Gearbox Will End Partnership With G2A If Shady Business Practices Aren’t Changed

Ear­ly this week Gear­box Pub­lish­ing announced that it had entered a part­ner­ship with G2A for the spe­cial edi­tions of Bul­let­storm: Full Clip Edi­tion. The com­pa­ny received heavy back­lash for the part­ner­ship due to G2A’s proven record of sell­ing stolen keys and harm­ing devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers such as Tiny­build.

Gear­box has now issued an ulti­ma­tum to G2A after being informed of G2A’s prac­tices by pop­u­lar YouTu­ber John Bain aka Total­bis­cuit. If G2A does not make the fol­low­ing changes, Gear­box will ends its partnership.

• Before Bul­let­storm Steam launch, G2A makes a pub­lic com­mit­ment to this: With­in 30 days, G2A Shield (aka, cus­tomer fraud pro­tec­tion) is made free instead of a sep­a­rate paid sub­scrip­tion ser­vice with­in terms offered by oth­er major mar­ket­places. All cus­tomers who spend mon­ey deserve fraud pro­tec­tion from a store­front. To that end, all exist­ing G2A Shield cus­tomers are noti­fied by April 14th that fraud pro­tec­tion ser­vices are now free and they will no longer be charged for this.
•  Before Bul­let­storm Steam launch, G2A makes a pub­lic com­mit­ment to this: With­in 90 days, G2A will open up a web ser­vice or API to cer­ti­fied devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers to search for and flag for imme­di­ate removal, keys that are fraud­u­lent. This access will be free of charge and will not require pay­ment by the con­tent holders.
• Before Bul­let­storm Steam launch, G2A makes a pub­lic com­mit­ment to this: With­in 60 days imple­ment throt­tling for non-cer­ti­fied devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers at the title, userid, and account payable lev­els for a fraud flag­ging process. This is to pro­tect con­tent providers from hav­ing large quan­ti­ties of stolen goods flipped on G2A before they can be flagged.
•  Before Bul­let­storm Steam launch, G2A makes a pub­lic com­mit­ment to this: With­in 30 days, G2A restruc­tures its pay­ment sys­tem so that cus­tomers who wish to buy and sell legit­i­mate keys are giv­en a clear, sim­ple fee-struc­ture that is easy to under­stand and con­tains no hid­den or obfus­cat­ed charges. Join the ranks of oth­er major marketplaces.

At the time of writ­ing it is unclear whether G2A will fol­low through with these changes. In the past they have rec­og­nized some of their faults and laid out plans to legit­imize their busi­ness. Despite this there has not been many changes and the com­pa­ny is still not viewed favor­ably by developers.

Gear­box has not stat­ed whether they believe G2A will fol­low through, but Total­bis­cuit has stat­ed that he does not expect the com­pa­ny to make any changes. His full state­ment, expla­na­tion of the sit­u­a­tion, and evi­dence against G2A can be read here.