The developers haven't profited from those keys though. It's why those stores are called "unauthorized resellers". You don't seem to think about just how they can sell things below the cost everywhere else. You're too stupid to understand why that is.

You just think everyone's picking on you/them unfairly. The reality is that you're just trying to rationalize and you're failing miserably. You lost because of your greed and it deserved to happen to you. Buying from places like these just reinforces why you're poor trash and will remain poor trash. You'll always spend more money than people like me do and you'll end up with less for it.

The funny thing is that trash like you usually pirates everything and in your attempt to be half-legitimate it backfired completely. Hilarious. You're not capable of being legitimate so why even try? You're only capable of crying about how the world is unfair and how being a poor little child means your $7 is all your trash parents can give you this year. Go back to the dumpster and stay there safe away from this unfair world where you can suck your thumb in peace.

Well, this thread was useful for me.

I never really understood how exactly key resellers worked. Obviously they were somehow getting keys cheaper than the typical retail price, but sometimes the prices seemed even cheaper than regional discounts.

Now I get it, most of them are "marketplaces" where independent sellers are given space to sell their keys that they've acquired by whatever unverified means. It's like some kind of online flea market. Some stuff might be from a garage sale. Some stuff might be hot. Some stuff might just be smuggled. Who knows?

The difference with this type of digital good is the databases can track the goods together with the purchases, so improperly region-transferred purchases or goods purchased with fraudulent credit card data can be identified, and revoked.

It's kind of shitty that the end purchaser (who may be naive) likely ends up paying the price, but realistically the blame lies with the grey market provider. They could work to validate the purchase region, or they could work to ensure that fraudulent key sellers are shut down by default. But realistically their whole business model kind of depends upon one of those types of arrangements being the case.

For GOG keys, there's no flexible costs. it costs near-zero to create additional keys, and near-zero to provide the download of the game. Therefore, there's no concept of a competitive marketplace for the keys. It's not like someone is going to have increased efficiency in delivering the keys to you as opposed to getting them straight from GOG. By definition they can only add costs. So the only plausible scenarios where the prices are lower than GOG direct are keys purchased on sale being resold later, cross-region pricing games, or fraud.

If you want to compare prices, you can certainly look at other sellers of games. For example Valve's Steam, or Amazon digital downloads are definitely legitimate options.

So basically G2A's whole business model is based around region-price dodging, and fraud. If you're cool with dodging the regional pricing rules (and you live in a place where this is even a possible win), then you unfortunately have to deal with the hassle and results of possibly purchasing fraudulently acquired keys.

In any event, there's nothing in either case that serves GOG's (or their partnered game publishers's) interests, so there's no reason to expect GOG to be supportive of such arrangements. I do admit a one-world-one-price model did make key resellers much more clearly black-market, so it's too bad that's gone.


All that aside, a standard boiler plate message on product removal to the user would be the right thing to do. But the only place a user is likely to find out about the rules ahead of time to avoid the problem is when reading the GOG terms of service (with a friendly plain-English explanation), or on the key reseller page where the key is listed. Fat chance getting the resellers to post "by the way, reselling GOG keys is considered illegitimate by GOG".

Luckily GOG seems to display the number of games (or items) in your account nowadays, so you just need to remember one number. That's why I know I'm supposed to have 1023 items in my GOG account right now, so if that number decreases, I want to know why.

The recent unbundling of games made me lose track for some time though, as the number of account items increased a lot during that time. But now it seems to have stabilized, I think. As for how to find what exactly has changed in your account (in case the number changes inexplicably)... I guess gogrepo.py is actually quite a good tool for checking that, as long as you keep older manifest files around. Then I guess you can simply diff the older and newer manifest file (or maybe the output when gogrepo reads that manifest file, because then it lists all the files in a human readable format), to see all changes that have happened in your account specifically. Like, which game might be missing in the new manifest file.

I agree with OP that it wouldn't hurt GOG makes it clear on the pages that GOG keys bought elsewhere may well not be legit. Not quite sure how they should word it so that it doesn't confuse people who got a GOG key in a legit way with e.g. their NVidia graphics card. After all, they didn't buy it from GOG either, so they might be afraid those codes are not legit.

