I'll try and elaborate to clear things up as there is so much confusion about key sellers.
The 2 biggest are G2A and Kinguin-Group, both originally Polish companies although in the past they were registered in Hong Kong and Operating from Poland.
Kinguin is owned by VIWA Entertainment:
http://viwa.me/en/
They run sites like Kinguin and many localised portals like fast2play, acheterlecle etc.
I supply both G2A and VIWA. For bigger releases like MGSV our business does like 50.000 - 80.000 units. Smaller releases a few thousand on Day 1.
I buy directly from ALL publishers. I do not exclusively sell games but other stuff as well like merchandise, computers, sporting goods , jewelry. We basically trade all kinds of goods. If there's demand we supply.
How they got big:
As everybody is aware of there was a huge price discrepancy between western boxed retail games and Polish/Asian and Russian retail games. The fact that publishers didnt region lock game keys at the start gave G2A and VIWA a big advantage.
Also there was a VAT Loophole. In Europe non-EU companies selling digital goods to EU consumers didn't have to pay VAT. G2A and VIWA profited enormously from this as they registered in Hong Kong and had a 20% (VAT) extra margin to price lower than competitors.
This was completely legal until last january. Cheaper games + no VAT in the early days = very cheap games.
As the EU got its shit together by by introducing this new law (VAT MOSS) last january:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs...m/index_en.htm
and Publishers locking down on retail pricing or locking keys out in western territories G2A and Kinguin saw their current businessmodel on shaky grounds.
Regarding region locked keys, EA games nowadays for example are all region locked, Warner Bros games are still wild wild west. EA games prices are fairly stable but Warner Bros is shit, you can get a key within a week of release for 10 euros.
What G2A and Kinguin both did was change their businessmodel instead of selling the keys they created a marketplace a la eBay and Amazon marketplace. Take a average 10% commission of every sale. All older titles are available on these marketplaces. As far as i know G2A and Kinguin-group only sell new games which havent been released yet, which they buy for me.
Kinguin allows pre-orders for marketplace sellers but on their own sites they sell their own stock, which could be sourced from me. G2A locks out all other marketplace sellers for Pre-order titles. So basically all the pre-orders on G2A are sold by G2A, which i sometimes supply.The following question that arises is how can i supply titles to G2A/Kinguin which still allows G2A/Kinguin to sell for below marketprice?
Ladies & Gentlemen: The publishers allow me to.
In the EU almost every publisher has its own local branche. EA UK, EA France, EA Germany, EA Spain etc. Each of these offices have performance targets for each title. Local offices opt to sell me games at dealprices at bulk qty's if they do not reach their sales target.
For example for a certain MMORPG releasing soon, we sold an extra few thousand to G2A at a special lower market price given me by the local publisher.
The title didn't meet their pre-order targets but they needed to reach HQ targets. Local publisher calls me, i need to sell xxxx units more, what can you do at what price?
The local offices dont want to know who i am selling it to as it could put them in a nasty situation as they disrupt (global) marketprices. Ignorance is bliss for them.
Marketplace is a different monster. Kinguin and G2A are dealing with an influx of suppliers whose sources can not be tracked. Keys could be stolen etc.
How G2A/Kinguin deals with them is their own. However for they games i supply i can confidently say they are 100% legit. I made a lot of money off you guys ^_^
If there are more questions just let me know i'll try to anwser them.
