "We make zero money on our games if people buy them through ads," he said. He recommended that people considering buying a game through G2A just pirate it instead.
This recommendation was followed up by Rose and other game developers on Twitter, suggesting that anyone thinking about buying a resold game key via G2A just pirate their games instead. This isn't he first time we've seen this sort of thing specifically about G2A, which is one of the more popular Steam key resellers out there. A couple of years ago, another indie game studio went so far as to put its game up on The Pirate Bay itself just to keep money from reaching the hands of G2A.
The big problem here is that game developers regularly give away free or cheap Steam keys to influencers and others in the hopes of promoting the game on the internet. Some of those influencers then turn around and resell those keys on the G2A market. For its part, G2A insists that it will take down fraudulent sellers and even issue refunds to devs that can prove the keys sold were obtained by nefarious means, but that's generally a lot of window dressing, given that G2A also buys Google ads to place its own links at the top of search results for these same indie games. Meanwhile, these resold keys generate no revenue for the developer, but do increase their costs in customer service, server requirements for online games, etc.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this is that these indie developers, for whom you would think piracy would represent an outsized threat compared with the AAA publishers, see piracy as a perfectly acceptable remedy.
If you can't afford or don't want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller. These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more. https://t.co/25NWxrj8f8
— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 30, 2019
Now, I'm quite sure that none of these developers would come right out and say that they like piracy generally. Still, it's interesting to see the nearly universally demonized practice of copyright infringement turned to as a pressure release against a far greater evil. Given that some of these indies proactively combat key resellers by putting their own games up to be pirated, might there be other ways they could use "piracy" to their benefit as well?
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Filed Under: copyright, game keys, grey market, key resellers, mike rose, piracy, steam keys, video games
Companies: g2a
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FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy?
There is NO "benefit" to the piracy here nor at any time. These are just trying to stop the even worse commercial-scale thieves.
That sinks your entire premise.
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I’d say that “indie company giving people blanket permission to pirate its game” means the game gets more attention. That means the company can sell its next game to a potentially larger fanbase. If you don’t see how that is a benefit, you never will.
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Re: FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy?
As usual your reading skills and cognitive functions are sub-par compared to the average person.
For an indie developer in this situation a pirated copy of the game ACTUALLY benefits them compared to someone buying a key from a re-seller that originated through a fraudulent transaction. I doubt you understand the underlying economic reasons for this, because understanding it means you are wrong and you would NEVER admit to that, even to yourself.
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Re: FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy?
"There is NO "benefit" to the piracy here nor at any time. These are just trying to stop the even worse commercial-scale thieves."
Don't you get tired inventing new nicknames to post that stale drivel you keep harping on, Baghdad Bob? You think a new alias will magically un-debunk the garbage you've kept spouting for so long?
Of course there is benefit. Marketing departments the world over will tell you outright that as long as you can strengthen your brand name, business will follow. That's why bottled water still sells despite the fact that everyone in the target demographic has good clean tap water on hand.
Only in your delusional little la-la land does the market reputation have no impact on sales.
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Re: Re: FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy
Meh, forgot to sign in. Just so Baghdad Bob doesn't start projecting again.
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Re: FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy?
"There is NO "benefit" to the piracy here"
Hmmm... shall I side with the people who made the game who believe that it's fully advantageous to them, as follows, or the rambling idiot who can't finish an article before saying silly things:
"These are just trying to stop the even worse commercial-scale thieves."
...by telling people to pirate. See, despite your statement above, they believe that piracy is advantageous.
"That sinks your entire premise."
No, it's sound. You, however, just contradicted yourself in the very next sentence you wrote after making a claim. You should work on that.
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Re: FIRST, what "benefit" are developers getting from piracy?
Profit to the dev selling a $10 game:
Bought through their Steam key store: +$10
Bought through steam: +$7
Pirated: +$0
Got from g2a: -$5
Hmm, 0 > -5, so the piracy option certainly looks objectively beneficial to the devs in comparison here.
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Re:
They aren't spending additional money tracking down fake keys. In other words, they make more money from people pirating their games rather than buying them through G2A.
That IS the entire premise, genius.
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Giving away "free" is NOT a workable business model:
You blew a major premise of Masnick's out of the water too.
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Maybe I'm not understanding something. What is exactly the developers beef with G2A? Do they expect to receive money every time their product is re-sold? Like the same way I keep getting money when my old Civic gets passed on from owner to owner?
