How does g2a even work? I've bought a few keys there before and they worked. I assume these keys were given to someone from like a promo or something then they just resell it?

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

They let people resell keys "no questions asked" (it reduces their liability to not ask questions). Some percent of the resellers they host use stolen credit cards to sell at a loss, and nobody knows what percent. It's probably depressingly high, but (likely) still <50%.

Some percent of the resellers just buys games on sale, or in a cheap country to resell to expensive countries. It's not uncommon when a game has a plummet sale (a $70 black friday sale for $20) that thousands of copies of the game show up for $30-40 on G2A as soon as the sale ends. Those are (generally) not in any way related to stolen credit cards.

[–] binboupan@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

they buy keys using stolen credit cards and then resell them

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And then the owner of the card issues a chargeback, so they lose more money (chargeback fees can be $25-$100) than if you'd have just torrented it.

Technically they could revoke the key as well, but that tends to cause a bit of fuss and bad PR so they don't often bother.

So the lesson is clear. Buy your keys on G2A with stolen credit cards.

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[–] Haraknos@jlai.lu 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What about Instant Gaming ? Is it also a website that only resales keys or do they have some kind of partnership with game devs?

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Same stuff as G2A.

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[–] wholeofthemoon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I'll do my best to stop using them.

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