Ubisoft kills copies of Far Cry 4 sold through third parties

G2A, Kinguin and their ilk can die in a fire. Shady Russian and chinese keysites selling grey market and stolen keys that you have to activate through a Russian/chinese VPN are also a good way to get your steam account banned if you do it enough times. Sure it may work once or twice but it's playing with fire.

Stick to aggregators like CheapShark to find legitimate key sellers.
 
It happened with AC Unity as well. Not the first time a studio has done this and really not surprising.
 
Or I could keep on buying from the cheapest source possible until they figure out that we live in a global economy (at least digitally) and I'm not going to pay $60 for your game just cuz I live in America?

Take my $5-45 or take nothing, your choice game devs.
 
lilbabycat said:
Or I could keep on buying from the cheapest source possible until they figure out that we live in a global economy (at least digitally) and I'm not going to pay $60 for your game just cuz I live in America?

Take my $5-45 or take nothing, your choice game devs.
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There is a glaring problem with your argument: You aren't giving the developers a single penny when buying from those sites. It's not like buying from an authorized reseller where they only take 20-30% and give the rest to the publisher. 100% of the money you spend on grey market sites goes to the site and no one else. By buying from those sites you already are giving them nothing so why should they care about supporting you or your keys?
 
I quit buying from those sites a long time ago. When they start asking you to use a russian vpn to activate a product thats when you should know to move on.
 
Derangel said:
There is a glaring problem with your argument: You aren't giving the developers a single penny when buying from those sites. It's not like buying from an authorized reseller where they only take 20-30% and give the rest to the publisher. 100% of the money you spend on grey market sites goes to the site and no one else. By buying from those sites you already are giving them nothing so why should they care about supporting you or your keys?
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Well actually the keys come from boxes bought in countries where the games are cheaper. So UBISOFT does make money off the codes; just not as much if it had been bought in America. With that said I'll just wait for those games to go on sale for $5 on Steam. I have a ton of games to play and don't care enough to spend big bucks on games nowadays. The only game that I have penciled in for this year is GTA V after some inevitable patches. Everything else will be an Amazon / Steam / Origin / whatever 75% off sale.
 
You take the risk by buying keys from shady sites. Don't feel bad for you. I think Twitch streamers should be getting railed hard for supporting shit like G2A.

Its already been well proven that developers often do not see the money from the long trail of trade that these keys go through.

So despite my hate for Ubisoft I do not blame them.
 
The only way I can see UBISOFT not making a profit is if the key was illegally generated or a shipment of games was stolen at the port. I think this is more of a "We want more profits!" deal than stolen key problem. To be exact the really big issue is that the key resellers are buying game for less than $7 and selling them for almost full retail pricing at launch. Those "lost profits" are what is ticking UBISOFT off with key resellers.
 
For awhile I thought G2A was a legitimate site similar to GMG, when I saw many popular Twitch streamers promoting it. Not sure if Twitch should continue allowing their users to promote G2A on their site if those keys could be locked at any time.
 
cageymaru said:
The only way I can see UBISOFT not making a profit is if the key was illegally generated or a shipment of games was stolen at the port. I think this is more of a "We want more profits!" deal than stolen key problem. To be exact the really big issue is that the key resellers are buying game for less than $7 and selling them for almost full retail pricing at launch. Those "lost profits" are what is ticking UBISOFT off with key resellers.
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No, stolen keys are actually pretty common. Of course a ludicrous conspiracy is so much easier to believe :rolleyes:.
 
yourgrandma said:
No, stolen keys are actually pretty common. Of course a ludicrous conspiracy is so much easier to believe :rolleyes:.
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Talking to quite a few reputable key resellers over the years, stolen keys aren't as common as you think. They buy keys from poor regions and resell them to more affluent parts of the world is what the publishers are upset about. When the game retails for $7 at a store in a poor region, and these guys are buying it in bulk, it's easier to just open boxes and put the codes up legitimately. Especially when you're selling the games for $5 off the full Steam price.

Of course there is always going to be "that guy" that tries to generate codes, but places like G2A don't have time for it. They sell way too many copies to do that. Much faster and easier to just scan codes.
 
I've bought a couple of keys from G2A and I never had any issues with them, but after hearing this I don't think I would want to purchase from them again, though I've never had any games pulled from my account purchased from those CD key sites.
 
You pay for what you get. Karma hits all of us, especially the cheap skates.
 
So many clueless people in this thread. It'd be funny to watch if it wasn't such an harmful ideology.

cageymaru gets it, though.


Oh, and to the guy above whinging about being asked to use Russian VPNs? No one forces you to buy Russian keys. That's a moot point if I ever saw one.
 
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1-Poor sales cant be an indication of our failures!

2-but sir, we shipped broken products that run like shit and had bad reviews.

