A few days ago, popular subreddit r/GameDeals, a place where many deals and sales on games are posted, put out a PSA that some people who had purchased games from Indiegala noticed an email stating they had also signed up for a 30 day G2A Shield trial. After 30 days, if people have not canceled their subscription, they would be charged for it.
Indiegala recently switched over to G2A Pay as their service for processing credit cards for payment. It is likely this connection that has led to the recent mixup where Indiegala customers were then signed up for G2A Shield. G2A Shield is a subscription service offered by G2A whose primary purpose is for protection from fraudulent items received after purchase, such as an invalid CD key, among other member benefits.
The GameDeals post also offered the above image, which shows the very subtle and most certainly confusing checkbox for signing up for the G2A Shield trial. Can't tell where it is? It's the shield to the left of the small text of "Be sure to get ..." What many will find the most frustrating is the fact that you cannot cancel a G2A Shield trial until the last two days of the trial. So, people have to remember, four weeks later, to cancel their trial so as not to be charged for a subscription. However, in this case, customers need not worry as Indiegala has stated that G2A will be deactivating all G2A Shield trials from this issue, as said in a response we will detail below.
G2A responded to the PSA post claiming that this was caused by an IT error, a technical issue. The checkbox was not supposed to be automatically enabled on checkout but disabled, and the error caused the issue. They are also offering a free, surprise game emailed to those affected.
Indiegala also responded to the post. They go into why they decided to go with G2A Pay as an experiment as it offered competitive fees and more payment options to Indiegala's customers. However, since this mixup, Indiegala has dropped G2A Pay and will no longer be using them. They "have no plans of enabling G2A Pay again ..."
Back when Indiegala started experiment with G2A Pay, they described what they would be doing to prevent people reselling Indiegala keys on G2A:
Furthermore, aware that G2A is a marketplace, we intend to co-develop a tracking API for our keys to avoid the resale of keys sold from IndieGala on G2A's marketplace ... . Of course, this API would be adopted by G2A only after the trial period and if we decide to adopt G2A Pay as a permanent solution.The post also says that Indiegala would not share any personal information, credit cards or otherwise, with any company, even G2A. So despite the experiment with G2A Pay, they would not be sharing information. Whether or not the fact that people were automatically signed up for G2A Shield goes against that is unclear. Likely, the opt-in also included something about that information being shared for the service. However, the automatic opt-in was a mistake in this case on G2A's part so it would be difficult to lay the blame on Indiegala.
Again, though, Indiegala has ended that experiment, and G2A Pay is no longer a service they use.
Quick Take
TechRaptor's views on G2A are no secret. A technical issue is a really easy excuse that is pretty believable but based on the image above of how people were to choose to opt-in ... Let's just say I am not convinced. G2A continues to be an extremely shady outlet. Much of that is detailed in the linked post, but just look at the many steps it takes to get rid of G2A Shield.What do you think of G2A's response to the issue? What of Indiegala's? Let us know in the comments below.
