Security Confidential S14 E4 Dorota Wrobel

Manoj: Today joining us all the way from over in Poland is Dorota Wróbel. Dorota is the Chief R&D Officer at G2A. G2A is one of the world’s largest and most trusted marketplaces for games, DLCs, game items, as well as software and e-learning. She’s been in e-commerce for over nine years. She’s a big advocate for women in tech, and she believes the best work comes from diverse teams with interdisciplinary backgrounds. In addition, when she has some free time, she’s a cycling enthusiast and likes documentaries. So, Dorota, thank you for joining us today.

Dorota Wrobel: Hello everyone, thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here today.

Manoj: So, you know, one of the things our listeners always like to start out with is the origin story. How did you get into this world of gaming and tech, if you don’t mind giving us a little bit about your background?

Dorota Wrobel: Sure, with pleasure. When I graduated, actually in International Relations from the University of Rome, I was looking for a job where I could use my knowledge of languages: English, Italian, and Polish. I was a gamer, but more a casual type than a regular gamer, and my recruiter told me about G2A. And you know what? I decided to leave Italy and return to Poland.

Back then, G2A was an online shop for gamers, and I started as a Business Development Specialist. Within a year, I became responsible for more and more markets, and in 2014, G2A changed its business model to a two-sided marketplace from a website shop. It was a time when I was promoted to the Head of the Marketplace, as many of my ideas had a positive impact on our business. Let’s say that many of my observations and suggestions turned into effective business solutions in the end. And today, as you said, G2A is the world’s largest marketplace for digital entertainment, and I am right now responsible for the entire platform and R&D area as Chief R&D Officer. So that’s the story.

Manoj: That’s a wonderful story. Now, what were some of your insights that we might take as obvious today, but were not obvious when you came up with the ideas in business development?

Dorota Wrobel: I think that the idea I had was to listen to the customers’ needs in the first place and to make sure that they have got a variety of offerings as wide as possible, because at the beginning we were trading only a few products and then expanding into a much wider product portfolio.

The second one was about developing new markets, because we started in Poland. We had a quite big success in Poland, and then we decided, “Let’s try other markets within Europe.” Once we were at a good level, let’s say, of brand awareness for the G2A platform in Europe, we decided to go outside Europe to the US. We were also exploring some Asian countries, African countries, Latin countries, and that was a quite interesting experience.

I must say that I was also registered on every marketplace in the world to see how it is working from the backstage as a seller. So I was trying to sell video games on Taobao, Lazada, Amazon, eBay—everywhere. This experience gave me the background on what we can do better and what we can totally cancel because it’s not related to the digital environment. This is how we were improving the G2A platform, and today G2A is offering more than 75,000 products with 30 million customers that trusted us.

Manoj: Wow, that’s a huge number. 30 million are on your platform on a regular basis making purchases. I have to ask you—I know we have some questions here, but I’m going to deviate a little bit because you’ve told some really good stories here. When you’re trying to sell to different cultures, what have you noticed? From the people who are buying games, is it relatively similar, or do you have to change your tactics of how you sell based on the culture that you’re trying to sell to, like the US and Europe?

Dorota Wrobel: It was totally different from country to country. We observed that certain countries are more interested in sports games like FIFA, Football Manager, or Pro Evolution Soccer. Others are more into shooters like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or others. So we are trying to adjust to those preferences of the customers.

From another point of view, we were also trying to adjust payment methods, because what we discovered is that in different countries, there are different popularities for different methods. Not everywhere, let’s say, are PayPal or credit cards so popular. Sometimes in different countries, we have got alternative payment methods that are much more popular.

My biggest surprise was when we were trying to enter India; they were focused on cash on delivery, which was for digital products something totally new. So those kind of experiences across the globe gave us a lot of experience and a lot of insights.

Right now, we can recommend the best, in my opinion, gaming experience to everyone—not only to the hardcore gamers, but also to the casual ones, and also for people who never treated gaming as a pastime or as a moment when they can spend their free time. After the post-pandemic world, I think that more and more people tried gaming and they decided to go through this type of entertainment.

