Steam

[deanb]

G2A (and most other key resellers) primary method is keys, it's kind of in the name. I've never been sent a gift through them just keys, I'd doubt it's their biggest system in use (and obviously won't be a thing for anyone going forward). 

And Valve will never stop using keys. Always kind of amuses me that Humble, GMG, etc are put in one basket and G2A n CD-Keys are put in another. Both sell you steam keys and email them over to you to input into Steam just one of them you get Russian Borderlands and the other US Borderlands. Can't be having people using that globalisation against the publishers though. Instead you get all this "G2A steals credit cards" stuff which is so grounded on reality all you ever get is likes of Devolver (a publisher with active interest in using globilisation for own gains) tweeting about it, whereas I'd imagine if there was any actual evidence on that side of things then G2A wouldn't be long for court, theft n fraud are pretty serious offences. As it stands nada, but Valve have been in legal bother with US govt, EU govt and Australian govt for various dodgy practices they've directly or indirectly been involved in.

I like them for buying games from n all, but Valve are extremely anti-consumer when they think they can get away with it. You may notice the US one is relating to gambling, the EU and Australian ones are anti-consumer activities by Valve. Incidentally the EU one which launched a few months ago is related to region blocking which this latest change seems to maybe be a slight response to but given EU and EEA covers a relatively broad economic range (for example I'm UK, but G2A is Poland and Polish games are generally cheaper).

[Mister Jack]

Supposedly there is evidence of G2A using shady practices, but I don't have the links handy at the moment. I'll look into it when I get the chance. I've never had a problem with cdkeys though. I agree with pretty much everything else you said.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

[toxicitizen]

Really? You don't understand the difference between authorized retailers and gray market resellers? You'll never see Humble selling keys bought fraudulently, for a start, and your money isn't going to some random dude in China or whatever. And, of course, small companies like Devolver and tinyBuild are the ones you'll hear complain the loudest. They're the ones that will be hit the hardest by this bullshit! 

Where you choose to spend your money is your own business and I'm not trying to tell you otherwise but G2A's incredibly shady behavior is well documented at this point. You have to be either grossly uninformed or intentionally obtuse to claim that buying from them is the same as buying from Humble. I mean, just look at the process to deactivate their G2A Shield "protection"

Anyone that's taken so much as a single UI design class can see that it's blatantly designed to confuse, mislead and frustrate you into leaving it active. Totally consumer friendly and not shady at all!

As for Valve, that no questions asked refund policy sure is anti-consumer! I mean, they are far from perfect and have done shitty things in the past for sure but they are not the bad guys in this particular scenario.

 

[Mal]

Essentially money laundering.

And I guess I should read replies that's on the next page. G2A can go suck a bag of dicks. 

Edited May 4, 2017 by Mal

[deanb]

TBH I've never had any bother cancelling G2A shield (though this was a couple years ago according to my emails, seems I got it for a free month with DA:I and got it cancelled within the day). Having a crap UI is hardly illegal however or CNET would be in a shit ton of bother for their downloads page. And hey, at least they let you cancel online unlike MS whose obfuscation of cancelling Xbox Live meant me buying Batman on GFWL locked my card because my bank had so many requests to block payments to MS. (though I believe they have recently allowed you to now cancel online like most other services).

Buying games through them is exactly the same as buying through Humble. You get your payment processed emails, you get an email with a link for your key on your account page, you then copy n paste the code into "Activate code" on Steam and download your game. What you get (for those that only use Steam).

 

Though I have been using them long enough my first order from them does come with this
 

Quote

Sehr geehrte / Sehr geehrter Dean Bowes, 
Willkommen in unserem Shop!

Also on the "authorised reseller" versus "grey market" I assume you're all fairly fine with Green Man Gaming. They're perfectly fine n dandy and such...with the slight thing that they also acquire keys from low income regions. Vast majority of sites you can buy your gaming keys from are rarely ever acknowledged as "authorised resellers" beyond Steam itself, and Gamestop and GAME (and local equivalent) who sell the official Steam card things. And of course if they're not authorised as Destructoid uses the word "legitimately" it must mean that these keys are...dun dun dun...acquired in an illegal manner and you end up with all sorts of shit flung around about how it's essentially piracy n such. It's like the negativity around buying an Android phone from China versus buying it from your local electronics retailer...who get their stock from China.

