G2A
| 200px | |
| Web address | g2a.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
|
Type of site
|
Video game distribution marketplace |
| Registration | Yes |
| Available in | English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Arabic, Romanian, Turkish, German |
| Users | Over 6 million |
|
Alexa rank
|
 1,681 (as of January 2016)[1] |
G2A.COM Limited (commonly referred to as G2A) is an online video game distribution marketplace co-founded by CEO Bartosz Skwarczek and Dawid Rożek[2][3] The platform allows users to sell video games to customers. The site currently has over 6 million customers and serves 250,000 new customers each month.[4] Similar to eBay, G2A itself does not sell the keys and software on the site, the users do. G2A acts as an intermediary, connecting the buyer to the seller. This has caused controversy in the gaming community.[5] G2A offers a protection against fraudulent sales called "G2A Shield", a paid service. G2A sponsors multiple gaming teams, including Cloud9 and Natus Vincere.
Contents
Charity
On 1 December 2015, G2A, along with multiple Twitch.tv streamers, YouTubers, websites and gamers participated in a program dubbed #GamingTuesday. It was to raise funds for the charity Save The Children.[6] In 2014 to 2015, G2A raised over $500,000 for Save The Children.[4]
G2A, partnered with Bachir Boumaaza, the creator of Gaming for Good, created the Humanitarian Emergency All-Out Response Team (HEART). Both projects were designed to help and support children, charities and help with disaster relief. G2A had partnered with Boumaaza before in projects like Gamers got Heart.[4]
Controversy
As the keys sold were not always bought directly from the developer, sometimes the companies would not receive any money from the sales.[7]
Riot Games sponsorship ban
Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, banned G2A from sponsoring teams during the 2015 League of Legends World Championship. The reason behind the ban was Riot believed the keys sold on G2A were illegally obtained. Riot also claimed G2A was selling fully leveled accounts, which was also against Riot's terms of service.[8] The statement was released publicly on a League of Legends subreddit on 6 October 2015. The statement read: "We’ve already formally banned them as a sponsor as of September 18th, and have no plans to reconsider the decision at this time, this was NOT a decision we made lightly, and came after many weeks of back and forth conversations with G2A to find a resolution, which we were not able to reach an agreement on".[9]
G2A response
G2A called the ban "an aggressive attack" and the company had tried many "friendly ways" to sort out the issues with Riot Games. G2A banned accounts selling elo boosted League of Legends accounts, which was a main factor of the ban. G2A claimed that Riot did not cooperate with G2A in their attempts to fix the issue and instead responded with other demands such as banning the sale of game guides on their marketplace.[10]
References
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