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The beef is G2A often sells keys that were either fradulently obtained or given out by the companies. G2A pockets all the cash and the game companies get nothing but a hassle in return. Toss the ad buy on Google into the mix and you have a sleazy grey market retailer doing a hell of a lot to divert money away from the companies that made the game and towards its own bank account.
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Re:
And just to expand upon the term fraudulent in this context with an example:
Someone buys a Steam-key with a stolen credit-card, sells the key to G2A, some gamer buys the key and starts playing the game. Later the owner of the credit-card discovers the fraudulent transaction and reverses the charge. Now comes the problem, who should take the cost of the fraudulent transaction? The gamer, Steam or the developer?
In reality the total cost of the fraudulent transaction is usually passed onto the developer by Steam so the gamer who bought the key in good faith can keep playing, and that's why some indie developers thinks it's better for people to rather pirate the game instead of buying keys from re-sellers, since the latter actually can costs them money PLUS a lost sale, ie for each fraudulent transaction they need to sell 2 more keys to make up for it.
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Re: Re:
And the developers don't sue Steam why? If Steam doesn't want to bear the cost of the fraud, then simply reverse all of the fraudulent transaction and be done with it. But if they only want to reverse half the transaction, taking back the money they paid the dev while letting the player keep the fraudulently-obtained key, that's exactly like someone demanding a refund on a purchase and the store deducting the refund from their payments to the distributor but not recovering the item and returning it to the distributor. If any store was in the habit of doing that, you can be sure the distributor would have them in collections pretty quickly.
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Re: Re: Re:
How can the developers sue Steam for what a third party did? I don't think you really understand the transaction-process going on between the buyer, Steam and the developer. You can't compare it to someone selling physical goods.
The thing is, the developers are fully within their rights to invalidate any key but they don't do this because of the bad-will it generates (well, unless you belong to one of the larger publishers).
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Re: Re:
The retailer is the one that eats the cost of the charge-back as they are the one that should have stopped the fraudulent purchase in the first place.
So if someone uses a stolen credit card on Steam then Valve will eat the cost of the charge-back as it's their fault, all the publisher loses is that sale (well that is assuming Valve don't eat that cost as well).
The only time a publisher/developer eats the cost of a charge-back is when the fraudulent transaction happens on their site, because it's their fault their site didn't have good enough fraud prevention. (Red flags should really be raised when some is try to buy thousands of copies of your game from your site).
This is also one of the things indie devs moaning about Steam's 30% cut don't get and that is that it isn't as easy as you think to run an online store, and fraud prevention/charge-backs are a cost of doing business and are one of the things Valve take care of with their cut when selling though their store.
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Re: Re:
This would be a separate issue that would have to be dealt with legally just like anything else bought with stolen credit cards.
There are some mitigating factors apart from it being illegal too; when you do a charge back on steam your account will probably get banned, the person who bought it will lose their purchase.. This will make consumers want to avoid the service unless it keeps a handle on the problem. It most of the keys you buy their don't work then people are just plain going to stop buying stuff there and it's not likely going to stay in business for long.
Either way it's a law enforcement issue not something you should be trying to guilt innocent people legitimately buying or reselling your game with.
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Re: rhetorical question
I understand that the problem is one of scale but how much fraud needs to happen before a reseller admits they are the problem?
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Re: Re: rhetorical question
"I understand that the problem is one of scale but how much fraud needs to happen before a reseller admits they are the problem?"
Until said re-seller hits bankruptcy.
It's very difficult to prove bad faith without a legal framework which unduly restricts legal markets as well. And the gray-area market has neither the motivation nor the actual ability to ensure fraud gets found out at their step in the process.
Re-sellers usually subsist on small margin, high volume deals. In a business model like that it's usually impossible to still turn a profit if the administrative expense goes up.
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Re:
That doesn't really make much sense. Sure, fraudulently acquired keys are a problem. But the companies themselves give away a lot of keys at low or no cost. They must expect those keys to result in installed copies of their games which will consume support and server resources. This bit from the article doesn't make any more sense than what keeps getting repeated in these comments:
Of course they don't generate revenue. They keys were given away for free.
Is it "fraudulent" to sell a key you were given for free? Is it also fraudulent to resell a key you paid for? I'm not really seeing the problem here.
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Re:
Those are two very different things. Getting something for free doesn't make it somehow illegal or immoral to sell, unless the recipient previously agreed not to sell it. Why shouldn't I be able to sell an unwanted gift?
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Re:
Simple issue, but a steam key in China, or other location where its cheap, resale on G2A, Customer gets game via weird trade method, card gets charged back because it was stolen, game is removed from customers account, but he never buys it again because indie games are shorter.
