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Let's talk about how G2A is buying itself in

SeppOCE

Member
G2A only really came in handy for me in getting Arkham Knight for like 15 bucks. A game I'd never pay near full price and for a company that doesn't deserve any money after the shit they pulled on PC.

I see purchasing from G2A having it's own set of pros and cons but the main thing is you should only buy from them knowing that the devs who made the game probably won't see any profit from your purchase and that you risk losing your digital retailer account if the key you just bought is stolen. I know people had their uplay accounts banned after buying Far Cry 4 keys.
 

Walpurgis

Banned
Gog snatched Pillars of Eternity right out of my account after I bought the key from G2A. They said something about the games being possibly stolen or bought with shady credit cards or something. I should have known the prices were too good to be true.

Does G2A provide insurance for that and replace your key or are you SoL when this happens?
 
i dont really see the difference between buying a game off of g2a and buying someones unredeemed humble bundle games off of them from the buy/sell thread
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
How the hell do they have Mad Max for 16 dollars and a year of XBL for less than 30? Thanks for the heads up, OP. I gotta use G2A next time my XBL runs out.
 

RM8

Member
I've met several people who buy games from them, it's no surprise since I'm in Mexico and this is a rather price sensitive market. I'd never buy from them since I learned about its nature on /r/gamedeals, and I don't fancy getting my games shut down by publishers. It's funny, though, because unlike GOG, GMG and basically most non-Steam stores, they show prices in Mexican currency.
 

Storm360

Member
How the hell do they have Mad Max for 16 dollars and a year of XBL for less than 30? Thanks for the heads up, OP. I gotta use G2A next time my XBL runs out.

By abusing regional pricing and/or buying codes with stolen credit cards.


I've seen countless developers find their keys on G2A after being lied too (being told they're for a giveaway, they're for a youtube channel or press site etc), it's a huge problem and plenty of examples can be seen with some research, such as this article here.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Lesz...0/How_to_get_every_game_on_STEAM_for_free.php

or, when Ubisoft found a bunch of codes for uPlay games such as Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity were bought from Origin with stolen credit cards and made their way onto G2A

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/28/ubisoft-key-resellers-stolen-cards/

Honestly, the worst part is, when these incidents happen, they don't blame the reseller, they blame the publisher, even to the point where the revoked FC4/ACU keys had to be reactivated sadly.
 

rrs

Member
the endless G2A ads are annoying, to be honest

but I'm guessing they run on zero margins and are a nice place to dump illicit keys and out of region keys
 

Storm360

Member
Their "G2A shield" thing which you have to pay an extra dollar or two for gives you a money back guarantee I think.

I'm amazed how the shield thing isn't illegal, if a retail store did that trading standards would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
 

Foffy

Banned
I'm amazed how the shield thing isn't illegal, if a retail store did that trading standards would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

It's digital media, so there's no 'right' compared to physical material.

It's petty spin, in a sense.
 
I'm amazed how the shield thing isn't illegal, if a retail store did that trading standards would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

It took the EU multiple years to stop apple from selling an extended warranty which customers get by default at no price extra in europe.

They were literally selling hot air (it did come with some extra fluff).
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
i dont really see the difference between buying a game off of g2a and buying someones unredeemed humble bundle games off of them from the buy/sell thread
Well, at least with HB keys you can be pretty certain they won't be revoked due to a stolen credit card. Unless the seller is garbage and wants to nuke their account here.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Without the grey market I wouldn't be able to play as many games so I'm thankful for it, that being said I avoid g2a as they're pretty shady. CDkeys are my go to, or Games Planet.
 

Odrion

Banned
If someone approached GameStop with a truck full of Splatoon copies, you bet they'd look where it came from.
Digital and physical redistribution have their differences that when compared in an analogy like this, is absurd.

No, Gamestop is not designed to take a truck load of games off of one customer.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
RE: Buy/sell/trade thread, personally I find the fact that the thread has gotten increasingly filled with software and game key sales to be pretty unfortunate. It's going to be a moderation nightmare some day. :(
 
If there are more questions just let me know i'll try to anwser them.

You say that you are selling 50.000 - 80.000 keys of Metal Gear Solid V, a title that most definitely wouldn't have any problems missing a whatever preorder target (or similar story you describe on the last paragraph) they might have by a margin of hundred thousand keys.