1-Thats not our fault!

2-But people hate Uplay

1-No, people love Uplay, the poor sales must be due to stolen keys.
 
Raudulfr said:
So many clueless people in this thread. It'd be funny to watch if it wasn't such an harmful ideology.

cageymaru gets it, though.


Oh, and to the guy above whinging about being asked to use Russian VPNs? No one forces you to buy Russian keys. That's a moot point if I ever saw one.
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I guess the question here then is, what will G2A do about disabled keys? do they offer refunds or do they offer SOL-funds?

as cheap as games are comparatively to the rest of life, buying them from regular sites is a no brainer - but I do feel bad for those that bought from G2A under the impression that they are a normal outlet.

The bulk of the scrutiny shouldn't be pointed towards Ubisoft, disabling region locked keys that were obviously sold in other regions in bulk is just normal practice, but more how G2A will handle this and do right by their customers..
 
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I think I'll stick with purchasing 1-2 year old games and getting the discount that way.
 
ZLoth said:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I think I'll stick with purchasing 1-2 year old games and getting the discount that way.
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If you only want to ever play 1-2 year old games then I guess that plan works out great
 
H-street said:
I guess the question here then is, what will G2A do about disabled keys? do they offer refunds or do they offer SOL-funds?

as cheap as games are comparatively to the rest of life, buying them from regular sites is a no brainer - but I do feel bad for those that bought from G2A under the impression that they are a normal outlet.

The bulk of the scrutiny shouldn't be pointed towards Ubisoft, disabling region locked keys that were obviously sold in other regions in bulk is just normal practice, but more how G2A will handle this and do right by their customers..
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G2A released a statement saying that they're working with people who didn't pay for their G2A Shield thingy to try and get them refunds, but people who did pay the extra fee have the option of getting a refund or a new key.
 
Derangel said:
G2A released a statement saying that they're working with people who didn't pay for their G2A Shield thingy to try and get them refunds, but people who did pay the extra fee have the option of getting a refund or a new key.
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That is pretty bad when you have to pay extra for "if we get caught" insurance. I guess it only takes once for people to realize it sucks to be scammed
 
H-street said:
That is pretty bad when you have to pay extra for "if we get caught" insurance. I guess it only takes once for people to realize it sucks to be scammed
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Yeah. The G2A Shield is nice if you're buying from non-G2A sellers on their marketplace. It covers you if their "preferred sellers" end up being scammers.
 
lilbabycat said:
Or I could keep on buying from the cheapest source possible until they figure out that we live in a global economy (at least digitally) and I'm not going to pay $60 for your game just cuz I live in America?

Take my $5-45 or take nothing, your choice game devs.
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I do see your point but you must admit that's a little "have your cake and eat it too". You live in a first world country and have things like reliable sources for food, electricity, clean water, and so forth. You probably make a good living, or at least the US minimum wage. What about those people in third world countries making $1.50 an hour? Cost of living adjustments are commonplace. It is harder to understand with digital products though. Perhaps you don't think they should have computers or video games? It's the same argument for why some people think netflix is great while I think it's a ripoff.
 
Wow. A site that sells serials requiring a Russian VPN to activate and whose users spam referral links all over the Internet is caught selling stolen goods? I am shocked!

Clearly, this is just another conspiracy perpetrated by thieving Ubi$oft.:rolleyes:
rsbennett00 said:
What about those people in third world countries making $1.50 an hour?
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How does such a person afford a gaming PC?
 
Ebernanut said:
From what I've seen most people in those countries are using low end and/or outdated hardware.
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For Far Cry 4? People in non-western nations mainly play F2P Valve games and LoL, but FC4 is a different animal, no?

They can afford a PC that can play FC4, but not the game itself?
 
crusty_juggler said:
For Far Cry 4? People in non-western nations mainly play F2P Valve games and LoL, but FC4 is a different animal, no?

They can afford a PC that can play FC4, but not the game itself?
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The people in these countries can certainly afford video games, but not at the same price as you do (ie. a direct conversion of USD to their currency). A person in US may be able to spend $60 or more on video games every month, heck that's probably less than what you spend on food over the weekend if you have a family. Convert that to the currency of a 3rd world country, that's probably their meal budget for the entire week for a working class. Not to mention that they have less to spend on luxuries.

Therefore, a $60 video game will be a luxurious entertainment to them, and you are not going to sell many copies. This is why video games are priced differently in certain countries.

As for the hardware, you could purchase a mid range PC and it will last you for years. The spending approach is different from buying video games, as you can save up over a long time to buy a new PC. But if you price your video games in such a way that people will have to save up for it too, then you're not going to sell many copies.
 
crusty_juggler said:
For Far Cry 4? People in non-western nations mainly play F2P Valve games and LoL, but FC4 is a different animal, no?

