Guild Wars 2

Cross-posted from r/Guildwars2:

So I bought the expansion off that site, seeing as they appear to be a legitimate retailer and offer a substantial rebate.

Turns out, all I get after paying is this message: “This product is a Pre-Order, it will be available here on or slightly before the release date of 22nd September 2017.”

So that means, presumably, no pre-order bonuses, no extra character slot, etc. at least until September, if even then. Of course, no reply to my support message asking about where my pre-order content is. Just a warning to others…

If you are going to buy the game from a 3rd party retailer, A net has a list of retailers here
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/#UnitedStates-physical

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

I always buy it direct through Anet to be safe, but deff always beat to stick to official providers if possible (I assume there’s a list somewhere on these forums)

To be fair though I’ve just looked at the listings on CD Keys and neither edition claims that it includes any of the pre order bonuses anyway.

When i buy an product online. I always make sure the website/webshop is providing a couple information. One of these are chamber of commerce number, address, phone number, and paypal payment method. I also check if they are correct. So i can always reach out to them if something isn’t right. Site’s and shops providing these information are often willingly to retour the product if it doesn’t make up to your likings.

Also Anet is selling you the cd-key only themselves. So retailers cant buy and offer it to your for cheaper. So in that regard. It would be safer to buy it straight from them instead.

As for your mis purchase. Maybe you can contact them, explain the situation. And get a refund. Since they didnt provide you with the code yet anyway.

Donari.5237:

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

What utter nonsense. I know plenty of people who have purchased from that site and never been banned. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. That site buys cheap keys from distributors that need to meet a quota for units sold.

As for preorder bonuses, no you shouldn’t expect to get them. That’s fair enough; if you want those you will need to buy from Arena Net.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Donari.5237:

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

What utter nonsense. I know plenty of people who have purchased from that site and never been banned. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. That site buys cheap keys from distributors that need to meet a quota for units sold.

As for preorder bonuses, no you shouldn’t expect to get them. That’s fair enough; if you want those you will need to buy from Arena Net.

cdkeys is a trading platform like many others (more or less reputable) out there. The point is: They buy keys from various sources and re-sell them for a profit. Some of these platforms check their sources, some don’t. And thus is happens often enough, that the platform buys stolen keys and re-sells them without noticing. While this might be a non-issue for activating games (if the key doesn’t work, they just send you another one), it becomes a major issue if you try to use a stolen key to upgrade an account, that you already spent many hours and some money on. While 99% of their keys are ok, I wouldn’t want to be the unlucky one to get a stolen key.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Donari.5237:

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

What utter nonsense. I know plenty of people who have purchased from that site and never been banned. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. That site buys cheap keys from distributors that need to meet a quota for units sold.

As for preorder bonuses, no you shouldn’t expect to get them. That’s fair enough; if you want those you will need to buy from Arena Net.

You might consider perusing the Account Support sub-forum, and take a gander at the posts/threads from those individuals that had their account terminated due to fraudulent CD-Keys purchased from 3rd-party sites.

Here’s a Dev statement, as well: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Buying-HoT-through-a-3rd-Party-Careful/first#post5175830

Good luck.

I value my account to much to trust anything other than a direct purchase from Anet. I can’t say anything good or bad about other sites. I just know I’ve seen 100’s of people upset because their account was banned after they bought the game from a 3rd party. I can understand if they have a great deal on price why it may be tempting. Just there is always the chance. At least buying from Anet you know you can’t get a ban for having a stolen account. Or at least I don’t see how you would if they are the ones to sell it to you.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Donari.5237:

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

What utter nonsense. I know plenty of people who have purchased from that site and never been banned. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. That site buys cheap keys from distributors that need to meet a quota for units sold.

As for preorder bonuses, no you shouldn’t expect to get them. That’s fair enough; if you want those you will need to buy from Arena Net.

Agree, have used this site as well in the past without any issues so far so don’t think the OP was out of bounds giving them a shot for this. I think this is more of a question from ANet on how pre-orders and bonus’s work if purchased via 3rd party.

I’ve bought plenty from cdkeys.com and it has all been fine, including the GW2 keys.

I don’t understand the people saying “I bought from them and it was fine”. You understand what “anecdotal evidence” means, right?

Djinn.9245:

I don’t understand the people saying “I bought from them and it was fine”. You understand what “anecdotal evidence” means, right?

Bingo. Buy direct from ANet or at least from official retailers if you value your account.

If you still don’t know how a key-site works and why there’s a small chance to get fraudulent keys, here is a nice article that explains the process from the hacker’s pov: http://kotaku.com/g2a-scammer-explains-how-he-profited-off-stolen-indie-g-1784540664

The site is g2a instead of cdkeys, but the business model is the same.