You say that they don't care about the dubious source you are selling the keys forward to, but from your description a guy from local branch X contacts you about needing to unload thousand keys for a special low low price, just for you. I mean it sounds totally legit, not anything like how gray market with anything works. I bet there's a rock solid paper trail leading up right to the top where there's a guy on the Konami HQ writing to a paper "100 pachinco machines, 100 000 keys to that guy in Moscow" and so on. It sounds like the classic "but no rules are broken* so it must be legal!" scheme where G2A and similar sites are the peak of mountain and the sources themselves are base, with middlemans like you taking the biggest risk in the middle.

I sell keys on G2A. In the sense that my collecting habit has made me repurchase many games OVER AND OVER, due to short sighted buying habits. I used to just give them away at Steamgifts(Anyone else remember that place?), but I decided even a few cents in profit was a better investment.

How many keys are we talking here. 10? 100?
All the dupes from various bundles
? As a Steam collector myself, I have erroneously bought keys that I already owned too, maybe two or 3. And then there's the 1000 dupes from bundles and so on.

Without the grey market I wouldn't be able to play as many games so I'm thankful for it, that being said I avoid g2a as they're pretty shady. CDkeys are my go to, or Games Planet.

Games Planet is a legimate seller, CD keys is not.

i dont really see the difference between buying a game off of g2a and buying someones unredeemed humble bundle games off of them from the buy/sell thread

Yeah me neither. Both allow people to benefit from something that seemingly should not be allowed in the first place. Humble Bundle even states that gaining benefit from the keys is not allowed.
 

Dryk

Member
Aside from the wrong analogy, the only defences of parallel importing (Which this is a digital form of) are to protect companies, not consumers. After all, GAF on the whole supports region free console gaming, which facilitates this and railed at Nintendo especially for locking the Wii, 3DS and Wii U. Importing games from other regions is also parallel importation, only on a physical scale and usually because of games being unavailable in some regions. Aside from that the premise is the same.
GAF is able to discern between markups for profit (Europe/Australia) and markdowns to allow companies to sell a product they otherwise wouldn't be able to in a weak economy (Russia).
 
G2PLAY, for me, was and still is, a great service. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I bought (both preordered and bought after release) a LOT of AAA PC games on G2PLAY (never on Kinguin even though it's the same firm) and I always bought directly from them (not some reseller on their store since they enabled the "marketplace" option).
I never bought a "RU VPN" or anything similar. Always a "normal" Steam key (EU or ROW). Prices are usually in the 20-35EUR range.
It all started with the amazing offer they had in October 2013 where they bundled AC:IV and Watch Dogs for ~60 EUR. WHOW. Amazing price.
Bought it, got my Uplay keys on release fair and square, no issues.
Since then I preordered AC:U, DA:I, Splinter Cell Blacklist, couple of Blizzard games for friends, etc.... NEVER HAD A SINGLE ISSUE.
So that's Steam, Origin, Uplay and B.net experiences with no issues.
Latest game I bought (preordered) was Batman:AK for ~22EUR.

Sorry, but I'm not going to pay 60EUR for a game I can get for 25-30EUR. Fair and simple.
 

Nokterian

Member
I see even Joindota sponsored by G2A and even some cosplayers and yes even youtubers i never bought a key there and never will but it is pretty disgusting that they're blind to see what this website really is.

It is simple if it is cheaper than anywhere else than it is shady enough to not buy it from there.
 
G2PLAY, for me, was and still is, a great service. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I bought (both preordered and bought after release) a LOT of AAA PC games on G2PLAY (never on Kinguin even though it's the same firm) and I always bought directly from them (not some reseller on their store since they enabled the "marketplace" option).
I never bought a "RU VPN" or anything similar. Always a "normal" Steam key (EU or ROW). Prices are usually in the 20-35EUR range.
It all started with the amazing offer they had in October 2013 where they bundled AC:IV and Watch Dogs for ~60 EUR. WHOW. Amazing price.
Bought it, got my Uplay keys on release fair and square, no issues.
Since then I preordered AC:U, DA:I, Splinter Cell Blacklist, couple of Blizzard games for friends, etc.... NEVER HAD A SINGLE ISSUE.
So that's Steam, Origin, Uplay and B.net experiences with no issues.
Latest game I bought (preordered) was Batman:AK for ~22EUR.

Sorry, but I'm not going to pay 60EUR for a game I can get for 25-30EUR. Fair and simple.

