The G2A Controversy: What Actually Happened?

With the dust just about settling around the recent G2A controversy, we take a look at just how one of the biggest online gaming marketplaces hit the self-destruct button.

While G2A hasn’t shied away from controversial business practices in the past, July represented a particularly troublesome time for the digital redistribution site. With names like Mike Rose, Rami Ismail and Mike Bithell joining the chorus of indie developers hit with the fees associated with stolen key reselling, the marketplace experienced a considerable public meltdown that seemed to reach into every aspect of the industry.

The rumblings of dangerous business practices were around even in the beginning. Problems began almost as soon as G2A pivoted to a public marketplace for everyday gamers to buy and sell their unwanted Steam codes. In 2015, Riot Games banned the company from sponsoring the 2015 League of Legends World Championship for reselling stolen keys as well as offloading fully levelled accounts, a strike against their regulations. Then, in 2016, tinyBuild claimed that they had lost close to $500,000 in stolen game codes that were sold on the G2A marketplace. We’ve always known there were shady dealings going on in the grey market, but it wasn’t until last month when a simple Google Ad search blew the lid off the problem.

On June 30th, publisher Mike Rose (previously of tinyBuild and now of No More Robots fame) took to Twitter after G2A steamrolled his publisher page with their own Google Ads. Tweeting that “we make zero money on our games if people buy them through your ads,” other developers soon followed suit in asking players to simply torrent their games instead of buying them through the marketplace. For G2A, this only represented a minor headache at this point. For the developers, all the pent-up frustration surrounding G2A’s business practices and seeming unwillingness to address their concerns was about to spill out.

Rami Ismail tweeted that “these sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks.” That caught G2A’s attention. In a move that seemed to set the tone for the rest of G2A’s bizarre marketing decisions over the next few days, the company released a statement completely ignoring the cause of the problem (at that point, stolen keys) and instead focusing on the positivity of offering developers 10x their chargeback fees in repayment. Note: This was later found to be bogus, with developers only being able to claim for keys they had themselves supplied.

While they do this, they also take the chance to attempt to dispel some of the social media stink that currently surrounds them. Again, we see another early indication of just how G2A will handle the sensitive and often volatile world of social media relations. They respond to Mike Rose’s tweets with a blog post of haughty smarm and an adolescent tone that manages to remain defensive and aggressive at the same time, essentially arguing that developers who give out free keys should expect to see them on a digital marketplace.

“I’ve had to stop giving out keys so freely to potential press and influencers because G2A doesn’t care about policing their site,” Rose explains. “We’re far less inclined to get involved with Humble Bundle as we know all the keys will appear on G2A afterwards and tank our Steam sales.

“The problem is the perception of value… as an industry, we are constantly fighting for players to perceive our games as valuable. If you see that Descenders is available for cheap somewhere dodgy your brain will say ‘hmm, maybe I shouldn’t buy it full price?’.”

With all of this coming out in real-time over social media, G2A seeks to minimise the conversation, asserting that only 8% of sales made through their site are indie, and the game in question sold minimal copies on the platform. A theme emerges. G2A answer the bare minimum in response to developer concerns, before filling their own media with lofty proposals and answers to questions that developers never set to them. Rather than addressing the stolen key issue, they try to pay back for chargebacks. Rather than take a look at how their sellers can afford to list games so cheap and crash the market, they pluck stats from the vault that make such prices seem irrelevant anyway.

So only 8% of sales made through G2A are indie? It wouldn’t hurt you to get rid of them then, say the developers. Mike Rose starts a petition to stop G2A selling indie games through its marketplace. 3,000 people sign in 24 hours.

Again, we see a sarky response from whoever is running the G2A social account: “Let’s say that petition goes and G2A decides to stop selling an indie game… Sellers would move to the next platforms (there is like 20 of them) and then to Ebay and other marketplaces”. The industry takes time out for a good chuckle and then goes back to signing the petition.

As more and more developers join Rose’s petition and Twitter becomes more and more overwhelmed with the voices of angry developers and consumers alike, G2A panic. That’s when this email lands in the Indie Game Website inbox.

