G2A

History

The company (under the original name Go2Arena) was established in 2010 by Bartosz Skwarczek and Dawid Rożek in Rzeszów, Poland as an online game retailer. G2A.COM's main demographic was young gamers with a lack of disposable income, so its objective became to sell video games at the lowest possible price. Skwarczek said that he had approached many large game developers at various events such as Gamescom, E3 and G-Star to secure partnership deals in order to become an official seller of their games. Due to a lack of interest from developers, as well as variations in market trends, the company’s business model changed from retailer to marketplace.

Products and services

Starting in 2015, G2A began focusing on and building other projects and products outside of its digital gaming marketplace. In January 2015, G2A introduced its online payment gateway G2A PAY. PAY is a checkout solution for businesses which currently integrates over 200 global payment methods. Later that same year, G2A created its first virtual reality application G2A Land, a VR amusement park. In early 2016, G2A entered the 3D printing market by introducing G2A 3D, an online marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing 3D designs and models. G2A then went on to launch G2A Direct, a partnership program for video game developers and publishers, in July 2016. Before the year ended, G2A introduced two new projects in December 2016. The first was G2A Gear, an online shop which sells G2A branded clothing, as well as clothing and accessories with images and slogans from games, movies, TV shows, and comics. The company claims it will soon add items designed in partnership with gaming streamers and YouTubers to the shop. The second project announced was a World War I VR shooter entitled Blunt Force, which is currently being developed by G2A’s own in-house video game development studio - G2A Dev Studio.

Marketing activities

Throughout 2014 and 2015, G2A established partnerships with numerous eSports teams such as Cloud9, Natus Vincere, and Virtus Pro and has invested over 10 million USD in the industry to date.

In August 2016, G2A partnered with Sporting Clube de Portugal, who had previously signed Portuguese FIFA player, Francisco Cruz.

G2A states it collaborates with many YouTubers and streamers such as PewDiePie, Towelliee, Maximus Black and Castro 1021.

Charity

On 1 December 2015, multiple Twitch.tv streamers, YouTubers, websites and gamers participated in a program dubbed #GamingTuesday in order to raise funds for the charity Save The Children.

G2A, partnered with Bachir “Athene”Boumaaza, the creator of Gaming for Good, and created the Humanitarian Emergency All-Out Response Team (HEART). Both projects were designed to help and support children, charities and aid in disaster relief. G2A states that it has been working with Gaming for Good since 2013 and had previously partnered with Boumaaza in projects like Gamers got Hearts.

Between 2014-2015, G2A says that it raised over 500,000 USD for SaveTheChildren which was then amplified to five million USD

In January 2016, G2A states that it participated in the Polish charity auction event, The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity Foundation, and bought a 2.5m-tall statue of the character Geralt of Rivia from the game The Witcher.

Awards

In the first half of 2016, G2A won seven international awards in multiple categories including Customer Service, New Product and Virtual Reality.

Riot Games sponsorship ban

Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, banned G2A from sponsoring teams during the 2015 League of Legends World Championship. Riot believed the keys sold on G2A were illegally obtained and made further claims that G2A was selling fully leveled accounts, which breached Riot's terms of service.

G2A replied that it had tried hard to find a “win-win” situation in order to resolve the issues with Riot Games and had banned accounts selling Elo-boosted League of Legends accounts, which was a key factor behind the ban. G2A claimed that Riot did not cooperate with it in its attempts to fix the issue and Riot instead made further demands such as banning the sale of game guides on G2A’s marketplace.

INTZ’s Tockers Gabriel ‘Tockers’ Claumann, was later fined over 1,000 USD at Campeonato Brasileiro de League of Legends (CBLoL) 2016, for wearing a shirt with the G2A website logo on the shoulder. Midway through the game, he was asked to apply masking tape over the logo and later told he would be fined. G2A paid this fine, stating that “no e-sports organization should be punished so severely for wearing a G2A branded T shirt.".

tinyBuild Games allegation

In June 2016, CEO of tinyBuild Games, Alex Nichiporchik, accused G2A of allowing key resellers to resell fraudulently-obtained game keys, costing the company 450,000 USD. G2A responded to tinyBuild's claims, stating that it offered to help to identify which keys had been fraudulently purchased as to determine which resellers had committed illegal chargebacks and remove them from G2A. G2A also questioned the 450,000 USD figure arrived at by tinyBuild, noting that its games had either been discounted several times on other sites or given away for free and consequently felt the figure was inflated. tinyBuild added that in communication with G2A, the company felt it was being pressured to participate in G2A's payment platform, which would take some of the sales revenue back to G2A, in exchange for rooting out fraud on its platform.

The official G2A statement went on to say that it “gives full support to developers with prompt communication channels, uses advanced tools (exchanging blacklists, identifying suspicious merchants and auctions and ‘KYC’-Know Your Customers procedures), and offers award-winning protection solutions with G2A Shield.”

Following this debate, G2A announced strengthened front-end verification steps for its marketplace security which included social media profile and phone number verification, with further verification required after 10 or more products have been sold through one account while introducing its and publisher partnership program G2A Direct.