Since digital storefronts became the de facto standard for video game distribution, there have been changes in the way we purchase, view, and install video games. Platforms such as Steam, GOG, and more recently, the Epic Games Store, have revolutionized our gaming preferences and rendered the need to physically store game copies on outdated media such as DVDs superfluous.
This has also changed our purchasing habits as well. Modern games are moving away from traditional publishing methods towards a Games as a Service model. Naturally, this has impacted the price. While the $60 price ceiling is maintained, this just covers the base game. Season Pass, DLCs, microtransactions – all of these cost extra. Even worse, games will often be built around them, so you won’t get the full gaming experience until you’ve bought everything.
In large part because of this, gamers have flocked to gray-market key reseller websites like Kinguin. But people are unsure what is the legal status of keys purchased here, as well as if there are any risks associated with these stores. So let’s see what is the answer to the often posed “Is Kinguin legit?” question.
How Kinguin Operates
As hobbies go, gaming isn’t a particularly cheap one. Once you’ve gotten your hands on a great gaming PC, or are looking forward to the release of the PlayStation 5, odds are that you can’t afford every game that catches your eye. Factor in that more and more games are being released, and it results in a pastime that’s getting to be a bigger financial burden year after year.
For many of us, gaming is how we relax after a stressful day of work. Furthermore, we use it as a sort of creative outlet, a way of keeping in touch with faraway friends, of living out impossible fantasies. Gaming has long since outgrown the confines of its medium and became something far bigger and a lot more involved.
So, like with any other product or service out there, we’re always on the lookout for a bargain, even if it’s just to save a couple of bucks. Up until a few years ago, the only real way to do this was to wait for a sale, like the Steam Black Friday discount offerings.
In the meantime, the game marketplace experienced another shift. Regional pricing – meaning that games in certain areas will be cheaper or more expensive according to their buyer’s location – has caused some new (and many would say – shady) business practices to appear.
When Steam launched in Russia, many expected it to fail. But, by offering significantly lower prices, Gabe Newell’s company succeeded in expanding its userbase into the notoriously piracy-loving Russia.
The difference in cost between regions can be drastic, so savvy dealers soon saw a loophole in this business model – they would buy the games in bulk for cheap in Russia, and then sell them in other parts of the world. The price is still way below all but the most drastic (and rare) of sale discounts, so, seemingly, everyone profited.
This is where Kinguin comes in.
Launching in 2013, Kinguin quickly established itself as a marketplace where people could offer to sell and to buy software keys for cheap(er) prices. The origin of these keys can be completely legitimate – for example, a person who accidentally bought the same game on two different distribution platforms without realizing they already own it, and now wants to sell the other copy to recoup their loss.
But, they can also come from other channels, some of them bordering on scams – exploiting the goodwill and charitable causes that Humble Bundle champions or convincing developers to give digital copies for “promotional reviewing purposes”.
Understandably, Kinguin doesn’t ask how the keys of their resellers were obtained, so we can only speculate which ones were procured legally and which ones through more ethically-challenged ways.
How To Use Kinguin
Kinguin works like most other game storefronts. To start with, you make an account there and after that, you enter the product you are looking for in the big search bar at the top of the screen.
Let’s say we are looking for a copy of one of our favorite open-world games – Fallout 4. We type that in and get the following results.
As you can see, this is already significantly cheaper than what the game normally sells for on Steam – $59.99.
Other important information is also visible – the Steam icon means, of course, that this is a key that can be activated on that platform. The 84 is its Metacritic score. And the picture of the revolving globe indicates that it can be activated worldwide. Similarly, the EU globe on the third result restricts the game to Europe.
Let’s click the SEE ALL to get a look at all the offers.
Here we can further filter the search results, by setting the Platform, Region, Price, Genres, Delivery, Product Type, Operating System, and Languages options.
Let’s choose the first one.
Here we can see some further information on the game, such as its features and story overview, and also how many offers there are for it. Currently, four of them. Before you buy it from the cheapest source, it is advisable to see how many positive and negative reviews the seller has – this will tell you if they are reputable or not.
We’ll add that to the cart and proceed to the checkout.
Pretty standard stuff here – the option to use a discount code and a tax (think of it as a finder’s fee) for the website itself.
And then you buy it using one of several available methods – PayPal, Google Pay, Skrill, credit card, etc.
That’s it – all that’s left is to take your key and activate it on the appropriate platform.
There is an optional Buyers Protection Program that – allegedly – safeguards you against fake or expired keys and the like for an additional fee. In theory, if you buy such a faulty product, Kinguin will make a full inquiry into your case and offer you a complete refund after the investigation. But customer testimonials tell a different tale, with many of them unsatisfied with the system and left feeling cheated.
Should You Buy From Kinguin
The million-dollar question.
There are immediate risks associated with gray market sites like Kinguin. The most obvious one is that your keys may not work at all and you will have spent your money on essentially nothing. Beyond this, your keys may get flagged by Steam, GOG, Epic, etc., and you can even end up having your accounts deleted, rendering your entire gaming catalog null and void.
Bear in mind that you are purchasing the license to play these games on the platforms, and not really the games themselves. This is a very complicated issue when it comes to the ownership of digital products, one that will probably be resolved in one way or another in the future.
But as it stands now, digital distribution platforms have the right to remove suspect software and users from their apps according to the EULAs (End-User Licence Agreement) we’ve all confirmed (without reading all the way through) when we signed up for these sites.
To give you an example – several years ago, Ubisoft deactivated more than 4000 game keys from Kinguin on EA’s Origin platform which were bought with, as it turned out, stolen credit cards. To quote a statement from a Ubisoft representative: “We regularly deactivate keys that were fraudulently obtained and resold.”
There are ethical concerns here, too. When you buy from one of these resellers, the original developers don’t see any profit from these transactions. This may be an almost insignificant problem for large studios and big publishers, but indie developers are hit the hardest here. Several prominent indie devs even implore that you pirate their games instead of buying them from resellers.
There’s also the matter of ramifications to the entire gaming industry. While the industry is far from blameless and is prone to corruption and terrible, anti-consumer decisions, they will also see the existence of reselling sites as an excuse to implement even more drastic DRM (Digital Rights Management) measures which only negatively impact users.
Kinguin, G2A, and the like rarely admit to their own mistakes. Whenever faced with situations that are clearly their fault, their usual modus operandi is to write a lengthy blog post decrying their innocence and pinning the blame on somebody else – usually companies such as Ubisoft that went after them in the first place.
Final Words
So, is Kinguin legit?
It depends on what you expect from it. If you are aware of all the risks and only want to grab a cheap copy of your favorite game you otherwise couldn’t have afforded – it can be a great way to increase your games collection for only a fraction of the cost it otherwise would have been.
But if you don’t want to take a chance on a service provider with a proven history of shady business practices, it would probably be wiser to wait for a sale.