G2A Paid Journalists | Games ReCAP Episode 020

[Music] all right sup everybody welcome to another episode games recap yeah good morning guys welcome back to our daily show where we try to pick the biggest piece of news from yesterday and really beat the dead horse as hard as we can letting everybody know our thoughts opinions and any sort of facts that we can dig up that also apply to the content we're talking about yeah you can catch us live every morning at 10 a.m. Pacific time on our twitch.tv forward slash blue underscore champs to interact with us asses and give your opinions while we're discussing these topics live you are watching this after the fact then you are probably watching on our YouTube calm ford slash blue champs to catch any minute that you miss later if you want to support us directly go to

our patreon.com forward slash blue tramps to kind of make games recap at audio podcasts things that you can listen to every day on your daily commute if you want to become a twitch prime member what are the Subway sandwiches doing on our table area well yesterday I threw it out there I said if anybody's subscribed to us fights which prime and gave the gave us their free five dollars that does nothing if you don't use it that we would get two five-dollar footlongs and I came through I went to subway before the day starts we got to some of the days which they don't do five-dollar footlongs anymore yeah but the promise was already made so I personally want to say thanks to John Thorson who provided my sandwich I want to say thanks to Dane Thane I'll be eating this sandwich right after this maybe during it alright so let's go to the a-star V this is actually a continuation because yesterday we covered this topic somewhat if people

that did miss it yesterday can you kind of remind them what these guys are about alright so g2a is an online marketplace for basically being able to find or acquire or even you know legally what you call it legally required copies of a game on PC through a steam code or through a download code so they've created this marketplace which is completely ethical where people can upload these codes at a discounted rate or whatever price they see fit - then you know generate sales the issue that they run into though as a business is obviously the developers of these games since this is a third market the the developers don't get a cut they don't get a piece only the person who uploaded the code and g2a actually get a piece of the transaction so again it's much like a digital version of Game Stop now where someone is selling a copy of the game they're making money but not the people who made the game and the only reason the people who made the game weren't getting money is because these codes were the reason why there's a

protest is because the codes were acquired illegally you see if you purchase a legit code then the developer gets their money and if you for some reason decide to discount that code or try to sell it online cool the money transaction has already happened the studio that made the game already get their piece the publisher get their piece and the platform you get their piece if you sell it for a higher price which I don't know how you would but let's just say you did the developer won't get any money but I guess they already get their money yeah only case where it sucks is fraudulent credit card gets access to legal codes legal codes get uploaded and sold game developer makes no money right and if you want fuller details we'd spent like basically 45 minutes explaining that part of GTA but GTA saw this as a opportunity for them to humiliate themselves even more so they decided to pay or attempt to pay journalists to kind of promote their own

blog post that they written it's supposed to be unbiased blog post yeah as they promoted it that they wrote themselves that video themselves and we're putting it out there in the press outlets saying that can you publish this without any affiliates that we posted this or given this to you and tried to pay and I guess is this like being run by interns for something what's going on how do they not see this as the layers like you what's a juicier story oh my do you vote me is the fact that you're trying to get this printed under a different name what's silly to me is the way the public stance on how things have been going is this has been like a rogue employee behavior yet the employee you know just cares so much about the company has gone behind the back of the company to solicit these you know very favorable posts are these favorable blog or journal entries or articles or whatever site then they gone all the ways that they tried to solicit this positive light yeah they said it was a rogue employee who did this on their own doing

well because that's what makes me laugh right because how much money did this rogue employee throw at these journalists like 50 bucks yeah you know I mean like I think or was it like Oh fifteen thousand dollars total budget to go across ten journal sites and try to get 2 grand 3 grand here and there a grand and a half and I don't know the numbers I didn't get to see I wasn't a fly on the wall in these deals but just boil it down to basic a rogue employee wrote and spent possibly at the thousands or worth at his time or her time to write an article kind of promoting the very company that he's trying to the face to scheme and to bet on the journalists kind of printing it you know bet in bad faith right like to tidy face company like that's so many steps for somebody to work at GTA to be like I'm gonna [ __ ] them I'm gonna [ __ ] him indirectly several steps away from me actually sending this you know yeah to me and then I also saw that GTA