The "dodgiest" game I've ever bought was Borderlands 2, my order came through as a photo of the CD-key in the case (And I know what country it came from because my Steam library has "Borderlands 2" and "Borderlands 2(RU)". It obviously was a key that worked though. No idea what retailer I got it from though. I guess because we have to assume the worst and no doubt some American publisher would accuse them being from some poor Ukranian driver being gunned down and his truck load of game discs stolen, rather than just some Eastern European games retailer with access to a camera and the internet (they do have it there) going "Huh, I buy my games dirt cheap, I could make a nice profit selling them to westerners for what'd seem cheap to them".

 

Also Steams refund policy only came about after they got in legal bother for not having one. There was of course that time where not only did they lack a refund policy they'd purposefully updated their EU EULA to make out that you'd "used" your purchase once it was in your library. Lest people forget Steam has been operating for over 13 years and their refunds are only less than 2 years old.

Also I'm pretty sure even in America that anti-competitive collusion is pretty frowned upon. And lest you didn't read the article on the EU case, it's not in the past, they are currently under investigation. 

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-201_en.htm

As I said right at the top, Valve are happy to partake in the benefits of globalisation themselves so they can access billions of consumers, but would quite like it if the billions of consumers didn't also enjoy those same benefits.

[toxicitizen]

Intentionally obtuse it is, then. That means I'm done with this discussion but just a few last points.

1) The UI for disabling G2A Shield isn't "crap", it's very deliberately misleading. Just because MS apparently did something similar doesn't make it any less shitty.

2) I only mentioned Humble in my previous post for a reason. GMG were caught selling dodgy keys for Witcher 3 and caught flak for it (rightfully so). They've since added a disclaimer on their store pages sourcing their keys, so that's something. You're free to double check (or not) when you buy from them.

3) Yes, the refunds are fairly recent but that's not particularly relevant here. They could've gone the Google route and implemented some shitty, corporate-friendly refund policy but instead they went ahead and implemented pretty much the most consumer-friendly refund policy imaginable and, as far as I'm aware, the best one of any digital distributor. To the point where devs making short games with zero replay value are having freakouts about it.

Edited May 5, 2017 by FLD

[deanb]

If it's obtuse to mean I'm actually informed, in that I've actually used G2A, Shield, and a pretty large variety of other online retailers and not just straight up buying into publishers anti-grey market BS then so be it. I just think, and IMO it's a reasonable thought, that if G2A really were committing fraud* and credit card theft there would have been some kind of legal action going on. They've got GTAV on their homepage, I'd think if the keys were stolen or what not that 2K isn't going to twiddle their thumbs. Or, scrolling further down the front page; Sega, Valve, Blizzard, EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc. as well. Either none of these companies don't give a shit that a high profile site is trading in goods stolen from them or maybe, just maybe, baseless accusations in tweets are pretty much just that. 

It might just be a cultural thing (and given the US investigation into Valve is due to gambling and not anti-consumer practices it probably is). Growing up it was an accepted and expected thing to pick up cheap booze or fags from Europe, heck even purposefully go for a trip in your car to fill it up with booze from France (there's even specific shops set up in France for British booze tourists). Buying games online from Poland isn't really any different (just doesn't need me to have a car). 

Also you're the one that brought up the "not particularly relevant" refunds when trying to say Valves anti-consumer actions are in the past (and haven't even acknowledged the EU investigation into them). Also Googles refund window is also two hours (and vast majority of their apps aren't £50). Like yes it's nice n all that Valve have relented and put in a refund system but it's patting them on the back for doing something they're legally required to do and had resisted against. I'd put money on it being that when the "putting digital goods in a will" stuff comes to a head Valve will once again be in the camp against it.

*I will point out that yes I have seen evidence of attempted fraud, though it's not from G2A. Just every now n then developers I follow will post up an email they've gotten from "Jon Starling from Destructor" or what not asking for a key for their new game. Given that it's easy enough to catch out that they're mocking them on Twitter I doubt it's a pretty sustainable practice of acquiring keys. Oh I also see people complaining against people buying HIB keys and selling them on, but once again while people can frown against it all they like it's entirely perfectly legal practice (at least in EU) and no one is forcing developers hands for putting their games up for $1 on HIB.

