LogFAQs > #889019861

DarthAragorn posted...

It deserves it

If you're going to steal from the devs just don't fucking play it

I have an honest question (as I have no meaningful reply other than "no"): when you enter these discussions, do you expect to change people's minds on pirating or gray market resellers?

When I used to virtue signal against G2A and similar services, I would get extensive essays about how youtube exposes, according to their supporters, were poorly researched or outright lies. For instance, in the particular case of the developer which was crippled with charge backs that John Bain speaks quite often of - I've seen that called an isolated case, and in some circles an outright lie.

I just wonder what my arguments, and the arguments of others, ever amounted to. I stopped pirating after getting a job in high school. I paid for games because I had money, and it was more convenient just to buy a game than to spend time finding a virus free torrent and jumping through hoops to get the crack to work. Nothing really to do with morality.

And what's even more widespread is simply the buying of real keys in countries where they are cheap, and selling them to customers in richer countries for a profit. Odds are this is the majority of cases - although they are not hit with charge back, they are effectively losing out on money they would have gotten with a legit purchase. I remember some years back there was concern that this abuse would negatively affect region specific pricing to curtail this issue. I'm not sure if it has tbh.

Nowadays, G2A continues to grow despite negative coverage among youtubers and some journalists. I've discouraged people IRL and online from using G2A, Kinguin, and the multitude of other gray market sites. But I don't think a single one of them listened - my IRL friends still use gray markets because prices are cheaper, and, no matter what these sites do, people will continue to go for cheaper prices regardless of shady practices.

I wonder how much of the marketshare these sites have to take up before legitimate litigation comes from developers and publishers. And, even more, would they have a case against these key reselling sites, I wonder?

We're probably long overdue on legislation on key reselling. It should probably be illegal for anybody to sell a digital market key outside of an approved vendor. But even then, you could probably just have your website based in another country and make money that way. And who knows, maybe there is some legislation out there that I'm just ignorant of.

W/e. Maybe I'll start another thread of gray market sellers.
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