Potential new sponsor, G2A - Yay or nay?

[Faceman]

Have bought and will continue to buy from them.  Never had an issue with customer service, so can't comment on that.  They provide the product at a greatly reduced price, I've bought from them 3 or 4 times now, AAA titles, no problems at all. 

[widomaker]

I have used this site for some of my steam games... They have a great CS and a good refund if you pay the $1 or 2 so if you get a bad code they will give you your money back... Many of the youtube channles I watch have links to this and give 3-10% off... They also have Battlenet, Orgins, and others. When I have a few bucks I go and see what they have most of the time I pay less then $10 for games that if I bought them from steam or others it would be 2x as much or more.

[daldaren]

G2A sponsors alot of DOTA2 content, but I think they're one of the most suspect sponsors I've seen. I'd just as soon you were advertising MLG, Doritos, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, and XBOX One(s), but that's just my opinion.
 

Basically what I'm saying is, don't make a deal with G2A. Find someone less sketchy.

[Lays]

Lol, Their payment protection is BS.

 

Let's say you have 100 customers that are paying like £1 for payment protection and nothing goes wrong. That is £100 pure profit.

 

Let's say One person has a key go wrong with a £19.99 Key.

 

You are still making pure profit. It's like having a "Admin Fee" when you buy cinema tickets or whatever even though it's fully automated they take that little cut to boost their profits even though you get nothing back.

 

And if your key doesn't work... that's it your high and dry because you never paid for payment protection. Don't you see how fucking dodgy that is!!!!

 

 

That's literally no different than how insurance works.

 

 

Life insurance:  4000000000 people pay $50 a month, say a few people die a month & they have to pay out, yet they still rake in massive amounts of money.

[MoonSpot]

Money is money.  If game devs find X number of dollars acceptable in country Y, then that amount should be just fine in countries A B & C as well.  Welcome to globalization.

One price to find them.  One price to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

 

Besides, gaben's a billionaire.  I REALLY don't think that G2A has been causing steam any grief beyond being so greedy that they can't see the forest for the trees.

Better to opt for G2A then to steal software out right.

 

Vote yes.

[Lays]

This poll is also not cool, we don't need to do business with them and have a bad experience to know they're not good guys.

 

The "but I've never used them" seems like you could use it as an excuse to not listen to those votes with a "well if you've never used them how can you judge them?"

 

No, I've never used them, and I've never used them because I don't support what they do.

 

 

They just provide a market for people to sell things, I'm not really sure how it's any different than a service such as ebay?

 

People sell stolen things everywhere, craigslist, amazon, kajiji, ebay, the list doesn't end.

 

 

There are legitimate people using this website, I sold one of my keys there once that I got from the 970 promo deal when I bought my 2 970s, and many other people use it for that reason to.  Another thing people use it for are people that have steam money but want to convert it to real money, so they get the gift & sell it there.

[mono]

I can only say the best about G2A. They provide a great service and you can find more than just cheaper game keys - you can get windows keys too. My experience is only positive

[Phinix]

If you want a game sponsor rather go with someone like GMG or GOG.

[TheSLSAMG]

Nope, I'm not a fan.

 

Bought a CS:GO code from them. It worked for less than a month. I contacted them through the resolution center on their site, and they deleted my messages and never responded to me. It took me disputing my payment with PayPal to get them to give me my money back. I had G2A Shield as well.

 

The hacked codes from Ubi where sold by people using G2A, not G2A by themselves. I have used them many times with no issues at all. You cant exactly blame a third-party seller giving you a dodgy key. Its just like an Ebay seller giving you a broken item. G2A shield will protect you.

And this.

[DTYJ]

Nope, even there is a small chance of negative review for G2A, I will avoid it.

[eldergeek]

Lert's put it this way - G2A help me screw Valve over with their absurd policy of $=£ - Steam may be great for you US users and that fact that pretty much everything gets subsidised by everywhere else, but I can't afford their extortionately high prices all the time.

 

I say go for it. I've never had a problem with them.

[Badger906]

i buy ALL my games from G2A and have never had an issue. very good service and games at a very very good price!

[Carpenoctem]

I am glad that for now this is not going further.

 

I very much dislike their philosophy and practices, and this goes for all the places like that.

 

And the fact that they rarely speak in public, to me shows that while they obviously cannot control all the fake re-sellers and scammers, they do not proactively do anything to raise up their reputation and limit the incidents, because their strength is in the numbers, and if you want big numbers you have to limit any form of control and bureaucracy to the minimum legal. 

