There’s always a catch, isn’t there? If you haven’t been caught up to date on this whole saga, we recommend checking out these two articles from last week. If you are lazy, we can summarise the situation for you: G2A sell CD keys of games that were purchased using stolen credit cards, so tinyBuild and other independent developers become annoyed as they argue G2A has stolen several thousand dollars of potentially lost revenue from them. In the span of two days both companies issued each other a three-day ultimatum.
G2A have announced a brand new policy that lets developers apply for a royalty from any of its products sold on the G2A marketplace. G2A responded to Eurogamer in an email, making this statement: ”As a leader in the digital gaming marketplace, we recognise our responsibility to serve the greater good for the entire gaming industry. Recent events have demonstrated that we need to move faster to introduce new benefits designed with developers in mind, and invite them to play an even bigger role in creating the marketplace of the future.”
Where is the catch, you say? Well, the problem indie developers have with G2A is the fact they are selling stolen CD keys. G2A have offered to give developers access to its database, allowing developers to verify sales and track the lifecycle of every key to see if it has been purchased using a cancelled credit card.
While this might seem like a nice gesture on paper, G2A are only offering developers 10% despite the fact that they will have to do all the work to earn that money. Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone, argued on Twitter that G2A aren’t actually cleaning up their act at all. “So, to be clear, for 10%, I take on responsibility for checking for credit card fraud? Not sure that’s a great deal,” said Bithell on Twitter.
G2A plan on starting this new royalty initiative within the next two weeks, with a rollout planned for 29th July, according to Eurogamer.