stepping in front of the news that they get found out that you know somebody had done this and this is my skepticism but the response was oh you know we have found the employee we know who did it we're not gonna say who did it yeah but they're gonna get reprimanded not fired right like not we don't want this behavior to stop and we want the employee gone because they're putting us at significant risk but reprimanded which leads me to believe that they were asked to do it in the first place but that's just a guess see son they got to go back to ninja school and they're not the dear things more discreetly same thing says did they forget that the FTC banned that kind of horsemen yeah 100,000 100,000 percent I mean that was huge among streamers years ago yeah where they have to say it's by advertisers and they've managed to make it very clear last so don't so just read this article let's kind of go to the nitty-gritty of things so an employee and a lot of this is kind of like what we mentioned before

which runs the controversial at GT a marketplace that sells game key codes attempting to secure the secretly paid a different journalists for favorable coverages of their company all Larry's eating this he's eating it hard over tomorrow right girl ah thanks for twitch price for the sandwiches g2a had a communication confirm the scheme to polygon via telephone this afternoon he said attempts to solicit positive paid coverage without disclosure is against company policy no [ __ ] and the disclosure employment law within the European Union is right there citing that yet it is cancer their law as approaches to their 10th anniversary is having difficulties proving the consumers in-game divorce at the marketplace is a source for discounted game cones as a legitimate place of business 10th year wow they're approaching their

10th year anniversary and this is what they're facing Oh a closure for the people who work there who are you know completely ethical about everything that they're doing or and fighting the good fight I feel bad cuz there's a lot of people that are gonna get dragged down in all this I mean us especially doing these type of expose articles or pieces of content you know we go from new sources and kind of echo chamber based on what we believe or what we think coming from the situation and more often than not my skepticism is always like that don't sound like a good thing you know to me and I there's probably some higher-ups who could be doing more that aren't yet yeah I'll give them the benefit of doubt and use the word yet and I think that they need to get in front of this and actually like legitimately try to clean up their company because that's the best way to you PR me the company that you say you are so you don't have to say it that's an incredible PR yeah when other people talk about you way more effective than when you talk about you yeah it's so there's that yeah so let's look at so

this is the entire email that was sent they did there's the the head of communicative communication just so fire dude reprimanded like a further step to walking into a police station and pointing gun at different what what is this without triggering is internal security measure the difficult part is pulling money out of the GTA ecosystem and converting it to cash in the real world what is this this is an X next level stuff I didn't read this part okay let's read this whole thing so is there a card document for a number of reasons not the lease which is request to journalists to keep silent on the fact that they were being paid to publish it the GTA employee says that the low level scam scammers might be able to sell one or two even ten fraudulently obtained game keys without triggering its internal security measures the difficult part is pulling

money out of the GTA ecosystem and convert it to cash in the real world the employee compares the step to walking into a police station and pointing a gun at different officers there what are you guys what are you talking about here's the Nugget that I did here it's very difficult to sell these fraudulent keys and then get the money from us you're all consumers are legitimately making business and it's hard for them to get money into the bank account after they got money what bank again will hold the money you'll be there and like I showed through my cruises comment yesterday people were buying hundreds or are selling hundreds of these that it does so that Bulls out that discovery of oh maybe at most ten not true this doesn't sound somebody like somebody who would be trying to sabotage the company no no they did it were intently wasn't to sabotage but to try to save

face or to create opposite yeah alternative facts yes alternative facts but the fact that they try to say this is a rogue employee that wrote this article and send it out to everyone and started paying hundreds of dollars just to say fu that's to pinpoint himself has the victim eventually to the company it's like he's not sleuthing around yeah and no one knows who wrote this or anything well it feels like I'm sorry you called us yeah to me that's what it feels like I'm sorry you called us I think that that was the play they wanted to see if they could start to create favorable favorable spin I can see why they would want to because none of the articles that have come out about g2a in the last week have been positive unfortunately and so yeah that's that's one way that you could get in front of it is to if if the news is 100% bad and you make it fifty percent good then that's a game yeah so on Twitter the Polish own Hong Kong based company so many cheating going on there just in that one Center

