Indie developers are massively urging players not to buy keys to games in the G2A store. According to igrodelov, even piracy is the best alternative.
Indie developer Mike Rose, the head of No Mor Robots, drew attention to the non-turn-off G2A advertising on Google. As it turned out, the site bought advertising space in a search engine, and now links to it drop out first when trying to find a particular game.
Rose claims that this is exactly the case with the search for the Descenders game, published by No More Robots. After that, he reminded the players that buying keys through G2A does not bring any profit to developers, and urged users to “pirate” games instead of buying them on the site.
Descenders — Rage Squid developers themselves spoke in favor of free torrents. Rami Ismail from Vlambeer also joined them. All of them do not want G2A to receive users’ money.
What is the G2A problem?
In 2017, not only indies, but also such major developers as Gearbox Software spoke out against the site. She was directly called an “unscrupulous seller.”
The scheme, according to the developers, works like this. Game distributors request thousands of game keys from the developer and put them in bundles. They sell keys from unsold bundles to the G2A website and other similar sites, and they sell them at low prices. Game creators don’t get a cent from such deals.
An example of what typically happens is that a bundle site requests 20,000 keys to put your game in a bundle. Then the site only sells, say, 5000 bundles. So the bundle site takes the remaining keys and sells them to a site like G2A for a cheap, quick profit.
— Dave Gilbert (@WadjetEyeGames) June 30, 2019She insisted on her innocence: “We are doing everything in our power to maintain the best relations with developers and ensure the highest standards in the fight against unscrupulous sellers.”
Разработчики также говорят, что из-за G2A процветает торговля поддельными ключами. Студиям приходится тратить много времени и средств на решение вопросов с возвратными платежами и техподдержку. Хотя, как упоминалось выше, им транзакции с G2A ничего не приносят.
Вдобавок, G2A может на время изъять игровые ключи из продажи, чтобы попытаться заключить сделку с разработчиком. И в случае, если последний не соглашается, G2A снова возвращает ключи в продажу. Эту информацию подтверждает Майк Роуз.
Два года назад сама G2A Gamesindustry asked for a comment on the current situation in G2A.biz, but the answer has not been received yet.
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