Joystiq: What's your game called and what's it about?
It's called Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. It's a hybrid tower defense/RPG about a young woman who's dumped unceremoniously into a plague colony who then sets off to escape by gathering survivors to fight off the minions of a crazed necromancer hot on her trail.
“A lot of people like to say ‘Piracy is theft.’ It’s not.”
Man, G2A must be incredibly bad, then. I keep seeing ads for them when I shop sometimes, and now it sounds like I'm glad I stayed away from them.
Nothing wrong with G2A. Pub is just pissed off they are not able to double dip.
All of G2As keys are purchased from other providers, who pay the publisher, who pay the developer. The keys are then resold by users on G2A. These moron dev/pubs are thinking that because they themselfs were not the ones to sell the keys to G2A, that they should be able to double dip and get payed twice for the same key.
If it really was an issue of credit card charge backs on sites like Humble Bundle, all the Pub would have to do is void the key with Steam/Origin, problem solved. They are making shit up in an attempt to get payed twice.
Now G2A is telling them basically the same thing i just said. Refusing to pay them for keys they have already been payed for, so they are acting like butthurt 10 year olds, telling people to just pirate. Pubs like this deserve to go bankrupt.
Somebody's got to defend these thieves. It is a fraud fueled marketplace that doesn't give a damn who they are damaging. Hey, join our shield program to help protect against scams and fraud that they actively know that is going on and yet if you want to be protected from any fraud you need to subscribe to the Shield service, rather than tackling fraud directly within their thieves den.
Was nice seeing Ubisoft revoking stolen and fraudulent Far Cry 4 keys bought from G2A then seeing people crying on forums knowing well that they took the risk buying dirty goods from G2A. Good to see coverage from people like Nerdcube, Jesse Cox, TB, etc calling them out.
How about all publishers go bankrupt, so then G2A dies as well because then there would nothing stolen to sell. Idiots have enough money to buy high spec PC hardware, but too damn tight to buy games legally or wait for a steam sale.
You are wrong. The keys are purchased with Stolen Credit Cards. But go ahead and support G2A. Only a matterof time before it becomes class action.
rocketpanda:
When you buy a physical used game in-store, you don't care if it is stolen. However, you do risk that if the game is broken and you don't discover it until after the return period, you are on the hook. That is one of the reasons why GS offers disc warranty as an extra feature. This is no different. There is no way for G2A to verify if the key was bought with stolen credit cards or not, nor is it really their responsibility. For all we know, those keys could be legitimate.
That is the sellers responsibility to revoke those keys. G2A gave publishers/devs an opportunity to revoke keys that are stolen. There is no reason G2A should be giving publishers/devs the opportunity to double dip or set the minimum price of their game.
This is completely counter to a free and capitalistic market on second hand sales.
I would rather support publishers/devs than second hand market, but I feel this steps on consumer rights.
@donthate
It is their responsibility to verify keys arent stolen before selling them on their storefront.
Would it be alright for a honda dealership to take a stolen car and sell it on their lot. OF COURSE NOT!
Now on to your solution of justwiping the keys. The issue is that not all the keys were sold seperately. Some may have been through any numerous bundles, so they would have to verify bundle packages with stores first to see if any were stolen. Now that itself its too hard because stores would have a list of ahipments that were stolen. The issue comes when that products leaves the store. What happens if you went and bought a game, and on your way home you were mugged. As far as the store is concerned that is a legal copy of the game. But now someone has your game and is selling it on G2A for 100% profit while the person who actually paid for it. Has nothing.
Then theres the credit card fraud. Not only online but in stores where people use stolen credit cards to purchase games. It takes in some cases up to 15 days after a charge was put through for the fraud investigation to begin, depending on how the peraon uses the card.
There are too many variables for a small team to find and verify all the keys within 3 days. It would be crunching time for a company like EA.
So what does G2A do? Tell them the only way to verify at that point would be to hand over the master list of keys for them to go over... Sounds a little fishy, why not justsend your copy of the keys G2A has sold to get verified, well that wpuld lose any chance of getting keys from the publisher for free.
Lastly they offer a 10% cut to publishers for anything sold on their site. Thats bribery. Instead of actually verify and look to stop the fraudulent activity through G2A, they just want to pay off the publishers.
