The PC games “gray market” isn’t just a couple of shady websites. It’s an economic behavior that exploits regional pricing and promotion timing to siphon revenue away from publishers. In this episode, Our host,
Alexandra Takei, Director at
Ruckus Games, sits down with
Vadim Andreev, CEO of
Rokky (and former founder of PlayKey), to unpack how retail-era code resale evolved into today’s global key-arbitrage machine.
Vadim breaks down two core leak points: regional price arbitrage (buying keys in cheaper markets and reselling in premium ones) and promo stockpiling (buying deep-discount keys during sales, then reselling after discounts end). He argues the damage is material: publishers can lose roughly 20 to 40% of margin to resellers, often without realizing how much of their “regional” volume is being cannibalized elsewhere.
The conversation gets practical fast: why region locking is table stakes, how publishers frequently mis-bucket territories (China and New Zealand), and why Steam’s price recommendations can lag real exchange rates and taxes. Rokky’s pitch is a mix of distribution and defense: API-level checks (IP, identity, purchase limits), a key management dashboard, and pricing/promo optimization to close the gaps attackers exploit. The conversation ends with a discussion about Valve and their role in games distribution and the gray market and what they could do to help mitigate the problem.
We’d also like to thank Lightspeed Venture Partners for making this episode possible! With its dedicated gaming & interactive media practice, the firm invests from an over $6.5 billion pool of early and growth-stage capital. If you’re interested in learning more, go to
https://gaming.lsvp.com/.
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