There’s no question that Steam is the most widely used sales and distribution platform for PC games, but Origin and Epic have pretty big market shares, too. Still, there is a large (and still growing) number of smaller stores that sell game keys, usually after buying them in bulk from game publishers, from one of the big three distributors, or from other third-party sources who may or may not have legitimate contracts with publishers.
It’s often quite hard to tell where the PC game key you’re considering buying ultimately came from. You may find yourself with an invalid key—or even worse, a stolen one—and in both cases, a refund is far from guaranteed. Some third-party key sellers are legitimate, but others aren’t, so you really need to do your research. We’ve done some digging on Green Man Gaming to help you decide if you want to do business with them.
What is Green Man Gaming?
Green Man Gaming is a medium-sized UK-based online retailer that sells digital PC, Nintendo, and PlayStation game keys. They frequently have sales, even on major AAA titles, and they have an affiliate partnership with isthereanydeal.com. Their catalog of games doesn’t remotely compare to Steam’s, but they still have thousands of titles on offer.
Where Does Green Man Gaming Get Its Keys?
First things first: we haven’t directly contacted GMG to ask them about this ourselves, and we want to be clear about that. We spent some time reading articles, perusing reddit threads, and checking out screenshots of emails. We’ve drawn our own conclusions based on that information, and we’ll update this article if different evidence ever comes to light. We strongly encourage you to do your own research as well.
Near as we can tell, GMG’s official policy at some point in the past was that they did resell keys, but only when those keys had, to the best of their knowledge, come directly from publishers or from “authorized third parties with revenue going back to the publisher,” according to the company’s CEO, Paul Sulyok, in 2015.
What exactly did “to the best of their knowledge” mean, and how were those “authorized third parties” vetted? Those are good questions, and we don’t have the answers to them. However, some things over at GMG appear to have changed since then. A super-obvious banner on their homepage reads “Official Retailer—Every game comes direct from publishers.” A separate page reiterates the same thing.
We perused their reviews on Trustpilot and found a few people complaining about allegedly bogus keys, but most reviewers seem to be satisfied with their purchases and with the ultimate resolutions of problems that they’ve had.
What’s the Big Deal about Where Keys Come From?
In the digital gaming world, there are “white market,” “gray market,” and “black market” keys. White market keys are purchased directly from publishers or from authorized third-party sites that have established relationships with publishers, but in either case, there’s a clear and traceable paper trail proving that the publisher directly or indirectly authorized the site in question to sell keys for its games.
(That is, someone—often not the consumer—has the ability to trace where the keys came from. Whether and how the retailer shares that information with consumers is another question.)
Black market keys are, in one way or another, stolen. Regardless of the exact circumstances, someone along the supply chain explicitly violated the publisher’s terms and conditions and is selling game keys without permission.
These keys frequently don’t work (because publishers deactivate them whenever they discover them), and because the kinds of people who sell stolen keys tend to throw fairly obvious red flags, you’ll almost never get a refund from the publisher if you buy one. If you buy black market keys knowingly and repeatedly, you could even run into legal trouble.
The ethical status of a gray market key is, as the name implies, harder to figure out. These keys may or may not have come from an authorized source at some point, but even if they did, there’s often no way to know for sure if the site that’s currently trying to sell it to you is an authorized source, or if the particular key in question is authorized for your region.
(For instance, a key intended by the publisher for use in Russia might work in America, but it screws up the publisher’s stats, and activating it outside of Russia may even violate their terms of service.)
All that being said, there are only a few official statements we can find about the ultimate source of game keys sold by GMG. Sulyok stated in 2015 that at that time they “source[d] [their] keys from a range of over 400 publishers, developers, and distributors to meet customer’s [sic] demands on a title by title basis” and that “Where possible, [they] work[ed] directly with publishers and distributors to make sure customers [had] the very best experience.”
Yes, that’s vague, and the “where possible” qualifier in the second quote does raise some eyebrows. Still, that statement is 4 years old now, and it seems at odds with GMG’s current ultra-clear disclaimer.
The statement was made in response to a reddit controversy of indeterminate size; allegedly, GMG sold some number of keys for The Witcher 3 around the time of its release that CD Projekt RED never authorized them to sell. The facts of that case remain unclear to us at this time.
Bottom line: There is some evidence to suggest that GMG may have dealt in shadily-sourced keys on at least one occasion in the past, but the evidence we’ve seen is hardly conclusive. It’s also worth noting that it’s even less clear whether they did so knowingly. Given their current stance on this issue and their track record over the last 4 years, it’s probably a reasonably safe bet that they now only deal in white market keys.
Remember: Innocent until proven guilty. Internet lynch mobs (and all other kinds of lynch mobs) are not cool.
Is Green Man Gaming Safe and Secure?
After spending a few hours reading up on GMG, the conclusion that we’ve come to is that GMG is probably safe to use in most cases when it comes to the ultimate source of their keys. We strongly encourage you to do your own research and to (politely) reach out to GMG customer support before making a purchase if you have any ethical concerns.
In terms of the security of your payment information, we have no reason to think that GMG doesn’t adequately protect customer data. All transactions are encrypted, and as far as we can tell, the site has never been flagged as a source of malware or suffered a data breach. 79% of its 14,675 reviews on Trustpilot are 5-star reviews, and only 6% are 1- or 2-star reviews.
They also have a fairly robust return policy and will replace or refund any key if you have a problem. (Presumably, that means some sort of actual technical problem, not an “I played this game for 37 hours but now I don’t like it anymore” problem.)
All in all, it’s safe to say that you probably won’t regret buying some awesome strategy games, or outstanding survival games, whatever your preferences are. Maybe even some of the best horror games to boost your adrenaline. You choose.
Game Gavel’s Recommendation: Buy with Confidence
On a 10-point scale, with 10 being “unimpeachable” and 1 being “worse than EA,” we think Green Man Gaming deserves a 9. Yes, there was an internet meltdown in the past, but it’s still not clear to us exactly what happened and who was at fault, and GMG’s record has been clean ever since. You may want to email them with any specific questions you might have before making a purchase, but we’d be surprised if you run into any serious problems.