A couple of years back, various Reddit posts and articles on the Internet have cropped up regarding g2a charging for you not using the site.
Is it true that they do charge you for inactivity, though?
Well, yes. But there are some important considerations here. Let me explain these now.
Each account on g2a has a wallet assigned to it. This wallet holds all sorts of funds coming from various sources (gift cards, top-ups, etc.) that you can later spend on buying stuff on the marketplace.
Now, g2a states that if there are inactive users who still have money on their accounts, this is a problem. Upkeeping those costs extra money and g2a needs to explain their existence to various financial institutions. In general, it’s a massive headache. So, they introduced the inactivity fee which either keeps the marketplace’s users active or has them spend all the money in the wallet.
The way this works is that if you have any funds in your g2a wallet and you haven’t logged in for half a year, you will be charged €1 for each month of inactivity until your wallet funds run dry (you will receive a notification a couple of days before that happens, though).
Once your wallet has no money in it, your account will be deactivated and you will no longer be bothered with any inactivity fees and reminders.
But if you log in, the inactivity counter resets and you have another half a year before this situation repeats itself.
So yeah, while g2a might eventually charge you for inactivity on the marketplace, it’s easily avoidable and all you need to do is log in once in a while to reset the counter.
If you’re not planning on being active on g2a and have some funds in your wallet, just spend them and then forget about the whole ordeal.
You can also simply delete your account.
ONE IMPORTANT THING HERE: the inactivity fee only applies to your wallet funds, your credit card or anything else won’t be charged at all! There were rumors and fears regarding this, so it’s time to dispel that. Once again: if you have no funds in your wallet anymore, your account simply gets deactivated and nothing else happens. Your normal funds are perfectly safe!
So, to sum up:
- Yes, there is something called the inactivity fee on g2a.
- You get a notification about the fee to be charged soon before the end of the half-a-year-long inactivity cycle.
- If you ignore this reminder, you will be charged €1 for each month of inactivity until your account balance drops to zero.
- Once it’s at zero, your account gets deactivated and no further charges will be applied to you.
- You can avoid the fee by logging in before the half a year period ends. Logging in after that also resets the time counter and stops further fees from being charged.
- You can also simply delete your account.
- The charges only apply to your g2a balance, no other money will be taken from you.