generally-speaking

G2A is a website that scams you, and it also allows other people to scam you. It has policies such as charging you money if you have an account and haven't used the site for 6 months, or if you buy a game you automatically get put in a "buyers protection program" which costs $1 a month and can only be cancelled on the 28th and 29th day after each purchase.

It was a huge deal back a couple of years ago because they signed on a lot of streamers with great deals in return for promo then turned the scams up to 11 after the majority of the most popular streamers had signed on.

This made it seem very legitimate for a while but the reality is that a lot of people ended up getting banned over fake/credit card scammed/stolen CD keys which they bought there. And many which were not paying 100% attention during the purchase will still be paying $1 a month to G2A to this day without knowing so.

TLDR: Huge scam site, filled with third party scammers, stay away.

How much of the work done on your farm is automated?

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier in one of my replies here, credit card scams or enterprise keys being sold as individual keys are some of the big ways these sites work.

The last time I used it, I unchecked all the options and the payment process bugged out 4 times. On the 4th attempt, I managed to purchase, and then the options didn't show as active but they were still activated. And I wasn't allowed to cancel them.

Customer service was no help either.

I've heard several similar stories where people have deliberately unchecked the scams but still got them, and the site claims it's all on you.

And regardless of who's fault it is, many of the CD keys sold there are still stolen and you already have way better buyers protection through Paypal without paying extra for it.

And the "You haven't used the service for 6 months" thing can't be unchecked during registration or purchasing process. And in fact it took 18 months before they tried to charge me money for it, all of a sudden.

It's complicated to say the least.

But in short, they entered the market as a legit looking super well behaved super cheap key seller. Then got a bunch of streamers to sign long term contracts with them for "On-Stream" promotion.

Then they started to become super sketchy with their terms and services (charging you money for not using the site and similar). They deliberately make their site buggy so you enter in to buyers protection by "mistake". The buyers protection costs $1 a month but you can only cancel it for 2 out of 30 days, and if you try to cancel it between day 1 and 27 they won't let you.

And streamers were stuck with promoting them despite all of it, because of the long term contracts they signed with the streamers.

Keys bought directly from G2A tend to be legitimate though, but they have third party sellers and that can be super sketchy. But just because the keys themselves are legitimate, doesn't meant that they are legitimately sourced. For instance a lot of real CD keys come from mail fraud/credit card fraud. Where people buy games in the case using stolen credit cards and fake addresses, then take the CD keys out of the cases and sell on sites like G2A. Others are sourced from bankruptcies or sold in countries other than the one they were intended for which can get the customer in trouble.

Keys bought from third party sellers though can be straight up fake, and if you don't pay for buyers protection they will refer you to the buyers protection which is "free for the first month but you chose not to use it". But again, the buyers protection is a scam which is very hard to cancel.

They've had to end some of their practices though after being through some criminal investigations and similar. But in short, don't use the site.