Ive bought HOT and all gw1 games, as well as many games on steam from CD keys and never had an issue so I think your are exaggerating when you say there is a probability you will get a stolen key. Not saying there is no chance but it will be very very rare and I expect CD keys would reimburse you as their support seems decent.

ALso I preordered HOT from CDkeys and got all the title so it seems strange that it wont give you POF. Anets leadership has changed though so its possible.

Djinn.9245:

I don’t understand the people saying “I bought from them and it was fine”. You understand what “anecdotal evidence” means, right?

Well the poster made it seem as if you were more likely to get a dodgey key than not so people are probably just commenting that its not as bad as the poster made it out to be.

Sorry if I overstated. I did do a quick Google to make sure I wasn’t mixing up the site with other dodgy ones that have gotten accounts banned before I posted. But since apparently it has happened enough with that site as well as other third party distributors that the risk is real, I did think perhaps a strong warning might save someone from falling prey to it.

Just imagine the sick feeling if you buy a cheap key to upgrade an account you’ve been building for years only to forever lose the account thanks to an illicit key. That’s not worth saving a few dollars.

It’s a gamble. Did your key come from a legit purchase or did it come from a fraudulent purchase?

Here’s the thing: If the key was purchased fraudulently and it gets found out, the credit card company issues a charge back on all fraudulent purchases. Digital River, the company ANet partners with to process their card payments has a very very very strict policy on charge backs: if you charge back for whatever reason, your account is permanently locked.

This isn’t something that ANet can just give an exception to right away after hearing the circumstances. They likely have to go submit a ticket to Digital River and attempt to get them to grant you an exception. Which will likely mean you purchasing the game again. And depending on the place you got the key from and their refund policy, you may or may not be out the money spent with them.

The question is: do you want to take the risk that your key might not be legit and that the issue might not be uncovered for months?

If you buy from an authorized retailer and there’s an issue, the retailer and ANet will work to make it right. If you buy from a reseller and there’s an issue, ANet might not be able to help.

I’ve purchased from them for gem cards many many times. I’ve zero issues with them or the validity of the gem cards. I use PayPal for all my online purchases even through the gemstore itself as an added layer of security. They are a reputable website to use and I will continue to do so.

Shouldn’t that be “Warning: Pre-order != pre-purchase”?

Drecien.4508:

I’ve purchased from them for gem cards many many times. I’ve zero issues with them or the validity of the gem cards. I use PayPal for all my online purchases even through the gemstore itself as an added layer of security. They are a reputable website to use and I will continue to do so.

There have been a number of people who’ve bought keys obtained through fraudulent purchases from that site. If it was a completely reputable website, why isn’t it an authorized reseller?

Personally, I wouldn’t risk something like my entire Guild Wars 2 account by purchasing from a site that is not on the authorized reseller list. It’s too risky. It just takes one time for the key to have been obtained fraudulently for your entire account to be in jeopardy. You can succeed several times, but that one failure could permanently ban your account if Digital River doesn’t grant an exception.

Seera.5916:

Drecien.4508:

I’ve purchased from them for gem cards many many times. I’ve zero issues with them or the validity of the gem cards. I use PayPal for all my online purchases even through the gemstore itself as an added layer of security. They are a reputable website to use and I will continue to do so.

There have been a number of people who’ve bought keys obtained through fraudulent purchases from that site. If it was a completely reputable website, why isn’t it an authorized reseller?

Personally, I wouldn’t risk something like my entire Guild Wars 2 account by purchasing from a site that is not on the authorized reseller list. It’s too risky. It just takes one time for the key to have been obtained fraudulently for your entire account to be in jeopardy. You can succeed several times, but that one failure could permanently ban your account if Digital River doesn’t grant an exception.

I don’t see how, when they issue the code it checks out through the gem store when you redeem it and you get your gems. if there were some issue with the code it should be flagged preventing you from using it. If they were to come back to me months later and say “that code you used back in april of 2015 says its stolen” that’s not gonna fly. They have a responsibility to the players to insure that all the codes they redeem get checked, by accepting those codes as valid means they are valid. You cant turn around later and say oh we finally checked the codes and you are sol. After all, they are the ones who issue the codes to the retailers in the first place.
Also, I’ve used them for xbox live renewal codes several times and a company like Microsoft isn’t going to wait and see if a code checks out.

Uh that is not the problem with those sites.

