Not to mention the potential for problematic sales to increase support costs for a game dev - a real hassle for small operations.Īs explained in a 2016 blog post by Lars Doucet of Level Up Labs, the dev behind Defender's Quest: Worse than that, people frequently purchase games from sites like G2A with stolen credit cards and the resulting chargeback might ultimately cost the developer money. Game keys sold on gray market key sites can sometimes be from a stolen or hacked source. G2A has taken out sponsored ads on Google, which mean that when you search for our games, you get G2A popping up above our own links - and we make zero money on our games if people buy through the ads.Īnd when you try to turn their ads off. The perspective of developersĪsk certain developers and they'll tell you to just pirate the game instead of supporting sites like G2A.

Maybe I had to wait a few hours or I had to click through more menus than I would have preferred to get that key, but the key has always arrived - and almost always for a greatly discounted price. However, I've always received a key after paying. And in my experience, sometimes their payment processors decline a purchase for no apparent reason. Because of how prevalent stolen keys have been on gray market sites, some of them require you confirm your identity before you can place an order. While 'legit,' buying games through sites like G2A, Kinguin or CDKeys can be less convenient than official stores. Most of these sites have some kind of shopping protection where you will be refunded if you don't get a key, though this protection tends to cost an extra dollar or two during the checkout process. Sites like G2A are legitimate in the sense that you will pay less for games and receive a working key that you can use on services like Steam. Here's the short answer: Yes, in the sense that you get a key for less than full price, but no in the sense that they are not supported by game developers - and gray market sites may not support game developers either. The reason you're really here is because you want to know if gray market key sites are legit. So you're going to buy a game from one of those no-good-gray-market key sites like G2A, are you? Well, we have your IP address and we're already on the phone with Interpol.

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