[TheMightyEthan]

It's not that G2A themselves are committing credit card fraud or whatever, it's that they act as a fence for those that do, and resist any attempt to verify where the keys are coming from because they know it'll eat into their business.

[toxicitizen]

12 minutes ago, deanbmmv said:

If it's obtuse to mean I'm actually informed, in that I've actually used G2A, Shield, and a pretty large variety of other online retailers and not just straight up buying into publishers anti-grey market BS then so be it.

???????? What's obtuse is to ignore the overwhelming evidence and act like G2A is exactly the same as the company that allows you to choose who gets your money between them, the devs and charity.

12 minutes ago, deanbmmv said:

I just think, and IMO it's a reasonable thought, that if G2A really were committing fraud* and credit card theft there would have been some kind of legal action going on.

Where exactly have I said that G2A themselves are committing fraud? I think you might be misunderstanding the problem here. It's their marketplace that facilitates the sale of stolen keys or keys bought using stolen credit cards. The problem is that they don't give a flying fuck and have no desire whatsoever to do anything about it. They're perfectly content to just look the other way and take their cut.

13 minutes ago, deanbmmv said:

Also Googles refund window is also two hours (and vast majority of their apps aren't £50).

When I said "Google route", I was referring to the draconian way they handle copyright stuff on YouTube. Probably should've been more specific there.

14 minutes ago, deanbmmv said:

Like yes it's nice n all that Valve have relented and put in a refund system but it's patting them on the back for doing something they're legally required to do and had resisted against.

I'm not "patting them on the back" for merely having a refund policy. You're absolutely right that it was overdue. I'm simply acknowledging that their refund policy is way better than anyone could've expected given their history. They could've probably gotten away with something worse than what we got. Just giving credit where credit is due.

[deanb]

Once again, if G2A were actively fencing games don't you think one of the big publishers with big legal teams to hand wouldn't have taken umbrage against them? The 'fact' that G2A is such a dodgy site is treated like some open secret that oddly no one has taken action on. (also G2A is currently raising money for Save the Children so I'm not sure that one site donating to charity and the other particularly excludes them in some way either).

And when keys that have been stolen are highlighted to them they do remove them from the marketplace and close the sellers account. IIRC with the tinybuild accusation on the $450,000 stolen keys G2A removed 200 keys from the site. That's not exactly resisting it, and also I doubt TinyBuild games were going for $2,250 a pop.

As for the checks, they're about the same as selling any other item online. Though as online attitudes matured you're a lot less likely to hear about how super shady eBay is for example, despite also having a history of stolen goods, deceptive descriptions, and also the requirement of using their own payment system (PayPal certainly has its issues but it's pretty accepted form of online payment these days. Even pay for this place using it). And given physical goods tend to lack a unique identifier it's even easier to commit.

Also the "overwhelming evidence" has yet to be produced. Misterjack did mention he hasn't got links handy, and you've just shown that their cancellation for G2A Shield is crap. I have actively looked myself, and maybe my google-fu is weak (but it'd be a professional shame if that was the case) but I just can't find anything that seems to indicate that G2A have ever been proven to be this big boogie man shifting hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen keys and such. I'm just a bit sceptical. I remember when it was all big news about Game Dev Tycoon being pirated and lamenting how they're being shafted n such. What wasn't really covered was that they were being shafted by being a Game Dev Story clone that no one gave much a rats ass about and the developer has to put their game up on piratebay themselves and it only had like 19 downloads. But make a blog post, point at the bogie man that is piracy and then get a boost in sales when you get free marketing coverage on a bunch of blogs and people buying your game to stick it to those (19) pirates. It gets a bit boy who cried wolf after a while.

When the day comes that I'm reading an article on G2A being taken to court by Bethesda for actively selling stolen and fraudulent keys of TES VI then I'll change my opinion on them. But when I'm having exactly the same customer experience as if I was buying from HIB, GMG, S-E, etc then I'm pretty inclined to believe they're more legit than people would like to make out, and just ruffling feathers for encouraging use of globalisation while providing a handy scapegoat for all that ails publishers atm.

[Mr. GOH!]

