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TinyBuild, the publisher and developer of games like The Last Station and Speed Runners, has accused game key seller G2A of selling pirated keys for its latest title, Punch Club. G2A requested that TinyBuild send it examples of the pirated keys in question, but claims that the publisher never came back to it, so what could it do?
This all started a couple of days ago when TinyBuild reported that Punch Club has been pirated at a rate five times higher than the number of legitimate sales. Part of that it blamed on G2A, claiming that nearly half a million dollars worth of keys had been sold, without a single payment going to the publisher.
Although G2A hasn't denied that it may have sold some invalid keys, it claims that it needs to confirm that with TinyBuild and for that it needs key examples.
Considering it's only £7 on Steam, do you need to buy discount keys of Punch Club?
“TinyBuild should connect back with us and provide us with the list of suspicious keys for further investigation. Thereafter, G2A will be happy to publicly release the results of the investigation of this case with TinyBuild,” it said (via PCGamer). “G2A.com calls for TinyBuild to provide their list of suspicious keys within three days from the date of this transmission.”
TinyBuild doesn't feel this is the way forward though. Not only is it incredibly time consuming to compile lists of potentially fraudulent keys, it says, but that that would run the risk of those who received keys in giveaways or contests having their game license revoked too.
Instead it wants G2A to make changes to its business model: providing the ability for developers/publishers to set a minimum trading price for their games and more regulation for sellers. As it stands it claims that you can simply sign up with no checks whatsoever and start selling keys. Who knows where you got them.
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KitGuru Says: As much as it can be tempting to buy keys from sites like G2A, there are only a couple I trust not to provide me with a pirate key. Most of the time I'd rather just go to the source.
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G2A being shady as shit as always. I wonder what they’re going to do with these batch of potential keys, maybe resell them? XD
how can you sell pirated keys though? its been bought with money somewhere right ?
Since we’re dealing with product activation keys, to me it sounds more like theft – I mean, it’s not like the old days where you could just make-up a key that followed the rules but wasn’t legit… at least I don’t think so. If I’m right in my thinking, it seems like either a bunch of keys have been “intercepted” by hackers, or leaked by employees – hell their could even be an employee MAKING their own keys to sell? I honestly have no idea how steam keys work. Either way, personally I think TinyBuild are being slightly obtuse. I’ll admit that G2A should regulate their key sellers better, but minimum trading prices? That’s just absurd.
I’m not 100% about the whole business but from what I’ve seen in the past “pirated keys” fall into 3 categories.
Firstly is buying the keys from bundles such as humble bundle at their extremely discounted rate and selling them off to G2A for the profit. While technically “legal” it does harm the developer.
Secondly is buying the keys using stolen credit cards stored in a darkweb database which is a whole lot more common than you’d think and G2A’s come under fire from it a number of times. While they themselves don’t directly have anything to do with it they do nothing to prevent it such as identity verification like, say ebay, would have.
Thirdly is official partners to the developer selling off their batches to sites like G2A, which in this case is what G2A is claiming however in TinyBuilds very long statement they mention that their only partners are known bundle sites where they often do promotions.
To add salt to the wounds G2A are essentially saying that the only way they will help figure this out would be for them to officially partner up which would mean undercutting their existing partners including steam to keep up, otherwise they’re going to have to just deal with it. and while G2A won’t do any kind of refunding or damage control the only way they’re choosing the help the situation is if TinyBuild uses the G2A payment verification system
i dont agree on your first point, discounted sale shouldn’t be added to loss, considering they still sold it, i dont think selling those keys for higher price is a loss for the devs. its a skewed way of thinking just as devs consider a pirated copy to be a lost sale, they never plan on to buy it anyway.
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