Factorio is a bit of a modern cult classic, which makes it a prime target for G2A key resellers wherever possible, according to the latest set of data afforded by Factorio developers. According to them, "we would rather you pirate Factorio."
Factorio devs have spoken about this issue as a follow-up to last week's claims that G2A is a bad choice for developers, and that potential fans of any given game should outright pirate the games they are interested in, instead of buying them via G2A.
"Our stance is pretty much the same as Mike," says the relevant Factorio blog post, referencing last week's discussion and argumentation on the topic of grey market key resellers and G2A in particular.
After Factorio developers looked into the matter, they realised that Factorio, too, is being targeted by these parties, and though they're not happy about it, there's precious little they can do. They did, however, decided to take up G2A's offer to pay 10x the money that developers could prove they lost on credit card chargebacks.
"We had a ton of chargeback and fraud issues in 2016 just after our Steam launch, with over 300 Steam keys of the game being purchased with stolen credit cards. With an average chargeback fee of about $20, we estimate the total amount of fees we paid because of chargebacks is about $6,600," said the developer.
Devs know for a fact that some of the Factorio keys made their way to G2A because, after they revoked them, people reached out asking why that was the case. After Factorio devs changed their payment provider to that of Humble, fraudulent purchases stopped outright, and since Factorio does not go on sale, they have since been inoculated from the problem - for the most part.
There are still Factorio keys being sold on G2A, mind. Developer's guess is that these are either keys bought before the game's price increase pre-launch, or cheap keys purchased via regional fraud. The conclusion is obvious: "we strongly recommend people buy from us or one of our official partners."