A good article that was out some time ago is this one:

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/8006693/the-truth-behind-those-mysteriously-cheap-gray-market-game-codes

 

 

I appreciate that you guys value the community feedback on this and ultimately I believe that what you should look for is just how that can affect your reputation and trust.

The moment that you associate your name to that place you will be held responsible for anything that goes bad with them.

 

The relationship with your audience is based on trust, and you should avoid like the pest anything that can make a breach in that trust. 

[Goldensapling]

I've used them a few times with no issue, would love LTT to be sponsored by them.

[Timie187]

I've used G2A a few times, never had a problem. If you can get a sponsorship I'd say go for it.

[Goodlordthatsalotofbytes]

If you have to use a poll to help decide about a sponsor you should probably go with your gut. My feeling is you should pass. 

[rayden54]

Please don't support a company that frequently sells illegal copies of games.

Even when they are legal, the developers get no support from G2A.

 

Purchasing a game off of G2A supports developers as much as pirating a game, would you allow The Pirate Bay as a sponsor if they offered?

 

Most people don't equate buying something secondhand with piracy. No one expects you to pay EVGA a fee to resell a GPU.

 

G2A seems like a glorified pawn shop to me-except everything there is one-use. Now, there are good pawn shops and no so good pawn shops. I don't know which one G2A is.

[Will_Naught]

I have used them before and I well at first i was sceptical of G2A I now think they are great just due to the low prices and i hope if they sponsor LTT we get a discount or something like that.  

[Wilbur232]

I used G2A a few times and the Key I got were good. The Customer Service is quite good to.

I think they are a little bit shady, but I don´t mind!! Its cheap games and I´m fine with it.

[turbo pascal]

In my opinion, G2A is by no means a good sponsor choice.

 

Their users acquire game keys from really shady sources a lot of the time, and - from people's experience - they can hardly guarantee any decent customer support. Some get it, some don't. G2A is essentially the Wild West in the game keys market. You wouldn't be really happy if a bunch of people bought game keys from a site you recommended and they ended up getting scammed, would you?

 

G2A's sponsorship is present in a huge number of places - websites, gamers, YouTubers, esports teams, etc. - and I don't think them being so ubiquitous is anywhere near justified. They pump a lot of money into advertising, but they forget about customer service when dividing cash between departments.

 

Also, there are better game selling/trading websites out there - GOG, for example. Or just better sponsors in general.

[Sir Asvald]

I bought a FarCry 4 key (remember that whole debacle)

 

The way they acquire their keys is most definitely dodgy. They obtain them from cheaper countries: (Steam is working to stop this, but Uplay and Origin is not), via stolen credit cards, or even from humble bundles! And i bought that key directly from them.

 

As for their customer service. It was alright. They were slow to respond, but they got me a refund in reasonable time.

However their SHIELD service is a terrible idea. Having to share your screen to prove that the key worked? I don't like that at all.

 

So TLDR; I think that they shouldn't become an LTT sponsor. Their integrity is questionable, and LTT is known (at least to me) for choosing honest sponsors. The fact that this thread exists is evidence of that

 

People are saying that they'd like the discount. They can obtain that elsewhere. LTT doesn't need to have anything to do with G2A

I second this. 

[thorpj]

Money is money.  If game devs find X number of dollars acceptable in country Y, then that amount should be just fine in countries A B & C as well.  Welcome to globalization.

One price to find them.  One price to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

 

Besides, gaben's a billionaire.  I REALLY don't think that G2A has been causing steam any grief beyond being so greedy that they can't see the forest for the trees.

Better to opt for G2A then to steal software out right.

 

Vote yes.

It's not about Steam's back pocket, it's about the developers that make the games.

[themoon123]

Don't. It's stolen keys that developers earn nothing from. Wayy to shady

[ImBleu]

100% Yes. I've used them for over $800 of games (not even joking) and I've only had one key issue (which was a FarCry 4 key) which they swiftly replaced. I fan.

 

 

Don't. It's stolen keys that developers earn nothing from. Wayy to shady

 

They are also part sponsored by Developers and Paypal. Would you consider HumbleBundle bad because you get cheap games? G2A itself is a Marketplace where other users can sell stuff. If you had been scammed on Ebay by one person, would you therefore not trust the whole of Ebay?

 

That's all G2A is. A Gaming Ebay.

[spyder]

I have used them before to buy 2 games and 1 license key for anti malware software. I have purchased without the shield protection, all the keys worked, you just have to use common sense when buying the keys, always go with a seller who has 100% feedback and loads of reviews from buyers no matter what the price is and you will definitely get a working key.