And you haven't at any point thought to yourself why or how the prices can be 50%-60% lower than on retail? Or is that just because you haven't had any issues yourself?
 

Kiriku

SWEDISH PERFECTION
Yeah, I never buy anything from G2A. And honestly I personally don't see the need for them, games generally drop in price so fast on legit sites anyway. I guess if you are one of those who need to have every game on day one it's useful.
And yes, it's so weird seeing them being sponsors for huge youtubers and streamers. I guess they've done a great job painting a pretty picture of themselves for the masses.
 
And you haven't at any point thought to yourself why or how the prices can be 50%-60% lower than on retail? Or is that just because you haven't had any issues yourself?
I know exactly how they source those keys: mostly via bulk physical PC versions out of which they sell the keys (at least that's how they did it a year or two ago).
It's not my job to do to publisher's work. If the market for this is broken (in publisher's view), its on them to fix it. As a customer, I'm getting what I want, cheaper than elsewhere.
 
I know exactly how they source those keys: mostly via bulk physical PC versions out of which they sell the keys (at least that's how they did it a year or two ago).
It's not my job to do to publisher's work. If the market for this is broken (in publisher's view), its on them to fix it. As a customer, I'm getting what I want, cheaper than elsewhere.

Would you be okay with publishers curbing down this kind of activity by more aggressive region locking and other means such as invalidating keys or locking down digital sales to certain stores?
 

FinalHeaven

Neo Member
I'm actually really pleased to see this thread. For a while now I've been so confused over how G2A has gained so much momentum, especially on twitch with numerous professional streamers sporting links on their pages.

I've never really tried to get into a discussion about it until this point because part of me figured welp if pro streamers are doing it then it must have some level of legitimacy or why would places like twitch allow the advertisements?
 
Would you be okay with publishers curbing down this kind of activity by more aggressive region locking and other means such as invalidating keys or locking down digital sales to certain stores?
Region locking is a big NO, especially in the EU.
And tbh, consumers hate it and have always found a way to circumvent it in some way. We all know the "love" Nintendo has on GAF with regards to region locking. ;)
There's a huge push by the Comission to greatly reduce/remove geo-locking in the EU and I fully support this since it's a step forward to achieving the Single Market, one of the pillars of the EU.
I'm in Croatia and I hate the fact that even though we're in the EU, we don't have access to almost all of digital content platforms (iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, ...). Offtopic, but still... I'm pissed about it since I would gladly be a customer of most of those services.

Ontopic, here we have a situation of a market disbalance where some participants on both sides of the market are able to obtain the product in a more cost effective way.

Paying 25 EUR for a 50-60 EUR Steam game on one side (customer's), or obtaining the game wholesale as a seller with significant cost reduction than going directly via the Vale verified reseller route or whatever is a sweet deal.

The method by which the savings occurs ( 60 EUR - 25 EUR = 35 EUR is "lost" somewhere) on the selling side is the question.
But the customer shouldn't bother themselves with wholesale at all.
They see a store, the see the product, if the price is OK for them, they buy the product. Just like any other (digital) product/service out there.
Consumers are just the primary beneficiary of this and should in no way be the party that should fix the apparent problem.


If this was to be handled in a "consumer-friendly" way and I put " " on purpose because whatever happens, it's not consumer friendly and you're taking away something consumers valued as good for them (paying 25 as opposed to 50-60EUR), regardless of the intrinsic "morality" of the offer (again, to emphasise, the customer sees the END PRODUCT, not the wholesale delivery method of the said product), then it should be handled by the party that's harmed (publishers) and the "wrongdoers" (G2A, KINGUIN, G2PLAY, ...).
If its key deactivations ,then the resellers will have a huge backlash from the consumers wanting refunds, etc. and the market will shut them off in time since that source of cheap games will be closed.
Region locking? Region locking already exists in a sense, but like I said, it doesn't work since people who want to break it will go via RU VPN or whatever the route necessary.

It's a messy topic, but messy topic for those parties, not the customers.
Customers just reap the benefit offered to them. For how long? Who knows...
I don't see massive game deactivations, fraud claims, PayPal Buyer Protection surgers, refunds, etc.

Maybe publishers see this as "better than nothing" option where at least they get something (from SirJackDaniels et. al.) as opposed to people just torrenting the games.
 