Here we are with our recommendations. Our mission, actually, is to democratize digital entertainment, because our mission is to provide the best digital experience and adventure to everyone, without looking at gender, age, religion, etc. This is what G2A is and how we see our customers.

Manoj: That’s a big, big project, because you have such a diversity of customers and cultures. To service all of them is absolutely not a minor undertaking. That’s stating the obvious, but now, being a cybersecurity show, I guess with what you guys have built, there are a lot of cybersecurity concerns with it, right? You have a lot of data and a lot of different audiences. Let’s just systematically go through and get some of your ideas on how you first of all secure these folks from getting their identity stolen, or getting compromised, or their data getting stolen out of the system. I’m sure you guys have thought about that quite a bit.

Dorota Wrobel: Yes, actually. When replying to your question, I would focus on a few things. The first one is that we support a wide range of payment methods, including popular global options such as cards, PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, of course, as well as numerous local methods like BLIK, iDEAL, Przelewy24. We are constantly expanding our payment offerings to better serve our customers, and we are excited to continue growing and evolving alongside the changing needs of this payment industry.

What is important is that G2A actively identifies changing payment environments in terms of legislation, payment methods share, innovative payment acquirers, and technological advancements. At the same time, it combines with possibilities offered to the market and sellers’ requirements, because we are a two-sided marketplace, for quick settlement and a high success rate of transactions. This is, let’s say, from the customer’s point of view.

The second aspect is about cybersecurity. As you mentioned, we can see that cybercrime is currently on the rise, and we are working hard to stay ahead of it, ensuring our security protocols are above industry standards. Security was, is, and always will be one of our top priorities. We are proud to have created a safe environment for everyone on G2A.COM, because we hope to see more companies prioritizing security. We see that this is not really popular right now, and I think that more and more companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, will see that they have to invest into security much more than they are doing nowadays.

Of course, there’s no marketplace in the world with no attempt at fraud, but our comprehensive approach to security allowed us actually to keep the anti-fraud rate much lower than a level that is, let’s say, the medium industry average. This is also a big achievement, especially considering that we are treating only digital products with instant delivery. There’s no physical stuff that can be delivered by a courier on our marketplace.

We are protecting our marketplace also by cutting-edge, AI-supported security systems.

Manoj: Oh, really?

Dorota Wrobel: Yes, like SentinelOne, Qualys, or SonarQube. We are very enthusiastic about AI that helps businesses, and we know that it does. But I would like to point out also one aspect here: AI actually is a double-edged sword, providing opportunities on one side but also new threats.

Because of monitoring and analyzing patterns of user behavior, AI is helping predict the outcomes of unusual behavior, preventing fraudulent activity and its outcomes, and of course training and machine learning for future use. However, cybercriminals often use AI for their own purposes, of course, including creating new malware and hacking tools, and automating phishing attacks in a really effective way.

AI can be tricked by those who study and test its vulnerabilities by crafting data communications or events that fool the system. Also, AI algorithms are susceptible to human error or oversight. So this is a two-sided thing of using AI: protecting the business on one side, and on the other side trying to find out how these tools are used also by criminals.

The third point, I would say, is about our sellers. As I said, we are a two-sided marketplace. We have got customers on one side and merchants on the other side. So at G2A, we really pay attention to how we verify the sellers.

At G2A, you can pass the verification process only if you are a business-verified seller. We do not allow any individual sellers to sell, because we believe that they cannot treat customer service in the way that we would like. That’s why only business sellers are allowed to sell on G2A.COM.

The registering and onboarding process for sellers is really complicated if I compare it to other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, or Allegro, because we are asking sellers to provide many, many documents, like a certificate of registration, legal documents, ownership certificates, and many others. So we really pay attention to qualified merchants, and this is also resulting in a really low refund rate on our marketplace, which is less than 1% of total transactions.

Manoj: Wow, that’s very low for the size of your market—incredibly, incredibly low.

Dorota Wrobel: Let’s say that focusing on the sellers’ verification just pays off, right? Because then you will see that the customer service for the customers is on a higher level than if you were allowing anyone to sell on the marketplace.

