Change your business practices or we walk Gearbox Publishing recently announced it would offer a special collector’s edition of People Can Fly’s Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, which went on sale exclusively at G2A on April 4. But Waypoint reports that it is now reconsidering their partnership with the game key reseller, and have threatened to sever the relationship entirely. G2A has been under fire for over a year amidst allegations of fraud and money laundering. Recently, the influential YouTube creator John “TotalBiscuit” Bain said he would no longer cover Gearbox releases on his channels because of their partnership with G2A. That prompted Gearbox to reach out. Together, Waypoint reports, they have drawn up an aggressive proposal. “According to Gearbox,” Waypoint writes, “if the company doesn't make a public commitment to these modifications the publishing agreement between them is over.” Here are the terms of the ultimatum: 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. G2A recently announced that more than 100 developers had signed on to their G2A Direct program which offers, among other things, priority listing on the marketplace and access to the site’s entire key database. The developers Polygon spoke with were mostly ambivalent about the service. Source: Polygon