Well, whatever happens GOG should still notify you.

I have a few games I have won in giveaways, I'd be pretty upset if I wanted to play them in a year but couldn't find them because they were removed.

If I got a notice that they had to remove the game because of a fraud, then I'd be a bit sad of course, but that's it, GOG dealt with it in a fair fashion.

ok ;)

Just read up, have to correct myself a bit, he bought a used boxed version, but the code supplied with it, was already used. Which by the way is legit in Germany (second hand).

He took the easy way and asked from this amazon-powered shop (or however it is called) the money back, which he got.

I think he could also asked Amazon as a official retailer for a new code, or asked GOG/CDPR to free this code again ;)

hmmmm.....as I said I don't know this shop/whatever the OP used, but for me it already sounds fishy if you have to pay an extra fee for 'in case of problems'.....there I would already back out....(and I think you would do the same ;) )

For breaking the agreement: Like stated above, did this guy (buyer) anything wrong, no. (in this case, yes/shady side I assume ;) )
Again for the above mentioned case, did the seller do anything wrong, maybe (we don't know if he asked GOG/CDPR to free up the code again). But reselling games is legal in Germany (Our supreme court decided so, so long there is a CD or similar involved, so property)

EDIT: The arguments of the OP sounds rather similar to what people downloading pirated versions are using to defend their actions.....noooo, I opened the Pandora-box ;)

This one sentence tells me just how completely you misunderstand GOG's business model. I'm honestly surprised that no one else has bothered to call it out; maybe by this point they've started treating your posts like one long TL;DR?

And FTR, I'm one of those so-called "rich" people that foxworks mentioned. Over the past four years, I have well over 400 games legitimately purchased here (plus several more for giveaways and such) and I haven't paid full price for a single one of them. At a quick estimate, I've probably paid around $1800 for the entire collection; my secret (such as it is) is to wishlist 'em and wait patiently for the next big sale.

One person did, but I think the deliberate ignorance in that statement has generated a forcefield repelling replies. How does one even reply to that kind of thing? GOG is a DRM-free store. S/he obviously has no idea what they're talking about.

And yeah, the 'rich people' complaints are hilarious. Not waiting for sales is like...do they even know how to shop? I've paid full price for some games, but only when I felt the game was worth it. Sales exist for a reason, and are awesome.

For someone who's been around since 2010 it's really weird. Maybe the account got hijacked?

See here...

weird!

Hmmm, nothing's missing in my account. I guess it helps that I don't touch dodgy key resellers with a 500-foot pole.

apparently there is heavy disapproval of getting screwed over by an unscrupulous key reseller.

how dare you get fucked over carnival73. -1 to you sir.

It's more after being informed of the reality of the situation continuing to go on and on about how the resellers are fighting the good fight of "saving money" and "making games affordable for those who aren't rich".

I agree he or she got screwed by the reseller game (as I said above), but the tedious attitude is not excused.

I'd agree but I decided to hit up Kinguin. I expected to see bargain prices on everything including fresh releases. It isn't like that. Then I realized New Zealand, Australia, OP lives in regional rapetown. Honestly, there is no valid reason that a digital game should cost anything more beyond exchange rate in Australia and New Zealand. You could make an argument for shipping but even then, the prices are too high to be just related to shipping. I find it difficult to condemn OP for frustration given he's in the Australian regional zone with this stuff.

I understand the frustration about regional pricing (I boycott every game with regional pricing above the US base price myself), but in this case this can hardly be the reason. Most of the regional priced games on GOG are even cheaper than the US base price in New Zealand and Australia.

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Victor Vran is an exception and costs $0.40 more, but still Poland or the Czech Republic (which are poorer countries).

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Because people will do seemingly anything to avoid the outrage of paying full price on a game. And, because people really do want to believe that they can get a $500 watch for $20.
It's weird because I haven't seen the "GOG is evil because they're selling abandonware!" argument since, well, around 2009-2010. And the comments about DRM are probably references to Galaxy in addition to recent issues with games like Victor Vran, and DEFCON.