G2A failed to comply with Gearbox demands regarding changes to its service, so it backed out of the deal.
Update: G2A has responded with the following statement:
This last week brought forth a lot of confusion, and caused a lot of inaccurate information to appear on the internet about G2A.COM. Although this saddens us, at the same time we are also glad to have the opportunity to thoroughly explain many of the inaccuracies and misunderstandings tied to G2A.COM.
It all began with a few negative reactions from some YouTubers, and in particular from John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, to an announcement that G2A.COM is working together with Gearbox Publishing. Our partner, Gearbox Publishing, unfortunately decided to publicly publish a letter with a list of ultimatums, without consulting us about the truth of the allegations made by John Bain. This is an excellent example that rash actions, without full knowledge of the facts, can be harmful to both the developer and the marketplace. Especially since all of the requests made of G2A.COM in the ultimatum have in fact long been part of our marketplace.
The full response, which goes into specific detail on how G2A has already fulfilled the reuqests, can be read here.
Original Story: A somewhat controversial collaboration between Bulletstorm publisher Gearbox and CD Key Reseller G2A arose over the last weeks. Essentially, Gearbox reserved an exclusive collector’s edition of the game for the reseller, a move which raised a lot of eyebrows considering some G2A practices in the past. Addressing this controversy, Gearbox demanded that G2A publicly commit to certain changes to its service within 24 hours. Now that those 24 hours are up, Gearbox has cancelled the deal.
“As there has been no public movement from G2A by the time Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition launched now on PC,” said Gearbox head of publishing Steve Gibson in a statement, “Gearbox Publishing will be doing their part to not directly support a marketplace that did not make the new public commitment to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing.”
Here are the demands Gearbox made of G2A:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source: Waypoint
