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General discussion" G2A sold $450k worth of our game keys"(66 posts)(66 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 22, 2016
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enigmaxg2: I hope more and more people and media joins against G2A and similar shady sites, indie devs are taking heavy losses because this.

Do you want something cheaper, wait for sales!
^ This.
Posted June 22, 2016
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Gonchi: So is this the modern day version of "Piracy has cost us $X in lost sales"?
Well, it's more complicated than that. There are various fees involved in transactions and in eventual chargeback so in this case, devs really lose money in each transaction and most indies aren't exactly swimming in money are they?

In case of normal piracy devs only lose potential sales, ie money they might've gotten if piracy did not exist. No money changes hands so there are no transaction or currency conversion fees nor chargebacks involve in regular piracy. Even in normal grey market sales when stolen credit cards (or other fraud) are not involved, devs gain at least something but in case of fraud everyone involved, with the exception of the one committing the fraud, loses.
Posted June 22, 2016
Correct me if I'm wrong; but aint these keys devs carelessly throw around for free like candy on Cologne Carnival to promote on various media?

I don't buy on any other site but gog so no idea what these keys are or look like; but I recall reading somewhere that they are not pirate copys or otherwise illegeal keys.
Posted June 22, 2016
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Gonchi: So is this the modern day version of "Piracy has cost us $X in lost sales"?
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Petrell: Well, it's more complicated than that. There are various fees involved in transactions and in eventual chargeback so in this case, devs really lose money in each transaction and most indies aren't exactly swimming in money are they?

In case of normal piracy devs only lose potential sales, ie money they might've gotten if piracy did not exist. No money changes hands so there are no transaction or currency conversion fees nor chargebacks involve in regular piracy. Even in normal grey market sales when stolen credit cards (or other fraud) are not involved, devs gain at least something but in case of fraud everyone involved, with the exception of the one committing the fraud, loses.
Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that G2 selling keys is fraud? It's not.
Posted June 22, 2016
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drewpants: Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that G2 selling keys is fraud? It's not.
There are people selling keys on G2A (and elsewehere) that have purchased those keys with stolen credit cards or aquired them thru other fraudulent medhods. Oh and there are keys that do not work too (bogus or already used).
Post edited June 22, 2016 by Petrell
Posted June 22, 2016
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drewpants: Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that G2 selling keys is fraud? It's not.
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Petrell: There are people selling keys on G2A (and elsewehere) that have purchased those keys with stolen credit cards or aquired them thru other fraudulent medhods.
The same goes for eBay, Amazon and any other site you care to mention.

Brick and mortar video game retailers and secondhand stores also occasionally unknowingly end up selling stolen goods, should we ban the sale of pre-owned games?

It's not up to G2 or anyone one else to police the prior credit card transactions of each and every one of their users and to suggest closing a store because some people are committing crimes, which i'll grant you does suck, is ludicrous.

I'm assuming you don't like the idea of gifting here on GOG either? That system could easily be abused too.
Posted June 22, 2016
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Petrell: There are people selling keys on G2A (and elsewehere) that have purchased those keys with stolen credit cards or aquired them thru other fraudulent medhods.
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drewpants: The same goes for eBay, Amazon and any other site you care to mention.

Brick and mortar video game retailers and secondhand stores also occasionally unknowingly end up selling stolen goods, should we ban the sale of pre-owned games?

It's not up to G2 or anyone one else to police the prior credit card transactions of each and every one of their users and to suggest closing a store because some people are committing crimes, which i'll grant you does suck, is ludicrous.

I'm assuming you don't like the idea of gifting here on GOG either? That system could easily be abused too.
You probably should've read what I wrote above before jumping the gun. I was merely pointing out the difference between "normal" piracy and goods purchased using stolen credit cards or other fraudulent medhods and then sold on grey market and the fact that devs are the ones who end up paying any fees involved in such transactions and eventual chargebacks so every key purchased this way actually costs them money.

