this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Stolen credit cards, buy legit keys, owner of card does chargeback, actual retailer is now out money and a key and can get penalised for the chargeback.
Might as well pirate it instead because the devs definitely don't get the money.
It feels like an easily solvable problem. Every key is unique. It can be centrally tracked from it's origin to the buyer. Steam should allow the easy revocation of keys if reported as bought with fraudulent means.
The reason keys aren't revoked more often is because it results in negative press. If you bought a Plony GameStation 6, you're very clearly not a Sony customer. But if you buy what looks like a Steam key, you enter it on Steam, you play it on Steam, and then days later get invalidated, usually the customer frustration is towards Steam. Most people looking for cheap games don't follow the chain of causality to see who's at fault.
It does. That's why sometimes you'll buy a game on g2a, it'll work for a while, and suddenly be inactivated. (Because it was bought with fraudulent means)
And even if the keys don't become invalid and were initially purchased with a non-stolen credit card, it may be part of a money laundering operation and therefore facilitating some shady crap.
I used to say this same thing parroted over and over again on reddit when in reality it's not even an issue. Every time you ask for examples they link the same incident that happened in like 2015 where some keys got stolen and sold on the site. It was a sliver of overall business they do yet redditors ran with it as if fraudulent key sales made up 50% of their business. It would be like saying Craigslist or Ebay aren't legitimate sites because there can be stolen good found on them from time to time when that's just the nature of an open marketplace.
Game devs and publishers have commented on this matter numerous times saying that it's a significant source of costs for them, but sure, it's just one incident.
Oh yea, have some links https://unknownworlds.com/blog/beware-shady-key-resellers-and-discount-steam-keys/ https://www.techdirt.com/2019/07/09/indie-publishers-tell-gamers-to-pirate-instead-buying-keys-through-reseller-g2a/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/g2a-pay-factorio-devs-over-32000-after-uncovering-stolen-key-sales
It's an open marketplace, every open marketplace in the world has fraud on it and G2A is no exception. Doesn't make it any less legitimate than other online marketplaces. But to address your three links, the first one is from 10 years ago which is before the G2A marketplace existed, the second features a developer (Mike Rose) whose game barely sold any copies on G2A as found during the 10x fraud challenge and the third is actually a legitimate claim that G2A paid out. However if 32k is the worst we can come up with that's pretty low comparative to the amount of business the site does.
If fraud is so much more prevalent than other marketplaces then why hasn't the EU opened an investigation?
G2A isn't more fraudulent than other marketplaces, if someones selling a game for less than any official retailer it's likely to involve fraud. G2A and Kinguin are just the biggest ones.
Regional pricing is the alternative to it being cc fraud, which I'm pretty sure still qualifies as fraud but since the publisher doesn't lose money from it it's kinda whatever. But many games are now region locked and still show up on these sites, I sure wonder why.