The Indy gets stuck with the charge back fee + they are out the cost of the game.
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Re: Re: Missing parts here...
You forgot...
a) Now the devs have a customer with a bad experience..
b) Those chargebacks and support calls and such take up quite a bit of dev's most precious resource: his staff. The game isn't helped or enjoyed.
Piracy is just cheaper, those that feel the need to pay will, for example, buy swag.
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Re: Re: Re: Missing parts here...
"Those chargebacks and support calls and such"
This is likely the thing they're railing against. Piracy doesn't have a quantifiable cost - sure, some people will claim they'd be billionaires if only people were forced to pay full price for something they pirated, but the real world is more complex and nuanced than that, and most people take the unknown cost as part of doing business.
This kind of stuff, though? Supporting people whose money you never got, bank charges and the like are not only 100% quantifiable costs but they lose you future customers. A sensible dev would rather have none of these costs and the possible risk of losing a few sales, than they would have hard overhead costs that they can't avoid. The bonus is the good will they get from this - people who already bought a G2A key might be alerted and moved to buy a full licence, while people who never intended to buy certain titles might buy one after this story.
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Also, you implicate GOOGLE as facilator of worse-than--pirates!
This is one of your BEST pieces, EVER, Timmy!
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While you’re here: How do you feel about corporations using copyright to censor protected speech?
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Re:
"While you’re here: How do you feel about corporations using copyright to censor protected speech?"
You should just stop catering to Baghdad Bob as if his compulsive sock puppeting under a thousand and one nicknames actually did whitewash his oft repeated prior statements.
We know full well by now how he feels about using copyright as the censorship tool it always was, no matter whether its a corporation or a government abusing it.
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Besides how legitimate means continue to fuck over developers and/or consumers, and the way that the influencer/celebrity-driven culture we have today is coming to bite us in the ass...
I think the funniest takeaway from all this is blue have to stretch his mental faculties thrice as much AND fuck with his TOR just to troll this article three times. You know... just in case you could tell it was him. Hey blue - consider lifting the bonnet of your engine every once in a while, or you might overheat!
Or do overheat, that'd honestly be the preferable scenario.
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Thank you to everyone above who explained the fraudulent practice side of things. I can imagine that is probably a bulk problem. Otherwise i am left thinking that game companies are just still whining about the First Sale Doctrine, with occasional fraud, and oh-my-god-no someone resold a key we gave away. (Gee sorry someone less influence-y is playing your game, asshats.)
The issue here, when fraud is involved at scale, yeah that is a legit complaint.
I will certainly think twice about buying from a reseller, but what about genuine resales without ethical or legal baggage?
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Re: Sans Ethical and Legal Baggage???
Let's see if we can pull this off...
Your friend (and it has to be your friend, cuz for argument's sake I've got hundreds of these stolen or promotional keys on my craigslist) has discovered that XYZ game is not for him, uninstalls it, and decides he'd like a partial refund and sells you his key for a discount.
You start to play on that key.. Someone check me, but the things of value in this transaction are the non-automated support you use and whether or not you like XYZ with enough enthusiasm that your friends buy their own keys or make other contributions, such as nice forum posts. Or maybe you just buy their swag.
IMHO, the question is how much support you and the friend required. If it's a lot, then you probably should have bought your own.
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Re: Re: Sans Ethical and Legal Baggage???
lmao, support. right. ok then.
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Dodgy sellers aside, this looks like publishers complaining about Gamestop selling second hand games. The big difference is now the medium has changed
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Re:
The big difference being, when it turns out the game you bought from a store was stolen, the developer is not the one on the hook for reimbursing the person it was stolen from.
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Re: Re:
Is there a reason an indie developer can't keep track of which key was given to which influencer? Wouldn't keys from influencers continually appearing on 2nd hand sites speak a lot about certain influencers? Would it be possible to... i dunno... not give free keys out to morons with 1000 followers?
My big take is Indy devs are getting conned by dodgy influencers/advertisers who do nothing but sell a gift.
Everything about refunds and bad publicity affecting the developer is in the comment section. It all seems to be conjecture.
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Re: Re: Re:
Each time this has come up they have complained it is too difficult to link keys to a transaction (which raises the question of how do they know the keys sold on sites such as G2A are initially purchased with stolen credit cards?). And in the past when the likes of Ubisoft and Tinybuild deactivated keys they claimed were purchased with stolen credit-cards they also took out keys that were purchased legally as they just deactivated batches of keys without checking each one.