Not G2A, which I've never used, but cdkeys has sold me some super shady keys for Ubisoft and EA games. My Watch Dogs 2 key was straight up from some promotion for folks who bought a Samsung phone or TV or something. I had to activate it through a special website for purchasers and everything, and cdkeys gave me instructions on what to type into the third party site, IIRC. If it was a dude selling a code that came with his phone or toaster or whatever because he didn't give a damn about PC games, that would be fine. But how did cdkeys end up with enough of these codes to sell them en masse? 

I've never had a valve code from cdkeys be as janky, but I've gotten games from cdkeys on origin that were similarly strange. 

[Mister Jack]

Alright, here are the links I found regarding G2A.

http://www.pcgamer.com/tinybuild-claims-g2a-sold-450000-worth-of-its-keys-without-paying-a-penny/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-03-controversial-pc-game-key-reseller-g2a-com-fights-fires-in-reddit-ama

The convoluted process of canceling G2A shield.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-21-murky-world-of-pc-game-key-reselling-exposed-by-indie-developer

From what I could find, it seems the bad press they get comes from the TinyBuild incident, where they washed their hands of 450,000 dollars worth of stolen keys for their game, and the fact that G2A shield is an incredibly slimy "service."  You have to pay extra for fraud protection?  How is that even legal?

[deanb]

Except it wasn't $450,000 worth of stolen keys and it was incredibly stupid of Tinybuild to be all "hey we want a cut of 2nd hand sales", like the right to first sale is even a thing in the US (in fact I'm pretty sure it originated from the US). The hard on that software (and this isn't just games but like office etc) guys have for wanting to use the uniqueness of keys to reap an extra cut each time software is sold on is pretty shitty (and enshrined in law that it's also never going to happen).

I've personally sold keys on G2A, and how did I get those keys? Did I go and steal someones credit card n buy a copy of Burnout and put it up on G2A all nefarious, or did I maybe buy a humble bundle as I do, find there's a bunch of games I already have and sell them on instead of stagnating (I have offered to throw them your lots way too but given these keys are obviously dirty dirty I can see why some of you would be suspect, I'm obviously not listed on Ubisoft site as an approved distributor of Driver San Francisco). But then how did Humble Bundle get the games to sell for $1? Did this charity loving site go and steal some grannies pension to get them cheap, or steal a truck full of games? Nah, the publisher put them on Humble Bundle for $1 knowing full well it'd sell for $1 and not only that but they might not even make anything off it if everyone decided to make it a humble tip or charity. But then the developer goes "hold on, there's people here selling the game for cheaper than I've got it on Steam. I'll ignore for now I've actually done that myself through Humble and instead demand that I get extra cash for this". It's pretty much having your cake and eating it.

(Also TinyBuild have actually taken down the blog post. I'd take a stab in the dark that maybe someone with some legal background pointed out it's a really bad thing to quite publicly accuse someone of half a million in theft if you can't back it up. Given libel is an actual, and in this case quite obvious, crime)

The fact that G2A are even having to respond to accusations of selling pirated games kinda shows how uniformed a lot of people have been made by developers over how game key selling works.

@Mr. GOH! Yeah that'd be similar to my (not-G2A) experience as mentioned above for Borderlands 2. Not as convoluted but not as straight forward on most key selling sites.

[toxicitizen]

Oh, tinyBuild have taken down the blog post? I had no idea, that changes everythi-- oh wait, nope, it's still up. I guess your google fu isn't as strong as you thought it was, uh?

So, you've sold legitimate keys through G2A. Okay. Congrats? And you think that anecdotal experience proves what exactly? Because it sure as shit isn't "so all the other keys must be legitimate as well!" Not remotely close to how that works. Do you also think that credit card theft doesn't happen because you've never personally done it?

At some point, doubling down on being intentionally dense starts to make someone look just plain dense, dude. Not a great look when you also start accusing others of being uninformed...

[deanb]

Well I stand corrected on that point. I was just going off the link MisterJack gave. I figured it was safe to assume that Eurogamer would have correct links (and nothing came up in Google Cache either). Also worth noting the URL you've linked implies that post was only put up a week ago, so I'm gonna take a stab in the dark that they had actually removed it and only recently (I guess with tying into the Gearbox stuff and the devs heckling their Q&A) put the post back up. TinyBuild obviously took in some of G2As feed back because checking their games none of them are listed as purchasable through their site but instead go through Steam, which makes a lot of sense in both ease of use, not having to make sure your sites security is up to lick, and hey no keys spat out by their site to be sold elsewhere n make them upset.