450k worth of stolen games is worth as much as 450k 1dollar bills. Why is ok to steal games but not steal money?
The difference between places like humble bundle and G2A is that Humble Purchases the keys directly from the publishers. G2A doesnt. They are an ebay or kijiji of gaming.
If humble bundle gets a chargeback they know exactly which key was linked to the transaction that was charged back.
G2a just takes a commision of games sold on their website. They arent 1p year old cry babies. They are hard working artists ans programmers who have been robbed of almost half a million dollars.
Next time you have 500k let me take 450k and see how much of a butthurt 10 year old
Isn't Defenders Quest made by and indie developer, who publishes their own games? They probably don't have the cash to hire people specifically to handle the hassle, and can't afford to divert personnel to handle it.
FYI Using the phrase butthurt, makes you sound like a 10 year old.
No, actually.
G2A buys keys from 3rd parties and doesn't give a crap how the sellers actually got them. Many are stolen or "bought" with credit card fraud, and many others were bought in poor regions where the price has to be lower or nobody could buy them at all and then resold in regions where people can afford it.
There is a *reason* they can charge less than everybody else. The publisher/devs, quite often, are simply not making money off keys G2A sells. Not like, they can't double dip, like they're taking a loss on keys that were obtained illegally and bought by people who (unlike many pirates) actually would have bought the game in the first place. Not because they keys themselves cost the publisher money, but because getting 30 fewer USD dollars from sales in a region where they're relying on that 30 bucks does.
You obviously have no idea how G2A works, but it's a comment section so I won't bother explaining, long story short, they're screwing devs in the ass, especially smaller ones. And charge backs are not a myth, but I guess you must be shopping there so you're biased anyway.
It's not double dipping since the devs don't get paid in the first place when a lot of the keys come from the use of stolen credit cards that get charge backs.
And you can't just magically disable a small set of keys since you aren't informed which are legit and which are not legit. And key purchases happen on steam as well.
You literally have no idea what you're talking about, I've used G2A in the past, but they definitely traffic in stolen keys.
Very well said. Basically wanted to say that but there's no need for that :D. 10/10
PSN Plus and XLive Gold monthly freebies work with the same cycle.
The situation here is pretty complicated. You can't say the people who are buying the keys from these grey market sites are committing theft, because the keys are in fact being bought by someone and then resold for a fraction of what the game was, mainly because of what region the game was bought from (many games are sold in other regions for a fraction of what, say, the US or UK would sell them for because of the economy in those regions being not as good as they are in the main ones). The double dipping doesn't seem to be in play here, though, because these are more indie publishers that making these statements. In 2014, EA and Ubisoft had run-ins with G2A, which is probably what Dasteru is thinking about (two publishers well known for not being consumer friendly).
But you don't know if that person that is essentially going to use that key they bought from G2A or any grey market site would have bought it for full price, anyway, or wait for a Steam sale down the line. You can't prove that intent. And because that end-user really doesn't know (or care) how G2A got that key, in the end, it leads to some issue as to who bears the responsibility of staying legit in this case. You can tell the end-user all day that they are thieves for buying off of G2A or a similar kind of site, but are they the bearers of the responsibility to know where that key came from? Of course, we know more then about these sites than we did back in 2014 when the EA and Ubisoft issues came about, but it's still something to consider as to if you can really call anyone who buys from the sites thieves. Do they know anything about the possibly shady way those keys are initially bought before they are sold to G2A? Do they know that those keys MIGHT be stolen (which in of itself is a very interesting term in this case because they are actually being bought by SOMEONE, but how they got the money to buy them is in question, which tells you something about how difficult this is to know where things begin to get suspicious)?
In short, while I do agree that it is rather shady, and I wouldn't trust G2A, I would hesitate before calling this all out thievery or outright piracy before understanding the site and the methods in which we're dealing with here.
G2A is a fraud ring with zero oversight. Many of the keys purchased on G2A are bought using stolen credit cards which are then charged back, costing the developers money and time (also money). There's no way to know if the key you are buying is actually legit or not, unless you pay them for a guarantee.
If you're going to use a greymarket key site, at least use a trustworthy one like Greenman.
@Pandamobile
Any sites like Greenmangaming that has Xbox 1 codes too?
