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G2A responds to No More Robots founder “Let’s lay all cards on the table”

Earlier this week founder of indie publisher No More Robots, Mike Rose, lambasted G2A and begged gamers to rather pirate games than buy them from G2A.

Following our coverage of that story G2A has contacted Hypertext in a bid to set the record straight as well as address Rose’s comments.

“Let’s lay all cards on the table,” says G2A.  “We will pay developers 10 times the money they lost on chargebacks after their illegally obtained keys were sold on G2A. The idea is simple: developers just need to prove such a thing actually happened on their stores.”

This is in reference to a trend a few years ago in which criminals would get their hands on a stolen credit card and rack up charges while buying games. These game codes would then be sold on a marketplace such as G2A for prices lower than the retail price in a bid to get rid of them quickly.

When the stolen credit card was eventually stopped, charges made to that card would be reversed leaving the developer and publisher out-of-pocket (it would incur charge back fees) and the player without access to the game.

To speak frankly, it sucked.

In recent years the sale of games online has become somewhat more controlled. Steam for instance doesn’t give you a key but rather ties your purchase to your account. That’s not to say you can’t buy games through channels that let you see the key, there are, and fraud can still take place.

G2A’s argument however is that it has measures in place to help developers recoup loses they incur and adding that it would pay for audits conducted by an independent, reputable auditor to determine whether games were obtained fraudulently and then sold on G2A.

However, the website acknowledges that its behaviour in the past hasn’t won it any fans.

“We never said we don’t deserve criticism. On the contrary, we have made huge mistakes in the past, and we have owned up to them and changed for the better. Just to mention the infamous G2A Shield, our biggest screw up. We got rid of it a few months ago and introduced the Money-Back Guarantee in its place, completely for free. But we know the backlash Shield has caused will stay with us for many months to come. We totally deserved it,” writes G2A.

But back to Rose’s comments earlier this week.

G2A says that in total five copies of Descenders – the game Rose’s No More Robots publishes – have been sold on the marketplace since release. Ahead of release however 226 keys were available on the marketplace.

The marketplace says that these keys likely made it on to the marketplace via giveaways but could have come from anywhere. Using these figures together with estimates of the total number of owners (32 000 according to data seen by G2A on SteamSpy) G2A estimates that as few as 0.72 percent of all copies of Descenders came from its marketplace.

“G2A has no significant impact on No More Robots’ business,” it said.

The marketplace goes on to say that it has helped Microsoft block game keys in the past and that it will gladly co-operate with developers, publishers and law enforcement.

“If any developer suspects there are keys on the marketplace that shouldn’t be there, there’s a quick and easy way to report it. All it takes is to contact us. If any key was illegally obtained, we’ll remove it, block the seller and provide their personal data to the proper authorities,” explained G2A.

Following the release of G2A’s response, Rose has once again slammed G2A on Twitter.

It seems as if this story is far from over and we expect to start seeing emails and more soon.

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