The typical issue is that the key seller uses stolen credit cards to buy the keys. Some indeterminate amount of time later(depending attentiveness of the card owners) the owner of the card realize what happened and contacts their credit card company and probably does a chargeback because it was a not a purchase that they actually made.

The keys were always legitimate so they will check out. The money used to buy them on the other hand isn’t necessarily so. Not all keys are fraudulent since there are other cases where the seller could have obtained the keys for cheaper such as during sales or something they were bought in a different region of the world for non-region locked keys.

You are misunderstanding how fraudulent keys can enter an otherwise legit marketplace. For example, say someone steals my credit card info. They buy five copies of PoF… and sell them on one of these sites. The keys are legit until the fraud is discovered, which could be days, but could also be years.

Why not just buy the game from the client…??
Seems the safest way…

OP, pre-ordering is not the same as pre-purchasing.

People are missing the point here. If anyone wants to run that risk of buying from an unauthorized seller, that’s their choice. However you must accept the responsibility if that key was fraudulently obtained.

Ofcourse, the keys are valid if they work, it is how they are paid for that would render it fraudulent. You buy a key from one of these sites where there are customers who report accounts get banned because of the key not being valid, that’s the risk. All keys fraudulently obtained will be locked, because Anet didn’t receive the money, due to chargebacks from the stolen cards that were used for the purchase in the first place, that got you that really good discount. You lose your money to the 3rd party, Anet locks your account. Some keys may be legit, others wont be, it’s a lucky dip.

Vova.2640:

Why not just buy the game from the client…??
Seems the safest way…

It is. Anet asked for a price for PoF, I paid it because it’s worth it for me.

How can there be stolen keys, isn’t the only way to get a key to buy it from anet? Did someone break into their offices Mission impossible style and make off with a stack of papers.

What sites like these usually do is buy up cheaper retail copies, or buy their keys as regions where video game prices are lower because of currency exchange.

Shinzan.2908:

How can there be stolen keys, isn’t the only way to get a key to buy it from anet? Did someone break into their offices Mission impossible style and make off with a stack of papers.

What sites like these usually do is buy up cheaper retail copies, or buy their keys as regions where video game prices are lower because of currency exchange.

Read what the others have posted above… the keys aren’t stolen per se, but the money used to buy them is.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Donari.5237:

The better reason not to buy from the site you listed (and likely you should edit it out, since you just gave them free advertising) is the probability that their keys are cheap because they are bought with stolen money/credit cards and accounts using said keys will rapidly be permabanned once the original purchase falls through.

What utter nonsense. I know plenty of people who have purchased from that site and never been banned. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. That site buys cheap keys from distributors that need to meet a quota for units sold.

As for preorder bonuses, no you shouldn’t expect to get them. That’s fair enough; if you want those you will need to buy from Arena Net.

I know plenty of people who cross the street without looking who have never been hit by a car. Unless they number of people you know is in the thousands, you have no real argument here.

People get banned sometimes by buying from certain unauthorized dealers. When you do you’re taking a risk. If you think the risk is worth it to save a few dollars, take it, but don’t complain if you get banned

What you shouldn’t do is speak factually from your limited experience because you don’t know enough people who have bought from that site to make that sort of definitive statement

as far as i understand, aeschines is upset about not getting “pre-order bonuses” by buying PoF from cdkeys.com.
there’s only one problem:
you don’t get pre-ORDER-boni – only pre-PURCHASE-boni.
after reading ANet’s statement from HoT release about third-party sellers (link posted earlier) there’s a significant difference between pre-PURCHASE and pre-ORDER.

Chris Cleary.8017:

The only way to officially Pre-Purchase right now is through the official GW2 website, or in-game. This does not cover Pre-Ordering, which may exist on a number of reputable resellers. Pre-Purchase and Pre-Order are different.

Since english is not my first-language and I’m afraid you won’t understand it if i try to explain the difference, you’ll have to figure it out yourselves.

Since cdkey.com seems to advertise their product of PoF as “pre-order”, technically you can’t expect to get any boni.

Drecien.4508:

Seera.5916:

Drecien.4508:

I’ve purchased from them for gem cards many many times. I’ve zero issues with them or the validity of the gem cards. I use PayPal for all my online purchases even through the gemstore itself as an added layer of security. They are a reputable website to use and I will continue to do so.

There have been a number of people who’ve bought keys obtained through fraudulent purchases from that site. If it was a completely reputable website, why isn’t it an authorized reseller?

Personally, I wouldn’t risk something like my entire Guild Wars 2 account by purchasing from a site that is not on the authorized reseller list. It’s too risky. It just takes one time for the key to have been obtained fraudulently for your entire account to be in jeopardy. You can succeed several times, but that one failure could permanently ban your account if Digital River doesn’t grant an exception.

