Unknown Worlds wants G2A to "pay us $300,000"

A few weeks ago there was a rather public spat between online retailer G2A and some indie devs who suggested that it would be better for players to pirate games rather than buy from the site. In response to that G2A offered to implement new site features to combat people selling codes that have been acquired fraudulently, and the company offered to reimburse devs ten times as much money as they lost from credit card chargebacks.

A modest list of 19 developers have since registered their interest for the new site tools, but it's Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds that has really put the cat among the pigeons by slapping a bill down on the proverbial table for $300,000, asking the company to honour its promise to reimburse studios ten times what they had lost from games being sold on G2A.

As you can see in the post shared on Twitter, the Subnautica dev has asked the retailer to put its money where its mouth is, after claiming to have lost $30,000 on chargebacks for an earlier title called Natural Selection 2, referencing an article on Engadget from back in 2013 (although G2A isn't mentioned by name in that report).

"It's a load of crap that this tool would be 'expensive' to develop. It's also suspect how they are pushing the names of developers who don't want their games to be sold on their service—it's almost like they want blowback from players who don't understand the shadiness of their service and be encouraged to review bomb those developers," Unknown Worlds Entertainment founder Charlie Cleveland wrote on Twitter.

"It's also terrible to put the impetus on developers to have to take action with G2A to get this proposal moving in the first place, while G2A profits off gray-market sales and credit card fraud."

At which point the dev referenced the original claim from indie devs like Mike Rose, saying that it would be best for people to pirate games instead of buying them from G2A, although Cleveland then invited the retailer to pay up ten times the $30,000 they lost on Natural Selection 2 back in 2013.

As per the company's original offer, any claim will need to be verified by an independent auditor, so presumably, we'll have to wait and see what the result of that investigation offers up. Watch this space.