Is G2A Legit? Is G2A Legal?
G2A (not to be confused with G2G) is a legit and legal marketplace that has been in operation since 2010. Moreover, it’s currently the most popular marketplace for digital goods on the internet, mainly due to the cheap keys you can find there. The website was founded by Bartosz Skwarczek and Dawid Rozek, two well-known Polish entrepreneurs.
The official company name is G2A.COM Limited, and it is registered as a legitimate business in Poland, although it has its offices in Hong Kong and the Netherlands with nearly 1000 employees.
Moreover, G2A.com boasts over 10 million views a month, according to similarweb and Amazon's Alexa. That's almost twice as much as its other competitors! The website also comes with a valid Padlock (SSL) which means that the communication between the browser and the server will be encrypted. Moreover, G2A has repeatedly partnered with eSports organizations (Natus Vincere, Cloud9, Virtus Pro), gamers, and streamers.
So, yes, we confirm that G2A is a legit marketplace, so why are so many people calling the site “scammers” in their G2A reviews on sites like Trustpilot? Well, some G2A sellers are not so fair; they can sell us non-working or stolen cd keys. Still, there are just a few bad apples in the thousands keys sold on the site daily.
However, this is not the fault of the site owners! G2A works in exactly the same way as eBay or Amazon — anyone can list a product for a specific price, but where that product comes from is another matter. So if you decide to purchase Steam keys, it's up to you to avoid shady sellers and avoid having to fill out a police report. Jokes aside, you can safely purchase any Steam key and any other goodies without any concerns.
G2A is actually just a marketplace that allows buying and selling and digital goods, but the site itself doesn't sell anything. So with that business model and from that angle, it is the most legitimate and safe marketplace it can be, and we wouldn’t call it a scam. remember that G2A also offers a Plus membership, offering discount and free games.
GET TO THE BEST DEAL PAGE ON G2A
Is It Legal To Shop On G2A?
Purchasing cd keys or any digital good itself on G2A is perfectly legal, so is selling.
One issue here may be the origin of all these digital goods, as we always get them from some third party seller and not G2A, so while this is a legit site, all products on it might not be.
Most of the time, we do not know where they come from and how these third party sellers originally got them. But isn't that the case for most of the marketplace platforms in the gaming industry that sell games?
We mentioned eBay and Amazon, where you can also buy stolen or counterfeit products. Does this happen often? Not necessarily, but it does happen, and you know it.
The most important thing is that the purchase of a game key on G2A itself is entirely legal. However, the site does not guarantee that the third party seller from whom you purchase the item has obtained it legally.
You're unlikely to have any problems even if you purchase a key from a shady source, but it can happen as there are some iffy individuals among many sellers on the site. How do you protect yourself from this? Just as you would protect yourself on eBay or Amazon — always check the seller's ratings and decide if you want to trust them or just stick with big sellers and avoid less-known small sellers.
GET TO THE BEST DEAL PAGE ON G2A
Why Are Some Game Developers Against G2A?
“Please, if you’re going to buy a game from G2A, just pirate it instead!” — These are the words of Mike Rose, one of the No More Robots game developers. Moreover, in 2016 there was a huge scandal started by TinyBuilds, who suggested that selling their gaming keys on the G2A marketplace is done illegally, which caused the company to record almost half a million dollars in losses.
Alex Nichiporchik, a founder of tinyBuilds, said at the time: "Websites like G2A are facilitating a fraud-fueled economy where key resellers are being hit with tons of stolen credit card transactions and these websites are now growing rapidly due to low pricing of game keys".
So, as you can see, G2A doesn’t have a good relationship with indie developers and game publishers.
And it's understandable! Generally speaking, the developer's preference is to sell their game firsthand. On G2A, you can find numerous keys for indie games that were available for free on Humble Bundle a few years ago, so the game developers don't make any profit, but the marketplace does. You're essentially getting a free game for a price.
In this way, the products of a particular developer lose value, so the whole company loses value as well (and the larger the scale, the greater the losses). So, if you want to buy a cdkey at a bargain price and save some money, G2A is an excellent option. However, if you're going to purchase a game/software and care to support the developer simultaneously, the best way is to do it directly through the official website of the product you want to buy.
GET TO THE BEST DEAL PAGE ON G2A
G2A Bonus & Discount Code
It's hard to find a working coupon code for G2A.
At one time, the site worked with influencers and gave them codes in bulk, but that's not the case anymore.
Don’t waste your time looking for a discount code for g2a on the internet.
However, if you are looking for good promotions, be sure to follow them on their social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter, and keep up to date with their periodic sales (they often appear on the homepage) like Black Friday.
We try to keep the button below uptodate and will redirect you to the best deal page available, so make sure to click here:
VISIT G2A
Reputation (2.5/5)
If we look at G2A's profile on Trustpilot, we can see that the site does not have a reliable reputation (like MMOGA). But why, after all, it's a safe website where you can buy and sell games without engaging in fraudulent sales, isn’t it?
Short answer - yes (even though this is a gray market website), but this is mainly due to situations where users bought games with a non-functioning game key and lose money. Even though there aren't many users that experience that, such cases have a negative impact on the reputation of the site, even though the marketplace itself does not influence the content of the purchased product. When you're buying games it's entirely up to you to keep yourself safe.
However, G2A charges a fee for all the transaction, even fraudulent ones, so it is not surprising that users may be unhappy that the site is making money on scams.