I don’t see how, when they issue the code it checks out through the gem store when you redeem it and you get your gems. if there were some issue with the code it should be flagged preventing you from using it. If they were to come back to me months later and say “that code you used back in april of 2015 says its stolen” that’s not gonna fly. They have a responsibility to the players to insure that all the codes they redeem get checked, by accepting those codes as valid means they are valid. You cant turn around later and say oh we finally checked the codes and you are sol. After all, they are the ones who issue the codes to the retailers in the first place.
Also, I’ve used them for xbox live renewal codes several times and a company like Microsoft isn’t going to wait and see if a code checks out.

Of course they can lock your account even months after they accepted the code. Imagine this: Person A has their credit card information stolen. Someone uses it to buy gem-cards and immediately sells them via some platform. Person B buys these codes and activates them for gems. At this point no one has any method to know, that the key is fraudulent.

A month later, person A checks his/her credit card history and notices charges, that he/she did not authorize. A chargeback is issued. Now person B looses his/her account.

Firstly (this bit might be a long rant, so tl:dr) would just like to agree, that it is quite commonly known these key sites do end up with lots of fraudulent keys purchased using stolen credit card details, keys like that when found often are revoked. Just because lots of people buy from these sites and find no issue, doesn’t mean the problem isn’t there.

Funnily enough I once got gifted a key for something like Farcry 3 or 4 as a present, then found it actually was removed from my Uplay library months later as it turns out it was from a batch of keys sold on the site that had been obtained by a stolen credit card. Oddly in this case Ubisoft decided to honour those who had ended up with such keys and reinstated the game, but this leads to another reason why I won’t use key sites, and that is the developers always end up losing out! I know the savings can be attractive, especially when money is tight, I’m often in that situation, but devs work hard to create games that we enjoy playing, and if they keep losing out via key sites it can really hurt the industry (even more of an issue for indies and small teams).

Hyrai.8720:

as far as i understand, aeschines is upset about not getting “pre-order bonuses” by buying PoF from cdkeys.com.
there’s only one problem:
you don’t get pre-ORDER-boni – only pre-PURCHASE-boni.
after reading ANet’s statement from HoT release about third-party sellers (link posted earlier) there’s a significant difference between pre-PURCHASE and pre-ORDER.

Chris Cleary.8017:

The only way to officially Pre-Purchase right now is through the official GW2 website, or in-game. This does not cover Pre-Ordering, which may exist on a number of reputable resellers. Pre-Purchase and Pre-Order are different.

Since english is not my first-language and I’m afraid you won’t understand it if i try to explain the difference, you’ll have to figure it out yourselves.

Since cdkey.com seems to advertise their product of PoF as “pre-order”, technically you can’t expect to get any boni.

As the original complaint was really about not getting the pre-order items, this is quite right in terms of you shouldn’t expect pre-order bonuses via a third party seller. Though I don’t like to defend key sites, as I mentioned in an earlier post, if you read the descriptions of the two editions of PoF on cdkeys, neither of them mention anything about pre-order bonuses, or even remotely imply that you will get/be entitled to them.

So in that respect it is actually fairly clear from the start that they are not providing them. The OPs message they got of ““This product is a Pre-Order, it will be available here on or slightly before the release date of 22nd September 2017.”” shouldn’t have been a surprise to receive as under the product information tab on both editions on cdkeys it already says “* Pre-Orders will be delivered on or before the release date listed above (22nd Sept)”, so really the original complaint/concern about the pre order bonuses could have just been avoided by reading the description/info on the site before ordering.

Vova.2640:

Why not just buy the game from the client…??
Seems the safest way…

Cause people are trying to save some money. This is understandable – they just don’t understand how the resellers can end up with some bad keys. And of course only a small number of the keys are bad, so a bunch of people are like “mine was fine”. I personally wouldn’t speak up for a company that had sold bad keys in the past. If someone purchased a key because I and other people spoke up for the company and then that person got their account banned, I would feel terrible.

Being that they only use PayPal as a payment method and you can use your credit card in PayPal you have double the protection against any fraud. But some people are just scared of using the internet. It’s your money, at least be responsible with it and don’t ecto gamble it away. ????

Drecien.4508:

Being that they only use PayPal as a payment method and you can use your credit card in PayPal you have double the protection against any fraud. But some people are just scared of using the internet. It’s your money, at least be responsible with it and don’t ecto gamble it away. ????

But buying from those sites is gambling more than just your ecto.

