MarTech Interview with Bartosz Skwarczek, CEO of G2A Capital Group & Founder of G2A.COM

Hi, Bartosz. Welcome to our Interview Series. Please tell us a little bit about your journey in the digital commerce industry. How did you arrive at the idea of starting G2A.COM?

My entrepreneurial journey began in the post-communist reality of the 90s in Poland, driven by the motivation to overcome financial challenges, grow, educate myself and succeed even under the circumstances. Since high school, I’ve pursued my dream of entrepreneurship, fueled by a relentless determination for success and growth. Despite starting with limited resources, my goal has always been to demonstrate that anyone, regardless of background or location, can achieve significant success through motivation and personal development. This drive motivates me daily, pushing me to explore new opportunities and break my perceived limits. When I founded G2A.COM in a small office in Poland 13 years ago, we were just a handful of people with big dreams and even bigger ambitions. We wanted to become the best source for gamers to get their games from, first as an online store. Soon we saw a new trend — people moving from games in boxes to the digital world. In 2010, when we started G2A.COM as a regular retail store, almost 70% of the market was physical, and in 2014, when we decided to move on to the marketplace format, it was only 39%. In 2018 it was 17% and 2022 only 10.5%. At the time the rest of the industry was still focused on boxes, but we decided that instead of being the sole distributor, we would set up a digital marketplace, create a safe and secure platform that allows sellers and buyers to meet and put emphasis on facilitating the selling and buying process itself. And that is how the G2A.COM Marketplace was born. It was the first milestone for us.

What is G2A.COM and what are your core offerings?

 Today, G2A.COM is the world’s largest and most trusted marketplace for digital entertainment, with offices all over the world, headquarters in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, and available for users in pretty much every country, offering more than 75,000 all-digital items from registered sellers from all over the world, and over 200 regional payment methods.  Our aim is to open the Gate 2 Adventure and democratize digital entertainment for all, regardless of gender, age, culture or location. We have a very diverse and complex offer of digital entertainment, including video games, DLC (downloadable content), subscriptions, gift cards, software, e-learning and Web3 collections. No matter if you are a hard gamer looking for sophisticated in-game items, a casual person looking for a VOD subscription, a parent searching for a birthday present for a kid, or a silver generation seeking for e-learning course — at G2A.COM you have the best digital adventures at your fingertips.

As a CEO and founder of an e-commerce marketplace, what are the fundamental challenges you try to solve for your customers?

At the beginning, we asked ourselves a question: “What does it take to build the largest marketplace in the gaming industry?” The answer was 6 factors; be on the top of the game in terms of payments, prices, range of products, support, security and UX. They are all about our users, so since then every day we’ve been working hard on each of them. I’ve already mentioned our diverse offer, equally important is that you purchase on a safe and secure platform. Our comprehensive approach to cybersecurity allowed us to keep the fraud rate at the level of 0.39%, almost ten times better than the industry average of 3.6%. We care about customers’ safety and their satisfaction, that is why we have a very easy and fast path to purchase, instant delivery, attractive prices and over 200 different payment methods all over the world.

Could you tell us about your customers and partners? What sets your business center apart in the gamified marketplace?

Certainly, our users and partners are at the core of our success. With over 25 million users from 180 countries, our marketplace, G2A.COM, has become a global hub for digital entertainment enthusiasts. Our customers range from gamers seeking the latest titles and in-game content to individuals looking for digital gift cards, subscriptions, and software. Our partnerships are also quite diverse, ranging from game developers and publishers to digital content providers. We collaborate closely with industry leaders to ensure vast and up-to-date offerings for our users. Additionally, we work with a variety of payment processors such as Mastercard, Visa, Razer Merchant Services and more, ensuring seamless transactions for our global user base. What truly distinguishes G2A.COM in the gamified marketplace is our relentless pursuit of a unique and enjoyable atmosphere. We don’t view our platform solely as a place to buy and sell digital items. It’s a space where users can immerse themselves in a community-driven environment. Through personalized recommendations, interactive features, and a visually appealing interface, we’ve transformed the transactional process into an enjoyable journey, making G2A.COM not just a marketplace but a destination for digital entertainment enthusiasts. This holistic approach to user engagement and experience sets us apart, creating a vibrant and thriving ecosystem that resonates with our users and partners alike.

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Tell us more about G2A offer. What new technologies do you offer to digital marketers in the gaming industry?

G2A.COM stands as a global marketplace dedicated to digital entertainment, with a primary focus on catering to gamers and enthusiasts. While our core audience comprises gamers and geeks, our extensive catalog goes beyond video gaming, encompassing utility software, streaming service subscriptions, online shopping gift cards, Web3 collections and much more. G2A.COM has successfully created a space where sellers can conduct business, and gamers and geeks can pursue their passions without straining their budgets. At G2A.COM, we offer multiple innovative solutions that empower digital marketers in the gaming industry.