Their maths still sucks from when they posted it last year. It's very much inline with the usual "lost sales from piracy" fallacy that used to be trotted out years ago just now it's lost sales from people selling humble keys (or "Humble Store, BundleStars, IndieGameStand, IndieGala" as listed on their site where they also deny it's not keys coming from their distribution partners. Despite all of those selling keys that are easily resold..)

And no, my point would be it'll likely be the majority of their keys on the site. Even with the Tinybuild stuff G2A had removed stolen keys. Just because some scrap merchants accept stolen copper and some pawn shops sell stolen goods it's a pretty dim view of the world to assume that it applies to the majority.

As I said above, I'll happily change my tune on G2A and others when they're taken to court by Bethesda or what not. But given as I also said above how Bethesda are currently under investigation for colluding with Valve and other publishers I know I'd much rather be "dense" and following actual cases of a games retailer actually breaking the law, than just blindly accepting whatever "our sales are shit because [insert here]" is flavour of the month for indies.

[toxicitizen]

The tinybuild blog post has a bunch of updates at the end of it. The date in the url is most likely just updated automatically whenever there's one, probably so it gets bumped to the top. I doubt it was ever taken down completely.

Also, the piracy comparison you keep bringing up isn't really apt in this case. Arguing that piracy directly translates to lost sales is silly, yes. But that's not even close to what they were actually saying. If you actually read that blog post, it says a bunch of keys were bought through tinybuild's own store and then they started getting hit with chargebacks and were able to trace the same keys to G2A. Which, by the way, is the actual reason why their games only show as purchasable through Steam on their own site now. They had to shut down their own store because turns out getting hit with hundreds if not thousands of chargebacks isn't exactly profitable. Pretty sure you usually get fined and end up losing money.

The most confusing thing for me at this point is why you're so adamant on giving the benefit of the doubt to G2A, a company with a well documented shitty history, but have no issue making out the actual game makers to be greedy liars shouting at a non-existant boogeyman. Did video games steal your lover and run over your dog or something?

[deanb]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399257707760

Valve posting some of the tweaks to the store. The reddit post made a good poitn that a simple addition would be the "I already own this" type option like you have on Amazon/Netflix(though that's watched) so it stops trying to recommend things you own on say Origin or uPlay (or heck, on consoles).

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, an "I already own this" option would be great.  Like, it just recommended Halo Wars to me, which, yeah, I like that game a lot, good choice, but I already own it on both PC and 360...

[toxicitizen]

Lol.

So, at this point I guess mainline Halo is just a matter of time? Halo Wars 2 seems inevitable and considering how hard Age of Empire DE is guaranteed to bomb on the Win10 Store, it'll likely join the rest of the series on Steam before long.

I just hope Ori 2 won't be the exception. Ori and the Blind Forest was great and I really don't wanna have to skip the sequel.

[deanb]

Steam sale "leaked" by Paypal to be starting on 22nd.

[Mister Jack]

God damn it, Valve.

[Mal]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082

 

Looks like Steam is fully backing out of policing games on Steam except in the cases of illegal or "troll" content and games. It'll be up to each user to curate their store pages. Seems like with the upcoming UI update we'll have more power to do so. Auto curation (which caused the visual novel issue a few weeks back) will still be there but you can disable it. Overall, I like it. Just have to hope that they don't bungle it up.

 

Oh yeah, you can have your anime titties. Or butts.

[toxicitizen]

New Steam Chat beta is live.

 

I guess it's now more Discord-like? I don't know, I don't really use Discord. Seems really slick, though. The friends list especially. There's also now an invisible mode.

 

The client is also slightly tweaked. It's more blue now and the top bar icons were changed a little. Hopefully that means the proper client overhaul is coming in the near future.

[Mal]

Good move but just short of greatness that is addressing asset flips. Though, I guess doing that probably is going against what I posted before, however, asset flips are kind of like fake games.

[Thursday Next]

We're all on board with the concept that buying pre-made assets and reusing is ok though right? Because I really don't see an issue with that. It just makes making games more accessible for developers who don't have access to huge art teams, but have good ideas for games they otherwise wouldn't be able to make.