Green Man Gaming responds to allegations it's selling grey market keys
Green Man Gaming is making headlines once again with regards to the source of its game keys.
The source of Green Man Gaming's game keys has been brought into question once again. The online retailer's recent discounts on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 raised an eyebrow among users who believe the keys may not have come directly from Activision.
Moderators of the popular sub-Reddit GameDeals have decided to ban all future posts that contain links to the site. The decision followed communications with Activision after a number of users reported having issues with Black Ops 3 keys they bought from the online etailer.
After contacting most large publishers, the sub-Reddit mods were told by Activision and Ubisoft that Green Man Gaming is not an authorised seller of theirs.
Green Man Gaming chief executive Paul Sulyok told Gamespot, "Let's be clear here; there is a difference between being an authorised retailer for some titles, and being a retailer selling keys that have been sourced responsibly through authorised third parties with revenue going back to the publisher.
"Where possible, we work directly with publishers and distributors to make sure customers have the very best experience with us... Whenever things outside of our control have happened, we have instantly and fairly tried to make it right."
Generally, when a publisher says a retailer is not an authorised seller of their keys, it doesn't automatically mean said keys are acquired fraudulently or that they may not work. What it usually means is that keys are not bought directly from the publisher. Publishers such as EA, Bethesda, Devolver Digital, and ArenaNET have all confirmed to the mods the site is indeed an authorised seller.
Back in May, The Witcher 3 developer CDProjektRED stirred up similar questions about the source of the keys Green Man Gaming was offering.
As is always the case, key selling is based on contracts, and while these allegations may be true for now in the case of Activision and Ubisoft, new contracts could be inked in the future and statements could change.