We are also partnering with different external partners. I can name a few, because I think it’s important to cooperate with others and to find out and check tools and companies that can help you out with protecting your business.

Just is using machine learning to properly handle any disputes or chargebacks that are raised against us, and this is a company that is helping us a lot. After implementing this solution, we had a 30% point increase in the win rate for reversing chargebacks, which is not only a great success in terms of the KPI itself, but also a great place for sharing knowledge with others who are seeing similar cases, behaviors, or other merchants.

I just mentioned that before, but I would tell it again because I think it’s extremely important, and I really appreciate that we have programs, podcasts, and interviews like this one. My observation is that in a post-pandemic world, there have been quite a lot of new internet users who are completely unaware of how they should protect themselves on the internet. That is why we see a need for working on changing that and helping with education, trying to give them an idea and also some tips and tricks on how to protect from threats.

Manoj: Let’s go there, then. Share some tips and tricks for your user base. Share some ideas on how they can be safer.

Dorota Wrobel: Let’s say that when customers are scanning things, it happens that a customer is sharing credit card data with our customer support, which is not safe to do so. We are trying to educate them that you shouldn’t do that because of this and that. The same with using social media. We see that people are sharing different things without too much care of what they are sharing, and then you can be easily targeted by some bad actors within the internet who can steal your data or your credit card, etc. We are trying to give them tips on how to be protected.

Internally, we have also got security training for our staff to make sure they are not vulnerable to phishing attacks and that they wisely share data with everyone in the company, but also outside. We are trying to focus on this human firewall, and we are giving people badges if they are a good protector of those tips and tricks or not.

Manoj: Oh, so you are establishing a culture of cybersecurity inside your environment. That’s admirable. Very few companies actually take that challenge very seriously, and that is actually one of the most effective ways we have seen to cut back on bad actors compromising people, as a lot of things can be prevented by addressing human behavior.

Dorota Wrobel: Yeah indeed, I totally agree.

Manoj: Let me ask you about regulation, because you guys are in Europe and you’re in the United States—California, I assume. So has the CCPA and GDPR been a good thing for you for e-commerce and security, or does it not affect it, or has it been a bad thing? What are your thoughts there, Dorota?

Dorota Wrobel: From the business perspective, I think that they are a good thing. But from the customer perspective, sometimes they are a bad thing because people do not understand correctly what they mean. What we observe is that sometimes they are not reading about things.

However, we are always compliant with every regulation, and in every country, we are complying even with local regulations. So this is our priority: to be compliant with everything that is required in terms of not only e-commerce business, but also from the payment perspective. We are audited by 200 payment methods every month, because they are our partners. So we have to adjust to the requirements of the card schemes, etc.

And in here, I think we are quite good in terms of implementing that always on time and at the best level, so the customer can easily buy without suffering too much. We make sure the process is quick but also compliant in terms of regulations and requirements from different points of view—not only payments, but also general e-commerce directives.

Manoj: Going back to AI, how do you see AI transforming G2A in terms of your e-commerce? How do you think it’s going to impact it? What’s your vision for the future with that?

Dorota Wrobel: In terms of AI, I think that it definitely helps to automate the processes, let’s say, in terms of customer compliance or always the same questions, in the fields that are, let’s say, regular fields where similar questions happen often. But I don’t believe that AI is resolving every problem in terms of security. I wouldn’t bet only on AI. I still think that the human touch is necessary because machine learning is only machine learning.

Where the threats are coming very often is about emotions. Criminals sometimes are caught because they were too greedy or something happened, and this is not an anomaly—this is about emotions. In those fields, I think that the human touch is very important. So that’s why on the cybersecurity side of G2A, we have got AI tools, but we have got also a cyber defense team which is prepared, analyzing, monitoring, and trying to find out the rationale about what is in cybercriminals’ minds in order to be ahead of them.