the Foundation's there's real money conversions happening there oh my god polish on Hong Kong B's company how can you trust a company like this GTA is like in a word it's two letters than a number these emails were sent by our employee without authorization for which we apologize to all the game companies and media outlets that he sent it proposing to he will face strict consequences as this is obviously unacceptable absolutely unacceptable oh yeah getting caught how do you acceptable no Brandon if you were in the shoes of the CEO there and let's assume it was a ruse and it was something that you you had wanted to do the whole time and you were behind I mean what would your stance be on like hey we get caught so how do I do you step in front of the train and say look you know what we

[ __ ] up we made the wrong decisions and or do you say like you put on the ploy as the escape goat and you you know you claim you have a whipping boy but you never publicly show or say your yes no one's LinkedIn profile is gonna change jobs you know that is uh as a tough nut to crack yeah like yeah like of course your initial I the initial response is always to me the new pre-spawn strain it's not gonna work which is to deflect the blame right to say the employee went rogue and that's why we're in the situation we're in that's always the bad response I think I think if he were to give that responding he's probably giving the best response possible in that situation to say hey you know we are looking into this this is absolutely wrong we don't endorse this type of behavior we can't believe this is happening they're gonna fall along with that stance yeah if I were in their shoes I would immediately roll out

instead of just saying in response and I would immediately roll out plans to help the Indian developer like that move yesterday that they said indeed direct or something to make goodwill who you've heard with this scam right now it's the indie developers right you can say you can go go after all these scammers which I feel it's within their power to kind of track down who sold honor these eighty two percent of these four are sold by three people how much you know or is this game one sale while this game was being sold it's like so easy to track these people you know what we got one of these culprits yeah you know we're cracking down on this we caught two of them that helps that helps it like this I think action says a lot more than words it's a lot louder though to do that than to say whatever you're gonna say because no one's on your side with this message no one's looking at this article or this statement from GTA head of communication saying oh look see they

had the best intentions and obviously they just had a rock employees see see you want to know one believes that I don't think anybody's there right now I personally don't believe that it was a rogue employee who on their own was trying to save the entire opening by doing something associated especially not a non c-level employee right maybe a c-level employee who already thinks they're invincible has like that kind of a like hero comp I don't I don't know like I'm really trying to paint a fine line picture that I just don't think exists so my money tells me but it sounds like they were it was planned to do this strategy and if things went wrong they were going to try to blame this laminate for a story versus like you know with the bonus yeah hey man just take one for the team we'll give you a severance whose name is really on that email account how easy is it to be like Jonathan dirt in yeah at g2a calm yeah go who's jumped in to see top men yeah yeah it's funny that they

didn't haven't pinpointed exactly who sent out this and I wonder why MIDI as outlets are withholding information about that well g2a doesn't owe us that answer okay the media does the media is receiving the yeah it's like I'm gonna count Zeppelin yeah why wouldn't they be probably had a name to it because they would have believed the validity that like it wasn't just some random person that Gmail but it was it would be a lot better for the story I say this person who works at this position yeah that would completely shatter the [ __ ] right there oh this guy's a VP yeah well why wouldn't be the first question I have is I wonder if any of them took the deal I don't know what that has to do with other people not exposing it but you know what I mean but any journalist like why not looking at this do a Google research why is ut8 like hitting me up oh [ __ ] they're in hot water what the [ __ ] is this anybody is a journalist think knows that this is a way juicier story out sort of what they're sending you all right so why would anyone take that bait and be like yeah well polo

just $50 the only thing I can think of is there was some sort of implication on the journalist end as to why they're not trying to share more detail whether that be they don't want their relationship with GTA as a whole to be tarnished in some way or some sort of fallout but like if I was Kotaku or if I was polygon or whatever and they tried to solicit that through us I would call them straight out because oh we got this email here it is yeah here's the juicy scoop this is the exact email everyone wasn't about right now I think it's actually in their best interest to have posted this it's a second of all how can we didn't get any what the [ __ ] do you do it our prices are too low sandwich we were to publish it a minute after the account cleared what is good what is good oh man the day when people pay us off that will never happen for me

