tinyBuild exposes impact of key resellers

Indie developer tinyBuild, responsible for Punch Club and Speedrunners, has claimed that key reselling website G2A.com sold $450,000 worth of games without tinyBuild getting anything.

tinyBuild boss Alex Nichiporchik contacted Eurogamer with this claim. He said that G2A's business model "facilitates a black market economy." Nichiporchik went on to accuse G2A users of using a database of stolen credit cards to pick up keys in bulk to then sell on G2A.

tinyBuild tried to sell its games on its own online store, but Nichiporchik revealed that it was hit hard by chargebacks associated with fraudulent credit card purchases.

"I'd start seeing thousands of transactions, and our payment provider would shut us down within days," he explained. "Moments later you'd see G2A being populated by cheap keys of games we had just sold on our shop."

Nichiporchik has tried to deal directly with G2A, but was told that no compensation would be provided.