This article was originally published on May 15, 2025 - read the full issue

By Patrick Garratt

For 16 years, Bartosz Skwarczek built G2A without any external investment. The Warsaw-born founder grew the platform from a small online game store into, according to the company's PR, "the world's largest digital entertainment marketplace," with nearly $400 million in gross merchandise value and 35 million users across 180 countries, entirely on its own terms.

So when Skwarczek announced this month that G2A had taken its first outside investment, from Krzysztof Krawczyk, the former head of CVC Capital Partners' Warsaw office, the question of timing seems most obvious.

"We've been approached by private equity funds, growth funds, many times in the past," Skwarczek tells Knowledge.

"We never wanted to dilute too early. And we believe that being in control of the business is very important, because then you can control the direction, you can control what's most important: the approach to the clients, the buyers, the sellers, the partners."

The answer to 'why now', he says, is simple: "We believe G2A has got to the moment that we are ready to institutionalise the business."

That institutionalisation is being pursued carefully. Skwarczek is explicit about what he did not want. "Private equity at this stage most often requires to take over the majority of the business. That is something we would like to avoid, because we very much believe in G2A. We've been building it for 16 years, and we very much believe that the next 16 years is ahead of us [under our ownership]."

Krawczyk's minority stake is structured accordingly: not a fund investment with an exit horizon attached, but a personal commitment from a man Skwarczek has known since 2018.

Krawczyk's CV is formidable. He's spent nearly three decades in Central and Eastern European private equity, the past decade of it building CVC's Polish operation into one of the most active in the region. His portfolio included board roles across telecoms, media, logistics and healthcare. More recently, he oversaw the transformation of Żabka, a Polish convenience-store chain, into a technology-enabled retail platform that IPO'd at a $5 billion valuation.

None of which is digital marketplace experience, but Skwarczek smiles broadly when we note it. When evaluating a business partner, he says, professional credentials come second to something harder to measure.

"The first thing is: who is this person? Who are they as a human being? Values, understanding of culture – is he a good human being? This comes from the long-term game. I am always a fan of that. It has nothing in common with money, nothing in common with how much you can deliver. It is about who you really are."

He adds: "Even though Krzysztof hasn't built any marketplace, he is one of the most successful private-equity heads in this part of Europe. He knows not only the playbook of a top-five private equity firm, but he did it personally. For over 20 years he's been building companies, investing, getting inside and helping CEOs and executive boards properly get a company to the next level."

Crucially, Krawczyk's investment does not come with the typical PE clock attached.

"Most often, private equity aims for a four- or five-year investment horizon, and this is too short to really build the value of a company," Skwarczek says. "I wanted a partner that can join to build something very special within the next seven to ten years. Not somebody looking for a quick exit."

G2A is now targeting acquisitions, businesses valued between $5 million and $350 million, with a particular focus on Asia and non-gaming digital categories. G2A is no longer just about games.

In 2022, the company undertook a 12-week strategy evaluation with Bain & Company. The conclusion was blunt: abandon physical products entirely while expanding beyond games.

"Bain told us: look, you have to forget about physical – you have no rights to win. But in digital, you are a top-two, top-three company in the world. Stay focused on digital, but enlarge your portfolio."

G2A acted immediately. Today, games account for about 60 per cent of its business, with software, gift cards, subscriptions and educational content making up the remaining 40 per cent – and growing.

Asked whether this means G2A is becoming something different, Skwarczek answers: "Not something different. Something more."

G2A is a now a single platform through which users can access digital content in general – games, Netflix subscriptions, Spotify, software, elearning – without switching between services.

"Why go to so many different platforms if you have one which you already trust, which is already giving you a good experience, where you have a loyalty programme, where you can get something extra for every purchase?"

The diversification doesn't mean abandoning G2A's roots, however. For publishers and developers, Skwarczek frames the expansion as additive rather than competitive.

"Publishers want to sell games and create communities," he says. "G2A is bringing the clients. We are paying for the marketing, we are paying for acquiring users."

He describes a snowball effect. As G2A brings in users through non-gaming verticals, they become potential customers for gaming content: "We can bring more customers than publishers can get on their own." He points to partnerships with PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others, which have approached G2A specifically to access its game-oriented userbase. "The more brands like this we have, the more clients and gamers we can bring to the gaming industry."

On AI, Skwarczek is committed but measured. G2A has operated an AI-powered anti-fraud system – internally named Shodan – since 2017, and uses machine learning across customer service, marketing, UX and compliance. Fully agentic AI, the kind where autonomous systems transact on behalf of users, is a future the company is preparing for rather than claiming.

"We're testing, but haven't yet implemented agents on the client front," he says. "We’re learning how to do it in the best way, because it must work perfectly. AI agents today are not perfect yet. We don't want to be too rash."

Some forecasts suggest agent-to-agent ecommerce could account for a quarter of all transactions by 2030. Skwarczek isn't betting the business on that timeline, but he isn't ignoring it either.

"We are on the forefront, but also being very cautious about not rushing too much."

While G2A's position, growth and expansion are all exciting, any conversation with this company eventually arrives at its history. The platform has been an industry flashpoint at times, accused of enabling the resale of fraudulently obtained keys and abitrage, the act of profiteering by exploiting regional price differences. Skwarczek assures that much has been done to allay any current fears.

The shift, he says, began with a structural decision to move away completely from C2C: "We decided this would be a B2C marketplace only, where only business-verified sellers can sell.

"And when I say verified, I really mean it. We created probably the most strict process: 48 distinct checks before anybody can start selling on G2A, including verification of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company."

G2A now applies multi-layered AML screening, prohibited jurisdiction checks, and its own risk assessment framework. It has been audited by Deloitte for over a decade.

On the regional arbitrage question, Skwarczek argues the problem has been structurally resolved by the publishers themselves.

"Publishers now control every market, thanks to digitalisation. If they say a key is only for Germany, you will see it in red letters at our marketplace. If they say it's for the European Union, you cannot buy it in another country."

"Sometimes I see journalists or YouTube interviews referring to things that were valid ten years ago. And I'm saying, 'Oh my God, another person who doesn't understanding the whole shift that happened with digital."

The ambition now is a business that hits $1 billion in GMV within a few years, a heady aim powered by organic growth, new digital categories, an acquisition strategy backed by Krawczyk's institutional network, and what Skwarczek describes as strong appetite from banking partners who have watched G2A's decade of consistent, profitable growth.

"We're not doing 100 per cent growth in a year," he says, "but we are double digit, year after year, very consistently. This is what we do."

This article was originally published on May 15, 2025 - read the full issue