but I would love to see somebody try yeah it'd be fun it would make me feel like we're worth something yes yeah oh he's like that much it's like the the what the man wife or the married husband who goes out to flirt but to always be like I cannot yeah like I just it's good to know your funds it's good to know that we're value I would be laughing at this is just all types of bed I don't see how exactly they're gonna recover from this I mean 10th anniversary you might as well call score state indie developers 8% of what they're doing we need to check out what you can look like what else do they sell on there it's just a like a digital store seems like a digital marketplace for reselling game keys so Larry can you know like this s7 oh the thing the thing about this for me is I in their position I would cut all ties to the idea that you're gonna be

slick right now is not the time 2019 is not the time cancel culture and it's like fullest is not the time to try to be slick right now is the time to just be honest doing good business is good business again it's getting harder and harder and harder for people to cheat you state is [ __ ] no they're totally game center hello there front page and maybe I can look this up it's like all games yeah if you guys go over there GT it or if it's all game here's a good one five random premium steam keys five bucks you don't know which ones but [ __ ] their whole business is around these steam Grand Theft Auto 13 61% off it's basically the black-market storefront so you can see why they are so important skin yeah there's so there's some trepidation completely shut this down because a lot of the revenue ball even if we go by there 8% is a huge

chunk but I man they're probably just saying Indy what they like categorize is indeed like their game category must be huge because if you go to the front store anybody you're bombarded with just game deals you're talking about looks like a deal but it's yeah you don't necessarily know Xbox Live Gold work these sell subscription deals they sell games they put sell PlayStation gift cards recommend a game oh my god so clever because they don't have any other stuff no it's it's just digital going back and forth I'm gonna start a conspiracy where GTA is behind the scams a polar space haunt in Hong Kong themselves the hard ways that are getting the chance that their seller five man operation you know I mean at this point if I believe they've already been unethical in one way I reserve or I

take away any reservation of them ever being unethical yeah right not again yeah like okay so as soon as you show me like you have snake tendencies I'm gonna expect snake tendencies yeah even if you apologize it I'm sorry do it again like cool no problem you you let me know what there's a threshold that you're willing to go beyond and even if you feel like we hired a new CEO okay but I'm still pretty sure you know there's a lot of other people that are around in that same locker room when that CEO was there that you removed and replaced I'm sure there's still a lot of the similar talks happening well let's read the rest of this article cook coke I don't know let's come kaak kaak declined to elaborate on what they confiscate since consequences will be we promised a severance pay and taking care of his family as part of this deal to expose himself

it took polygons that while it is a standard operating procedure for GTA to pay promotional fees for its content to be included on various websites it must always be disclosed he also emphasized that he is the only person in GTA the author as I speak with the press that's a law unfair and he's only a person ahead of communication of one you whole department is just one person yeah what I mean press is gonna take you out of context anyway they're gonna read your tweets Janna read your Instagram posts or whatever we ask to ask talk about this open call for game developers to participate in an independent audit of its game key catalog on the GTA Marketplace he after both of these articles are there any in developers lining up to be a part of the GTA or like at this point is like man you have shady ass business going on like I'm going somewhere else

yeah from what I'm seeing I don't know how this works out in a legitimate way yeah right if I were to buy a PC game right now I'm pretty sure I'm going to go to steam I'm gonna pay whatever the developer and publisher ID ideally determines the price of that game to be and I'll say Olli exactly and it's direct knowing and hearing about all the shady stuff that's happening with g28 even if I see a price that feels like it's too good to be true it starts to feel like a risk yeah but also just if you have any sense of a conscience you're like all men I'm ripping off the people that made the thing I'm technically making it a small percentage harder for that company to get revenue for the year don't understand it hurts the dev 100% g2a has no dog in the fight because they don't actually make the product that they're profiting off yes yeah they're not housing any of these in a warehouse or anything it's such a weird business model like I'm never this is completely new to me we're selling a used game basically model for digital games yeah this got to

