Green Man Gaming

Green Man Gaming

Type of site	Online retailer
Available in	English
Founded	2009
Headquarters	London, England, United Kingdom
Key people	Paul Sulyok: Managing Director
Website	www.greenmangaming.com
Launched	May 2010
Current status	Active

Green Man Gaming is a United Kingdom-based online video game retailer. It has a catalogue of over 5200 games from more than 450 publishers (including direct partnerships with Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Capcom), selling games in 185 countries; 90% of its revenue is generated outside the UK.^[1] Green Man Gaming also owns and is integrated with Playfire, a game-tracking social networking website that allows users to automatically track their gameplay and in-game achievements or trophies from Steam, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live.^[2]

History

In 2009, Paul Sulyok formed Green Man Gaming with Lee Packham. Sulyok had previously been the CEO of Prize Fight, an online gaming platform, and Packham had been responsible for developing the technology behind Prize Fight. Green Man Gaming officially started trading on 10 May 2010 with a launch catalogue of 500 games from 26 publishers.^[3]

Packham developed and managed the initial launch of the retail platform, and was the architect of a new system and method for facilitating a Video Game Exchange for Green Man Gaming. Users who download games from its "Capsule" gaming client with SecuROM DRM can then trade-in some of their digital games for credit to use against anything on the Green Man Gaming website.^[4][5] This works by deactivating the code required to play the game, which is then re-sold as 'pre-owned'.^[6]

In 2011, Green Man Gaming revealed plans to expand its service to gamers in the Czech republic, Germany, Greece and Turkey,^[7] and announced alternative ways to top up account credit via a reloadable Green Man Gaming game card, powered by Rixty; the service was available and redeemable only in North America.^[8]

The latter end of 2011 saw Callum Jay join Green Man Gaming as CFO from cloud-based digital video distributor Miniweb Interactive where he was finance director.^[9] Tim Sawyer also joined Green Man Gaming as their EVP Operations in 2011, having previously been Head of ecommerce at MeMega Retail Ltd.^[10] After a year-long sabbatical at Twitter to develop Tweet Deck's iOS, Android and Windows services, Lee Packham returned to Green Man Gaming as Co-Founder and EVP Engineering.^[11]

2012 began with Green Man Gaming announcing a partnership with Gaikai to stream and play selected game demos from Gaikai’s portfolio on any of Green Man Gaming’s sites through any web browser or operating system.^[12] In May of that year, Green Man Gaming appointed former HMV Games Category Manager, Martin Baxter to become EVP Trading.^[13] Baxter was joined on the senior management team by Darren Cairns, who became EVP Marketing at Green Man Gaming, having previously spent 6 years as Head of Online Marketing, running the PlayStation EMEA Digital Business at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.^[14] On 9 July 2012, Green Man Gaming announced its merger with Playfire.^[15] At the time of acquisition, Playfire had more than 1.2 million users, tracking over 50,000 video games on the website. At the end of July 2012, Green Man Gaming expanded its multiplatform portfolio to include selling boxed games, and now sells PC-DVD, Xbox360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4 games as well as consoles and peripherals.^[16] This service is offered only in the UK.

In June 2013, Green Man Gaming launched its instant Trade-In credit and Pre-Owned game services in the UK.^[17] The service offers consumers trading-in their Xbox360, Xbox One, PS3 or PS4 games instant Green Man Gaming credit, which can be used on the Green Man Gaming website before their pre-owned games are sent to the company. In August 2013 Green Man Gaming also announced partnership with CollectPlus, the UK’s largest store-based parcel service.^[18] For trade-ins in the UK that are £50 or over in value, customers can drop off their package of games at a nearby store. At the end of 2013, Green Man Gaming announced that its Playfire service was able to track in-game achievements/trophies and gameplay on Xbox One^[19] and PlayStation.^[20]

Starting January 2014, Green Man Gaming has added the Euro to its list of supported currencies, in European countries such as France and Germany. Other European countries, however, now pay using the GBP.^[21]

In March 2014, CEO Paul Sulyok was named as one of the 100 most influential people working in the British video games industry by trade publication MCV.^[22] Following the departure of EVP Engineering Lee Packham (who left to rejoin Multiplay, but remains a shareholder and consultant at Green Man Gaming^[23]), at the end of June 2014, Chily Fachler, former IT Director of The Outdoor Group and CIO at Encore Tickets, joined Green Man Gaming as EVP Technology.^[24] Green Man Gaming announced in September 2014 that it was to be the first reseller of OnLive cloud-gaming subscription services, offering monthly bundles and free trials of OnLive's Playpack and CloudLift services to launch its new partnership.^[25] On September 30, 2014, Green Man Gaming launched its own publishing arm, Green Man Loaded.^[26] Gary Rowe, former SVP Publishing and Content at SEGA joined the label as EVP Green Man Loaded.^[27] At the end of the year, to coincide with its Christmas Sales, Green Man Gaming launched Bitcoin as a payment option on its platform.^[28]

In September 2015, Green Man Gaming announced that it has officially partnered with Nintendo and is now selling digital titles for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS consoles.^[29] In October 2016, the company reached a similar agreement with Sony Interactive Entertainment to sell digital titles for PlayStation 4 consoles.^[30]

Awards

Controversy

Green Man Gaming has been accused by some publishers, including CD Projekt, Activision, and Ubisoft, of selling unauthorized game redemption keys, as it is not an authorized key seller for these publishers. The company has responded that while it attempts to work directly with all publishers to sell keys directly, the company will sometimes need to use authorized third party vendors to offer keys for games from these companies, and insists that all revenue goes back to the publishers, with Green Man Gaming absorbing the cost of any discounts they offer.^[31][32] Following this, in November 2015, the company have placed information on each game's store page at their site to identify the source of the redemption keys, either through Green Man Gaming as an authorized reseller, or through a third-party reseller, in addition to when users can expect delivery of keys for pre-orders.^[33]

References

External links

• Green Man Gaming