They can afford a PC that can play FC4, but not the game itself?
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You might be surprised what some people play newer more demanding games on, often they're running min settings at a low res and getting maybe 20 fps. It's not how I would want to play games but from what I've seen it seems to be fairly common in some of these places.
 
A little more info on this from Game Informer apparently all the keys were bought on Origin using stolen credit cards then resold on grey market sites. For the time being EA has removed Ubisoft games from Origin.
 
G2A is refunding everyone. I think they have to, this is a pretty crushing blow to them. If they don't theyd lose everyone.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/for...ry-4-CD-Keys-From-3rd-Party-Re-sellers-Update

As some of you may already know, steps have been taken to remove games purchased indirectly from a publisher, via main marketplaces in the web. G2A.COM is not in any case responsible for any of these procedures. However, we are well aware of this process and will do everything possible to compensate for that. For users who have made transactions without G2A Shield, we will check if the corresponding merchant was responsible for the withdrawal of the code. If so, these users will get a compensation. Any user who used G2A Shield affected by the current process will get either a new code for the game or the money back. G2A.COM will make every possible exertion to prevent this kind of procedures in the future and exclude merchants responsible for such incidents from the marketplace.
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Honestly I've never shopped there. When I realized they're just like ebay for grey market keys it blows my mind that anyone would use something like that.
 
cageymaru said:
Talking to quite a few reputable key resellers over the years, stolen keys aren't as common as you think.
I think this is more of a "We want more profits!" deal than stolen key problem.
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Raudulfr said:
So many clueless people in this thread. It'd be funny to watch if it wasn't such an harmful ideology.

cageymaru gets it, though.
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Funny seeing how people quickly jump to conclusions willing to believe just about anything, unless you guys still think somehow EA is going to lie on ubisoft's behalf.

Stolen keys and games are common, many trades get revoked on steam through illegally purchased games.
 
yourgrandma said:
Funny seeing how people quickly jump to conclusions willing to believe just about anything, unless you guys still think somehow EA is going to lie on ubisoft's behalf.

Stolen keys and games are common, many trades get revoked on steam through illegally purchased games.
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I can confirm I was briefly in an account trading and grey key forum a while back. I just wanted blank steam accounts with CSS for my lan. As account and keys got revoked it became pretty obvious what was going on and I bailed. I recently got contacted by someone on there trying to scam me and yeah theres a ton of forums still live for scammers and fake key tools. European Keys are one thing I used to buy a lot from a plain jane polish cheap key site and never had a problem. The fact that this site is reselling keys from users is like a billboard saying SHITS FAKE!!! I think its interesting that Ubisoft knows how to Isolate the offending keys. Its not like theres a big wave of legitimate users getting revoked.
 
Derangel said:
A little more info on this from Game Informer apparently all the keys were bought on Origin using stolen credit cards then resold on grey market sites. For the time being EA has removed Ubisoft games from Origin.
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I have to say if this doesn't' t show how Illegitimate G2A is I don't know what does. What I think is really sad is Ubisoft is the one who took the bad press (even from people on the [H]) for disabling the keys and even some of you defending them and the global market blah blah blah.

in the end not only did G2A profit off stolen keys, but the poor people who had their CC stolen get the shaft and those that didn't buy the "Might be a stolen key from a stole CC" insurance will be SOL..
 
yourgrandma said:
Funny seeing how people quickly jump to conclusions willing to believe just about anything, unless you guys still think somehow EA is going to lie on ubisoft's behalf.

Stolen keys and games are common, many trades get revoked on steam through illegally purchased games.
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Steam trading and key sellers are NOT the same thing. G2A has 2 different businesses. They have their keys that they sell that come from open boxes and they have their 3rd party sales. It is clearly marked when before you enter a transaction whom you're buying a key from.

So no, the average key seller sells legit keys. I don't deal with 3rd party sales. I don't trust things like that. You'd have to be really hard up to save another $2 by buying from a 3rd party on G2A instead of G2A themselves.
 
cageymaru said:
Steam trading and key sellers are NOT the same thing. G2A has 2 different businesses. They have their keys that they sell that come from open boxes and they have their 3rd party sales. It is clearly marked when before you enter a transaction whom you're buying a key from.

So no, the average key seller sells legit keys. I don't deal with 3rd party sales. I don't trust things like that. You'd have to be really hard up to save another $2 by buying from a 3rd party on G2A instead of G2A themselves.
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Technically reselling retail keys can be considered not entirely legit as retail keys are generally not for resale. Either way G2A itself is generally a decent company when dealing with this stuff.
 
