Seriously, how the heck does G2A make money but Developers don't?

This kind of question has been bothering me for some time. Where does G2A acquire the keys in the first place? Do the buyers buy from developers who wants to help consumers elsewhere?

Can someone explain this to me?

Just a few things should shed some light about this:

• Someone uses stolen Credit Cards to buy games and get the keys.
• The thieves sell his/her keys on G2A.
• The thieves and G2A make money but the developers don't.
• The stolen purchases are charged back and since the keys were originally purchased from the developers, they're the one's that get hit with the original cost + fees.

To sum it up. This is why a few Indie developers have said, they'd rather you "Pirate than use G2A" (and it's the hip thing to say companies would rather you Pirate then buy through G2A) because it actually costs them money when they get charged back and buying from G2A, whether the specific key you purchased was stolen or not, supports the fraudulent practice. Plus, G2A just doesn't give a flying fucks about the fraud so they shouldn't be supported just on principle.

I haven't used G2A in years not because of any moral reasons, I think it's way over hyped on how bad it is. I find their prices to be pretty shit these days. I do however will buy Keys from CDKey site cause they actually do business with developers and the developers do get money back but less. I support all developers as best as I know how and while some console gamers might see buying Keys isn't supporting developers but let's not forget in order to get the keys, you gotta get'em from developers themselves and by doing business with CDkey, the developers do get back something.

Some money is better then NO money-Jim Sterling

I only bought one game from G2A once. As an additional cost it included some monthly recurring plan I had to pay for, this was not shown to me in any way, it was only activated once I had done the purchase. So it was a hidden cost and a monthly recurring plan I had not signed up for.

I immediately blocked all these payments and had to go through some trouble. It honestly felt like paying some mafia protection money.

Horrible experience and would no buy from that joke of a 'store' ever again.

Not sure where they get their keys from. But I know the publishers/developers themselves send out lots of keys here and there.

I've never bought anything from G2A. But I've bought quite many things from Kinguin. Never had a problem with them. Recently bought W10 for 20 bucks. If Microsoft didn't get anything from that, I really don't give any sort of shit. Could be lame if people buy indie games in droves from cdkey resellers, though. Those guys need the dough.

AAA developers should probably lower the cost of their games instead of whining about G2A.

Regional pricing where they buy on low income markets and sell them on high income, is the grey area of key selling... rest of them is purchased with stolen/hacked credit cards, so yeah stay away from those sites, in most cases you might aswell pirate the game..

G2A doesn't sell games, they just take a cut from sales made on the site, the keys people sell there can be obtained in multiple ways, but I wouldn't mess with that scum site. They recently tried contacting websites to promote their public Imago and the sites shouldn't disclose that deal...

@howmakewood: @davillain-: So that means all keys from G2A are stolen right?

@evil_loli: No, but some are, the rest tend to be keys from cheaper regions. There really is not any way to tell as far as I'm aware of.

Buy in bulk

Sell key

Cancel bulk purchase

?????

Profit

Not all, but sadly a lot. You should check out the Jimquisition video on it:

So a thief can steal credit card info, buy a lot of keys with the stolen info and sell them there. That way they can wash the money.

From what I've heard, places like that buy keys in bulk (read: tens of thousands) from a different region so they get a discount based on currency exchange, and can then offer that discount to their customers.

I've heard some fishy things about G2A, but Green Man Gaming and Fanatical are legit. I've easily bought over 50 games from Fanatical (at amazing prices) and haven't had a single issue yet. They often offer crazy flash deals that Steam didn't even offer back in their heyday of Steam Summer Sales (like 90-95% off sometimes).

It's easily explained. They don't ask questions.

So, by any means. Some will be legit and bought in bulk or in cheaper territories or more directly from the publisher or at sales. Some will be generated, intercepted, etc.

You'll notice that for most games the prices on G2A are actually not much lower than store prices, if you look at the more trustworthy sellers who don't have tons of customers saying 'hey the key didn't work.'

I think I only ever bought one DLC thing from G2A and I can't remember why... I probably could no longer purchase it elsewhere. And that was a pretty shady transaction. Let's say I didn't use my credit card because there was no way I was sending them my payment info.

i've never used it but their prices are good. do you pay for their on-by-default buyer protection? it's about £4.50 uk

I've shopped from them before I knew how bad they are for developers. It's reasons like this that region locking is becoming more strict/commonplace.

@ArchoNils2: Wow, Jim was on point about G2A. Sad developers are stuck with the situation.

@Macutchi: No, I remove it before purchase. There is a risk involved, but I've had zero problems with over 10 purchases.

ah ok cool, that's reassuring. might just roll the dice on a few ~£25 keys i've seen now then