I'm truly sorry for anyone who bought the game from an unlisted vendor but I don't see how this is ANet's fault that someone else commited fraud and sold you a fake/used/redistributed/stolen key.
If you used a CC then call the company, complain and if they don't fix the problem do a chargeback.
If you used PayPal do the same and issue a complaint with PayPal.
Don't take it out on ANet if someone else screwed you over.
I'm a little suprised at how one sided this arguement is and how closed minded everyone appears to be.
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I had no idea there was an approved list of retailers. Not everyone follows the game so closely that they would pick up this information, and with the multitude of data sources it could easily be left out of someones preferred means. I regularly read posts for GW2 on this site, and this is the first time I've heard of this approved list. I am not a regular on the official site or other forums.
I'm thankful that I can consider myself an intelligent person, and have the sense to not hand over my money to an unproven dealer. However, this is the age of e-commerce and the legitmacy of a dealer is not so easily discerned by the average shopper. Consider purchases from Amazon, where Amazon may or may not be the dealer but rather an intermediary between two parties. I see GreenManGaming.com on their list of approved dealers. I have never heard of this website and without NCSoft's support I would have never considered them as a reputable dealer.
I have to raise an eyebrow at NCSoft's response but will reserve judgement since we cannot know the full story without experiencing the situation ourselves.
I'm not surprised one bit, if you consider the hypocricy on these boards in regards to Anet. I mean could you imagine if EA did this? Most of these people would be screaming blue murder, but saintly Anet would never hurt us, so it's fine.
Could not be farther from teh truth, the internet has some massive double standards, especially when it comes to game companies.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
I think we should all remember that beta is not a privilege, it's a courtesy we extend to companies. We spend our time to test their games for free. At some point in time it got reversed, now all of a sudden beta testing is a privilege.
Well that argument goes both ways. It's a privilege that these companies get consumers money ahead of the release date in exchange for beta access. Seems like privileges on both sides. Why does only 1 side have say in this issue?
This mentality is what is wrong with gamers these days.
Beta tests are meant to test games. Instead people think of it as a free early access. Games don't get tested and then people complain there are bugs after launch.
These beta weekends are nothing more than hype builders, incentives, and at most a stress test. Once companies learned people will get excited to play a beta, they realized they could use this to sell pre-orders. Companies still have serious beta testers, they just have a bunch of stress testers too.
clearly you havent played the game or have the client installed... Anet is constantly rolling out patches and hotfixes etc... during the beta tests, inbetween they are CONSTANTLY working on the game.
I'm a little suprised at how one sided this arguement is and how closed minded everyone appears to be.
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I had no idea there was an approved list of retailers. Not everyone follows the game so closely that they would pick up this information, and with the multitude of data sources it could easily be left out of someones preferred means. I regularly read posts for GW2 on this site, and this is the first time I've heard of this approved list. I am not a regular on the official site or other forums.
I'm thankful that I can consider myself an intelligent person, and have the sense to not hand over my money to an unproven dealer. However, this is the age of e-commerce and the legitmacy of a dealer is not so easily discerned by the average shopper. Consider purchases from Amazon, where Amazon may or may not be the dealer but rather an intermediary between two parties. I see GreenManGaming.com on their list of approved dealers. I have never heard of this website and without NCSoft's support I would have never considered them as a reputable dealer.
I have to raise an eyebrow at NCSoft's response but will reserve judgement since we cannot know the full story without experiencing the situation ourselves.
I'm not surprised one bit, if you consider the hypocricy on these boards in regards to Anet. I mean could you imagine if EA did this? Most of these people would be screaming blue murder, but saintly Anet would never hurt us, so it's fine.
Could not be farther from teh truth, the internet has some massive double standards, especially when it comes to game companies.
Eh? Maybe I should have stuck a /sarcasm tag there, I know full well these boards have double standards when it comes to game companies :P
I dont understand why this is even being discussed. There is a MASSIVE list of authorized retailers which sell valid codes. The gme costs $60, if you got it for $30 from a non authorized retailer then duh... theres something fishy going on. As the old adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Buying from anyone not on this list is the equivelant of buying from ebay, or some bloke off the street? Tell me, people that got burnt by this, were the places you got your copy from "legitimate retailers"? I doubt it.....
