Gearbox Publishing has ended a partnership with G2A ahead of the release of Bulletstorm: Full Clip.
The duo had paired to release a special edition of the game, leading to heavy criticism. G2A has made headlines of late for shady business practices; developer TinyBuild alleged it lost $450,000 in sales thanks to the key re-seller. YouTuber John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain said he would no longer cover Gearbox titles over the partnership.
Gearbox approached G2A after the news broke, demanding changes to its business practices. The demands can be read, below:
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.
“As there has been no public movement from G2A by the time Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition launched now on PC,” Gearbox’s Steve Gibson told Polygon. “Gearbox Publishing will be doing their part to not directly support a marketplace that did not make the new public commitment to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing. We do not control G2A’s marketplace or where they may obtain keys from parties outside of Gearbox Publishing, but we can confirm that today we have begun executing on our extraction process.”
Regardless of a lack of special edition, Bulletstorm: Full Clip is now available on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4.
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