Manoj: You know, you are the only person that has appeared on this show who has actually mentioned that you’re trying to understand the psychology of the bad actor. My hat’s off to you for that; I was not expecting that. Because it’s an area that we often point out: if you’re going to defend against something, you have to get into the mind of what that thing or that person is to understand what their need is, what their desire is, and why they’re doing what they’re doing, so you can see what would be the next step. We term that proactive defense.

Manoj: Very few companies do that. You’re almost the first company out of over 150 guests who has mentioned that as a focus in their cybersecurity program. So that’s admirable. Whoever engineered that is thinking along the right tracks.

Dorota Wrobel: Thank you.

Manoj: Without it, it’s very difficult. In fact, most people—you mentioned the human touch, and I want our audience to make sure that we highlight that, because most of the industry in the cybersecurity world is throwing technology and automation at the problem. Unless you put the human touch in, both on the cybersecurity defense side and on the human behavior side, you’re not going to get a very effective outcome. That’s been our experience at least.

Dorota Wrobel: Yeah, and even when choosing partners in terms of cyber defense tools, I’m always looking to see if they are only technology-based or if they have got some analytical approach where humans are also looking at those numbers, where humans are trying to find out what is behind them, where humans are looking at the network that they have and trying to find out what could be the next pattern discovered.

Manoj: Now, I would imagine that you’re also providing platforms where gamers can collaborate together in a gaming environment. Is that true?

Dorota Wrobel: We are providing the marketplace where they can buy and sell digital items. However, they can always go through customer support if they don’t know what to play. We are there to advise.

Manoj: Oh, really?

Dorota Wrobel: Of course. If you have a problem with deciding, then we can help you out with that. I think it’s important because nowadays we have the culture where a lot of offerings are coming at you and your telephone is always beeping. Sometimes it is good to talk with someone and have some advice—just an advice, like a friend’s advice.

Manoj: How are you finding the younger generation taking to that? Because it seems like they don’t want to talk to a lot of people all the time, and what you’re providing is a premium.

Dorota Wrobel: My observation about the young generation is that they don’t like talking in terms of cold calling or taking the phone and calling. What they are used to is writing down. Here we have got customer support that is able to respond with advice. Also, sometimes people from the younger generation are asking us, “How do I convince my mother to let me play games more?” So, different types of advice are requested through customer support. However, we have a team dedicated to that, because we really care about our customers. We have a great repeat purchase ratio, meaning that people feel good on our platform, and this is the most important thing for us.

Manoj: Now, are you also advising the game developers then on what they should be putting into the games to sell them better?

Dorota Wrobel: That’s much more difficult, right? Because sometimes customers are complaining, “Oh, you know, these graphics in Starcraft,” or “I don’t like this one because it’s lagging.” We understand the pain points and we sympathize with them, but we cannot change that, because this is more on the developers’ side. Developers are doing their own research about the preferences, and those change from country to country. It depends on where the developer studio is and the type of games that they are producing.

Manoj: See, that’s fascinating to me, because I would think—again, as someone who is not a gamer—the last time I gamed was like 1982. That’s a long time ago. We had to put quarters into a video game machine, and that’s how we would play.

Dorota Wrobel: That was before I was born.

Manoj: Yeah, it’s been ages. It was fun. We used to have arcades and it was a social event to go gaming, right? But now it’s become isolated. I would think that the popularity of certain game themes wouldn’t be that dependent on culture, but you’re saying it very much is. That’s fascinating to me—that where the game developer is and where the audience for that is might be two different things.

Manoj: I always thought like lately these shoot ’em up games are the most popular, or Roblox, and these kinds of things are universal. It doesn’t matter which country you’re from, they love this stuff. But it’s fascinating to hear you say that, because that’s a deep insight into some cultural trends that you guys probably notice that we’re not aware of. You guys should advise politicians on what you’re seeing.

Dorota Wrobel: I think that I would prefer to advise families how to spend time together. The change that we are ambassadors for and that we advocate for is that instead of telling your kids to not play games, play with them, because this is also building a relationship between generations. Actually, gaming is for everyone. I think that everyone can find out something that will bring a big pleasure in playing together. There can be different approaches, especially for moms, because what I can observe is that dads are more likely to play games with their kids, but moms can also find something for them. I encourage everyone to do that because it’s really giving us an opportunity to be closer with our kids, which is very important.

