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Is there any legitimate reason for a site like G2A to exist? Reselling unused digital purchase keys isn't equivalent to reselling used games; once you redeem a

Is there any legitimate reason for a site like G2A to exist? Reselling unused digital purchase keys isn't equivalent to reselling used games; once you redeem a key, you can't transfer it to someone else, so these are keys that have never been used. And people generally don't purchase a digital game for themselves, then change their mind and look to resell the key without having redeemed it. Which is to say, as near as I can tell the only three real sources for keys on a marketplace like G2A are: * Keys resulting from theft of fraud (such as buying with stolen credit cards) * Keys purchased from region-limited discounted markteplaces and transferred into regions without the discount, such as described in the article * Keys resulting from bundles, which are not supposed to be redeemed by anyone except the bundle owner None of these three sources are "legitimate". Is there anything I'm missing here? Why would anyone have a digital key, which they have the full legal right to transfer without violating the terms of the store or bundle they got it from, that the paid for but never got around to redeeming? Having written that out now, the only real scenario that comes to mind would be something like Kickstarting a game, then changing your mind later on and selling the key you get once the game comes out, but I would wager that keys sourced in this fashion are so rare that they're not even a rounding error on a marketplace like G2A.

greycol 7y ago
Personally I don't have a problem with the second region limited sale issue as a source. Plenty of businesses are built on arbitrage between regions. However if these keys are not fit for purpose because they're region locked G2A should be pointing out explicitly in clear view what region a key it sells is from and they should be being forced to give refunds if it doesn't match. Personally I'm against region locking and believe it's especially hypocritical in larger businesses (that say outsource their customer support to a cheaper region but do not allow customers to outsource their purchase to a cheaper region). But legally a company can license their software like this and G2A shouldn't be able to co-mingle explicitly different keys if they are licensed this way. I do concede there are good arguments (though not convincing enough for me in the general case) that companies will just not sell in a market if they can't stop resale of their items. I do completely agree that G2A is a bad actor though. One 'simple' fix for their bad key issue is they could refuse to pay the same account (i.e. bank or paypal,etc not g2a account) for more than 1 key of any given game and rate limit keys sold to g2a from an account to 1 per day (which would limit the profitability of any stolen card before the associated payment option is blacklisted).
- eridius 7y ago
  That "simple" fix won't solve the problem where G2A makes bundle economics completely unsustainable for indie games.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Why does the business model of bundling invalidate the business model of reselling keys? There is a thriving business of people buying up Dewalt cordless tool combos (at a deep discount, especially when they're on sale), and then parting them out on eBay. Should Dewalt be able to prevent this by enclosing some faux contract alongside their tool bundles? We should be moving towards a world where a "key" has properties more akin to a physical item, rather than less.
    - eridius 7y ago
      Because the business model of reselling keys is built entirely upon a combination of fencing stolen goods and encouraging people to violate the terms of service of the stores they're buying keys from. There's no legitimate market here, and thus no business model worth protecting. Remember, we're not talking about the equivalent of selling used digital games. Once someone redeems a code, they can't resell it.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        Yes exactly. We're not even talking about the equivalent of selling used digital games, but rather the equivalent of reselling new in box merchandise. You didn't address the core of my argument, which is why should "terms of service" be able to carry post-transaction restrictions meant purely to implement a tenuous business method?
        eridius 7y ago
        A digital key is not the equivalent of "new in box merchandise". A digital key is a technical means by which to add a purchased item to your digital library. The ideal behavior is to not have a key at all but rather, once you purchase the item, to just have be added to your library automatically. That's the model that digital purchases are working towards. Physical merchandise exists before you purchase it. It costs money to produce, any unsold units are a negative for the company, there's a high overhead to buying a physical item in e.g. China and bringing it to the U.S., it's difficult for individuals to deal with large bulk amounts of physical items, and actually selling the items also involves physically transporting it to the buyer. All of this means it's rather difficult to do something like buy 1000 physical copies of a game in China for cheap and resell them to buyers in the U.S., or even to just buy 1000 physical copies of a game using stolen credit cards and then resell them. Digital keys on the other hand are ephemeral, they don't exist until you buy the product and they stop existing the moment you redeem it. The key is just to facilitate the process of going from purchase to having the game in your library. In some cases the keys are indeed separate entities you're allowed to resell (I'm thinking like you kickstart a game at a tier that gets you multiple digital copies, so they just send you several keys you can do whatever you want with), but that's not really the standard model. And yes, if you buy a game from a store and they give you a key, normally you are allowed to resell it, but there's usually limitations, such as games bought in China are supposed to be redeemed in China. And there are plenty of key sources, such as bundles, where you're not allowed to resell it at all, there's just no technical means of enforcing this (largely because services like Steam have no incentive to provide a technical means of limiting this; Steam doesn't care where you got the key, just that you put it in your library and thus increase usage of Steam).