be the only type of places that does that have it the only way I could see that even being profitable in any way shape or form continual like long-term is knowing that a big sector of it is because they're generating profit from scalped or what do you call it fraudulent activity codes yeah right the markup of like getting a whole bunch of codes 500 800 codes and selling them yeah versus trying to be competitive with actual excuse me with actual like codes like hey GTA code is worth $33 we're gonna sell it for 31 how did you get that code legally right to then offer it for $2 less and expect the stay in business I mean we don't ask questions here unless they work with the developers straight up and the developers like we're avoiding steam so we're coming to you to work out maybe some sort of better deal I don't know maybe there's some of those things happening so in all fairness this just once out another business of steam that

they just never really explored like how how great would it be if you they do have some kind of gifting system go but are you able to get the game that you own to someone else I will say this no right just just from a business standpoint the only person who would be happy about that idea in any way shape or form is like the game gaming the consumer right and the only way I as a business would ever allow that to happen is if it was some sort of trade yeah right so like you are giving your code to this person you will have no access to this code on your account anymore that person is giving you some sort of thing the purchases have already happened well actually no even then because that works against Steam I think steam in all ways shape or form will always want you to purchase the game at the highest price possible and they don't want any sort of exchange or trade to happen because imagine you imagine this right aim stop right this is a

whole business you're selling use games the unfortunate part of that is that all the profit goes to that game so it doesn't go back to the ball doesn't go back to develop but I feel but it is harder to track right when you're doing with physical copies with the digital world it feels a lot easier especially in a steam ecosystem when a transaction is made between a game that is catch-22 developer and the developer has that Steam account name so you get painted every time in transactions made how great would it be if I were to sell against you with the predetermined use games price across the board right you can't sell this any less or any more than five bucks if you want to make you gamers get a percentage steam gets a percentage through the transaction as well as the game developers get a percentage of that five bucks but that's the and it's all laid out through their buying system like that would be

fantastic like even if you're getting like a buck out of every used game being traded around like that is that is fantastic for all parties I think I just still land on the like what does buying the used copy of a digital game versus buying the new copy of the digital game really mean right where I see it apply obviously with physical waste because of scarcity yeah and I'm creating I have something of like tangible value right like if they only make a hundred thousand copies of iron hand ER and you want i'm hander today and I'm giving up my copy of I'm hander so that you can play it I can see why there's a sale barter agreement thing happening there yeah if you then go to like a digital storefront there's as many copies of that game as customers want right there is no such thing as scarcity when you're buying the game through Steam I don't think Sony ever went to steam it was like okay make sure you only sell a hundred thousand copies of iron hander on Steam Yeah right it's like no anytime somebody wants to just give them the

code generated key and just keep them running okay so I guess not too I'm not discrediting what you're saying or the idea that's just the hard part for me is like what's I don't see exactly I don't see what I don't see where the benefit is for Steam or the developer I see where it is for the consumer because they're like instead of buying the digital copy for 20 bucks I have a way of buying yet the same performing no scratches no chance that this is going to mess up digital copy but for 15 bucks because that user no longer has it anymore I would much rather be like well I would rather you spend 20 bucks and just get your own copy well of course but like what is happening now is that he's creating basically a black market mmm like g2a or people like pyatters are encouraged okay and it's like it's like an inconvenience thing again obviously there is our market share of people that isn't being satisfied with the current system and as a business person like how

do we get ahead of that and service those and and say bye-bye new and fresh or don't buy it at all and pirate it right I think there's something there that everybody like it yeah I understand pirates enough to know that it is mostly I feel convenience these are the laziest sacks of people and that if you create a way for them that makes sense to them you will crack like a huge huge base of people and can be able to comfort a user base that was untapped and GTA kinda has that going with this back door of selling steam codes secondhand right they're definitely in trouble they definitely know for a long time where it's all coming from obviously things like just a quick stat check from micros

