11 ms·

banning G2A, kinguin etc. won't stop those resellers. In Poland, there's a polish version of ebay (allegro.pl). Typing in any game and sorting by the price show

banning G2A, kinguin etc. won't stop those resellers. In Poland, there's a polish version of ebay (allegro.pl). Typing in any game and sorting by the price shows games being sold as shared accounts (xbox/ps4), or with ridiculous prices similar to those found on G2A and alike. And even if G2A were stopped from selling those keys, a new site would appear overnight. The industry needs rather a proper fix. How this would look like, I have no idea.

phito 7y ago
That website's layout looks weirdly alike Aliexpress'
- Kubuxu 7y ago
  Allegro was created a long time before Aliexpress was a thing 1999 vs 2010.
Robadob 7y ago
Those shared accounts might be accounts hacked with known/breached passwords. I previously had my mostly empty UPlay account hijacked by someone with a Kazakhstan IP. As I recall they renamed the account and added new friends and had been playing a game I'd received free, but didn't change the password. Mostly just spurred me to switch everything feasible to 2FA.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
  1. Everyone is responsible for their own password. Some sites may have password requirements, which I think is dumb, but ultimately it's still the users responsibility to secure their account against password guessing attacks. 2. (unrelated to article) My gaijin.net (warthunder) account has been hacked ages ago, and since I didn't spend a single euro on it, I never really cared. I just observe where people log in from (I get an email for every weird login), and it's quite interesting. 3. most likely changing the password would have required email access
  - Robadob 7y ago
    1. I was simply trying to clarify what 'shared account' likely actually meant. 3. This I didn't consider.
DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
> The industry needs rather a proper fix. How this would look like, I have no idea. How about they stop being so obsessive and controlling and just accept that A) People have a right to re-sell games B) We live in a global world; you can't sell stuff 4 times cheaper in another country and expect to be able to prohibit export C) When you give keys to an influencer (fake or not), the keys will be given away for free anyway; whether its on G2A or through some twitch giveaway does not impact your sales in any meaningful way. Unless you were expecting that the giveaway would reach mostly people who otherwise wouldn't have bought the game, in which case, you should have done some research on said "influencer" anyway. D) Many people buy games only because they can get them for cheap. Of course this doesn't apply to 100% of transactions on sites like G2A, but a significant percentage of them. E) If your game is good, people may pirate it and later buy it if they think you deserve the money. Harsh DRM drives would-be pirates into the hands of key-resellers; and once you "own" a game, through whatever means, you're less likely to buy it "again" from the actual developer. All in all, I'd say that the big game developers are steering people into the wrong direction (DRM, inflated prices, etc.); away from pirating and possibly eventually buying the game, towards key-resellers; and it's the indie developers who suffer the financial consequences of it.
- geofft 7y ago
  Developers are in fact accepting E, they say as much in the article. D is basically the model of set-your-own-price stores like Humble Bundle, and more generally the model of sales (in any industry): you temporarily sell a product at a discount to catch the people not willing to buy at full price. For B, is your preferred solution that games are sold at US prices worldwide? Who does this benefit?
  - DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
    > For B, is your preferred solution that games are sold at US prices worldwide? Who does this benefit? For one, me in Europe xD Joking aside though, stuff made in expensive countries is usually too expensive in cheaper countries. The only difference is that, once you make a game for an expensive country, there's no added cost to selling it (for a lower price) in cheaper countries as well; so devs try just that. I don't have a preferred solution to this; I just think that trying to impose their own restrictions on international trade is certainly the wrong solution. (Yes, governments do this, that's not my point)

phito 7y ago

That website's layout looks weirdly alike Aliexpress'

Kubuxu 7y ago
Allegro was created a long time before Aliexpress was a thing 1999 vs 2010.

Robadob 7y ago

Those shared accounts might be accounts hacked with known/breached passwords. I previously had my mostly empty UPlay account hijacked by someone with a Kazakhstan IP. As I recall they renamed the account and added new friends and had been playing a game I'd received free, but didn't change the password. Mostly just spurred me to switch everything feasible to 2FA.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
1. Everyone is responsible for their own password. Some sites may have password requirements, which I think is dumb, but ultimately it's still the users responsibility to secure their account against password guessing attacks. 2. (unrelated to article) My gaijin.net (warthunder) account has been hacked ages ago, and since I didn't spend a single euro on it, I never really cared. I just observe where people log in from (I get an email for every weird login), and it's quite interesting. 3. most likely changing the password would have required email access
- Robadob 7y ago
  1. I was simply trying to clarify what 'shared account' likely actually meant. 3. This I didn't consider.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago

> The industry needs rather a proper fix. How this would look like, I have no idea. How about they stop being so obsessive and controlling and just accept that A) People have a right to re-sell games B) We live in a global world; you can't sell stuff 4 times cheaper in another country and expect to be able to prohibit export C) When you give keys to an influencer (fake or not), the keys will be given away for free anyway; whether its on G2A or through some twitch giveaway does not impact your sales in any meaningful way. Unless you were expecting that the giveaway would reach mostly people who otherwise wouldn't have bought the game, in which case, you should have done some research on said "influencer" anyway. D) Many people buy games only because they can get them for cheap. Of course this doesn't apply to 100% of transactions on sites like G2A, but a significant percentage of them. E) If your game is good, people may pirate it and later buy it if they think you deserve the money. Harsh DRM drives would-be pirates into the hands of key-resellers; and once you "own" a game, through whatever means, you're less likely to buy it "again" from the actual developer. All in all, I'd say that the big game developers are steering people into the wrong direction (DRM, inflated prices, etc.); away from pirating and possibly eventually buying the game, towards key-resellers; and it's the indie developers who suffer the financial consequences of it.

geofft 7y ago
Developers are in fact accepting E, they say as much in the article. D is basically the model of set-your-own-price stores like Humble Bundle, and more generally the model of sales (in any industry): you temporarily sell a product at a discount to catch the people not willing to buy at full price. For B, is your preferred solution that games are sold at US prices worldwide? Who does this benefit?
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
  > For B, is your preferred solution that games are sold at US prices worldwide? Who does this benefit? For one, me in Europe xD Joking aside though, stuff made in expensive countries is usually too expensive in cheaper countries. The only difference is that, once you make a game for an expensive country, there's no added cost to selling it (for a lower price) in cheaper countries as well; so devs try just that. I don't have a preferred solution to this; I just think that trying to impose their own restrictions on international trade is certainly the wrong solution. (Yes, governments do this, that's not my point)