TinyBuild To G2A: No, You Have Three Days

The saga between developer/publisher tinyBuild and the Hong Kong headquartered key reseller has been an ongoing thing this week. The former started out by accusing G2A of profiting at their expense by not shutting down auctions of keys they say were obtained through fraudulent means, while the latter accused the studio of misleading the public and suggested their partners may have been to blame.

Yesterday, G2A publicly gave tinyBuild three days to hand over keys so they could investigate the latter’s claims. And tinyBuild’s response was about as dismissive as you’d expect.

In an update on their blog post from earlier in the week, tinyBuild chief executive Alex Nichiporchik has effectively taken G2A’s three day ultimatum and said, “No you.”

“In the same fashion as G2A issued us a 3 day ultimatum to share keys, we are issuing a 3 day ultimatum for G2A to provide a solution for developers and publishers to benefit from the marketplace,” Nichiporchik wrote.

“Any business revolves around mutually beneficial partnerships. As everyone knows, there’s currently no way for a company like ours to benefit from the marketplace without undercutting actual retailers. If we have solutions to set minimum pricing, getting revenue shares, and/or flatout not allowing sales of our keys on the marketplace, the tides could turn into a positive direction for the industry as a whole.”

TinyBuild is still calling on G2A to give more power to developers on their marketplace, as well as improving the verification process. According to the tinyBuild CEO, he was able to make an account and sell keys within an hour with no verification whatosever.

G2A hasn’t directly addressed that so far, but they did post a statement to the Russian website Kanobu. A translated version says G2A is “always open to working with developers and publishers” and that they were sorry “that tinyBuild’s shop was attacked and that it impacted their negotiations” with the key reseller.

Crucially, G2A’s statement says that all developers and publishers having problems with chargebacks should “use our G2A.Pay payment solution for their stores”. “It’s free and we guarantee 100% security of payments and cover all expenses associated with chargebacks, preventing any losses from our partners’ side.”

But tinyBuild can’t trust G2A, from what they told me and other outlets yesterday. As far as they’re concerned, if they provide a list of keys for G2A to investigate, how can they be sure those keys won’t just magically appear on the G2A marketplace? On top of that, G2A publicly revealed that they shut down around 200 keys and auctions for tinyBuild games before the two parties were ever in contact.

From that perspective, can’t G2A just broaden their investigation without tinyBuild’s help? G2A’s argument, however, is that the size and scale of what tinyBuild is alleging requires their cooperation.

And so the two parties find themselves at an impasse, sending out barbs to the public and press in the process. It certainly doesn’t look like there’ll be a resolution within the next few days.


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