If you feel it's worth the risk of getting non functional key or key that will eventually be revoked, that's your business.
Post edited June 22, 2016 by Petrell
Posted June 22, 2016
Still applies : http://archive.is/tLs2H
The figure of 450k was arrived by taking their 3 games and finding how many had been sold on G2a and putting the current retail price on them. Which works well provided the games have never been on sale or in a bundle. if they have then we need to look at the lower price as that is the lowest potential loss figure.

Punch club was 1,251 copies @9.99 = 12,497
Party Hard was 890 copies @12.89 = 11,472
Speedrunners was 24,517 @14.99 =367,509

Punch club has been sold for 4.99 from bundlestars so we need to half that one.
Party Hard has been as low as 4.84 from bundlestars so that is slightly over 1/3rd the quoted loss.
Speedrunners has been 2.49 on steam. so we need to drop that to 1/8th

The new figures are 6,242 + 4,307 + 61,047 which comes to 71,596.

There's more...Punch Club is the only one that hasn't been in a bundle. Party Hard and Speedrunners have been in the same Humble Bundle (Orbyt play). Speedrunners was one of 3 games in the $1 tier and Party Hard was in the $8 tier. This changes our figures again.

Speedrunners was effectively sold for $0.33... 33cents. Giving us a new total of 8,090 in lost sales for speedrunner.

So the final figures are actually 6,242 + 4,307 + 8,090 which gives us a minimum loss of 18,639. A figure 24 times less than the original post.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry that they feel there were significant loses due to G2A, however the prices they've sold speedrunners in particular, suggests that they had written it off as a loss leader already.

tl;dr Actual losses are 24x less than headline figure due to bundles and sales.
Posted June 22, 2016
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drewpants: snip
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Petrell: I was merely pointing out the difference between "normal" piracy and goods purchased using stolen credit cards or other fraudulent medhods and the fact that devs are the ones who end up paying any fees involved in transactions and eventual chargebacks so every key purchased this way actually costs them money.
That's fair enough, but the general thrust of this thread and others like it has been to put the blame on G2, which isn't necessarily correct.

For the record, I tend to only buy games from GOG, but I don't like the idea of curtailing the market for everyone because of a few bastardly apples.
Posted June 22, 2016
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Petrell: There are people selling keys on G2A (and elsewehere) that have purchased those keys with stolen credit cards or aquired them thru other fraudulent medhods.
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drewpants: The same goes for eBay, Amazon and any other site you care to mention.
Those sites have policies and mechanisms for dealing with fraud and abuse. What is G2A doing about it?

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drewpants: It's not up to G2 or anyone one else to police the prior credit card transactions of each and every one of their users and to suggest closing a store because some people are committing crimes, which i'll grant you does suck, is ludicrous.
What they should be doing is holding the keys for a sufficient length of time that they can be reasonably sure that there is no fraud involved, or accept full liability for everything that does turn out to have been fraudulently obtained. But that would obviously drive them out of business, which says everything that needs to be said as far as I'm concerned.
Post edited June 22, 2016 by richlind33
Posted June 22, 2016
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Gonchi: So is this the modern day version of "Piracy has cost us $X in lost sales"?
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Petrell: Well, it's more complicated than that. There are various fees involved in transactions and in eventual chargeback so in this case, devs really lose money in each transaction and most indies aren't exactly swimming in money are they?
Actually, if I understand the matter correctly, in this case the developer isn't losing any money. And the title is quite accurate, "G2A sold $450k worth of our game keys". It's not "We lost $450k worth of our game keys due to G2A".

The keys sold in G2A have been given away by the developer or gone through a reseller. Then those resellers get hit by chargebacks, not the developer. Surely tinybuild is not selling 5k keys to, let's say, Humble Bundle by credit card and then Humble Bundle charges it back, right? It's people buying from HB who charge it back, then sell it in G2A. So tinybuild got diligently paid by HB, and now HB is the one not making any money here (or losing some due to transaction fees, as you say).