Steam also has a system at allows publishers to redeem games directly onto peoples accounts so their shouldn't even be any need to hand influencers keys any more.
It seriously sounds like shouting about Charge-backs is just their version of 'think of the children' as there is no evidence that the majority of sales on sites like G2A come from stolen Credit Cards, if they did people wouldn't go back to the store and they'd likely have got into Legal trouble by now (or had the payment processors refuse to work with them).
Instead the thing they are unhappy about but cannot get people to rally around is the fact that the sites sell Grey Market Keys - obtained from cheaper regions, boxed copies or bundles all of which are perfectly legal sources and in addition to that the publisher got paid when the key was first sold.
It also seems in this case the keys weren't actually keys but were instead steam gifts, where it seems the games were purchased on Steam from cheaper regions, so the chances of them being bought with stolen credit cards are fairly low and even if they were Steam would be the one eating the chargeback fees not the developer.
That's not to say that G2A isn't a crappy store and there is plenty to hate about them attacking them for something that isn't true is disingenuous.
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Re: Re:
Where does theft enter into this? I thought this was related to fraudulent use of a credit card, which will produce a chargeback to the seller in either case (while the game's still out there and usable).
Is the only difference that the developer's selling the keys directly? That's pretty minor. While they were somewhat insulated from that with physical purchases, the middlemen (stores, distributors etc.) took a much larger cut to account for things like theft.
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Re: Re: Re:
In this case, the key was paid for on Steam, then sold on G2A, then the credit card was charged back and the agreement on chargebacks is that they go to the publisher.
This is nothing more then a credit card scam where the indy gets the bill and the fee for having a charge back. Scale is what is making this so bad, instead of buying 1 key, they buy 1000 keys on the same bad cards, sell as many as they can before the card is found out, and all the indy publishers get hit with huge fees.
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Buying steam keys from steam
Um... so pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't just stopping wholesale of steam keys purchased via credit card help solve a major part of this problem...
Of course, I had no idea that one could actually purchase Steam Keys from Valve these days... ... if this is an accurate summation of the actual issue, I would expect that Steam could do something about this problem... ... they do after all control all the aspects of the actual steam store...
I suspect that this explanation is missing a rather large portion of information though... if this were really the course of events, I believe that there are a few ways that this could be handled... some of which involve legal actions that would probably require the cc companies hand over some of the fraud info to go after the bad actors legally.
Mostly, I would expect that Steam could simply stop selling bulk keys to anyone that's not an authorized dealer...
There's a whole lot about this whole situation that doesn't add up... I feel like I'm in a field of scarecrows with all the straw men popping up.
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commentary for the author.
While reading the article it also sounded really close to a publisher complaining about first-sale-doctrine. But the comments cleared up all the confusion.
Next time it would be helpful for more clairity on the article especially when the subject matter can be easily confused with a different issue entirely.
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<i>Perhaps the most interesting part of this is that these indie developers, for whom you would think piracy would represent an outsized threat compared with the AAA publishers, see piracy as a perfectly acceptable remedy.</i>
Bullshit, and I can't believe the author is so dense that he/she does not realize this statement is bullshit. Piracy stiffs the game developer. G2A both stiffs the developer AND enriches someone else illegitimately. Noting that two bad things are worse than one bad thing is NOT the same as saying that one is "perfectly acceptable".
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Re:
Nice how you take that out of context. Just below that the article goes on to say:
It's almost like someone's trying to make the article say something it doesn't
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Re: Re:
I, for one, find it funny how the legal, legitimate path is what fucks over the developer more.
How bad do you have to fuck up that piracy becomes the more appealing option?
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Re: Re: Re:
It seems the article did a terrible job of even mentioning this but from the comments it sounds like G2A is not actually a legitimate path (it seems G2A is not getting the keys from entirely legal sources).
However I dont use steam (and it sounds like G2A is a steam key seller?) so I am not too sure. (hey Tim: to be blunt the article failed pretty bad here, I would strongly encourage an edit)
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"It seems the article did a terrible job of even mentioning this but from the comments it sounds like G2A is not actually a legitimate path"
Do you not know what "grey market" means?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Grey market doesn't imply stolen.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, it means not authorised by the original manufacturer. Hence "not legitimate", as the AC was claiming wasn't said.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Legitimate" doesn't mean "authorised". As someone mentioned elsewhere, publishers could call used books "not legitimate" by that standard, but that wouldn't make it true.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's a very semantic question. No re-sold product ever can be said to have been sold by authorization of the original manufacturer. But according to the first sale doctrine that doesn't matter - the sale is still quite legitimate.
