Gearbox Pull Out of G2A Deal Amidst Controversy

Recently, Gearbox announced that they were working with controversial digital distributor of dubiously-sourced keys G2A for a special edition digital version of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition. The Internet promptly exploded, with large numbers of fans denouncing the decision, and a number of high profile names in the gaming world publicly criticising the firm.

Gearbox appeared to be unaware of G2A’s somewhat chequered past, and reached out to a number of critics for some evidence of the accused wrongdoing. John “Totalbiscuit” Bain, who has been looking into G2A for a while now, came to the aid of Gearbox, providing them with a large amount of evidence that may suggest alleged wrongdoing from the company.
After reviewing the evidence, Gearbox got cold feet, and decided to give the firm an ultimatum: sort out your shit within 24 hours or the deal is off. The specific terms they requested were:

• Within 30 days, G2A Shield (aka, customer fraud protection) is made free instead of a separate paid subscription service within terms offered by other major marketplaces. All customers who spend money deserve fraud protection from a storefront. To that end, all existing G2A Shield customers are notified by April 14th that fraud protection services are now free and they will no longer be charged for this.
• Within 90 days, G2A will open up a web service or API to certified developers and publishers to search for and flag for immediate removal, keys that are fraudulent. This access will be free of charge and will not require payment by the content holders.
• G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 60 days implement throttling for non-certified developers and publishers at the title, userid, and account payable levels for a fraud flagging process. This is to protect content providers from having large quantities of stolen goods flipped on G2A before they can be flagged.
• G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 30 days, G2A restructures its payment system so that customers who wish to buy and sell legitimate keys are given a clear, simple fee-structure that is easy to understand and contains no hidden or obfuscated charges. Join the ranks of other major marketplaces.

In response, G2A did seemingly nothing at all. No statement was issued, and there’s no sign that the company have made any attempt to address the issues that Gearbox highlighted. As a result, Gearbox have now issued a statement to the press, stating the dissolution of the deal between the two companies.

"As there has been no public movement from G2A by the time Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition launched now on PC, Gearbox Publishing will be doing their part to not directly support a marketplace that did not make the new public commitment to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing," Gearbox head of publishing Steve Gibson told the site, adding, "We do not control G2A's marketplace or where they may obtain keys from parties outside of Gearbox Publishing, but we can confirm that today we have begun executing on our extraction process."

We’ve reported on G2A a few times here at GameGrin, as various practices have come to light. There was a very public issue between them and tinyBuild, and it was around this point that we stopped working with them, as did a number of other high-profile gaming websites and YouTubers. Gearbox are therefore the latest in a long line of names to end a relationship with the Polish distributor over the last year.