Factorio devs take G2A up on its chargeback offer

(Image credit: Wube)

Players of indie management and construction sim Factorio are kept up to date on the game's progress via regular blog updates every Friday, and while the latest of those noted a record low number of bug reports, it also went on to address recent developments in the G2A saga.

Key resale marketplace G2A has come under fire due to the number of Steam keys sold there that are obtained with stolen credit cards. This is a particular problem for indie developers like Wube, creators of Factorio, who have to pay an average chargeback fee of $20 for every cancelled transaction. They also have to go through and manually revoke all those Steam keys, but having to pay for the privilege of being stolen from must sting. They write, "we estimate the total amount of fees we paid because of chargebacks is about $6,600."

The number would be even higher but after receiving "a ton of chargeback and fraud issues in 2016", now direct sales of Factorio are done through the Humble Widget.

G2A recently announced they would be using an auditing company to find illegal keys on their marketplace, and not only refunding any developer who had to pay chargebacks, but paying them 10 times the amount they lost.

As Wube's PR and community manager Scott Klonan writes, "I emailed G2A about the article and their 'vow' last week, and they are not exactly prompt in terms of dealing with the request. I have a list of all the Steam keys I had to revoke because they were purchased fraudulently, and G2A offered to check the keys. Currently this is where the story ends, they haven't replied to my last email (2 days ago) sending them the keys and asking how many of them were sold on the website."

Wube's current stance is that they would prefer that players buy Factorio either directly from them or their official partners, which gives players the benefit of their 28-day refund policy and direct customer support. But if you're thinking of buying from a reseller like G2A, Wube's position is the same as a lot of other indie devs: "we would rather you pirate Factorio."

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.