Gray market doesn't mean illegal. Since we don't live by the napoleonic code we still have to realize that that which isn't expressly forbidden is still expressly allowed.
Hence the developers can scream themselves hoarse but the G2A business model is still both legal and legitimate since authorization isn't, at this point, relevant anymore.
Various unauthorized key copies may not be but that's another kettle of fish altogether.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
G2A is basically a digital version of Ebay or the old classified ads. They don't actually sell anything but instead just act as a marketplace for other people to sell keys for games.
As they are just acting as a marketplace they have no way to verify where the keys were sourced from (same as Ebay has no idea if you are selling an unwanted DVD or a stolen DVD).
The games can be obtained from various sources - taken from boxed copies, purchased from cheaper regions or when they were on sale, unwanted keys from bundles or keys given out for free - these sources are all legal but publishers dislike them as they lose control of the price so these sources generally get referred to as unauthorized or grey market, and despite what publishers claim they did get paid for these keys it was just when they were initial purchased rather from the G2A sale (think used sales - they got a cut of the initial sale but none from later ones which is perfectly legal).
However in some cases criminals will use stolen credit cards to purchase thousands of keys from a indie developers site (as they have lower fraud protection than bigger sites and for some reason don't seem to flag bulk purchases coming from the same card, account or IP address. Though that said the stolen Ubisoft keys were gotten from EA) and sell them on sites such as G2A, then when the card holder finds out they charge-back the purchase the initial site is charged a fee by the payment processor on top of the refund. However instead of the developers securing their sites to stop the fraud happening they instead blame it all on G2A. And despite publishers complaints about charge-backs they only get charged these fees when it's their store the fraud happened, if someone uses a stolen card on the likes of steam then Steam eat the charge-back fee.
In addition it's not even clear how many are from stolen cards as the developers keep on complaining it is too hard to produce the proof and then start mixing charge-backs with free keys and grey market keys. And as publishers dislike grey market keys they are happy to let the issues get mixed to push people to places where they control the prices, pretty much like how rights-holders have been fighting against used sales over the years.
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Re: Re: Re:
"How bad do you have to fuck up that piracy becomes the more appealing option?"
Not very much. As soon as you start using DRM, especially the more heavy-handed and/or intrusive types you're basically already at the point where the cracked game is preferable. A cul-de-sac most major labels are already camping in.
The question becomes interesting when you amend it thus: "How bad does an indie developer have to fuck up...", because at that point we can start blaming shady resellers and gray market mechanisms rather than the developers themselves.
Generally speaking it's a rule rather than the exception that copyright cult associates screw their own product up to the point where piracy becomes the preferred option. For any media, not just games.
This is still the best image illustrating that point:
https://me.me/i/if-you-are-a-pirate-this-is-what-you-get-4914a54238274660bb43bcf4627efd7e
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Re:
"Timothy" is typically a man's name.
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Re:
Then maybe you should take it up with the developers who are telling people to go pirate their games instead of buying them on G2A?
Since the developers themselves are encouraging piracy, the statement is perfectly legitimate. Your statements on the other hand....
If you had read the full article, or even just two lines down, you would see that's not the argument being made here.
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Missing element in article...
Another element that has been brought up is that G2A is allegedly used to fence game keys bought using stolen credit cards. The scheme costs developers cash out of pocket, not just time. Once the victim of the credit card sees the transaction and reports it as fraudulent, the store front where the key was originally sold gets hit with a chargeback for the sale and additional fees from the card company for the charge-back. In turn, the storefront hits the devs for both their share of the original sale, and at least part of the charge-back fee for the fraudulent transaction.
G2A is sleazy about other things as well: Basic consumer protections that most storefronts include with cost of doing business incur additional fees:
a) maintaining an account on the storefront but not using it is subject to fee. So an individual that wants to resell a Key they received as a gift gets their profit eaten away.
b) fraud protection for the buyer of the key costs extra. So if a key gets revoked after being stolen or bought in a fraudulent transaction, you're out of luck unless you pay extra.
This seems like something government regulators could crack down on. The "fraud protection" service could be viewed as separate and distinct from providing a platform for key resellers and might cause them to lose their section 230 immunity. Alternatively, they could be forced to provide details of the sellers who sold fraudulent keys.
c) Their best defense is "if we don't do it, someone else will".
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it's a problem of their own making
It sounds like a problem of their own making. Replace "key" with "book" and see what you get.
