G2A employee’s plan for sponsored posts backfires

Following the company’s response to the newly started petition for G2A to stop selling game keys for indie titles, a last ditch attempt to rescue their reputation has thrown more shade on G2A’s public image.

Yesterday Writer for Indie Game Plus Thomas Faust posted several email excerps on Twitter. These images showed a G2A employee requesting that a sponsored article, presenting G2A in a much more favourable light than they have been recently, be published on the website. The employee explained that the article must not be marked as sponsored, which would make it seem as though Indie Game Plus support G2A.
 

Ahahaha.

No. pic.twitter.com/7hqtxDY3X1

— Thomas Faust (@SomeIndieGames) July 8, 2019

The emails went on to discuss the cost of having such an article posted on Indie Game Plus would be. The G2A employee described the communication as an effort to improve the company’s public image and brand awareness, particularly with indie developers. When describing the article, the employee called it an unbiased piece about how selling stolen game keys through marketplaces such as G2A’s is basically impossible.

Following Faust’s reveal on Twitter, G2A responded by stating that the employee who had sent the email to him, and nine other websites, was not authorised to do so. They added that the employee would be facing strict consequences, and humbly apologise for the underhanded, and unacceptable, conduct of this individual.

This news is the culmination of a struggle between indie developers and G2A that was started by Mike Rose of No More Robots. Rose requested that fans pirate games instead of buying them from G2A because of how easy it is to purchase game keys with stolen credit cards, and then re-sell them through the site’s marketplace. Actions such as these result in the developers and publishers seeing no return on the games they create, which can lead to further games being put on hold, or companies closing altogether.

G2A have come under fire for other practices in the past, such as their G2A Shield service, which offers consumer protection only if they pay a subscription fee. Riot Games have banned G2A from sponsoring League of Legends players, after it emerged that the site had been selling services built around boosting player ratings, and full accounts.

LIRIK and MrMattyPlays, as well as other influencers, have dropped G2A as sponsors for various reasons in the past. Finally, due to the public resistance they saw, Gearbox Publishing backed out of a partnership deal with G2A to release a physical edition of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition just days after it was announced.