Please DON'T buy keys from G_2_A!

[Les]

Hi all,


IMPORTANT NOTE:
Steam allowed us to disable old batches. Starting from next week we will de-activate all unredeemed keys from old bundles. If is causes pain to someone, please mails us:
[e-mail]


Yesterday I have spend ca. 5 hrs implementing new spell - Chain Lightning, which will help to make Greenskins more interesting (it's a offensive spell for Warlock). To support reduction in attack and damage at every lightning hop, a large portion of code had to be refactored. Nevertheless, I did it :-)

However, in the morning I saw sales chart again and that make me fell very sad...

You see - over the last couple of weeks, most of players got their AoF Steam key in a way that made 3rd party profit, making money on me and my team back. I will give you bare facts:

- Over last couple of weeks, about 70-80% of Age of Fear games were purchased via G_2_A for 1-2 USD. We can't really compete with that price unless we do cheap stuff like puzzles.

- When you purchase AoF key on G_2_A, we get absolutely zero money from that transaction. Moreover, we are losing sales here on Steam!

- Those keys come from 2-years old bundles. Please don't try to convince me that few thousands people have just found found AoF in their old bundles.

- G_2_A is not authorised seller of Steam keys and those sales are illegal (re-selling Steam keys is illegal). Unfortunately, we practically cannot do anything about it aside of suing G_2_A (which costs money and takes time!).

- Sending take-down notices to G_2_Ais utterly pointless. They either don't reply at all or make us to waste lot of time proving that key is illegal. Even if they take game listing down, few days after new one appears.

- I have tried to undercut current sellers from G_2_A by providing super-cheap keys there, but G_2_A ranking system prioritizes 100k+ sellers (I wonder where they get all those super-cheap keys from...)

- G_2_A is very parasitic company. There are many indie developers affected. More details on that topic there:
{LENKE FJERNET}http://tinyurl.com/jfdy9wz
{LENKE FJERNET}http://tinyurl.com/gvovgqj

(Steam is filtering G_2_A I had to use short urls, originals are:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4pgszv/♥♥♥_den_of_thieves/ http://tinybuild.com/♥♥♥-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys)


Unfortunately, G_2_A is what is currently killing small indie games. Development of games costs money and how it currently stands here I can barely cover graphics and sound costs.

I have full-time job and I do AoF in my free time as a hobby. However, I have few other interesting projects to work on (e.g. my phd) and gradually will be spending more time on those.

I am so sorry to bring this topic here.


Take care,
Les


P.S. I have asked Steam to invalidate unused keys from previous bundles batches and hopefully they will invalidate them (they might not). Hopefully they do.

[Gorbash]

Thanks for putting notice to us, have bought over steam and will gladly buy next edition/dlc/expansion also over steam. Hope it works with blocking the keys.

[Les]

G_2_A is getting fire under their ♥♥♥:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5rg9mo/we_work_for_g2acom_global_digital_marketplace/?sort=qa

Finally people understood what damage this parasite does.

[Les]

@Rust
Please write your own game, start selling it and then we can exchange opinions about pricing, sales and legal details of this business.

However, if you somehow survive few years, by then you would understand what damage G 2 A does to indies. They don't produce anything just suck customer's money and create false perception of games value. 'Shield' that protects you from blocked keys that cannot be disabled in less than 20 clicks - does that sound to you like a legitimate business? They have found themselves a small grey area of law, registered themselves in Hong-Kong and are currently like a cancer of indie scene that no-one knows how to get rid off.

All those shiny things you see happen on screen are result of 7 years work and thousands of dollars spent on graphics, sounds and other assets. Yes, they do cost more than a cup of coffee.

CD Project almost collapsed of cost of producing Witcher. Even polish president was advertising it not let company die. If was a risk that could result in 50-60 people unemployed and you would probably never hear of them anymore. How would you fell being one of their developers?

Also, I don't know why you think putting it for 1 USD will cause 200k copies to be sold. It's not my ego - I have tried 5-25 USD price range and the highest revenue we are getting is around 15-20 USD. All money we are getting is feed-back into better assets, more content and other improvements in hope we will have stronger user base for our next projects.

Writing a successful video game is HARD (try yourself!). Behind almost every game here on Steam there is a team of dedicated people working hard to entertain you. Nowadays we also have to protect ourselves from parasites like G 2 A. We are releasing AOF3 in few months and it will never be bundled for the above reasons and lots of people won't be able to try it. Long term relationships with customers is important, but we have to protect our business first. This is the world we live in thanks to G 2 A.

For some unknown reasons we are still afloat and flood of new games, widespread piracy, even the latest changes in Steam discoverability did not change our sales much. Thus we are doing something right and I trust myself.

Gosh, that's a long rant. Hopefully you got something from it. Realities of selling games are harsh and this is hard and risky business. There aren't many rewards if you are not in top 1%. And no, being in top 1% is not always about quality and content.

There is much more nasty realities I could write about. You can stay with your vision of fairness and keep supporting G 2 A. Give them your money so they can steal from gaming scene even more. My priorities are my customers and those few people of my team I have to take care for and make sure we have enough to work for.

[Dopefisher]

Also, don't buy from G 2 PLAY or King uin, correct?

[Les]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Unicore & Manticorn GLOVES:

Also, don't buy from G 2 PLAY or King uin, correct?

Yh, those companies are pretty much the same.

[GabtridSavior]

Man this must be a terrifying problem to deal with.

[Les]

Opprinnelig skrevet av GabtridSavior:

Man this must be a terrifying problem to deal with.

Currently those bastards pissed off virtually every indie I know.

Yes, it’s a problem, however people are more and more aware.

[76561188078797539]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Les:

Yes, it’s a problem, however people are more and more aware.

It probably would be easier to list the legitimate "key resellers".

Er... Green Man Gaming, as far as I know? :)

I try to buy directly if possible (though won't ever touch PayPall payments), or through either GOG, Itch.io, or Steam.

Used to Humble Bundle, but some of the stuff they pulled regarding data-mining their customers made me say buh-bye.

Oh, and then there was Desura until it wasn't :(