Game key reseller G2A had a Q&A that became ‘real-life Reddit’

The morning the game key reseller G2A had a Q&A at Reboot:Develop and it didn’t go well. Rami Ismail, one half of the indie studio Vlambeer, attended the Q&A and was live tweeting for much of it. At one point he tweeted that ‘I’ve never seen a Reddit AMA in real life, but I can tell you, this G2A talk is exactly what you’d expect from real-life Reddit’.

G2A hasn’t had a great time recently. IGN notes it’s had problems with fraudulent keys for AAA games, and, following criticism from YouTuber TotalBiscuit, Eurogamer reported Gearbox very publicly terminated a deal with G2A ahead of the release of the Bulletstorm Collector’s Edition. G2A issued an official statement alluding to ‘false and defamatory statements’; at GDC, Polygon saw the feud between indie dev/publisher tinyBuild and G2A spill over into real life.

The Q&A, which contained a significant number of devs, was savage. At a mere six minutes Mario Mirek, representing G2A, is asked if taking advantage of the grey market area was always going to be part of the company’s activity. Mirek responded that G2A doesn’t see itself as a grey market seller, and that people ‘don’t understand our business model’.

It’s stunning to behold in it’s entirety. Mirek likens removing fraudulent keys from G2A to ‘a painkiller, not removing the source’, which is like someone going ‘Mate, I know I’m selling cocaine, but it’s not like I’m the one who actually made it.’ 

At one point Mirek brings up that 40% of G2A’s staff are women, ‘most of them gamers’, which you will note when watching the Q&A is entirely unrelated to anything asked at any point.

When the mic is passed to the audience things get, if possible, even worse. Eurogamer captured the specific part that Mike Bithell claps back at Mirek, asking why developers have to do so much work to prevent fraud on their system in exchange for a mere 10%.

You almost, almost feel sorry for him.

Ultimately Bithell summarised the entire Q&A by tweeting ‘It was silly to give this audience a microphone.’

You can watch the entire thing here, but it’s pretty awkward.