*Update: The original and subsequent blog posts are now available again the the Tinybuild website.
Today Tinybuild’s CEO Alex Nichiporchik published an article detailing a key re-seller called G2A’s potential shady practices. There are many factors involved in this scenario but the basic rundown is that G2A (A key resale site) is apparently selling keys that have been purchased with stolen credit cards which eventually charge back the funds. This means sites like Humble Bundle and Bundle Stars who are legitimately granted keys, have the bundles charged back after the codes have already been used. This practice was confirmed by Alex’s source who makes $3-4k per month using darkweb credit card lists to buy codes and re-sell them. I personally contacted a popular re-seller who also hinted that this practice was common and a reason for the major price difference found on G2A. Ultimately as consumers we want the best price for our goods, but when the vehicle is damaging the producer of those goods it’s not in our best interest to support it.
“G2A is apparently selling keys that have been purchased with stolen credit cards”
If you think that exposure seems like something G2A might want to keep quiet, you’d be right; So much so in fact that in the aftermath of publishing the article the Tinybuild site had been presumably under a DDoS attack and largely unavailable today into this evening. There is ZERO proof that G2A has anything to do with this, but it seems highly likely that they’d want to hamper this story’s traction. I’m going to fully disclose two facts that should even my personal bias here prior to my supportive gesture. The first is that I have purchased codes from G2A personally as they were at incredible prices and had no idea this was a practice being used. The second is that I’ve met Alex and his team twice at Pax South on separate years, and we at THL communicate with Tinybuild and consider them one of the best developers to work with industry wide.
All that being said I want to share the article with our readers in it’s entirety. Redditors were able to capture the article and save it as a jpeg. Please read this and critically evaluate what happens when the people making games you enjoy are being robbed. I’ve reached out to G2A but they have been silent thus far industry wide since the release of this article. Tinybuild.com is still down but be sure to send them your support via twitter @tinyBuild and let us know your thoughts on this story.
One response
Not surprised.