Again it is not YOUR purchase that is considered fraudulent.

Those sites have keys, but not all of those keys were obtained legally. I don’t know the % that were obtained illegally vs legally.

Here’s a real life example of a similar situation:

Person A’s house gets robbed a unique piece of jewelry gets stolen from their house by Robber while they’re on vacation. Robber sells the jewelry to a pawn shop and doesn’t tell the clerk that he stole the jewelry. Person B goes to pawn shop and buys the unique piece of jewelry. Person A comes home and finds their house robbed and they report the items stolen. Police go to nearby pawn shops to find the items and find out that Person B bought the jewelry. Person B loses the jewelry because the pawn shop got the jewelry from someone who got it illegally. After the jewelry is no longer evidence, Person A gets the jewelry back.

Except that’s not true at all, since jewelry is a physical object that’s taken, whereas a cd key is nothing more than a reproducable code. A better analogy would be if person A had their credit card stolen, and had cd keys purchased with the card…

Djinn.9245:

Vova.2640:

Why not just buy the game from the client…??
Seems the safest way…

Cause people are trying to save some money. This is understandable – they just don’t understand how the resellers can end up with some bad keys. And of course only a small number of the keys are bad, so a bunch of people are like “mine was fine”. I personally wouldn’t speak up for a company that had sold bad keys in the past. If someone purchased a key because I and other people spoke up for the company and then that person got their account banned, I would feel terrible.

Sometimes I get my car fixed at a third party repair shop. They usually do a good job. The dealership has free coffee, but holy cow those prices.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Except that’s not true at all, since jewelry is a physical object that’s taken, whereas a cd key is nothing more than a reproducable code. A better analogy would be if person A had their credit card stolen, and had cd keys purchased with the card…

That’s why I said similar. Not exact. Because what you said is exactly why you don’t buy keys from that site. Because they sell keys purchased with stolen credit cards.

And we kept telling the person that the issue was the keys were purchased with stolen credit cards and then sold on the site. But they keep going on about how their purchases aren’t fraudulent.

So I figured going about it a different way was necessary.

A company would not stay in business operating with stolen keys for long. Chargebacks most always land in favor of the card holder. There are major penalties from the credit card companies and processors. It’s in a merchants best interest to not get charge backs so they aren’t put into a “negative file” from the banks. Plus if they were getting alot of chargebacks, PayPal wouldn’t support them as a payment processor. But again, your money, your call.

Dude, Anet themselves has warned people about this issue and banned people for it. You see people coming on to reddit all the time complaining that they were banned MONTHS after the purchase from one of these sites. It is a real threat and I certainly wouldn’t take any chances with my account. Anet doesn’t want you to either, which is why they warn people to only buy from official retailers.

Drecien.4508:

A company would not stay in business operating with stolen keys for long. Chargebacks most always land in favor of the card holder. There are major penalties from the credit card companies and processors. It’s in a merchants best interest to not get charge backs so they aren’t put into a “negative file” from the banks. Plus if they were getting alot of chargebacks, PayPal wouldn’t support them as a payment processor. But again, your money, your call.

Given anecdotal evidence, not all of their keys are fraudulent. So it could be like an ebay type site where each seller is its own business and the sellers accounts may end up banned from the site after too many issues, but like gold sellers the ones doing this just create new accounts on the site and start again.

Drecien.4508:

A company would not stay in business operating with stolen keys for long. Chargebacks most always land in favor of the card holder. There are major penalties from the credit card companies and processors. It’s in a merchants best interest to not get charge backs so they aren’t put into a “negative file” from the banks. Plus if they were getting alot of chargebacks, PayPal wouldn’t support them as a payment processor. But again, your money, your call.

On the contrary, some of these sites stay in business even though they are aware that some of the keys sold through their software are fraudulent. Enough people are willing to risk the chance of losing everything to save a few bucks.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Djinn.9245:

Vova.2640:

Why not just buy the game from the client…??
Seems the safest way…

Cause people are trying to save some money. This is understandable – they just don’t understand how the resellers can end up with some bad keys. And of course only a small number of the keys are bad, so a bunch of people are like “mine was fine”. I personally wouldn’t speak up for a company that had sold bad keys in the past. If someone purchased a key because I and other people spoke up for the company and then that person got their account banned, I would feel terrible.

Sometimes I get my car fixed at a third party repair shop. They usually do a good job. The dealership has free coffee, but holy cow those prices.

And sometimes those third party repair shops could be a chop shop and now your car is totaled and have to spend time in the hospital. Sites like this are a risk. Sometimes you get by with no trouble and sometimes you get banned.