“Hello,
My name is Adrian and I represent a global digital marketplace called G2A.”

Yep.

“At the moment, we are trying to improve our brand awareness and public image.”

Okay.

“We have written an unbiased article about how ‘Selling stolen keys on gaming marketplaces is pretty much impossible’ and we want to publish it on Your website without being marked as sponsored or marked as associated with G2A. It is a transparent and just review of the problem of the stolen keys reselling. If you are interested in publishing the article, please provide me with the pricing and details.”

Oh, Adrian.

This email was, it turned out, sent out to ten independent gaming news organisations, and reignited the flame fuelling developer incredulity. In one fell swoop, G2A had grounded any previous semblance of credibility. They duly issued a curt Twitter apology and continued on their way.

It’s not the first time the company has reached out to potential influencers to straighten out their public image, however. With streamers coming forward to explain that they were being offered cash for spouting G2A’s marketing lines on camera previously, it’s obvious that the marketplace relies too much on outdated content marketing tactics that have since evolved out of existence. It’s a repetitive story, though; when G2A panic they make stupid decisions and it’s something we’ve seen throughout this adventure into the grey markets.

G2A’s latest move came just last week when they announced their new plans to develop a key blocking tool, one that would allow developers to enter codes that had been bought illegally into a system and remove them from the storefront. That’s all well and good if it was the responsibility of the developers to ensure G2A isn’t selling stolen goods, but it’s not and G2A know that. That’s all well and good if it’s actually stolen Steam keys that are the problem, but it’s not and G2A know that.

We’re going to need to back up a little now. G2A know it’s not the Steam keys that are the problem, it’s the dodgy Steam Gift workarounds that have been causing real financial harm to developers. G2A wants you to know that it’s difficult to sell a stolen Steam key, because it’s not just the Steam keys that are costing developers thousands in chargebacks and lost revenue.

When a person buys a game from G2A, they are often asked to add a bot as a friend on Steam, who will then gift them the key. This is a shady practice used only to keep the transactions separate – seller sells a game on G2A, buys the key from a cheaper Steam region, gifts the player the key, then cancels their own purchase. It’s why consumers often find that they can’t access these games after a short while, and why publishers and developers don’t get a cent of the deal.

Mike Rose comments on the new developments coming out of G2A: “It’s nice to see them finally taking a step in the right direction – however, notice how they still completely ignore the actual problem of sellers using dodgy Steam Gift links… it’s just yet another example of G2A publicly making some positive sounding noise to glaze over the fact that they’re not actually addressing the issue at all.” In other words: ‘Keep looking at this big flashy Steam key blocking tool we’re giving you developers, just don’t look over there at the Steam Gifts that are causing the real problems, otherwise we’re done for.’

So what’s actually happened here? Well, the difficult questions of ownership and digital distribution seem to be finally reaching maturity. Relationships between independent publishers and developers and the digital distributors they rely on are already taut around these issues, and we’re seeing the first eggshell crack. G2A have been knowingly running a sketchy service that turns a blind eye to the scammers and places responsibility for avoiding theft on the developer for years, and it can’t be ignored any more.

A defensive and petty social response and an ill-advised content marketing attempt later, and G2A are haemorrhaging credibility. Painting over the real cracks in their business model with flashy blog posts and headline-hijacking empty promises and puppeteering sent G2A on an incredibly publicised road to hell. With Mike Rose’s petition gathering traction every day and more consumers being alerted to the harmful practices at play here, it’s not long before G2A sees considerable damage. It’s not the first rumbling of virtual ownership malpractice we’ve experienced, but it’s a new chapter in what is becoming one of the biggest stories of the digital age.

In the meantime, Factorio developers Wube have taken G2A up on the offer of their 10x chargeback payout, though their radio silence on the topic hasn’t come as much of a surprise. Mike Rose’s advice? “We just have to keep highlighting the issue whenever we can. I have future plans that’ll do just this.” While that’s all Rose had to say on his next move, we’ve been assured he’ll be tweeting it all the way.