Past experiences with G2A?

[LavaCooled]

Hey whats up guys. I heard about a site called G2A that sell steam cd keys for pretty cheap. I went to their site and they look pretty legit. Anyone has any past experiences with these guys?

[Kombatwombat02]

Bought a windows 8 code. Didn't work. Bought the protection and got one email back but no refund or further replies. 

[Cryosec]

Bought several games on G2A, it's good. Just be sure to use PayPal or a virtual CC* and their G2A shield thing for refunding.

 

*idk about you, but with my bank (in italy) I can create a singe-use CC with a specified value. If I need to pay 50€, I create a CC with 50€, so nobody could steal CC info online

[KSores]

I bought black ops 3 from G2A

Worked great and great deal

But

The game sucks

[Lord_Karango17]

I do most of my game purchasing there these days, and have never had any issues. If you preorder a game, do note that you will have to wait till release date to get the key...

[sirtoby]

I would avoid these sites. They fuck over indie developers in a big way. 

[KearneyMC]

1 hour ago, LavaCooled said:

Hey whats up guys. I heard about a site called G2A that sell steam cd keys for pretty cheap. I went to their site and they look pretty legit. Anyone has any past experiences with these guys?

Every code I have ever bought has never been faulty 

[LavaCooled]

Thanks for the quick responses! Based on what I've heard so far i think it would be best to just buy through steam the old fashioned way

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, LavaCooled said:

Hey whats up guys. I heard about a site called G2A that sell steam cd keys for pretty cheap. I went to their site and they look pretty legit. Anyone has any past experiences with these guys?

G2A, along with places like kinguin, are "Grey Market" Key Resellers.

 

G2A actually doesn't sell you any keys. They act as a marketplace for anyone to come in and sell keys through their site. Think of it kind of like eBay or Amazon Marketplace.

 

The problem with G2A is that they have no control, and do little to no curation, over who sells what.

 

Some of the keys sold are 100% legit.

 

Other keys are "grey market" keys - which are keys sold in a 3rd world low income region at reduced pricing to combat rampant piracy (Places like Russia, for example). These keys are essentially sold at a loss by the software vendor (eg: Microsoft) to recoup some revenue from otherwise lost sales to piracy. They figure that getting $5 from you is better than $0. The problem with these keys, is that if you're from, eg, The USA, then these keys were never intended for you or your economic region. Even at minimum wage, someone in the US, often makes more in a week or month then the average person in some of these low income regions make in a whole year. Some keys are actually region blocked, so that, for example, a key bought in Russia, cannot be activated in America.

 

Some other keys are MSDN/Dreamspark/TechNet (Well not so much TechNet anymore) keys that people buy subscription access to (or are given access to for free via work or school) and resell these keys. This is technically illegal, since it's against the terms of service to resell keys. Plus they are given away for specific reasons.

 

Lastly, some keys are straight up acquired from stolen credit cards.

 

You, the buyer, have no idea which key you're getting. You might get a perfectly legit key that lasts forever, or you might get a MSDN key that eventually gets flagged, and stops working after 6 months. Or maybe you get a key bought with a stolen credit card, and the key is banned.

 

G2A shield is basically a guarantee or insurance that you buy, that basically says if you buy a key and it stops working (within a specific time period, I believe), then you either get a refund or a new key. The fact that they're SELLING you "insurance" on your key working, is proof that they know a lot of their market sellers are total bullshit scammers.

 

The guarantee/insurance should be free, because they should stand by what they're selling. They get around this by not "technically" selling anything, just facilitating sales between third parties.

[dalekphalm]

17 minutes ago, Lord_Karango17 said:

I do most of my game purchasing there these days, and have never had any issues. If you preorder a game, do note that you will have to wait till release date to get the key...

Why in gods name would anyone preorder a game from G2A of all places? Preordering is actually anti-consumer to begin with, and a bad practice for PC Gamers, because it encourages bad dev/publisher practices.

 

And G2A doesn't even sell the key directly, it's through a third party that probably doesn't even have any keys yet when they're offering preorders.

 

Not a good practice.

10 minutes ago, LavaCooled said:

Thanks for the quick responses! Based on what I've heard so far i think it would be best to just buy through steam the old fashioned way

I agree - use Steam, or an authorized reseller, such as Humble Bundle, GoG, GreenManGaming, Origin, UPlay, Amazon, etc.

 

If price is an issue, please just wait for a Steam Sale. The devs actually get more money that way, even when the game is on sale.

[LavaCooled]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Why in gods name would anyone preorder a game from G2A of all places? Preordering is actually anti-consumer to begin with, and a bad practice for PC Gamers, because it encourages bad dev/publisher practices.

 

And G2A doesn't even sell the key directly, it's through a third party that probably doesn't even have any keys yet when they're offering preorders.

 

Not a good practice.

I agree - use Steam, or an authorized reseller, such as Humble Bundle, GoG, GreenManGaming, Origin, UPlay, Amazon, etc.

 

If price is an issue, please just wait for a Steam Sale. The devs actually get more money that way, even when the game is on sale.

Oh yeah I forgot there should be a sale sometime this summer. I better just wait until then to buy games. Thanks!

[dalekphalm]

35 minutes ago, LavaCooled said:

Oh yeah I forgot there should be a sale sometime this summer. I better just wait until then to buy games. Thanks!

Steam has things on sale all the time, but yes, Summer and Winter both have huge mega sales.