is g2a.com legit?

[hillkill]

You don't think Steam buys keys in bulk? lol

wha

[Ad Bot]

[Ben Grapevine]

I've bought like 10-20 games off of it.

[Shift Kitty]

Also, it doesn't bode well for your business when one of the top suggested searches is regarding whether or not your business is actually ok to use:

That's just people being cautious, and for a good reason too. There's probably plenty of sites that rip people off. Have you tried taking that search suggestion and looking at the results?

You don't think Steam buys keys in bulk? lol

Steam doesn't buy keys. Steam doesn't need to buy keys. They are the DRM, and when a game does need a key, Steam can typically generate it, or grab one from the publisher's API.

[The Murderous Cop]

It's legit. I've also used kinguin before, both work pretty great.

[Headcrab Zombie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market

A grey market (sometimes called a parallel import,[1] but this can also mean other things;[2] not to be confused with a black market or a grey economy) is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels which are legal but are unofficial, unauthorised, or unintended by the original manufacturer. The most common type of grey market is the sale, by individuals or small companies not authorised by the manufacturer, of imported goods which would otherwise be either more expensive in the country to which they are being imported, or unavailable altogether.

Keys from these types of sites may be legit in the sense that they "work" but that doesn't guarantee the key itself was obtained 100% legitly, and you run the risk of unauthorized keys being deactivated
Give "grey market steam keys" a google search and read through some results.

Here's the first result:

The reason for that revocation Ubisoft said in a statement to IGN was that before those keys were put up for sale on the secondary market, they were sourced with stolen credit cards on Electronic Arts' Origin service. That initial purchase was illegal, and the game codes were therefore deemed invalid. A lengthy forum post at Ubisoft, opened on Jan. 24 and now more than 60 pages long, is filled with aggrieved players who thought they were buying clean codes from G2A and Kinguin,

[Ceist]

so what exactly happens if you end up purchasing a stolen key from g2a? my friend is saying that steam locks your account permanently.

[Headcrab Zombie]

I've never seen it happen, but it could

[hillkill]

i bought chivalry: medieval warfare from there.

[Flame]

it's legit, i purchased a few games and DLC from there

[Frequency]

daaamn I could've gotten space engineers and starbound at a huge discount...

[Muzzles56]

It's legit. If you have G2A shield and the purchase gets revoked or something, youre covered. Ive used it plenty of times with 0 issues

[Headcrab Zombie]

It's legit. If you have G2A shield and the purchase gets revoked or something, youre covered. Ive used it plenty of times with 0 issues

Again, there's some subjectivity, and even a bit of a moral decision, to whether to call them "legit"
The keys are mostly bought during things like steam sales and then resold after the sale. Nothing wrong with that. But the keys could be sourced from places like humble bundle, buying a ton of copies for a penny each to resell them for several dollars more. Considering that humble bundle purchases go to charity, it isn't a business model I want to support. I'd rather support the charities and developers than some guy who paid them a penny

There's also the fact that CD keys are an allowed form of steam account recovery. So there's a risk (small, as long as the sales platform doesn't expose things like email or anything else identifying to the seller, But much greater if you're direct buyer to seller or if the sales platform doesn't cover email) that someone could sell you the key, then turn around to steam support and say "hey that's my account, see, here's my key"

If the key came from a stolen card, and the card owner disputes it, not only does the retailer have to refund that money, but also pay a chargeback fee, which ends up costing them more than you saved. And then there's also that risk of being banned if your key came from a stolen credit card

I can't find anything on their site, but some people in other threads about g2a are saying they'll sell region locked keys, then tell you to use vpn to activate them... which is a really big risk to your steam account, as it's against the tos and easily traced

Buying from unauthorized sellers is against the steam tos

All these risks may be a small minority among other 100% legit keys, but I'd rather just buy straight from the source and know I'm facing 0 risk and that all my money is going to the parties who deserve it. And if something does go wrong with these services, the time taken to fix it wouldn't be worth the couple $ I saved


Edit:

If you have G2A shield

Wait, you have to buy an extra service in order to have a guarantee that your purchase even works? That's kind of stuffty lol, that's something a good retailer is just going to give you implicitly with any purchase

[The Murderous Cop]

ok let me just say this:
a lot of the time G2A doesn't give away the keys
you're getting them from other retailers
that's so if the retailer you get it from doesn't give you it or something, G2A covers you

[espio100]

Edit:Wait, you have to buy an extra service in order to have a guarantee that your purchase even works? That's kind of stuffty lol, that's something a good retailer is just going to give you implicitly with any purchase

I have this, just in case. Its only $1/month. And I never had trouble with any purchase I have ever made.

[Headcrab Zombie]

you're getting them from other retailers

I think you have retailer and reseller mixed up
A retailer would be something like steam saying "lol sell these keys for us even though we're perfectly capable of selling them ourselves on our own platform"
A reseller is someone who bought the key from a retailer during a sale and is reselling them for higher than they paid
Edit: now I'm just arguing words. I think I was going somewhere with that point, but I forgot where.

And I never had trouble with any purchase I have ever made.

I'm not questioning whether you get what you pay for. If you didn't receive your keys, then the site would have died long ago.
I'm questioning whether what you pay for is worth it. See the paragraphs above what you quoted for my thoughts on that.