based
image:
screenshot of a Tweet from Running With Scissors reading
"We've been told our games are too expensive in some countries but we've been using Steam's recommended pricing for a while. We trust Valve enough to not change this. If our games are still too expensive for you, you can pirate them until you have enough to support us."
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Most == prevent.
The issue with G2A is that any keys at all come from scammed credit cards. In a silly way it's like of like tor. It doesn't matter if I am trying to sell my excess Humble Bundle keys in good faith on G2A if other sellers on the market are selling scammed keys. Good users making listings obfuscate all the bad users.
Also, purchasing regional keys cheaper and reselling them is also what causes this shit in the first place. People blame Valve for making the decision, but not the people switching to a region to buy a game for cents on the dollar and then resell it? That is actively hurting the people in those countries who are now being charged closer to USD prices. For Brazillians this is exorbitant.
I don't disagree with you in that there are G2A keys that come from bundles. But I do disagree with the notion that "it doesn't matter." It absolutely matters because it's affecting people's ability to buy games and it affects people circumventing legal purchase methods (of which I support their circumventing) who then have to deal with buying scammed credit card keys instead of me selling them and excess Humble Bundle key. The card gets charged back, the developer loses money, the G2A purchaser loses their key, and the scammers get off scott-free.
Basically, G2A should be a good idea but has been co-opted by scammers. These sites have their grey-market reputation for a reason, because it's run entirely off of the losses of others. Losses of the developers, losses of regional players, and losses of players purchasing games on these grey-market sites.
There's no winners for G2A except for the owners of the site and scammers. You may win once in a while getting a brand new game for $5-25 less. You may end up losing when it's pulled from your account, if it does. At that point, you're effectively gambling. Taking a risk for a discount on something with a high likelihood of it being unethically sourced which may be removed from your account?
In most cases I'd personally rather pay the extra $15 to just have the peace of mind. The chance of the game not being bought on a stolen CC and not supporting regional theft that hurts those players is just a bonus.
I never said it didn't matter. I said it's not at prevalent as people are making it out to be. I've purchased 100s of steam keys from these sites over the years and never came across an instance where the key was removed or revoked. All of these sites guarantee the key is good or your money back anyways so I find it hard to believe that is what is going on at all. As long as you purchase the key from a reputable seller as they all have ratings just like eBay then there is no issue. I think maybe in the early days of key sellers it's what was happening, but these sites would have fizzled out a long time ago if they were bastions of credit card fraud.
Anecdotally, I've bought 3 keys over the years from g2a and 2 of them immediately didn't work. Iirc there's a big button you click during checkout if your key doesn't work and the seller immediately has to provide you with a working one. That's not g2a though, that's just the seller providing you with another cheap key from their collection. G2A is scammy in other ways too (I've yet to be able to cancel their $2 "insurance" fee or whatever they call it the first time, it's been years and I'll probably have to chargeback since their site just throws me errors when I try to cancel. PayPal won't even let me cancel it from their end.)
Why defend them?
Because I've never had a reason not to? I've only used G2A a few times but you can just remove the insurance at checkout. Never had an issue.
Except for, again, how it's screwing over developers, players in other regions, and supporting credit card scammers.
I've seen no concrete evidence of any of that. So agree to disagree.
You said yourself some of the keys come from regional bypassing?
No, I said they are bought in other regions. There is no proof that is from any bypass. Just some guy who lives in a poverished nation trying to turn a profit.
If they're charging less in different regions and people were using VPNs to purchase then you'd think that'd be a sign that maybe game prices are too high. They're selling an identical product at a much cheaper price because the people in some countries are poorer or their currency is garbage compared to USD? Pretty gross to think about.