were able to say like 81 percent of these steam coats are coming from three people it's like he's no Sherlock Holmes man and these guys have the actual details yeah right so they know for a long time that this was going on and they're trying to save face do you late with this and I mean it's gonna really hurt him I'm speculating here but just based on the pricing that I saw when you pulled up their site and I saw how significant the discounts were 61% off Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto right now I think is trending around a 33 $34 and we're around there yeah I feel like if I went to Amazon I probably get for 35 bucks cuz it's still that game yeah I got it when it was 19 because it was on a sale that Amazon through as like hey we're gonna lose money on this yeah what house yeah how exactly are they pulling these type of deals that seems legitimate at first glance right it's it's not like they're teamed up with Rockstar humblebundle type of things Rockstar no like the reason why Grand Theft Auto is

still like a $35 game Rockstar knows that not you no way that they would go to GTA with that brand with that notoriety with that many customers that they know or yeah there's no partnership going on there the last thing they want to do is like [ __ ] on their private glance at their pricing in their model like this shadiness going on it's a polished own company based in Hong Kong how much shadiness do you need why would you play let's start a company where you want to go it's kind of Hong Kong for hahaha why I like the weather it's like I never grew up there people are exactly the opposite of us right from what I've seen is intellectual property and law over there they don't see eye to eye yeah or at least our law and intellectual problem if it is some like we are planning a strategy to to make their company over there yeah we all everything about it we can't send Markie

Salamone to mount a freaking Honda or to Hong Kong and expect him to get anything done at that law firm yeah so shout out to East Coast people who know nothing is up let's read the rest of this and then I didn't see what's going on so he declined to elaborate on what the consequences are he's okay we were talking about that he also talked about the big four accounting firms we have one of the big four accounting firms I'm so tired of I'm so tired of non information information counter forms that are pretty famous me on the counting orders have been contacted said he expected more information to be released public regarding the audits later this week it's just deflecting flicked deflate it's the only thing he could do now not like I mean it oh here was really

legitimate way like I said he would be working on deals right now he would be talking to indie developers directly that got the most affected by this he's like hey we made this much off of your use game we're willing to give and shell out 30% of it to you right now to kind of help and make good will with the just take a picture with us all right that's all we need we need the picture good press but like that if I see that as they all right they're trying to correct they don't have to give 30% and there's no deal before app there's no contract but as goodwill they they're giving 20-30 percent to the redevelop that would really help they would come out and say hey thanks GTA that would help with the fan bases that would make indie develop and developers to reconsider their position on g2a like they need to make moves son and not try to kill time with this BS if you just look at the positive things that they're doing like you can give them some kudos in some areas yeah to say like hey look we're

gonna open this up and we'll do a public audit you know we want you guys to participate or to say like hey if you've been affected by these sales we're willing to give you ten times your money no come to I don't understand that move but it's more about public saving face and less about actually a good business move yeah or economically responsible business move I'll say that because then you open yourself up well I mean they're obviously the leading platform for whatever this market is it's like a legitimate black market right there's something there alright they're not being shut down there just getting bad press on their 10th year yeah being business in ten years for ten years is achievement in upon itself so they just need to work on direct relationships with basically their consumer are not vendors basically right and work something else and think of a more legitimate way to get this going it's like maybe we can work on a promotion we actually have a million

subscribers people frequently visiting our site we do have good foot there's legitimacy right in our following maybe when you launch the game can you reserve 500 keys on a discount and we'll promote it I mean there's so many things that can do that would help both sides right at this point I like legitimately feel like their business model is set up around the scam it's set up around the gray market they know that it exists and if any of them feel like oh well the people we're gonna pirate the games anyway right so we may as well if that's how anybody there feels like they're not gonna last much longer because they have an opportunity to go completely legitimate completely legitimate yeah but it might take it might take even the littlest amount of work that will stop revenue and that's usually where things start to break down because a lot of these for-profit companies for profit first ethics maybe