There's an online store reselling used 'books'. The publishers are upset because they don't get any money from people buying used 'books' instead of new ones from them. It's not about that, no, it's about the hassle of people who buy 'books' with stolen credit cards and the charge backs that happen when original credit card holders complain to their banks and we go to the homes of people who bought those used 'books' and take them back. It might be easier to police, but we give away sooo many promotional 'books' to influencers, many of which just turn around and try to resell them.
Therefore if you insist on not paying full price for a new 'book' we would much rather you just photocopy it, or download a pdf, instead of giving used 'bookstores' any business.
That about sum it up?
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Re: it's a problem of their own making
Well, as others mentioned, there's also the issue of credit card fraud, where money earned is returned. Add to that that the thief has already laundered the money through G2A, and a gamer who bought a key on good faith.
Steam either lets them keep the game, or cancels the key. Either the developer loses the sale, or the gamer loses the game, and the thief still gets away clean. And G2A tells the gamer, "hey, I'm just a broker, man. Your argument is with Steam."
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Re: Re: it's a problem of their own making
So while G2A has made a name for itself as a bad company to work with maybe the buyer should take their good faith elsewhere and not do business with G2A. It doesn't sound like any business would want to work with G2A due to so many problems.
Is there a different key reselling company one can use?
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Re: Re: it's a problem of their own making
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Re: Re: it's a problem of their own making
So?
There is also the issue of credit card fraud when buying and selling books or anything else for that matter.
If you buy a bunch of books from a publisher with a fraudulent credit card and then resell them through a used book store, Amazon, EBay, or anywhere else, the same problem exists. There's nothing special about Steam keys that should set up G2A for any sort of special condemnation, just because we are talking about Steam keys as opposed to anything else.
If there's a lot of CC fraud happening on publisher's sites then they should take better care to secure them. Instead they seem to want special rules to combat the grey market. They appear to be using CC fraud as an excuse.
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Re: Re: Re: it's a problem of their own making
The difference is that books resold after fraudulent purchases don’t also get revoked from the new owner.
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These guys are wrong.. They want to kill the second hand market for games, not understanding that it contributes to the first hand market.
"We make zero money on our games if people buy them through ads,"
Only if you don't understand that the ability to resell factored into the decision to purchase originally and how much you will be willing to spend on it...
"The big problem here is that game developers regularly give away free or cheap Steam keys to influencers and others in the hopes of promoting the game on the internet"
There are a couple scenarios here...
a) this process is worth it to them so they do make money indirectly from these second hand sales
or
b) this process is not worth it to them so... um.. stop.
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"Secondhand market" generally implies that somebody paid for something the first time. That's not generally the case here. These keys were either given away for free and then resold, or, as other commenters have noted, bought with a stolen credit card and then resold.
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No it's still a second hand market. It doesn't matter if developer is originally selling them or giving them away for some other reason.. That is up to the developer. No one is forcing them to give keys away. The second hand market will provide an incentive for people to become "influencers" or whatever the same as it provides an incentive to purchase games. Either the developer like this, and the incentive is helping or they don't and they should stop providing free keys to influencers.
The stolen credit card thing is a total red herring. You can't stay in business selling game keys that don't work.
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The stolen credit card thing is a total red herring. You can't stay in business selling game keys that don't work.
No, the stolen credit card thing is a really big deal. G2A has a massive fraud problem they need to address
https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/5/20683026/g2a-controversy-audit-petition
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Yeah that is what I mean, it is something that they will need to address, since it causes a problem for them in and of itself.
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"It's a really big deal" is what you meant by "it's a total red herring"?
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Well it's a red herring as a reason to be up in arms or to take special action against them to save the developers.
Your regular market factors will have this under control.
There shouldn't be any need to mobilize a boycott to keep someone from hurting their own customers. The customers can fend for themselves and the company will need to correct the issue or lose their customers.
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By all accounts the key resellers are facilitating fraud and CC theft on a massive scale. Not a "Red Herring."
This is not about First-Sale at all.
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"Your regular market factors will have this under control. "
Not that easy. re-sellers live in a niche market and rely on high volumes at very low margins to make a profit.
1) Add administrative costs through credit checks and anti-fraud measures to this, that margin goes away. No more resale company.
2) Any legal restrictions capable of enforcing regulation at the level where it's needed will carry collateral damage at a very general level. Fancy abolishing every ATM and online retail where the customers won't put up with a hefty surcharge and an in-depth due diligence investigation?
The issue is that every single transaction is, in itself, a very small one. The issue is that it just isn't fiscally sound to check a million microtransactions.