Derangel said:
Technically reselling retail keys can be considered not entirely legit as retail keys are generally not for resale. Either way G2A itself is generally a decent company when dealing with this stuff.
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This is a global economy. Corporations try and shape the global economy to suit themselves for max profit. In the end it's still a global economy. I order what I want from whom I want. I am a capitalist living in a capitalistic society and I vote with my wallet.

If none of the key sellers existed I would just wait for the same price point to occur on Steam.
 
cageymaru said:
This is a global economy. Corporations try and shape the global economy to suit themselves for max profit. In the end it's still a global economy. I order what I want from whom I want. I am a capitalist living in a capitalistic society and I vote with my wallet.

If none of the key sellers existed I would just wait for the same price point to occur on Steam.
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Okay now that you had your little rant how does any of that apply to what I said? I don't see anywhere I said that you couldn't or even that you shouldn't buy from those sites. I was simply stating a fact. No need to get defensive about it. Pay whatever you want from whomever you want, I honestly could not care less about you or what you do with your money.
 
Derangel said:
Okay now that you had your little rant how does any of that apply to what I said? I don't see anywhere I said that you couldn't or even that you shouldn't buy from those sites. I was simply stating a fact. No need to get defensive about it. Pay whatever you want from whomever you want, I honestly could not care less about you or what you do with your money.
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I'm just stating that buying products from another country shouldn't be illegal unless there is a trade embargo in place from the US government preventing such sale. Thus key websites are not "grey market" places. For some reason people think that purchasing items on the internet in a foreign country has to be a "dirty" thing. I'm just saying that it isn't.

I have the same discussions with people in my area that think that ordering stuff from Amazon is "grey market", because it is cheaper than the local merchants in my area. It certainly is cheaper than the suggested retail price. Some companies like Thrustmaster won't even honor the warranty on an item if it is purchased for less than full retail. Found that out the hard way.

It's the same way that publishers like UBISOFT feel about product pricing. They want to control all aspects of it. It's so bad that http://www.getgamesgo.com/ refused to sell UBISOFT games outside of their region in 2013 for fear of their wrath coming down on them. I tried to buy a UBISOFT game from them that was on sale. They sent me a nicely penned email some years ago explaining why they couldn't complete my transaction and apologized. I don't know if they have "made up" with UBISOFT since, but it was a shock to me that I was refused a sale because of my region. I loved their 75% off sales. :)

I'm all for capitalism as that's the society that I grew up in. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion on topics, and to disagree or agree is all good with me. ;)
 
cageymaru said:
I'm just stating that buying products from another country shouldn't be illegal unless there is a trade embargo in place from the US government preventing such sale. Thus key websites are not "grey market" places. For some reason people think that purchasing items on the internet in a foreign country has to be a "dirty" thing. I'm just saying that it isn't.

I have the same discussions with people in my area that think that ordering stuff from Amazon is "grey market", because it is cheaper than the local merchants in my area. It certainly is cheaper than the suggested retail price. Some companies like Thrustmaster won't even honor the warranty on an item if it is purchased for less than full retail. Found that out the hard way.

It's the same way that publishers like UBISOFT feel about product pricing. They want to control all aspects of it. It's so bad that http://www.getgamesgo.com/ refused to sell UBISOFT games outside of their region in 2013 for fear of their wrath coming down on them. I tried to buy a UBISOFT game from them that was on sale. They sent me a nicely penned email some years ago explaining why they couldn't complete my transaction and apologized. I don't know if they have "made up" with UBISOFT since, but it was a shock to me that I was refused a sale because of my region. I loved their 75% off sales. :)

I'm all for capitalism as that's the society that I grew up in. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion on topics, and to disagree or agree is all good with me. ;)
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GMG is a foreign key site but they're also an authorized key seller so I have no problem buying from them, as far as I know get games go is another authorized key site so I'm not surprised that they didn't want to violate the terms of their contract. On the other hand unauthorized key sellers are selling stolen keys or keys that are intended for a specific market where they have to sell them cheap or people won't be able to afford them. The latter is a grey market key seller by definition because it's not strictly prohibited by law but it is against the TOS which is backed by contract law, it's slightly questionable whether these terms are enforceable so until a court decides whether the terms are enforceable it's in a legal grey area*.

I view grey market key sellers the same way I view ticket scalpers, as parasites that contribute nothing to the final product and often make more per transaction than those actually responsible for creating the product/performance. I have plenty of issues with the way that most publishers do business but regional pricing(at least in terms of US pricing vs pricing in poorer countries) isn't one of them.

I do agree that there's room for multiple opinions on this subject and I think you're one of the better posters on here so I hope you don't think I'm singling you out or saying you're wrong, my opinion obviously differs from yours though.

*Technically Contract terms are considered enforceable unless challenged in court and found unenforceable but I think it's questionable enough to consider it a grey area.
 
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