LewieP

Member
For my part, as someone who runs a gaming deals website, informing people of the best prices on games, comparing both authorised and unauthorised retailers, but only featuring any particular retailer if they had a good customer service track record, here's my broad thoughts on unauthorized retailers.

I'm basically of the opinion that the responsibility to manage their inventory on keys lies with the person generating the keys. If they don't want resellers providing a secondary market for their keys, they should cut off their supply. I don't think demonising or punishing customers is an appropriate strategy.

Most publishers don't even have available a list of "authorised" retailers. When they aren't even taking this basic step to inform customers, I have little sympathy for any perceived negative impact on their business.

To some extent, here is a follow up article I wrote in response to Ubisoft revoking a bunch of keys that they alleged were fraudulently obtained (but provided no evidence to this effect, nor stated that they were liaising with any law enforcement).
 
And you haven't at any point thought to yourself why or how the prices can be 50%-60% lower than on retail? Or is that just because you haven't had any issues yourself?

That's more like 25-30% lower than retail. You are from Finland, so you should already know that retail PC copies can easily be found for €40-45, not the insane €60 that Steam is charging for new games.

Finland is one of the highest taxed countries in Europe, so it makes sense that countries with lower tax rates can be even cheaper than that. If Finnish retailers can constantly offer 30% cheaper prices than Steam and even deliver a box to you, what can other European countries?

Region locking wouldn't even be an issue, you could still get legit EU copies far cheaper than Steam.
 
You say that you are selling 50.000 - 80.000 keys of Metal Gear Solid V, a title that most definitely wouldn't have any problems missing a whatever preorder target (or similar story you describe on the last paragraph) they might have by a margin of hundred thousand keys.

I never stated i sold 50.000 - 80.000 copies to G2A. This was FYI of the scope of our business. We sold these amounts among all platforms for MGS5 (PS3/PS4/X1 etc)

You say that they don't care about the dubious source you are selling the keys forward to, but from your description a guy from local branch X contacts you about needing to unload thousand keys for a special low low price, just for you. I mean it sounds totally legit, not anything like how gray market with anything works. I bet there's a rock solid paper trail leading up right to the top where there's a guy on the Konami HQ writing to a paper "100 pachinco machines, 100 000 keys to that guy in Moscow" and so on. It sounds like the classic "but no rules are broken* so it must be legal!" scheme where G2A and similar sites are the peak of mountain and the sources themselves are base, with middlemans like you taking the biggest risk in the middle.

Let me explain in detail how it works. The local offices and their sales managers have their targets. These sales managers want to sell so they can get their bonuses etc.

For bigger pre-release deals certain publisher's HQ needs to sign off all orders. For example Activision is very strict in this. AFAIK their HQ Accounting / Sales department go over all Local orders and clear all orders. Some Local publishers have everything in their own control. Some publishers, who dont have an office in a certain territory, work with distributors who distribute their labels for them in these territories. For all 3 we are in the clear and in zero risk. The last two are easy to understand as i dont have anything to do what HQ thinks and all risk falls on the local publisher / distributor.

What about the sign off publishers? Let's use a new title from Activision for example. StarCraft II Legacy of the Void is coming in november, for which i already have on order of 10000pcs. If Activision contacts us: "Hey, can you sell 2000 units more at a lower price?" Ofcourse i say yes.

So, how do i get signed off and the paper trail? Well accounting magic.

If the general cost price for Starcraft is say 20 euro's to all wholesalers. I obviously need a lower price to sell these additional 2000 units for example 15 euro's.. Sales managers need to avoid a paper trail, as 15 euro's will immediately raise questions and the order will be bounced. Each local publisher has a trade marketing pot or several other ways to give out money on the books to a buying party. This is usually used as it says for marketing purposes etc. Local publisher allots trade marketing worth of 10K euro's on 12000 units SC2.

They book the 10K as marketing cost and the 12000 SC2 for 20 euro's. Deal is signed off and i have 2000 SC2 for 15 euro's.
 
So, how do i get signed off and the paper trail? Well accounting magic.

If the general cost price for Starcraft is say 20 euro's to all wholesalers. I obviously need a lower price to sell these additional 2000 units for example 15 euro's.. Sales managers need to avoid a paper trail, as 15 euro's will immediately raise questions and the order will be bounced. Each local publisher has a trade marketing pot or several other ways to give out money on the books to a buying party. This is usually used as it says for marketing purposes etc. Local publisher allots trade marketing worth of 10K euro's on 12000 units SC2.

