That is what my words said. People are lucky they are getting a refund at all. I have the same thoughts on people who subscribe to Lootcrate/Nerdbox type products. Last thing I want my money to go to is unknown shit.
You seem to have a difficult time separating two separate risks: risk that you are unsatisfied with what you get; and risk of fraudulent scamming. The former would be if GamePump released 12 games and all of them sucked and none had resale value. The latter would be GamePump not releasing games and then taking peoples' money. Most people, in calculating their risk, would assign a low-medium probability to the former, and a very low probability to the latter.
My calculations in the fall when I bought a GamePump subscription were:
1) It is extremely unlikely that the whole thing will be fraudulent. If it ends up fraudulent, I can do a chargeback with no consequence. The consequence is that I could have earned a cent or two of interest over the few months but this is not something worth thinking about.
2) It is somewhat likely it will be disappointing. By disappointing, I mean I will get relatively few games that I care about. At $20, it doesn't take much to break even. If I sell each game for $1 and keep none, then I'm only out $8 for a year. If I keep one $10 game, and sell the rest for $1 each, I break even. If any of them sell for $4-5, I'm golden. If I decide to keep everything, then I basically bought 4 junk bundles, something I do anyway. So my downside exposure here is fairly low.
3) It is somewhat likely that I will enjoy the service (i.e. get my money's worth)
So it wasn't because I'm a wild gambler, it was because it was low risk. It turns out the thing that happened is sort of a fourth case: I pay absolutely nothing and I get some games for free. That's closest to #3, to be honest.
As for Lootcrate: The reason you shouldn't buy Lootcrate isn't because they're going to take your money and run. It's because they're going to give you nerd garbage. Unlike a game bundle service, you can't resell the items because they have literally $0 value. Unlikely a game bundle service, it's a physical object, so you have to deal with physical junk.
But let's pretend we didn't know Lootcrate was $0 promotional garbage and it was a new, fresh service that you wondered about. We would ask what the business model is. The business model for Lootcrate is that it gives away promotional items. You get a crate from Lootcrate. They give you Marvel stuff that they bought from Marvel. In this transaction, Marvel has to profit from selling the stuff to Lootcrate (because the specific promotional value is pretty limited, but let's say at best it's like a Happy Meal Toy type scenario). Lootcrate has to profit from selling the stuff to you. At both stages, you are losing value.
A wine of the month club is a little different. First, wineries generally sell relatively small amounts of wines, and in general wine of the month clubs are quite large volume purchases for a small winery. As a result, the winery can make a profit without inflating the cost onto the consumer of the transaction. Second, the winery can afford to loss-lead a little bit, because once you've drank their wine from the club, you might decide to buy it again. This is the same business model wineries use for wine tastings. With Lootcrate there's not as much of an economy of scale, and there's not as much of post-sale spinoff benefits for the original seller.
The proposed business model for GamePump was closer to the wine club. They make their money by publishing the games and getting ongoing income. This is like how the winery makes their money by selling wine. The monthly game sale thing is about defraying some upfront costs, because games have an upfront cost but not an ongoing cost. The game club would also give a chance to get a community, some reviews, and buzz for launch to the general public. So again it's much more likely to be something of a loss-lead.
It didn't work out, but I don't think it makes sense to connect it either to LootCrate, or to say people are gullible because they're lucky they got refunds. I didn't buy in because I'm a high risk individual, I bought it because it struck me as a low risk purchase.
