Home One dev urged gamers to pirate his game instead of making use of “shady resellers”

One dev urged gamers to pirate his game instead of making use of “shady resellers”

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It all surfaced on Reddit Thread in Hearthstone where users asked professional players to drop their use of G2A.com as a sponsor in order to support developers instead of making use of the “grey market” place. G2A.com has been under fire for a  number of months, and it seems this may be the final straw.

g2a

The legitimacy of games placed for sale on G2A has always been a major concern for developers. It seems as though a number of resellers are using promotion codes, and those provided by developers for testing and media, to earn a quick buck reselling them on G2A. This has been a long-standing issue in the gaming world, and that’s not considering the large amounts of unpaid sponsorships which plague their eSports division.

Enough is enough

The most surprising outcome of the entire thread came from one of the developers of indie game Action Henk who commented and told users to rather just pirate his game, and even offered to give a link to the illegal download. This is usually the ultimate nightmare for developers as they do not profit directly, or at all, from their games being pirated, but that’s not the important factor at hand here for RageSquid Founder Lex Dercauw.

“I understand people aren’t always able or willing to pay full price for a game, but seeing people play my game is the most important thing to me. Just torrent it instead of putting money in the wrong hands.”

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PCGamesN reached out to Dercauw for a comment where he elaborated on his frustration with third-party resellers:

“At RageSquid we haven’t had a run-in with G2A-like marketplaces yet, but that’s because we’re not yet partnering with a lot of resellers. However, we are planning on partnering up with bundle sites in the future and we’d like to avoid situations like what happened to TinyBuild.”

The TinyBuild incident Dercauw is referring to is the loss of almost $450,000 to fraudulent resales on G2A.com. This is devastating for any indie developer as not being tied to a major development company means your sales are everything when building your tiny company from the ground up. Steam’s Greenlight program has not been as rewarding as to indie developers, so this is a huge blow and something which needs to be dealt with.

A number of other indie developers showed solidarity with Dercauw, perhaps ushering in a new phase of those who stand up to G2A.com and try shut down any shady deals which plague the site.

 

Last Updated: June 27, 2016

15 Comments

  1. Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

    June 27, 2016 at 10:23

  2. Darren Peach

    June 27, 2016 at 10:32

    Not cool.

    Reply

  3. Deceased

    June 27, 2016 at 10:37

    This is the main reason why I don’t buy from resellers such as G2A…
    The main reason why I PAY for games ( whether I can afford them or not ) is to support the people that created them.
    I believe the price on Steam is largely influenced by the developer/publisher, whether the game is on sale or not.
    When you buy from G2A or the like, there’s no guarantee that the people that created the experience is rightfully compensated – meaning you might as well pirate it, the difference being, that when you buy from such “Shady” resellers, you’re potentially lining the pockets of some people that don’t deserve a cent 😐

    Reply

  4. Allykhat

    June 27, 2016 at 11:32

    To be fair, the numbers that TinyBuild quoted were not 100% accurate because of the amount of sales of Bundles and such. That is their own full retail price added to some guesswork. And ALSO, G2A issued a statement to them giving them the opportunity to rectify the situation. If the dev supplied them with a list of keys and some other such info, G2A were more than happy to investigate. The dev didn’t do anything, or even reply to G2A with the info they needed to investigate. Now surely if you lost that much cash you would be hell bent on rectifying the issue? So you would happily work with the guys to solve the problem?

    Now don’t take this as me supporting G2A, but remember there are two sides to every story, and only half of it was detailed in this article.

    Reply

    • David Muller

      June 27, 2016 at 15:16

      not all guesswork, they know exactly how many keys they lost to chargebacks

      Reply

      • Allykhat

        June 28, 2016 at 07:46

        Where is the proof though? They were given ample opportunity to present it? They kicked up a huge fuss right in the public eye, G2A turned around and offered them a fair chance at getting at least some form of reprieve, but then they were all quiet and the whole thing has been buried and the Dev hasn’t said a thing since? Call me skeptical, but that’s just as dodgy as G2A’s grey market dealings in my book.

        Reply

  5. Dane

    June 28, 2016 at 09:54

    Kinguin FTW! xD

    Reply

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