Riot Cracks Down On G2A

A game company is taking action against G2A because they support actions that break that company's terms of service? That's the story released by The Daily Dot on Tuesday.

"G2A has run into trouble with the game developer thanks to a listing on its site promoting services from a third party that sells League accounts and offers elo boosting services, both of which are direct violations of the Riot Games terms of service and the League Championship Series rulebook.

"At Riot's request, teams that G2A sponsors, including Cloud9, Counter Logic Gaming, H2K, and paiN Gaming have removed G2A’s logos from their merchandise at the 2015 League of Legends World Championships."

A listing? How about several? I took a quick look at G2A's offerings. I found 70 accounts for sale along with 3 listings for leveling services.

As seen on G2A on 7 October 2015

Hopefully, no one by this time is surprised that G2A is involved in something shady. The virtual goods reseller was involved in the fiasco last year in which EA's Origin website sold thousands of Ubisoft game keys to holders of stolen credit cards. According to an article on Polygon, sellers on G2A sold around 2,000 such game keys. That G2A is involved in illicit real money trading activities that violate the League of Legends terms of service is just par for the course.

No game company can idly stand by and partner with such a blatant violator of its rules, and Riot took action. A Riot employee took to Reddit to explain the situation:

"Hijacking the top comment to clarify a key point (apologies LargeSnorlax!)

"It's pretty on point minus one key part, we've already formally banned them as a sponsor as of September 18th, and have no plans to reconsider the decision at this time.

"This was NOT a decision we made lightly, and came after many weeks of back and fourth conversations with G2A to find a resolution, which we were not able to reach an agreement on. We do not at all enjoy affecting the income of the teams, but the LCS rules include guidelines specifically against this sort of thing. We did however keep teams in the loop during the process in an attempt to avoid any surprises.

"EDIT - To clarify, it seems the wording I used was a bit ambiguous on 'an agreement'. Rest assured, 'Remove all account selling an boosting-site links' was indeed our request. We weren't going to compromise our values on that one in the sake of preserving the sponsorships."

For those who are wondering, yes, G2A does offer EVE Online merchandise. But considering how shady G2A is, buying from the company is like buying ISK from a black market RMT site. CCP has set up a relationship with several PLEX resellers so you can safely purchase game time to exchange for ISK in-game. Given that CCP permanently bans those involved in credit card fraud and G2A's history of selling items obtained by credit card fraud, is the risk really worth it?