G2A Controversy: Allegedly Causing Harm to Indie Game Developers

G2A Controversy: Allegedly Causing Harm to Indie Game Developers

There has been a new G2A controversy that surfaced recent and got very heated. This time, it’s from the indie game developer community who is currently demanding the company to stop selling all indie games.

The G2A controversy started when the founder of No More Robots, Mike Rose, criticized the company with regards to a game he published, RageSquid’s Descenders. He encouraged gamers to pirate the game instead of buying from G2A as the developers won’t get a cent anyway.

G2A has since responded by stating how little impact the marketplace has had on indie games. However, Mike Rose and the indie game developer community were dissatisfied with the response, which led to further criticisms. They have since acknowledged the feedback that they have received, essentially admitting that they were a part of the problem. However, they also added on by saying that “selling keys wouldn’t disappear” if the marketplace were to be shut down.

Some developers cannot accept the fact that people have full rights to re-sell the things they own. It’s a problem for those developers, but not for us or anyone else. And certainly not for gamers who have access to cheaper products, games included, thanks to marketplaces such as G2A. What we are saying is: It’s a good thing that people can re-sell keys and, with or without G2A, they will continue to do so.

This did not put a stop to the G2A controversy however, as Mike Rose has given his counter-argument. It is said that the core issue to the marketplace is that it damages the value of the games being sold. Descenders has never been officially sold for USD $22.49 but it was seen on G2A for just a mere USD $13. Given the grey market nature of the platform, there have been criticisms of game keys being obtained illegally. Mike Rose even went on to show that 85% of Descenders sold on the marketplace were just by three people, with one person selling 45% (roughly 100 keys).

According to G2A, 8% of the total games sold are indie games, which shouldn’t be give a significant impact but Mike Rose argues that studios need to maintain the value of their creations. As a result of the G2A controversy, a petition has since been launched to demand the platform to drop all indie game sales. At the time of this writing, the petition has garnered 3,429 signatures.

Source: GamesIndustry

Pokdepinion: You don’t hear the big companies making noise because the smaller, indie game studios are the ones feeling the effect. Hopefully, there will be a solution that will benefit all parties sooner rather than later.