on a Sunday yeah you know what I mean and I think that's one of the biggest issues is like you can still be a business that is run epicly and still make money hmm the problem is when you say like aw dang but if we have to cut out all the illegal revenue that we get that's a 45 percent loss for the year based on the projections yeah that's sixty million dollars I'm just throwing this out there that's 60 million dollars that we're gonna lose I just bought a new house man in Malibu you know that that high-cost escort that I have in my life that has to go are you kidding me yeah it'll ride this out what's going on with these companies man it's 2019 don't see like there are huge ramifications for these types of things we're talking about what the more more house what was that game the resis game Oh more dough more doubt yeah it was like a European company as well no this one like next door buddies or something yeah would like they're just completely dropping the ball on press it feels like we're in a period of

time where the big corporations are really feeling the sting of the ant yeah because all the ants are stinging together whereas before we were seen as inconsiderate there um I think it's inconsequential you know they don't care the the Internet we weren't so collected on the internet are so strong drag culture didn't really become a thing yet because everyone's voices didn't have power like it does today right right now it's so easy for the ant to be like oh hell naw and then a whole bunch of other has to be like oh hell no right because of retweets because it follows because of yeah you know virality yeah it's a whole new marketplace now and so now these like juggernauts are like coming to jesus because they're realizing that the people who they were just treating like crackheads and they were drug dealers who they had no respect for they were just extorting they were just you know I I don't give a [ __ ] about you consumer I just want you to keep buying my thing right that whole healthcare industry type of business yeah it's gonna start

dying out yeah because it's not that were unionized it's not that we're a collective bargaining but we we just thought least we're very loud very vocal yeah and there's a whole lot of people that are getting upset together just off of like reading one article or seeing a tweet as long as it's true even when it's not true sometimes yeah but like how fast these companies have to dive in front of bullets to try to save what's left of the business because of one thing right like how quickly like oh we're so sorry that person has been terminated we don't hire that type of thing we don't put up with it how many times have you seen like the racist manager or something you know basically do something to marginalize or to basically theoretically incriminate somebody find out that that person was innocent yeah and then the whole company has to backpedal for that employee yeah so quick know that didn't used to be the case yeah 20 years ago please man today hell yeah I'm all for everyone at Barneys that discriminated against the teenagers like who are not white shopping in their store and

getting in trouble yeah and all the times I like those big type of stores have to jump in front of that news and say we're sorry person's been terminated that doesn't represent us and our values know these times of change and we're getting closer to seeing eye-to-eye as consumer and you know company that produces well GTA if you want your ad placement as you're trying to backpedal into a bitter spot with the press I think overall just talk with actions man like go out there talk to these developers I know you have that list who got the most screwed through our platform start from the top to the bottom be like hey reach out to them here's 20% and here's something a part of the revenue that we don't have to give you but hopefully this helps that would be a huge with huge because all the indie developers as we know are so well-connected a tweet from them and a

lot of them at once would be way more press than you can give then like a rogue employee writing an article about yourself right you know it's interesting and I'm just gonna go on a limb here I don't imagine this is the type of company that has a lot of cash on hand g2a yeah they don't deal in physical products so they deal in digital products right well they didn't say that it's very hard to turn their money that you've earned oh yeah it's you cash it's like the equivalent of grew into a police station and pulling gonna everybody's alright it's like how do I get my money that's diversion is diversion it's like yeah the best they I don't me saying that I don't imagine they have a lot of cash on hand is not me saying they're broke order or so that like there's a lot of loot I look at their operating costs yeah just it's findable sooo yeah like it's a website a little things website you're hosting digital keys that get bought and sold so you have a web interface storefront and you have a back-end you know server space even polish and notepad come on you know even

if they have like a main location where they have people running all these things like I can see their cost being so cyclically like the same yeah right that they're like oh if it costs us a million dollars to run this business for the year like in cost we make eighteen million dollars I'm pretty sure they're not going to keep sixteen million dollars in the bank just in case yeah so I think that's what discourages me about hearing them say like hey we're gonna just start paying money to people because I worry that it will be new business to cover old business meaning they're still gonna have to prey on the predatory game keys to try to save public face while there like they're shoveling it from one side of the boat throwing it back into the other you know what I mean that's that's what I would worry about is that like alright to come up with the money that we're gonna keep paying all these people even if it's just they're 8% if the big devs also are getting screwed and then they want the same reparations the only way that that company survives is if they continue to take the money from new business to cover the whole business and

