Delete game keys: How to get rid of G2A by the gaming industry

The founder of No More Robots, Mike Rose, has just reacted to the Google ad of the G2A game key sale site. He said he’d rather have players download pirated games than have them buy games from G2A. Vlambeer co-founder is Rami Ismail previously explained why indie developers and publishers don’t like resellers of game keys. “Such sites cost us a lot of time in customer service, fake key investigation, etc,” he said.

But with the upcoming gaming industry trends, developers will probably never have to worry about this problem again.

In May, Ubisoft said it would no longer sell game keys, and would only sell games through third-party stores that use a “silent key activation” mechanism. With this method, the user cannot copy-paste or resell the key. Instead, the game will be linked to a Uplay account. Basically, they are still keys, but the user will never see them.

Meanwhile, according to the roadmap on Trello, Epic is currently “working with the Humble Bundle to integrate keyless purchases” for the Epic Store. Activision and Blizzard games purchased on Humble also require players to link to a Battle.net account.

Although many distributors still sell Steam keys, this situation will also end soon. If Valve joins Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Epic in the trend of keyless game activation, key retailers will have no choice but to comply. And game key sellers will face a pretty obvious problem: no more keys to sell.

Why did you sell the game key in the first place?

As Ismail points out, there is always a loophole when keys are resold: someone can steal credit card information to buy them and resell, or buy cheap keys from regions like Brazil or Russia and sell them in the US. ; or claim to be an influencer to get a free key from the developer (this is not effective, but causes a lot of trouble for the developer). There is no way to know exactly how much of this happens, but a few prominent cases have occurred in the resale market, causing a lot of trouble.

Unfortunately for the game industry, the issue of keys being resold is also a good point of them. You don’t have to use any system to give someone a game.

Dave Oshry, co-founder of New Blood, doesn’t believe the key will ever go away. “Anything that creates a barrier (like registration and account verification) is often detrimental to indie games,” Oshry said. “Anything that requires you to open an extra window or click more than two things will dramatically decrease your odds of customers buying your game.”

However, Oshry did not pay too much attention to the key. The only key distributor New Blood works with is Humble.

“Honestly, I don’t know how much profit websites that sell keys make,” he added. “I completely ignored their requests and now only sell my PC games on Steam, Humble and GOG. I have no interest in putting my game on other key resale sites just to make a few hundred extra dollars a month and have our game available in shady markets like G2A. You want our game? Buy them at major stores or download them illegally if you don’t want to spend money. At least you didn’t help G2A.”

An anonymous industry source said that selling keys on such websites is not worth their concern.

In 2016, the CEO of TinyBuild, Alex Nichiprochik, publicized the case of TinyBuild’s key being leaked to G2A. Regarding the game key issue, he said: “[Bundle và các gói key] generate a significant amount of revenue,” he said. “What is important is how it is done. Because, if you sell some games as a key, it makes sense, for example, to ensure a sufficient number of online players.”

“If no one plays your multiplayer game, it becomes a ‘dead game,’ so what we usually do is generate a lot of keys and put them in a bundle or something like that. Although we didn’t make a lot of money, we did have a lot of new players. I think the team was successful with the game SpeedRunners, because the game came in a lot of bundles, discounts, and it still sells like hot cakes. So to say this method is not worth it is not really.”

TinyBuild can also discount keys or bundles for games that are about to expire, after sales on Steam have almost died out, to earn a little more revenue for developers. Nichiporchik said he sometimes gives keys to new regional stores to make more profit, such as Asia.

Tripwire VP Alan Wilson says while bundles aren’t very profitable, they’re an effective way to get more players for multiplayer games. While some publishers are phasing out this method, some still see key selling as an important part of their business model.

Can a world without a game key exist?

There will probably be many developers who disagree with this, but Valve is quite comfortable about the rule of selling keys, which does not bring additional profits for Valve (and they do not really need to). According to Valve, if you sell Steam keys for cheap, you must also offer the same discount on Steam “within a reasonable time”. And if you add a game to the bundle, “the price in that bundle should be a price you’re willing to use to sell individually on Steam.”

There’s a lot of ambiguity here due to Steam’s use of the words “reasonable”, “ready”, and many publishers really have to raise their eyebrows in thought.

For example, last December, Humble released a monthly bundle of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Definitive Experience, Cities Skylines, and eight other games for $12. The cheapest price ever to appear on Steam for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Defenitive Experience is $12, which is the price during the most recent Steam sale. So what’s more appealing: this year’s $12 Metal Gear Solid 5, or last year’s $12 Metal Gear Sold 5 plus Cities Skylines and lots of other games?

Despite Steam’s rules, publishers don’t necessarily have to discount their games by 80% on Steam to match the bundle price, which usually doesn’t need to last more than a few weeks. That creates an opportunity for parties to resell keys. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Definitive Experience costs as little as $9 on G2A currently, the same price as in the bundle. At the time of writing, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Definitive Experience is $30 back on Steam. The appearance of so many $9 keys seems rather suspicious, but they are probably mostly valid keys.

This is detrimental to developers, who want to control the bundle price from start to finish, and that can be solved with ‘keyless’ bundles. But it creates a rather strange pattern. Customers will ask, “If I didn’t receive the key, why not give it a direct discount on Steam?”

That will be an issue that Epic needs to solve as they are trying to work with Humble to be able to activate on the Epic Store without using a key.

Key game has helped Steam become a major distributor of PC games. Recalling the days when the game was sold as a digital-disc combo, the Steam key was included with the game disc, but could only be used after the Steam app was installed and an account was created. Each key helps Steam add a new user, or gives users who already have a Steam account a reason to value their account more.

The reason key games became popular before is no longer important. Key is part of the industry. A lot of people love that, and if Valve makes a big change, like forcing keyless activation for all, it will create serious problems.

“If Steam decides to give up the key, and just activate ‘keyless’, the era of using keys will be over,” said Raw Fury co-founder David Martinez. “There are a lot of sales channels that only rely on Steam keys and they will have to change quickly or they will be eliminated. Among them are bad companies like G2A, and of course, no one will remember them.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure either,” replied Nichiporchik when asked if the keyless game industry could survive. “The gaming system was created around the concept of keys, and I don’t know if Valve will change their mind at some point in the future, because it will cost them a lot.”

While acknowledging keyless activation is the direction the gaming industry is headed, Martinez and Nichiporchik do not think Valve will change definitively in the near future. If the gaming industry wants to completely stop selling keys, they need to stop selling games as keys.

Nichiporchik still believes in the value of keys in bundles and stores, and he is trying his best to beat resellers, especially on search engines. New markets “sprung up every week”, he said, so criticizing a few companies would do nothing but help create more attention for them.

Oshry is completely oblivious to the key pattern, and wonders if it will really matter in the near future. He didn’t name specifics, but with the rise of streaming services like Stadia, as well as paid services Xbox Game Pass and Origin Access, it’s possible games will become a service. According to Oshry, it would be a world where “developers only get $0.1 for every hour their game is streamed” and “have to sell souvenirs to survive.”

It’s not an unfounded concern – it’s happened to the music industry – but don’t panic about the prospect either. Maybe it will be an issue by the end of 2019, but we are only halfway through 2019.

By PC Gamer