Yeah but g2a has private sellers which acts like Ebay as well as store sales which are apparently not affected.
The questions is if someone buys a key thinking it’s legit and it isn’t and the the digital service accepts it there and then is it then correct it can remove it later. Really it should be refused immediately and then the buyer goes back to the seller but it’s a bit difficult if they are removing stuff weeks or months later and without any indication what has been removed from your account or why.
They probably couldn’t refuse it immediately because they simply weren’t aware of the situation yet. Another popular one of these sites sold a bunch of cd keys for GW2 that were originally purchased from the NCSoft store using stolen credit cards. NCSoft wouldn’t have known that at the time of purchase and when they eventually found out (presumably from the police), they banned all the keys.
If you buy cheap games from unauthorised resellers then this is the risk you take.
Yup. It happens on Steam periodically as well. Even if the keys aren’t stolen, you still run the risk of the publishers revoking the key for the sale occurring out of region.
I bought half my Steam library from shady resellers, most of these keys were retail scans of Benelux copies. I avoid the ebay like sites like G2A and Kinguin though and only buy EU keys.
Most of my new release buys are from a few specific sites all which seem fine including my UBI stuff. They now offer a small charge to guarantee its a valid key so I assume they are aware of the issue. I don’t buy privately though.
Is till think it’s hard to punish the buyer as there seems no way of guaranteeing the key is valid or will even stay valid.
I realize the digital market is slightly different, but in the real world, if you purchase something at very much below the normal market price, and even if it works, chances are your purchase isn’t strictly legal. While there ARE legit outlets and it can be hard to tell the legitimate ones from the more shady ones, even people here admit they’ve purchased from shady dealers. Most of us do know, if the deal is too good to be true, it probably is. Perhaps if Steam and Ubisoft made a list of key dealers that are authorized one could check up against it would help?
Is till think it’s hard to punish the buyer as there seems no way of guaranteeing the key is valid or will even stay valid
Well, yes there is. Buy it from Steam or the publisher or an official distributor. If you can’t guarantee the key is legit from a given source, maybe you shouldn’t be buying it from them.
I recall these “computer expos” that would blow through the nearby big city a lot when I was a kid/teen. Rent out a whole convention center and have dozens of retailers selling RAM out of cardboard boxes, with LED-lit supercomputers buzzing behind glass and playing looping demos of the latest FPSes or “high-def” episodes of TV off CD-ROM. In the middle was a “software pit,” including one business, whose name I can’t remember for the life of me, who sold brand new videogames half off the normal prices. I figured something was up when my copy of SimCity 3K came in a small jewel case with a black and white cover and no manual, but hey, I was living off an allowance and wanted to play it, so I got it.
Haven’t seen one of those things roll through in ages–12-13 years at least. They were pretty awesome to me when I was younger though!
We have a “swap meet” here in town that sets up every weekend at an old drive-in theater lot. The videogames that they sell there seem to be legit used console games (older games, no cases, very cheap), but the DVD movies that you can find there are most definitely not legal. Lots of bootlegs of movies that aren’t even available in Bluray or VoD yet - and the prices are well under normal.
Twist! EA’s Origin notified Ubisoft of these keys.
We strongly recommend that players purchase keys and downloadable games only from the Uplay Store or their trusted retailers.
We regularly work with our authorised resellers to identify and deactivate fraudulently obtained and resold keys.
In this case, we confirmed activation keys were recently purchased from EA’s Origin store using fraudulent credit card information and then resold online. These keys may have been deactivated. Customers who may have been impacted should contact the vendor where they purchased the key for a refund.
Response from Kinguin:
We believe Ubisoft had no legal basis for its action. They did it just because they simply can. Kinguin of course is not going to challenge Ubisoft in court as we are not match up for these giants. We will continue to focus on customer’s satisfaction and our customers know we have never let them down."
We vow to help every customer affected by this unpleasant situation that contacts our support.
Response from G2A:
G2A.COM will make every possible exertion to prevent this kind of procedures in the future and exclude merchants responsible for such incidents from the marketplace.
Another twist! Ubisoft says they will reinstate keys purchased from the grey market sellers despite them being originally purchased from stolen credit cards.
After further investigation into the matter of keys that were fraudulently purchased on EA’s Origin store, we are reinstating keys for consumers who already had successfully activated and started playing the games. Any remaining fraudulently obtained and resold keys have been deactivated.
We are working with EA to prevent situations like this from happening again, and we will continue to deactivate keys that are found to be fraudulently obtained and resold. We strongly recommend that players purchase keys and downloadable games only from the Uplay shop or trusted retailers.
I think Ubi went above and beyond here. They really had no obligation to honor these keys, but they’re going to due to customers not understanding how these grey market sellers work.
So far we had tracked our game code from a Kinguin seller in Italy, to his source in the Netherlands and finally to seller C, a user on Steam who told us he was from Venezuela.
Where had he gotten the code? The Humble Store, where he says he received a decent discount by ordering the game just before its release.
So, in something like two weeks, that game code made it around the world and back to Polygon, the eventual buyer. C bought the game through the Humble Store at a discount, traded it to D for another game he wanted, and then D sold it, via PayPal, to R, the owner of the Kinguin storefront.
But Polygon contacted Humble Bundle, which sells books and games through its Humble Store. They say that the code we bought didn’t come from their store. They’d never seen it before.
Upon further investigation Robinson told us that, oddly enough, the key that Polygon purchased was one she had sent to a YouTube press contact to promote her game. She declined to name who she sent the code to, but was surprised to find that instead of playing her game or giving the code away as she had asked them to, they’d instead sold it for cash, anonymously, online.
By the way, the origin (har har) of the Gravity Ghost key being from a YouTube “reviewer” matches with what Wastelands Interactive uncovered back in October.
You roll the dice any time you buy from these grey resellers. Plus, you’re screwing over the developers.
Thanks for the link. That’s a hell of a thing, you wouldn’t think it would be worth their time to email requests for keys individually like that-- but I guess when you consider it, each key is worth $10-$30, which is a great return for 5 minutes of your time.
I always figured they were true grey market keys, from regions like Russia where games are priced to compete with pervasive piracy. I still assume most of them are.
[quote]
With official support for Windows Vista soon to end, we have decided to end our support of this now legacy operating system. This will allow us to take advantage of newer technologies moving forward and ensure the highest possible security for our users.
Users currently using Windows Vista will still have access to their games; however, they will be unable to receive future Uplay PC client updates once support ends.
If you are one of the few still using Windows Vista, we strongly urge you upgrade to a newer, more secure version of Windows at your earliest convenience.[/quote]