I would like to stock up on Xbox Live cash fast.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. There are cases of credit card fraud, and there are cases of developers being pissed that a reseller on G2A bought a couple thousand humble bundles and then resold the keys after the bundle ended, and there are cases where they are legit. Pretty much the craigslist of keys, without the risk of getting murdered.
It's essentially the equivalent of buying stuff off the street in New York. Sometimes the stuff is legit, sometimes it's illegal knock-offs.
Can't play on a lot of servers if you pirate.
All my keys from G2A have been legit and i love it. Do these people not realize they are simply advertising and sending more people their way? So many good deals right now on the site
I wish I had known about G2A before I made a few purchases.
I always make sure to check the site to see if I can get a game cheaper.
Agreed. All of my PC purchases on from G2A. I'll never purchase anything directly from steam.
Do you ever wonder why their keys have a significant discount compare to other sites. smh
Something has to give.
Well... if your going to take that attitude. Then even though I haven't pirated a game in years if I ever actually want any game you make I promise I will not pay you for it in any way! Yo Ho Ho off to Piratebay for any of your games Lars Doucet. So get to working on something worth downloading! *cracks a whip*
*you hear the sound of the worlds tiniest violin*
So while they have been payed once they don't want to be paid at all instead?.
" It's A trap " Admiral Ackbar said.
DId you read the article? The keys are stolen with credit card fraud. Not just sometimes but constantly. Not only do devs have to give the money back, but they have to devote time and resources to finding and stopping the fraud (which costs money) or they get hit with chargeback fees from the credit card company, which costs even more money.
Well that's a ****ing stupid response. It doesn't have to be all of them to be a major problem with keys on G2A and it doesn't somehow magically mean that by buying at G2A you aren't supporting the mass credit card fraud they facillitate, because you are. You have no way of knowing the difference, and small outlets have reported up to 1/3ed of their sales when they put something up for a discount being made with credit card fraud. Where do you think those keys go? G2A. They don't care or verify how anyone got the keys and they're the biggest site, so that's where the keys end up.
If you wanna support them anyways because you're too self interested to care about the devs you're hurting then fine, but don't pretend to have some moral justification in "not all keys." You know it happens and if you check the user ratings for sellers on G2A or the stories of devs then you also know it's common practice. The least you can do is be honest about it.
No, because i want to play online and need a legit cdkey to authenticate to your servers to enjoy the game.
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Then buy it from a legitimate source. Rather than fund the people who are actively organizing fraud against the developers that you enjoy.
You like to save money, and you like to play online, so you're okay with stealing from the developers and leeching off of their infrastructure for multiplayer. That is literally the statement you make when you pay your money to G2A instead of the people who actually make the game you love. The self-entitlement of your position is shocking. Crap like this is why studios embrace microtransactions, carve out content for DLC, or outright fold. Try looking at things from a broader perspective once in a while.
Defender’s Quest is a quality title that has seen a lot of love and care, it comes highly recommended. Level Up Labs has taken a stagnating genre and intricately laced it with compelling features, giving it a whole new image. There’s plenty of humour and the story is interesting. So go out there and discover the mysteries of ‘The Pit’ and the source of your powers.
GameZone: "Sony's handheld would be a good fit for some indie gems that are already quite popular. Here are 10 awesome indie titles that the Vita seriously needs."
1. Journey
2. The Walking Dead (is that considered Indie?)
3. Journey
4-10. Journey, Journey, and Journey.
Journey is probably my favourite game this year, and I even own a Vita, but putting Journey on the Vita seems kinda pointless to me given that the game is really only at it's best when it's played online.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm either playing my Vita because I'm out of the house and away from my PS3 and my Internet connection, or I'm at home so I might as well just be playing the game on PS3 with the big screen and 5.1 instead.
That just leaves offline Journey play for the Vita, which just isn't the same experience IMHO.
I love playing indie games on my Vita - they are a perfect fit. I know Lone Survivor is coming, but what else?
I hope Sony are working to get plenty more on the system including new games + ports of these mentioned.
I also wish Sony would structure and integrate the PSMobile offering a bit better, I mean games like Super Crate Box is another decent indie title which resides away from Vita games in the PSM category. To me, there should be no PSM category on the Vita.
