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G2A on PC : how to download on Windows 10 ?.Is Kinguin Legit for Windows & Game Keys? Our Kinguin Review |
Is G2A a legit and safe place to buy game keys? The whole story
We stuck it in a virtual machine , and it worked for about a year. In other words, at some point in that year, the key we purchased was flagged as bad by Microsoft. Your key may never work in the first place, it may work for a month, or it may never be blacklisted at all. By purchasing them, you may be supporting criminals who steal credit card numbers.
Or, you may be rewarding people who abuse programs set up to help students and encouraging the shutdown of these programs. Even if you luck out and your new key does work forever, purchasing these keys is unethical. These sites also sell gray-market video game keys, which are also of questionable origin and may be revoked in the future. Polygon, a gaming website, has a good look at the problem with gray market game keys. However, you could run into this problem on many websites.
Websites like Amazon. You may have an easier time filing a dispute after buying a shady key from Amazon. Amazon is a huge marketplace, and it has a problem with counterfeiters.
Amazon may not want to help you if your key works for a year before being revoked, either. You can install and use Windows 10 without a product key. It will show you a watermark and nag you a bit, but you can use it without ever paying anything or providing a product key. This is a good solution for installing Windows in an occasional virtual machine to test software.
You can still save money on real Windows licenses, too! Better yet, if you have an old Windows 7 or Windows 8 key, you can still install Windows 10 with that old key. You may also be eligible for a program that helps you get a key for cheaper. For example, students may be eligible for cheaper or free Windows 10 product keys through their universities.
And in my experience, sometimes their payment processors decline a purchase for no apparent reason. However, I've always received a key after paying. Maybe I had to wait a few hours or I had to click through more menus than I would have preferred to get that key, but the key has always arrived - and almost always for a greatly discounted price. That's pretty legit if you ask me. Ask certain developers and they'll tell you to just pirate the game instead of supporting sites like G2A.
In the latest episode of Fuck G2A: G2A has taken out sponsored ads on Google, which mean that when you search for our games, you get G2A popping up above our own links and we make zero money on our games if people buy through the ads. And when you try to turn their ads off Game keys sold on gray market key sites can sometimes be from a stolen or hacked source. Worse than that, people frequently purchase games from sites like G2A with stolen credit cards and the resulting chargeback might ultimately cost the developer money.
Not to mention the potential for problematic sales to increase support costs for a game dev - a real hassle for small operations. When you buy a key on G2A, a lot of the time you're buying a Steam Key somebody bought with a stolen credit card. When the cardholder inevitably finds out, they issue a chargeback and the credit card company refunds them, taking the money from the store plus a fee , and giving it to the fraud victim. This means the store or developer if they're selling direct made negative money on the sale of that key, as TinyBuild and IndieGameStand have detailed.
However, the thief still got paid. And so did G2A. So they do it again. And Again. The perspective of players People who buy discounted games from gray market sites are often unwilling or unable to buy the game for full price. There are, however, caveats to those low prices.
Namely that Kinguin has had a shady business model and that purchasing products through them is unethical when you consider where the codes you are purchasing could be coming from. So, you can buy from them.
But just be aware of the potential pitfalls that could arise if you choose to do so. Kinguin is NOT a legitimate site. I purchased an Office key in February of The key did not work. Microsoft identified it as having already been used. What I will say is that I was able to reach someone through the chat, who made it work using the telephone activation schema, but it was clearly not a reputable activation — they must have a tool to generate fake phone activations codes — as the key was identified by Microsoft as used.
I wanted to get a refund for my Purchase because it didnt work. I live in HK went to their office — there is no body working there seems like a scam. Didnt get my money back and wasted a trip there…. Kinguin is not a reliable source for anything Windows. Some of these keys just come from other countries where Windows licenses are cheaper.
They may be legitimate, but they were sold for cheaper in other countries. For example, Windows keys were once much cheaper in China. Other keys could have been purchased with stolen credit card numbers.
A criminal acquires some credit card numbers, purchases a bunch of Windows keys online, and sells them through third-party websites at a cut rate. When the credit cards are reported as stolen and the chargebacks occur, Microsoft deactivates the keys, and those Windows installations are no longer activated—but the criminal gets away with the money people paid for them.
Some keys may be education keys intended for students but obtained fraudulently. On really sketchy websites, you may just be purchasing a completely fake key or an already-known key that was used to pirate Windows on multiple systems that has been blocked by Microsoft.
An especially bad website might even steal the credit card number you use to buy the key and use it to start the credit card fraud game anew. We stuck it in a virtual machine , and it worked for about a year.
In other words, at some point in that year, the key we purchased was flagged as bad by Microsoft. Your key may never work in the first place, it may work for a month, or it may never be blacklisted at all.
By purchasing them, you may be supporting criminals who steal credit card numbers. Or, you may be rewarding people who abuse programs set up to help students and encouraging the shutdown of these programs. Even if you luck out and your new key does work forever, purchasing these keys is unethical. These sites also sell gray-market video game keys, which are also of questionable origin and may be revoked in the future. Polygon, a gaming website, has a good look at the problem with gray market game keys.
However, you could run into this problem on many websites.
