Comments on: Games Codes, Area Codes and Grey Areas.

By: Markoff Chaney

Markoff Chaney — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:30:30 +0000

Good? To me it’s better than fantastic, if you don’t mind paying for beta and having to utilize one of the most deplorable interfaces creatable. So far, I feel I’ve underpaid for my current license considering the amount of joy it has brought to my life so far and I will rectify that when the game comes out in box form, hopefully with something I can collect. I’ll even pay more for that hunk of stuff to put on my shelf as I usually do. For more thoughts on the game, and passion it can inspire, feel free to check out the thread that’s going on in the forum. This is a game that can grab you quite strongly and the quality of what is there is fantastic.

The day you can move a watermelon across an already established infrastructure with no loss whatsoever in the transfer and with neither party of the grower or the purchaser having to assume the cost to transport the watermelon is the day a watermelon stops costing 1 dollar in one country and 6 in another.

At least I feel that’s how it should be. I think the key is to understand it is a perfectly replicable environment with the sole cost, now, being able to be incurred by developers and creators. The balance is that those deciding the cost of a good must be fair about pricing or the market WILL balance itself somewhere between the extremes of 0 dollar transactions (piracy) and MSRP.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:22:10 +0000

The real question here is, is Blood Bowl any good? Are we gonna get a Wot I think? Also is it moddable ? It be very cool if someone modded Blood Bowl into a warhammer 40K game that uses the same turn based/RTS type game play and edited the rules to map Warhammer 40K or Warhammer Fantasy for that matter.

By: Santiago

Santiago — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Regarding the legality of purchasing the CD Keys from this companies, AFAIK what you buy when you buy a game is a “Right to Use”, a limited right to use the software that’s included in the box or file that you just downloaded. This right of use is independent of the CD Key as far as I understand it, the CD Key being a means of validation but not the actual usage right clearence. The difference being, you can only buy usage rights through the publisher (who owns such rights) or an authorized dealer (authorized by the owner of such rights). I understand it’s up to the terms of the EULA if you can re-sell such rights or not, and how.
If I’m correct, just selling a CD Key equals to selling the old Lucas Arts carton “spinners” used for copy protection, but not the actual Usage Licence. If I’m correct then, this is just another method of piracy.

With regards to the regional price differences, for example a watermelon in my country would cost 1 dollar, in Japan I could sell it for 6, so regional pricing is not such a novelty since the beginning of commerce. The price for a given item is determined by offer/demand and offer/demand only, with no actual relation whatsoever to the actual production cost.

And outsourcing is a complex thing to be against, if you could buy china-made items at china prices, would there be enough incentive for having those items developed and produced in the first place?

By: ibrez

ibrez — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:34:20 +0000

He has multiple accounts open under his name, Viktor Wanli, in Poland. Bank accounts can be found here:

http://allegro.pl/item682852699_counter_strike_1_6_8bonusow_cs_steam_key_i_w_10m.html

By: ibrez

ibrez — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:29:04 +0000

Ok, let me show you some more :

http://wwwinfo.mfcr.cz/cgi-bin/ares/darv_or.cgi?ico=25379437&jazyk=en&xml=1

Check what’s written under Viktor Wanli name and use translate.google.com to translate it in english. Basically, the Czech state got ahold of all Viktor Wanli shares in all czech registered companies, until he will be able to pay his debts.

Now, check this blog entry, someone describes his interactions with g2play and his owner:

http://clearpixels.net/2009/01/hot-deal-left-4-dead-less-than-13/

And the so called “unlegitimate supplier” fantasy is a sloppy method to hide the fact they bought those keys using fake credit cards. And the onlinekeystore is his site as well.
He is also very active in the country where he is living now :

http://allegro.pl/sklep/10858820_moonqq_games_shop

On his previous “site engine” he asked European customers to send money to his own account:

Hello:
Bank transfer details:
Bank account number (IBAN): SK1411110000001052610008
Bank account currency: EUR
SWIFT Code: UNCRSKBX
Bank name: UniCredit Bank Slovakia a.s.
Bank address:
Šancová 1/A
813 33 Bratislava, Slovakia
Account holder name: Viktor Wanli

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:01:10 +0000

Serondal: I admit, there was no way I was paying with my credit-card, so used the Paypal option instead.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:28:12 +0000

I think this just goes to show you that buying keys from a website like G2Play.net or otherwise is taking a big risk that A) your credit card may be stolen or b) you may be buying a stolen product or buying a legal product but in an illegal way. If half of what IBrez is saing is correct I wouldn’t even go to the website for fear of a virus much less buy something from them ;P

By: ibrez

ibrez — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:57:42 +0000

Viktor Wanli, why you shut down your polish company ? Forgot to pay the VAT:

http://dweurope.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44&Itemid=53&lang=en

By: ibrez

ibrez — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:54:32 +0000

Viktor Wanli, why g2play.net is registered under fake name, and the “Singapore” company that you claim that runes the store now, doest exist at all ? Why you ask your European customers to deposit money into an account open in Slovakia under your name ? How comes that account is not opened under your “Singapore” company ? That’s what matters most of all.

By: LewieP

LewieP — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:07:20 +0000

I just published an official response from G2play too, clears things up a bit.

By: David

David — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:04:38 +0000

Sorry we reached this article a bit late.
Blood Bowl keys on G2PLAY were supplied by diffirent suppliers. One of the suppliers aquired them in unlegitimate way (we can only speculate how) and these keys were getting banned by the publisher.
As i speak for G2PLAY.net now i can confirm the case and that all customers which were supplied by keys from this supplier were offered a refund and most of them are refunded already.
G2PLAY did not make its business based on stolen / illegal keys etc. As spoken above stores like G2PLAY.net make their business thanks to the publishers policies aimed to maximize their own profits by distributing the same product with big price differences around the globe.
We just happen to have the right contacts in the right countries which can be also anyone from you guys and can simply open his sotre on similar basis.
If publishers want to stop shops like G2PLAY.net the simpliest way is to effectivley control their own distribution model and network.
If a distributor offers us cheap price we will continue to sell for cheap because we simply do not have such huge operational costs like retail chains, niether we do have big demands on high profits like big internet stores are under the pressure of their management and shareholders.
As a good example of effective distribution control i can show Blizzard. Look all over the internet and try to find WoW game cards / wow tbc etc. for halfprice than retail… its almost impossible. Why?
But mainly i wanted to address the Blood Bowl issue.

By: ibrez

ibrez — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:55:46 +0000

Both sites – g2play and onlinekeystore are owned by the same guy – Viktor Wanli, a czech guy wanted by police in Czech Republik, who lives now in northern part of Poland. Do a google search for viktor wanli or g2play, you will find a lot of interesting stuff. He is a wanted criminal, will do whatever it takes for money