They book the 10K as marketing cost and the 12000 SC2 for 20 euro's. Deal is signed off and i have 2000 SC2 for 15 euro's.
O_O

oh whow... this is fascinating. :eek:
 

Kiriku

SWEDISH PERFECTION
So G2A themselves acquire these keys and not people outside of the G2A business looking to resell?

Yeah, I always thought this was more about (shitty) people trying to get free games to play, or sell on sites like G2A. As an indie developer, I can confirm it's veeery common (and annoying). Especially since one of our games is $2 on Steam, but then they probably have some kind of template where they just switch out the title of the game in the mail without bothering to see what game it is.
 

Kiyo

Member
All this boils down to is are you okay abusing region pricing? If yes then feel free to continue buying from these sites (as long as you go with a reputable/trusted seller). If not then just avoid them.

The only major incident that involved stolen keys didn't even affect the consumer (apart from not being able to play Far Cry 4 for a couple of days) because Ubisoft caved and gave them the games back. The seller also got removed from G2A. The minor stuff like people social engineering keys off devs and publishers to sell on G2A is bad, but that's on the devs/pubs to lock down. It's also not really reflective of the mass sellers on these sites who sell hundreds of thousands of keys.

I really see no difference in using G2A versus buying from these people abusing region pricing in GAF's B/S/T thread or even the people who do it on eBay (and yes, go look on eBay for a game like Mad Max and you'll see tons of people abusing region pricing). It's a marketplace for sellers and if you use trusted ones you shouldn't have problems, but if you're worried then buy their insurance.

As for the issue of separate pricing for different regions, I feel like that's a much broader topic that deserves its own thread for discussion.
 
As for the issue of separate pricing for different regions, I feel like that's a much broader topic that deserves its own thread for discussion.

I always wanted to make a thread about it since there is so much confusion. Now that im finally a member i will.

Highlight all aspects with digital vs physical. PSN vs Retail, Steam vs KeySellers, retail export pricing. Bulk deal pricing etc, territory publisher wars (example EA France vs EA Benelux). It's going to be an interesting read.
 

mclem

Member
Let me explain in detail how it works. The local offices and their sales managers have their targets. These sales managers want to sell so they can get their bonuses etc.

For bigger pre-release deals certain publisher's HQ needs to sign off all orders. For example Activision is very strict in this. AFAIK their HQ Accounting / Sales department go over all Local orders and clear all orders. Some Local publishers have everything in their own control. Some publishers, who dont have an office in a certain territory, work with distributors who distribute their labels for them in these territories. For all 3 we are in the clear and in zero risk. The last two are easy to understand as i dont have anything to do what HQ thinks and all risk falls on the local publisher / distributor.

What about the sign off publishers? Let's use a new title from Activision for example. StarCraft II Legacy of the Void is coming in november, for which i already have on order of 10000pcs. If Activision contacts us: "Hey, can you sell 2000 units more at a lower price?" Ofcourse i say yes.

So, how do i get signed off and the paper trail? Well accounting magic.

If the general cost price for Starcraft is say 20 euro's to all wholesalers. I obviously need a lower price to sell these additional 2000 units for example 15 euro's.. Sales managers need to avoid a paper trail, as 15 euro's will immediately raise questions and the order will be bounced. Each local publisher has a trade marketing pot or several other ways to give out money on the books to a buying party. This is usually used as it says for marketing purposes etc. Local publisher allots trade marketing worth of 10K euro's on 12000 units SC2.

They book the 10K as marketing cost and the 12000 SC2 for 20 euro's. Deal is signed off and i have 2000 SC2 for 15 euro's.

There was a This American Life episode a while back, 129 cars. It went quite deeply into the hoops a single car dealership would go through in order to meet their monthly quota. Your accounts of the logistical wrangling these local publishers are going through remind me quite a lot of that.
 

Chariot

Member
All this boils down to is are you okay abusing region pricing? If yes then feel free to continue buying from these sites (as long as you go with a reputable/trusted seller). If not then just avoid them.

The only major incident that involved stolen keys didn't even affect the consumer (apart from not being able to play Far Cry 4 for a couple of days) because Ubisoft caved and gave them the games back. The seller also got removed from G2A. The minor stuff like people social engineering keys off devs and publishers to sell on G2A is bad, but that's on the devs/pubs to lock down. It's also not really reflective of the mass sellers on these sites who sell hundreds of thousands of keys.