Or, I might as well have gotten the whole thing wrong, in which case I'd be glad to be enlightened and stop saying nonsense :)
Posted June 22, 2016
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drewpants: The same goes for eBay, Amazon and any other site you care to mention.
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richlind33: Those sites have policies and mechanisms for dealing with fraud and abuse. What is G2A doing about it?

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drewpants: It's not up to G2 or anyone one else to police the prior credit card transactions of each and every one of their users and to suggest closing a store because some people are committing crimes, which i'll grant you does suck, is ludicrous.
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richlind33: What they should be doing is holding the keys for a sufficient length of time that they can be reasonably sure that there is no fraud involved, or accept full liability for everything that does turn out to have been fraudulently obtained. But that would obviously drive them out of business, which says everything that needs to be said as far as I'm concerned.
How can you know that holding keys or accepting liability for stolen codes would drive them out of business without knowing how many codes are in fact stolen?

I agree that they should have a system in place though.
Posted June 22, 2016
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richlind33: Those sites have policies and mechanisms for dealing with fraud and abuse. What is G2A doing about it?

What they should be doing is holding the keys for a sufficient length of time that they can be reasonably sure that there is no fraud involved, or accept full liability for everything that does turn out to have been fraudulently obtained. But that would obviously drive them out of business, which says everything that needs to be said as far as I'm concerned.
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drewpants: How can you know that holding keys or accepting liability for stolen codes would drive them out of business without knowing how many codes are in fact stolen?
The only reason they're able to sell these keys for so much less is because cards are stolen and fraudulently used faster than the card issuers can respond to it.
Posted June 22, 2016
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drewpants: How can you know that holding keys or accepting liability for stolen codes would drive them out of business without knowing how many codes are in fact stolen?
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richlind33: The only reason they're able to sell these keys for so much less is because cards are stolen and fraudulently used faster than the card issuers can respond to it.
It's a possibility, but as has been expressed elsewhere there are also a lot of legitimate users and ways of getting free/cheap codes through sales and bundles.

It might be the case that the majority of these codes are stolen, but if that were the case it would be fairly simple to track the sales and eventually shut down the site no matter how fast the codes sell. There is still a trail.

But as I've said, I don't use G2 or sites like it. However, the article above reads like a butt-hurt developer as was the case with the attempts to ban the sale of second hand games.
Posted June 22, 2016
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Petrell: Well, it's more complicated than that. There are various fees involved in transactions and in eventual chargeback so in this case, devs really lose money in each transaction and most indies aren't exactly swimming in money are they?
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nepundo: Actually, if I understand the matter correctly, in this case the developer isn't losing any money. And the title is quite accurate, "G2A sold $450k worth of our game keys". It's not "We lost $450k worth of our game keys due to G2A".

The keys sold in G2A have been given away by the developer or gone through a reseller. Then those resellers get hit by chargebacks, not the developer. Surely tinybuild is not selling 5k keys to, let's say, Humble Bundle by credit card and then Humble Bundle charges it back, right? It's people buying from HB who charge it back, then sell it in G2A. So tinybuild got diligently paid by HB, and now HB is the one not making any money here (or losing some due to transaction fees, as you say).

Or, I might as well have gotten the whole thing wrong, in which case I'd be glad to be enlightened and stop saying nonsense :)
Actually the devs in question had their own shop and had it shut down due to chargebacks
The financial impact is actually huge

I’ve been dismissing the issue for a long time. Sure, a few game keys leak here and there – nothing major. For a few months we supported our own little store on tinyBuild.com – just so we can give some discounts to our fans, and do creative giveaways that’d include scavenging for codes.

The shop collapsed when we started to get hit by chargebacks. I’d start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days. Moments later you’d see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop.
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General discussion" G2A sold $450k worth of our game keys"(66 posts)(66 posts)
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