G2A accused of facilitating "a black market economy"

The CEO of indie publisher Tinybuild, Alex Nichiporchik, emailed us last night with some eye-opening accusations aimed at online retailer, G2A (a site that Nichiporchik describes in the blog post as something akin to eBay but for game keys).

According Nichiporchik, Tinybuild's online shop recently collapsed when it was hit by thousands of chargebacks. Apparently, in events that may or may not be connected, after seeing a huge number of transactions on their store, recently sold codes for the likes of SpeedRunners and Punch Club would then appear on G2A.

Naturally, with so many games being sold on G2A at prices that undercut the retail prices on Steam and on other online stores (the total cost of Tinybuild games sold on the site is just shy of $200K, which is apparently more than $250K less than their full value), the publisher enquired about potential compensation.

In response, G2A suggested that it's most likely that Tinybuild's distribution partners are responsible for selling the keys on G2A. Here's the response he received:

So the issue you have pointed to is related to keys you have already sold. They are your partners that have sold the keys on G2A, which they purchased directly from you. If anything this should give you an idea on the reach that G2A has, instead of your partners selling here you could do that directly.

I can tell you that no compensation will be given. If you suspect that these codes where all chargebacks aka fraud/stolen credit card purchases I would be happy to look into that however I will say this requires TinyBuild to want to work with G2A. Both in that you need to revoke the keys you will be claiming as stolen from the players who now own them and supply myself with the codes you suspect being a part of this. We will check to see if that is the case but I doubt that codes with such large numbers would be that way.

Honestly I think you will be surprised in that it is not fraud, but your resale partners doing what they do best, selling keys. They just happen to be selling them on G2A. It is also worth pointing out that we do not take a share of these prices, our part comes from the kickback our payment providers.

Nichiporchik writes that Tinybuild "are not going to get compensated, and they expect us to undercut our own retail partners (and Steam!) to compete with the unauthorized resellers." It's no wonder, then, that he calls G2A "fundamentally flawed" and a company that "facilitates a black market economy."

According to the retailer's response, G2A is only prepared to properly investigate Tinybuild's claims that the keys sold were stolen if they partner with them and effectively agree to undercutting their own prices.

It sounds like the publisher isn't keen on a collaboration, and Nichiporchik says that since there is no real way to know which keys leaked or not, their other option, deactivating the codes, is not feasible. It would just make a ton of fans angry and generally cause more problems.

In the same post the Tinybuild CEO says that he has spoken to one vendor who uses the site, who says that he makes $3-4K a month by using stolen credit card info to buy huge numbers of keys via cheap bundles, before offloading them onto G2A at a price that undercuts their market value.

"Make your own conclusions," he sums up at the end.

We recommend reading the full statement on Tinybuild's official site.