I really see no difference in using G2A versus buying from these people abusing region pricing in GAF's B/S/T thread or even the people who do it on eBay (and yes, go look on eBay for a game like Mad Max and you'll see tons of people abusing region pricing). It's a marketplace for sellers and if you use trusted ones you shouldn't have problems, but if you're worried then buy their insurance.

As for the issue of separate pricing for different regions, I feel like that's a much broader topic that deserves its own thread for discussion.
Read one post over you. G2A are abusing developers. Asking for review keys or something like that and then reselling them and they use creditcard scams. This isn't just regional price abuse.
 

mclem

Member
Read one post over you. G2A are abusing developers. Asking for review keys or something like that and then reselling them and they use creditcard scams. This isn't just regional price abuse.

I think the point is that there's multiple 'culprits' (Perhaps that's too pejorative a word; I mean "sources of cheap keys") involved here. Some sources are explicitly shady - stolen CCs, fake keys. Some (those from SirJackDaniels' account) are not actually illegal but stem from internal corruption within the publisher. And some are, indeed, simply regional abuses.

When talking about the broader issue, you really need distinguish between each, you can't tar all with the same brush. It's three different issues - perhaps more - and each would require a different approach.
 

Kiyo

Member
Read one post over you. G2A are abusing developers. Asking for review keys or something like that and then reselling them and they use creditcard scams. This isn't just regional price abuse.

This isn't G2A. These are random sellers that then sell the keys through G2A. G2A and the bulk sellers that sell through them don't have time for petty scams like this. Avoid people with low amounts of sales if you want to avoid this kind of thing.
 

EloKa

Member
the whole key selling / marketplace industry is legal limbo. Everyone knows that there might be something wrong with buying a AAA game on release day for 20€/20$ from dubious stores but people seem to not care. Guess it is easier than pirating games and you can tell yourself that you "officially bought the game". People seem to not care of the supply chain.

I like cheap games but I'll be happy if there's a day when this business gets shut down.
 
Q

Queen of Hunting

Unconfirmed Member
G2a kinguin all the same shady as hell selling steam gifts etc.

People are always looking for cheap prices and as long as they are spending money they think it's safe not theft piracy etc. Its a grey area devs and publishers dont see money from these places so its basically theft or piracy on that note. But people wil still throw a blind eye to this cos they spent money on it.
 

Majukun

Member
I would be an hypocrit by saying that I care about how much money big publishers get out of those sales, especially since from 2006 onwards publishers and part of the developers went out of their way to screw up customers with increasingly imaginative ways.. Last but not least put micro transactions in 60 bucks games.

I also thank sir jack for explaining us how part of this work, it's an interesting reading to say the least.

all in all, I agree with people saying that if you are OK with region free games, you should be OK with this kind of business too...of course some shady practices should be condemned, but it's not our job, nor the website's.
 

Keihart

Member
Didn't even knew this site was a thing, now wonder some people buy sometimes pretty recent games for really low prices.

Personally, since the day i started buying my own games i decided that it was to support developers, so i don't buy used games, nor trade them and if a store looks shady don't use them. If a game is to expensive for what i expect to pay for it, i just wait for it to drop price on the official stores.

It's a shame that this happens, but i've seen all kinds of "illegal" stuff with digital sales, like there is people that sells PSN games by giving the account that owns the game to multiple users, obviously this is not as "illegal" but might as well be the same.
 
I never stated i sold 50.000 - 80.000 copies to G2A. This was FYI of the scope of our business. We sold these amounts among all platforms for MGS5 (PS3/PS4/X1 etc)



Let me explain in detail how it works. The local offices and their sales managers have their targets. These sales managers want to sell so they can get their bonuses etc.

For bigger pre-release deals certain publisher's HQ needs to sign off all orders. For example Activision is very strict in this. AFAIK their HQ Accounting / Sales department go over all Local orders and clear all orders. Some Local publishers have everything in their own control. Some publishers, who dont have an office in a certain territory, work with distributors who distribute their labels for them in these territories. For all 3 we are in the clear and in zero risk. The last two are easy to understand as i dont have anything to do what HQ thinks and all risk falls on the local publisher / distributor.

What about the sign off publishers? Let's use a new title from Activision for example. StarCraft II Legacy of the Void is coming in november, for which i already have on order of 10000pcs. If Activision contacts us: "Hey, can you sell 2000 units more at a lower price?" Ofcourse i say yes.