Just look at the list..... its huge, and all of them have sales on regularly. I got my copy from DLGamer for £45.99 just before the first BWE. Which is £5 cheaper than the list price. First thing I did was check they were an official retailer..
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
There was a big issue back in BWE2 forums about this (can't link to it since those threads were deleted). Basically what they said was that they're not blocking game keys bought from unauthorized retailers just because they were unauthorized, they're blocking some of them because they found out were getting the keys trough fraudulent means, like buying keys off the oficial website using fake or stolen credit card info. They have no direct way to know who bought the keys (since the info is whoever the credit card was stolen from) and no way to know (or responsability) about which retailer eventually got them, all they know was that the keys were bought from their site using fraudulent means and were disabled because of that.
I have two friends that got hit by this on previous BWEs, bought the keys from a chinese website that were selling them for like 50% off anyone else, on BWE2 their account were blocked, contacted the retailer and they offered apologies and that they had bought the keys from an (unidentified) third party and that those keys were having problems and so on, gave them refunds and they bought from Amazon (IIRC) without any problem (BTW, Amazon US isn't on their list, or at least wasn't at first, and yet I haven't heard of anyone buying from them having any problems).
So in short, they're recommeding people to keep to the retailers list for security, since they're the ones we know for sure got the keys the legal way, that doesn't mean that other retailers don't have legit keys, just that they can't vouch for them. And personally, yes, if EA had done the same thing because of the same causes, I'd defend them as well.
Comments
I'm truly sorry for anyone who bought the game from an unlisted vendor but I don't see how this is ANet's fault that someone else commited fraud and sold you a fake/used/redistributed/stolen key.
If you used a CC then call the company, complain and if they don't fix the problem do a chargeback.
If you used PayPal do the same and issue a complaint with PayPal.
Don't take it out on ANet if someone else screwed you over.
Could not be farther from teh truth, the internet has some massive double standards, especially when it comes to game companies.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
clearly you havent played the game or have the client installed... Anet is constantly rolling out patches and hotfixes etc... during the beta tests, inbetween they are CONSTANTLY working on the game.
Eh? Maybe I should have stuck a /sarcasm tag there, I know full well these boards have double standards when it comes to game companies :P
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
I dont understand why this is even being discussed. There is a MASSIVE list of authorized retailers which sell valid codes. The gme costs $60, if you got it for $30 from a non authorized retailer then duh... theres something fishy going on. As the old adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Buying from anyone not on this list is the equivelant of buying from ebay, or some bloke off the street? Tell me, people that got burnt by this, were the places you got your copy from "legitimate retailers"? I doubt it.....
Just look at the list..... its huge, and all of them have sales on regularly. I got my copy from DLGamer for £45.99 just before the first BWE. Which is £5 cheaper than the list price. First thing I did was check they were an official retailer..
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
There was a big issue back in BWE2 forums about this (can't link to it since those threads were deleted). Basically what they said was that they're not blocking game keys bought from unauthorized retailers just because they were unauthorized, they're blocking some of them because they found out were getting the keys trough fraudulent means, like buying keys off the oficial website using fake or stolen credit card info. They have no direct way to know who bought the keys (since the info is whoever the credit card was stolen from) and no way to know (or responsability) about which retailer eventually got them, all they know was that the keys were bought from their site using fraudulent means and were disabled because of that.
I have two friends that got hit by this on previous BWEs, bought the keys from a chinese website that were selling them for like 50% off anyone else, on BWE2 their account were blocked, contacted the retailer and they offered apologies and that they had bought the keys from an (unidentified) third party and that those keys were having problems and so on, gave them refunds and they bought from Amazon (IIRC) without any problem (BTW, Amazon US isn't on their list, or at least wasn't at first, and yet I haven't heard of anyone buying from them having any problems).
So in short, they're recommeding people to keep to the retailers list for security, since they're the ones we know for sure got the keys the legal way, that doesn't mean that other retailers don't have legit keys, just that they can't vouch for them. And personally, yes, if EA had done the same thing because of the same causes, I'd defend them as well.
What can men do against such reckless hate?