But again, keep in mind that the game codes you get comes from a third party seller, not the site, which technically makes it a gray market website.
If you want to check the seller's credibility before you buy game codes, just click on his profile icon. And if you are not satisfied with the seller's reputation, you can always scroll down for a list of other users who sell the same product. We advise you do that, as otherwise you will find yourself in a sticky situation that might lead to you needing to file a police report if you wish to get your money back.
VISIT G2A
Prices (5/5)
Game prices on G2A are usually much lower than in the official stores or its competitors like MMOGAH, especially when it comes to Steam account keys and software activation codes. Moreover, G2A organizes various special events (such as Halloween and Christmas) where they collaborate with the most trusted sellers on sales with discounts of up to 95%, which is exactly what you want to see when buying games!
It's tough to find an online marketplace that matches G2A in terms of pricing. It's also a matter of G2A being extremely popular worldwide, so sellers know that they're more likely to find a buyer there than on any other marketplace or other platform.
Moreover, those who sell keys are not charged such a high fee (only 10%), which is not that much compared to competing sites) which also encourages them to sell Steam key codes and other items on G2A and avoid losing money on all the transactions they make.
VISIT G2A
Item Variability (5/5)
In the beginning, G2A was mainly a place where you could only buy gaming keys at attractive prices.
Today, G2A is a marketplace where you can buy almost everything related to gaming and hardware. It’s where you can find your new console, skins / ingame items, a gift card for your friend, in-game currency (for various games including PUBG Mobile) or even toys for the younger members of your family. You can even buy Runescape membership, but not gold like on 4RS Gold.
But back to video games specifically!
Something that we really liked about G2A, is that we can find activation codes for really old games there — both ones that are hard to buy and ones that we would like to play without spending too much money. And we all love things that make us feel nostalgic without spending too much money on them, right?
So, not only can you find a variety of items on G2A, but also get them cheaper, and maybe even find some stuff that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. So you get to save money and access more games and items at once!
With all that being said, G2A is an excellent marketplace when it comes to item variability, and we’d give a 6/5 rating if we could.
SEE THE BEST G2A HAS TO OFFER
User Experience (5/5)
When it comes to user experience, it’s easy to say that G2A beats its competitors, such as Kinguin or ENEBA or any other side where you can buy and sell game keys. First of all, the user interface is easy-to-use, and even if G2A organizes some kind of event that forces a change of interface, it is still super straightforward. And we're talking from both a buyer and a seller perspective.
Honestly, buying games on G2A can easily take less than a minute; most game keys will come to you in an email immediately after purchase. The registration process is pretty straightforward; even if this is your first time using this type of site, you should have no problem finding your way around it.
One of the most interesting things about the G2A registration process is that you can log in through PayPal, which is not a very common registration option on other marketplaces.
Moreover, G2A has a free mobile app available on iOS and Android, and it's just as accessible to use as its desktop equivalent. It has exactly the same features, which pretty much allows us to take full advantage of this marketplace, regardless of where we are, and we like that a lot.
The only thing about user experience is the wait time for the money transfer…
Even if we successfully sell game codes or any other item, G2A makes us wait up to 2 weeks for the funds to be verified and then transferred to our G2A wallet. Then, if we want to make a withdrawal, it takes up to a week. In this way, we can wait up to 3 weeks to withdraw our funds after a single transaction. But still, this verification has to take place for the marketplace to ensure that everything is legal, so it's hard to take a point off our rating; however, we still don't like that.
SEE THE BEST G2A HAS TO OFFER
G2A Support (4/5)
G2A's customer support may not be the best in the world, but it's hard to call it the worst. One big downside of it is that we don't have any form of live chat — G2A Support operates on a ticket system, which is a bit outdated.
Nevertheless, we have to admit that the ticket system really works, and we get an answer in less than a couple of hours (although it probably still depends on how complex our problem is). The process of creating a ticket itself is pretty simple, but in case anyone has any trouble doing so, G2A offers a video tutorial that describes step-by-step how to report any issue to the website's support.
But honestly, there's a good chance you won't even have to create a ticket to solve your problem. G2A has a well-developed support hub with FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), divided into two sections — one for buyers, and one for sellers.
And they are really developed, so we can imagine that most of the issues people report to G2A support are misunderstandings between buyer and seller; but again, this is the case on all such marketplaces.
SEE THE BEST G2A HAS TO OFFER
Payment Options (5/5)
Even if you haven't used G2A, there's a good chance you've heard of G2A Pay. What is it exactly? It is an innovative online payment gateway that includes as many as 250 payment methods (including PayPal, Credit Card, Crypto, and Bank Transfer, etc.). And, of course, we have access to all of them on G2A! However, when it comes to additional fees, it all depends on the payment method you choose. Interestingly, PayPal does not have any additional fees on G2A, and with how popular it is — we love it!
Moreover, the marketplace also has its own currency, called G2A Coins, which you can only use on G2A.com. And if you know a friend who uses G2A regularly, you can give them a gift card with a code to add funds to their account.
So, G2A is the absolute king when it comes to the variety of payment methods, and we can't give any other rating than 5/5.
SEE THE BEST G2A HAS TO OFFER
All in all, we recommend G2A if you're looking to buy or sell games. Even though the reputation is mediocre, everything worked out smooth during our tests and we got amazing prices.