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An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. It isn't just contradiction.
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It does seem to be a common trait that g2a's defenders here all show a distinct lack of (reading) comprehension.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't like G2A whatsoever, I don't buy from them or suggest anyone else do so.
I just see this as an attack on first sale rights for video games in general and not something that is restricted to G2A.
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In what way? As far as I'm aware, they're not going after physical resellers, they're not suing G2A or trying to get its behavior declared illegal, they're merely telling people not to give G2A their money.
Asking people not to do something is not the same thing as trying to deny their right to do it. Come on, man, I shouldn't have to explain that to you like you're Blue or something.
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Yeah they saying “don’t use these people” rather than “use nobody but who we say”
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The say "please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller". But also most of the arguments for why they think they are being wronged apply generally to any reseller.
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They are painting the practice of reselling digital games as being harmful to the game developers. In my mind selling that idea is the first step to having politicians get involved to help "fix" it. It's not that I am sure they are wrong... I'm just not quite sold.
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why should one need to be a "physical reseller", particularly of something which was entirely digital in the first place?
it sure seems like G2A has\is a problem, but it also sounds like these companies have a problem with every resale.
at this point i am going to have to look at more sources, as close to primary as i can get.
this has everything to do with statements from devs (as i have so far seen), this article, and some of the comments. it has nothing to do with an imaginary suing/forcing anyone. (honestly it would make more sense if they simply did sue over chargebacks, if possible.)
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You asserted that a second hand market implies the thing being sold must be originally acquired through a purchase. I can find no evidence that is the case or that that is a common definition.. As far as I am aware the common usage and any
definitions I can find all just say it's previously owned things being sold with no restrictions on how they became to be previously owned.
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You seem awfully hung up on debating the semantics of a single sentence from my post rather than address its overall point.
Key resellers differ from traditional, physical-goods secondhand markets in some important and obvious ways. One of those ways is that key resale sites do not "contribute[] to the first hand market" in the same way that physical used-goods stores do. In a traditional, physical-goods market, a person may be likelier to purchase a game at full price with the knowledge that they can sell it when they're done. That's the main way in which a secondhand market traditionally contributes to a firsthand market, and it doesn't apply here, at all.
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Ok. I guess I really don't see how you figure that doesn't apply here.
If people are making use of the ability to resell, then they are making their decisions about purchases (or their decisions about whether to devote their time promoting, etc) with the knowledge that they will be able to resell. The developers seem to think that the promoters are contributing enough to the first hand market enough that it is worth giving them free games, but if that isn't the case they have an easy remedy.
I agree it doesn't apply to the credit card frauds. That is obviously very much illegal and should be curtailed for sure, but it should be the customers who are the ones getting ripped off leading that charge. I don't think we need to kill reselling of digital games because of that, you should just be able to put a stop to the fraud. If G2A can't get a handle on it, then the next guys will.
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It looks to me like the only true issue here are the charge backs, because the expense in customer service, space, and server usage wouldn't be diminished from a pirated version.
What truly boggles my mind is why the hell are these idiots asking people to just pirate it? Wouldn't the smarter reply be "G2A is a broker who doesn't guarantee the key you're using is legitimate. Please use the key on our site or perhaps think of buying a copy at the great price of $#.99".
To direct anyone to piracy while bemoaning costs is stupid logic.
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Please use the key on our site or perhaps think of buying a copy at the great price of $#.99".
Because they don't want people who show up on their site seeking to buy the game to find a free key there, as that shifts a lot of actual business into that free channel, thus hurting the developer.
The people who go to these types of resellers, however, are unlikely to actually buy a copy through the official channels to begin with (which is why they're at these resellers) and so directing them to piracy generally doesn't hurt the developer much (if at all), while it does hurt the resellers.
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Because the developers understand that most of the people who are buying keys off G2A will NEVER buy a legitimate key at full price, that's why they are buying them at G2A, despite its bad rep.
So if you have a bunch people who won't pay full price for your game, no matter what, and their other options are:
I think the logic is pretty simple, and the choice is clear. You encourage buyers to take the option that is going to cost you the least money because those buyers wouldn't pay full price for your game anyway. Plus you just earned yourself some street cred.
Seriously, people see that and think "Wow, they'd rather I pirate their game for free rather than risk me having a poor experience on a shady site. Those guys are actually pretty cool.". And some (certainly not all) might then say "You know what, just for that, I'll buy their game legitimately just to show some support for actually being decent human beings.".
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Complaining about not making money on second-hand sales. How very original of them.