Our G2A News platform plays a pivotal role in this, delivering expert guides and curated recommendations based on diverse criteria for hundreds of digital items. This not only assists buyers in making informed purchases but also keeps them ahead of the latest trends in the gaming industry, offering valuable insights into the hottest releases.

For individuals with a strong online presence, our G2A Goldmine program provides a unique opportunity to monetize their influence. By creating a referral link and sharing it with their followers, participants not only provide their audience with access to cool games but also earn a percentage of the price transferred directly to their account. It’s an innovative way for digital marketers to make extra money while engaging their audience with exciting gaming items.

Furthermore, our commitment extends to video game developers and publishers through the G2A Direct program. This initiative is designed to help them showcase their own offer on our marketplace, providing greater visibility and extensive support. By leveraging G2A.COM, developers and publishers can tap into a global audience and benefit from a platform that is dedicated to promoting and supporting their offerings in the gaming industry. For now, we are working directly with over 300 developers and publishers through G2A Direct program and this number is constantly growing.

What is the future of AI-based NFTs? Which industries are you targeting with your e-commerce services?

As technology advances, we anticipate the integration of more sophisticated AI algorithms, enabling NFTs to become not just static digital assets, but dynamic entities that can evolve, interact, and provide ever-changing value to their owners. The evolution of AI-based NFTs is poised to redefine the digital ownership landscape, introducing a new era of intelligent and interactive digital assets.

G2A.COM is venturing into AI-based NFTs with the introduction of G2A Geekverse, a cutting-edge Web3 gaming marketplace. This platform offers carefully curated NFT collections related to blockchain-based games, embracing the growing phenomenon of NFT and Web3-based gaming seen in titles like Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained. G2A Geekverse, with a focus on quality, security, and zero transaction fees for a limited time, caters to Web3 and NFT enthusiasts, especially those passionate about gaming.

In terms of industries, our e-commerce services, particularly through G2A Geekverse, target the intersection of gaming and blockchain technology. We actively engage with game developers and gaming-related collections, providing them exposure to over 25 million users and professional marketing support. This strategic move positions G2A Geekverse as a comprehensive platform for developers to showcase and sell their collections, contributing to the evolving landscape of Web3 gaming.

In the era of ChatGPT and generative AI, how does G2A.COM position itself? Tell us more about your recent marketing campaigns.

AI is the most transformative technology force we have seen since the inception of the internet – and a perfect storm is coming. The influence of the most recent generation of generative AI tools will start to take off in the game industry in 2024. At G2A.COM, we are considering these advancements when we think of marketing campaigns. In our most recent Birthday Campaign, we introduced a new communication platform, Gate Ready, to cater to a wider, more mainstream audience with the expansion of offerings on G2A.COM beyond gaming into the vast realm of digital entertainment. The campaign used the latest AI tools available in text and picture generation to help visualize the project in the early stages, which helped us prepare and implement many interesting ideas to our final vision.

This spring we also launched our first diversity campaign showing the diversity across G2A.COM’s ecosystem of employees, offers, customers and partners and recognizing and promoting diversity in gaming with educational content. The main point of the campaign, a dedicated, 4-minute long video, gathered over 1.5M views on YouTube, and over 30% of viewers watched the whole thing through. This campaign also celebrated values that lead to success, such as integration and well-being; diversity, equity and inclusion; career and talent development; knowledge-sharing and cross-departmental cooperation; and feedback and appreciation culture. Embracing diversity helps organizations and society improve by nurturing conversations and solving problems from different perspectives. Right now we are just past the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale, during which, apart from promoting special sales, we worked to promote safe and secure shopping during seasons like this one, with tips from our cybersecurity experts being shared in such media as Trusted Reviews.

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What kind of challenges do e-commerce companies face when dealing with payment gateway integrations? Could you tell us how you solved these challenges at G2A.COM?

Some e-commerce companies struggle with payment gateway integrations by not offering a strong variety of global methods, having those that aren’t user-friendly, or ones that aren’t secure. At G2A.COM, we take many steps to ensure the offers you can find on the marketplace are as safe as possible – the most critical ones focusing on vetting the sellers themselves. Our sellers have to undergo a very strict 100-factor encompassing business verification process before they can start selling, and even after that, they have to present proof of purchase of any item they put up for sale and can sell only after it’s been verified. We are also actively working with over 200 different payment method operators all over the world, and in order to keep those partnerships up, we undergo regular audits by them or top global audit companies  (like Deloitte or PwC), which confirm that we are trustworthy and safe for them to entrust their partnership with us. The payment methods offered to our users are also set up UX-wise in a way that is the most comfortable for them, with the most popular ones located at the top of the suggested list, and right after them the local ones that can be best known to people making purchases from the specific region. This is done in order to avoid choice paralysis and to make the checkout process as easy and intuitive to people from all regions of the world as possible.