Yes, underpaying helps to get better prices but it doesn't explain everything. To get such insane baragins the Independent Retailers (g2a, kinguin, Instant Gaming, etc.) usually mass buy the codes found in the physical game boxes and then underpayed employees list the codes scanned in huge excel files that they can sell directely to the retailers at ridicoulously low prices while still being legal As you can guess the concurence is unfair between EU based companies and other based in HK or East countries where taxes are meaningless. Independents retailers based in country subject to taxes such as France or United kingdom have to take in consideration that when they sell games, VAT is applied to it so it means they loose 20% of the price for a french based retailer plus the salary of the employees. That's why those retailers can make insanes profits because this kind of trading is purely riskless. In fact they only pay for the keys they sold.
![witch it g2a witch it g2a](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0uufhRLdFPo/maxresdefault.jpg)
Distributors get their keys after negociating as much as they can but that doesn't mean they payed yet. Inde retailer are totally free to trade a few hundreds of keys packages directely with the devloppers.
#Witch it g2a generator
When you put your game on steam you get a key generator to sell your game, but the thing is, the keys are steam keys but you don't necesseraly need to sell on steam and that the issue.
![witch it g2a witch it g2a](https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_720p/sc91mu.jpg)
Steam for example is perfectly fine with such huge price tags since they can make margins around 30% on 50 bucks games (around 15€ will go to steam and 35€ for the editor or the indie) When EA or Ubi say that the game is 49.99€ it'll be sold at this price on thee big website because they don't need to discount it since they know that they have an insanely big base of customers who already have their banking info registered and want to buy games with minimal effort. The biggest website such as Steam, Green Man or Humble works directely with the editors.