The only difference is when the big publishers do the same, they don't suggest Pirate Bay as alternative.
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Knee Jerk Reaction
It feels like anytime that a developer is starting to feel ripped off by something they put into motion themselves they start screaming about it and starts pulling keys from Steam... I've already had several games pulled from my account that I purchased in a bundle that the developer had previously authorized.
I can understand that folks are getting upset when the keys they give away are being "abused" but on the same note, you can't control what someone does with these keys once you give them out. This right here is a case where making a special build for promotional purposes makes sense rather than handing out keys.
I get my keys from either one of the well established bundle pushers, steam or from the humble bundle store ... ... I avoid buying from most of the other single game key resellers (authorized or not) due to problems I've already had (like keys that only work in certain regions, but that wasn't mentioned before I bought it and there's no refunds)
If you're a developer, then you should probably find another way to handle promotions/bundles rather than giving away thousands of keys if you're worried about 'lost sales' on steam... ... pro-tip: some of us redeem freebies even if we don't play them (collectors) and some folks would only buy a game once it dips below a certain price, so either way, those wouldn't have been sales if not for a freebie/shady key reseller...
And for the love of god, stop using promoters anyways, unless you only want cattle playing your games (and I realize some of you do)
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The amount of times this has happened is relatively small, and each time has been met with SEVERE consumer backlash. Plus, the only developers that seem to have done this are extremely small ones who don't have a good handle on how to manage their keys or PR. I'm not knocking them for this (this isn't something you just know, you have to learn it, sometimes the hard way), I'm just saying that this is the exception, not the rule.
More seasoned or larger developers have a better handle on their key management and don't yank everyone's keys for the infractions of a few. They understand that it would be a really bad idea to yank keys from people who have legitimately purchased the game.
And at this point I've lost all respect for you. You literally just called all gamers "cattle". What is your criteria for a gamer who isn't "cattle"? What differentiate's a "real" gamer from a "cattle" gamer?
The goal of almost EVERY developer is to get as many people as possible playing your game. So not only have you insulted and put down all gamers, but you've also insulted and put down developers for trying to make it as a game developer. Because guess what, the only way to make money as a game developer is to get people to buy your game. The more people that buy your game, the more money you make and the easier it will be to continue making games.
Honestly, get a clue.
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Wow, feeling a bit tender hearted by my commentary about using the word cattle... maybe I should have used the word sheep and referred to the promoters as sheep dogs instead...
Anyway, I have a clue ... and I read the article instead of having a knee jerk reaction to a comment
was anything more than a straw man argument, then you wouldn't need further go on to say
If you want to take my statements as an insult, then go ahead... since the article was about game developers basically saying 'pirate this so I don't get paid instead of paying someone else I gave the key to free for' I really don't think your 'to make money' bit really holds a lot of weight here... anyways, enjoy feeling insulted while I enjoy being amused by the crux of the situation in the article...
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Referring to ANY human being as ANY animal, thereby implying they are worth less than other human beings is degrading and insulting and you should be ashamed for even trying to attempt to defend it.
No difference. I would have just put "sheep" in my comment instead of "cattle". You are still degrading other human beings based on your bigoted opinions.
Obviously not since you continue to degrade human beings and insist on being a bigot.
Again, obviously not, or at the very least you didn't comprehend what you read.
I'm sorry for trying to explain the logic behind my point, point out the logical fallacy behind your statement, and that you failed to understand it. That in no way makes it a strawman. The fact that you don't even understand what you yourself are saying is not a failing on my part to present a logical argument.
There is literally no other way to interpret what you said. You called a particular set of humans "cattle" and in your reply to my comment, "upgraded" them to "sheep", which is still a derogatory way to refer to humans. Those are definitely not compliments and not neutral descriptions.
That's not what the article said and supports my original statement that you didn't read (or I suppose comprehend) the article. What the developers are ACTUALLY saying is "you are costing me money and extra work buying off G2A, I'd rather you pirate it and not make a sale but at least not have to spend MORE money and time trying to deal with a shady reseller".
Oh? So game developers are not out to make money selling their games then? Why don't they just give them away for free then. It's a win win. Gamers get all games for free and developers don't have to deal with shady resellers. I mean, if they aren't out to make money, what reason do they have to charge for their games?
I'm sorry you insist on being a bigot and degrading your fellow human beings, while simultaneously burying your head in the sand and refusing to educate yourself or learn better reading comprehension. Enjoy more people accusing you of such for the rest of your life until you finally get a clue.
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