For all we know G2A is run by people who steal CC#'s for a living.

One solution to this problem in theory could be that when you buy a game, you have two options:

1) You buy the game for yourself and it goes in your library immediately. [x] exists now
2) You buy the game as a gift for someone else, they get a notification in their own account, no codes are given out via email or available otherwise. If the person accepts the gift, it is redeemed directly into their account. If they don't accept the gift, it goes into your gift inventory where it can be regifted to someone else, upon which it gets redeemed into their account immediately. No codes can be bought and then passed around or sold.

Option #2 doesn't exist at all anywhere AFAIK. Personally as a gamer I'd rather not see option #2 exist either as it would impact all of the free game giveaways negatively as well as other things positive for the community, so I'm certainly not arguing in favour of option #2 - only postulating that it would put an end to the G2As of the world.

But even then, it'd still be possible to gift games to people to be direct-redeemed into their accounts, with no way to regift them. That would mean giveaways would still work albeit without key exchanges, and with some changes needed for certain automated systems and sites like steamgifts.com et al.

I'm sure there are other pros and cons I'm not thinking about, but I'm sure that it would be possible to solve some other problems that arise by making changes to the way other things are handled as well.

I look at it this way: how viable will platforms like GOG remain if we buy from G2A whenever they undercut them?

For me, the issue of DRM is far more important than getting rock-bottom prices.

The answer lies in why you cannot return these unredeemed keys to GOG, or whomever you bought them from. Think about it.

One dev's reaction to G2A's offer:
https://twitter.com/sinisterdesign/status/747787063756529668

Yes you can. GOG's 1-month-game-hasn't-been-downloaded-yet refund works for codes too (I believe as long as they are unredeemed; not sure if it works after the code itself was redeemed but game not downloaded yet). Which actually is more or less same as what many stores offer for physical games, or any physical goods (you can return them in x weeks so long as they are unopened).

I think you are confusing one refund with another. :P

GOG has 3 refunds:

1) 2 weeks no-questions-asked refunds for in-dev games.
2) 1 month for games that don't work (provided the user has been willing to try some troubleshooting)
3) 1 month for games that the user hasn't downloaded anything from.

Yes, I was thinking about option 3. If a code wasn't redeemed it obviously wasn't downloaded, and GOG refunds those (I did it myself). I was thinking the grace period was shortened to 2 weeks, but I might have confused it with the in-dev refunds.

Edited my post now.

Here is what the Defender's Quest dev has to say about G2A:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20160628/276019/G2A_Piracy_and_the_Four_Currencies.php

Quote 1:
"If you're going to be buying Defender's Quest from us then knock yourself out! But if you're going to buy it from a grey-market key reselling site like G2A, then, please, please, just pirate the game instead.

To be clear, I don't agree with or condone piracy. But I'm a realist, and piracy is so much less worse than buying from seedy online pawn shops like G2A. If you're not going to make the best choice, please don't dive straight into the worst choice."

Quote 2:
"To be extremely crystal clear, I am not really bothered by 3rd-party key resellers who do not traffic in stolen goods. If they're just exploiting arbitrage, I got paid for that first sale and a key can only be redeemed once, anyway, so I don't really care. But I do care about fraud, theft, and chargebacks"

Are you telling me that you can buy a bundle, download what you want, and get your money back for the rest?

And what do you think they're going to give you for "free" games?

*reads OP... rolls eyes*

Is there any dev/pub that is going to fall for this? ^ So much this.

Not in case of bundles. But again this works exactly like with physical goods where when you buy bundled stuff (or buy-one-get-one-free or similar) you can't return a single item to the shop you bought it from, but you can sell it on ebay. So again I reiterate my point: resale of digital games should not be treated differently from physical games/goods. If you bought a code legitimately that's not redeemed you should be able to resell it to someone else.

Just to be clear, I'm not defending G2A in any way. As I've written in my first post, I didn't know anything about it and wasn't sure if people had problems with key resellers in general, or G2A in particular. If what's written about G2A is true (offering "insurance" against keys not working, knowingly dealing with stolen keys...) then they're scum and deserve all the worst. But just because some garages deal with with stolen cars, doesn't mean re-sale of second hand cars should be forbidden. And the same applies to digital games.

:)

Well, this answers my concerns. So happy to see devs feel this way.

G2A doesn't sell codes. The sellers sell through G2A much like sellers on EBay or Amazon. The insurance you buy is to protect you from the douchebags out there that sell bogus codes.

That doesn't cover the stolen credit cards from which the keys were originally bought...