then two years down the line they have to do it again and again and again again so I'm looking at this store right now and do you see anything on there that feels like an honest price like be honest no man just based on you so this is a very user-generated type of offers or uh to put on their marketplace right and yeah people just use all the basically PayPal and everything else to kind of check out actually that's a great point that you just brought up what though we should touch on what you did sit like three people are providing eighty five percent of the codes right yeah so in G toys favor if they're just the middleman that's like hey here's this platform and here's how you submit a code and what game you listed for in this net and this and that and you set your own price we're just like PayPal where we're gonna take one percent cut or whatever whatever then I guess I'm actually more mad at the Pirates because the Pirates are the ones from like all eight dollars for grand theft auto you know what I mean I I completely forgot

about that and then part of it is they're not the ones soliciting and selling at the certain price points but they are still taking the cuts just ending cuts yeah people are just uploading their price points yeah in their briefs leave the middleman they don't hold anything it's a transactional type of so you black market man even worse their operating costs they'll just drop the video yeah they don't provide any of these they just have a website and they're literally a marketplace for people to make transactions and it's it's it's super hard to get your money out of it once you get the money well first it gets converted from the USD into the Chinese currency and so then when you want your back they have to then go back and back and back that's that's what you know well you know it's the three-tier we got to make sure that you get the right exchange right we got to make sure that clears customs we got to make sure yeah man it's such a Dina three countries worth of taxes know that this deal happen I'm just telling jokes well I

mean that concludes g2a if you this is not cool straight they're done dude I don't know how they gonna bounce back I mean I guess black mark they're only as strong as like the people uploading their stuff and still buying from them which I think people are who are aware of the site that are over there constantly refreshing for deals they're doing that anyway so so this is the bad press if anything is getting a lot more traffic for them to kind of get eyes on hey that's a great deal no two dollars don't get it so there's a I think they're constantly be supported yeah but for legitimacy it's done like no no any developers are gonna participate in their [ __ ] program that they started I think more eyes are gonna be over there from the developer sighs like it's my game on there like I didn't authorize this like what's going on and I think that if anything they're they're

everyone's kind of grouping together to go against them I think two things I think g2a needs to come to Jesus as a business because our website based business they could feel a lot bigger than they actually are yeah you know a clean clean website could make somebody think that you're a big corporation oh yeah never nice website great stock photos lots of people make people think you're likely really did it I see all types of yeah I see once I see gamertags and then the next thing is again like we said yesterday go to the source man where are these codes being acquired and what can we do there to fort this business model all together ie hey you bought this game on Steam you have 24 hours to or why do we even need codes anymore right like I didn't buy a CD that has an instruction manual that I can since I chose captivate it straight away like foot five five seven seven bought you know whatever game cool instantly

tied to that account why would you buy five hundred copies wide that you will never do I know like Steam has a gift a way to kind of the only reason that you would have five thousand companies you're the developer and that can be controlled on that side hey obviously your game is on the store we can we check we verify you your account is tied to the game store yeah therefore you are allowed to have this many it's it's gotta be there like these codes exist the legal ones exist because like promotional reasons like hey we're Capcom we just released retinue game right we're doing a giveaway that's a very verifiable way to get those guys this yeah five hundred keys but like hacked low gamed legitimacy zero zero seven there's no reason for this guy to have a hundred discount yeah there's there's things that can be done both at the source but then also on g2a as well G Troy wants to be legit they completely can yeah I'm just gonna I will stand on that yeah

they wanna be legit they have everything in their power to actually do these run by five guys yeah so if they don't they still not there cuz he got shot they're gonna change the name to A to G more like G to G GG got to go but that concludes this today's top and we're gonna keep up to date with this because it's very interesting I'm sure it'll come back it will be coming back and now as are we 10 a.m. every morning please stand by we do have game da Vinci and coming up next in about 5-10 minutes with an awesome guess coincidentally about indie dev business alright and so if you want to hang on to that see you very soon yeah and you know when you play checkers somebody takes your king and you get another one consider yourselves recapped

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