greycol 7y ago

Personally I don't have a problem with the second region limited sale issue as a source. Plenty of businesses are built on arbitrage between regions. However if these keys are not fit for purpose because they're region locked G2A should be pointing out explicitly in clear view what region a key it sells is from and they should be being forced to give refunds if it doesn't match. Personally I'm against region locking and believe it's especially hypocritical in larger businesses (that say outsource their customer support to a cheaper region but do not allow customers to outsource their purchase to a cheaper region). But legally a company can license their software like this and G2A shouldn't be able to co-mingle explicitly different keys if they are licensed this way. I do concede there are good arguments (though not convincing enough for me in the general case) that companies will just not sell in a market if they can't stop resale of their items. I do completely agree that G2A is a bad actor though. One 'simple' fix for their bad key issue is they could refuse to pay the same account (i.e. bank or paypal,etc not g2a account) for more than 1 key of any given game and rate limit keys sold to g2a from an account to 1 per day (which would limit the profitability of any stolen card before the associated payment option is blacklisted).

eridius 7y ago
That "simple" fix won't solve the problem where G2A makes bundle economics completely unsustainable for indie games.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Why does the business model of bundling invalidate the business model of reselling keys? There is a thriving business of people buying up Dewalt cordless tool combos (at a deep discount, especially when they're on sale), and then parting them out on eBay. Should Dewalt be able to prevent this by enclosing some faux contract alongside their tool bundles? We should be moving towards a world where a "key" has properties more akin to a physical item, rather than less.
  - eridius 7y ago
    Because the business model of reselling keys is built entirely upon a combination of fencing stolen goods and encouraging people to violate the terms of service of the stores they're buying keys from. There's no legitimate market here, and thus no business model worth protecting. Remember, we're not talking about the equivalent of selling used digital games. Once someone redeems a code, they can't resell it.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Yes exactly. We're not even talking about the equivalent of selling used digital games, but rather the equivalent of reselling new in box merchandise. You didn't address the core of my argument, which is why should "terms of service" be able to carry post-transaction restrictions meant purely to implement a tenuous business method?
      - eridius 7y ago
        A digital key is not the equivalent of "new in box merchandise". A digital key is a technical means by which to add a purchased item to your digital library. The ideal behavior is to not have a key at all but rather, once you purchase the item, to just have be added to your library automatically. That's the model that digital purchases are working towards. Physical merchandise exists before you purchase it. It costs money to produce, any unsold units are a negative for the company, there's a high overhead to buying a physical item in e.g. China and bringing it to the U.S., it's difficult for individuals to deal with large bulk amounts of physical items, and actually selling the items also involves physically transporting it to the buyer. All of this means it's rather difficult to do something like buy 1000 physical copies of a game in China for cheap and resell them to buyers in the U.S., or even to just buy 1000 physical copies of a game using stolen credit cards and then resell them. Digital keys on the other hand are ephemeral, they don't exist until you buy the product and they stop existing the moment you redeem it. The key is just to facilitate the process of going from purchase to having the game in your library. In some cases the keys are indeed separate entities you're allowed to resell (I'm thinking like you kickstart a game at a tier that gets you multiple digital copies, so they just send you several keys you can do whatever you want with), but that's not really the standard model. And yes, if you buy a game from a store and they give you a key, normally you are allowed to resell it, but there's usually limitations, such as games bought in China are supposed to be redeemed in China. And there are plenty of key sources, such as bundles, where you're not allowed to resell it at all, there's just no technical means of enforcing this (largely because services like Steam have no incentive to provide a technical means of limiting this; Steam doesn't care where you got the key, just that you put it in your library and thus increase usage of Steam).