So, how do i get signed off and the paper trail? Well accounting magic.

If the general cost price for Starcraft is say 20 euro's to all wholesalers. I obviously need a lower price to sell these additional 2000 units for example 15 euro's.. Sales managers need to avoid a paper trail, as 15 euro's will immediately raise questions and the order will be bounced. Each local publisher has a trade marketing pot or several other ways to give out money on the books to a buying party. This is usually used as it says for marketing purposes etc. Local publisher allots trade marketing worth of 10K euro's on 12000 units SC2.

They book the 10K as marketing cost and the 12000 SC2 for 20 euro's. Deal is signed off and i have 2000 SC2 for 15 euro's.
This thread was worth it just for this post. Super interesting, thanks!
I always wanted to make a thread about it since there is so much confusion. Now that im finally a member i will.

Highlight all aspects with digital vs physical. PSN vs Retail, Steam vs KeySellers, retail export pricing. Bulk deal pricing etc, territory publisher wars (example EA France vs EA Benelux). It's going to be an interesting read.

Can't wait for it
 

Durante

Member
I fundamentally approve of buying out-of-region keys on a political basis. If companies want to source out-of-region goods and services with no additional tariffs then there is no justification for not allowing consumers to do the same.

Of course, when keys are actually stolen that's a different matter, but I've only very rarely seen truly proven instances of this. And no, the publisher claiming that they were "illegal" without any further evidence is not enough in this case -- they are hardly impartial in this matter.

Anyway, SirJackDaniels posts in this thread are really interesting.
 
So, how do i get signed off and the paper trail? Well accounting magic.

If the general cost price for Starcraft is say 20 euro's to all wholesalers. I obviously need a lower price to sell these additional 2000 units for example 15 euro's.. Sales managers need to avoid a paper trail, as 15 euro's will immediately raise questions and the order will be bounced. Each local publisher has a trade marketing pot or several other ways to give out money on the books to a buying party. This is usually used as it says for marketing purposes etc. Local publisher allots trade marketing worth of 10K euro's on 12000 units SC2.

They book the 10K as marketing cost and the 12000 SC2 for 20 euro's. Deal is signed off and i have 2000 SC2 for 15 euro's.

Isn't that "accounting magic" like, you know, called cooking the books or something similar.
 
Isn't that "accounting magic" like, you know, called cooking the books or something similar.

Not really. It's fairly common practice within the industry. Trade marketing is used to promote games on different sales channels. For example channels like Amazon and Game get huge amount of trade marketing money for marketing games through their product pages, dedicated landing pages and banners etc.

They get way more than the 1 euro per unit (10000/12000) i would have gotten. Sometimes channels make way more profit on the trade marketing than selling the actual games themselves.
10K on 12000 units is nothing for bigger publishers.

Durante said:
Anyway, SirJackDaniels posts in this thread are really interesting.

Thanks! I have enjoyed your mods a lot!
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Dude they are cheaper than The almighty steam, them HAVE to be shady! Just like GMG became shady overnight because GOG said so

We don't have a contract with G2A nor have we given them permission to sell our games, but we see our games up on their site. How is that not shady?

You do realize Humble, GOG and Steam all have contracts with the devs/pubs whose games they sell, right?
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Not really. It's fairly common practice within the industry. Trade marketing is used to promote games on different sales channels. For example channels like Amazon and Game get huge amount of trade marketing money for marketing games through their product pages, dedicated landing pages and banners etc.

Not just this industry, practically any industry with regional sales offices. Working as consultants/resellers partnered with large business hardware/software companies our sales team almost always had "co-marketing funds" at their disposal to make certain deals possible that otherwise wouldn't have succeeded. It isn't considered shady either, the funds are for promoting the products/services and getting the products/services into sites you might otherwise not have is a great way to promote them.

Long story short, "making your numbers" is more important to the regional team than the big picture in any industry where they give you numbers to make. Your boss isn't going to drag you over the coals due to the existence of a grey market, but if you don't make your numbers guess who isn't getting their bonus this quarter?
 

nynt9

Member
We don't have a contract with G2A nor have we given them permission to sell our games, but we see our games up on their site. How is that not shady?

You do realize Humble, GOG and Steam all have contracts with the devs/pubs whose games they sell, right?

Do you have a contract with eBay? What if you see your game being sold on eBay? Is eBay shady?
 
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