Manoj: That begs the question: why do you think most people game? Is it because it’s great fun? I don’t know why. I personally—this is just my opinion, not my company’s opinion—but I always thought it was maybe an escape. A lot of people are gaming to go into a different world and escape the reality that they’re in.

Dorota Wrobel: I think that right now people are living in digital. They are making friends in Fortnite. Kids have a platform where they can exchange their opinions and where they can have great fun together. I think it’s a social aspect that is important. It’s not right now a typical gamer who is in front of the computer for eight hours a day playing one game.

I think that people are looking for much more variety. They are trying new things, they like them or they don’t, and they are changing from mobile to PC and then to the console. Today, we do not have a share that says “this is a console type of gamer” and “this is a PC gamer.” Mostly everyone has both.

Manoj: Wow, heavily invested in it. Given that they are invested so much, they’re sharing a lot of personal data with you. How are you safeguarding that data from falling into the wrong hands? Or do you anonymize that information about people if you do share it with others? How is the data about the individual safeguarded?

Dorota Wrobel: We do not share any data with anyone. I would say that, fingers crossed, we never had any leak of data. We are ten years in the market. We observed many leaks from competitors and many leaks in the gaming industry like PlayStation and Sony, etc. We are really proud that we did not have any. This means that our protection wall is working well. From that point of view, we are trying to keep that level of security in order to always have our customers protected.

Manoj: That’s good to know, because we hear about it constantly on most of the social media platforms. Just recently, the news over there might be a little different, but here the TikTok ban has been a big topic of interest. The whole reason is the amount of data that they’re collecting on the individual, and their ability to share that data and mine it for analytics and then plan campaigns to affect that user base. That is the big concern, right? We know TikTok shares data; I’m sure these others—Instagram, Facebook—they all have some sharing going on. That has been the big concern. So I’m surprised and glad to hear you guys just don’t share that information.

Manoj: Let’s switch to interdisciplinary teams and diversity in those teams. First of all, can you define what you think is diversity in a team, and then how it actually helps that interdisciplinary team to achieve their goals? That’s something you’ve talked about in the past.

Dorota Wrobel: Diversity should be visible both internally and externally. Internally, we have initiatives promoting diversity like “Together We Are Smart” or the “G-Power” strategy. We are also in the process of creating our Diversity, Inclusion, and ESG strategies, which must be aligned with the business strategy. Otherwise, they just don’t work. It’s important to lead by example.

In 2023, we launched our first diversity campaign to celebrate the diversity of our employees, users, partners, offerings, and gaming, and to promote diversity in gaming with educational content and collaboration with a wide variety of gaming influencers. In numbers, with that campaign, we reached 200 million impressions with a 77% growth in brand searches in the US. That gives us an 80 million reach, which is awesome. It’s huge.

G2A.COM is diverse and incorporates people from all parts of the world. We want to use our diversity potential even better. We want to develop an inclusive corporate culture for all employees so they can feel good and safe. We aim for our diversity and inclusion policy and initiatives to be a persistent process, taking into account the perspective of each employee.

Within the organization, we have even got Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors. We organize workshops related to that topic, and we are preparing this policy including strategy initiatives for the coming years.

Manoj: Does your program specifically address getting more women in tech?

Dorota Wrobel: I think that we consistently emphasize the importance of creating that space for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnic, or cultural orientation. Our top management, which I am part of, consists of an equal gender ratio, with 50% women and 50% men. Nearly 40% of the G2A workforce is right now women. This is a kind of rarity in the gaming industry, and I am personally very proud of it.

When I started my journey within the gaming industry, for the first three years, I didn’t have any business meetings with a person of the same gender. It’s very important to aspire to be a leader in that aspect. I think that our mission is also showing people that this is doable. Having women in executive positions can allow for a much wider array of options and perspectives to become available and implemented within the company policy.

I think that diversity in any position also opens up much more potential workforce, so you no longer need to limit yourself to just the stereotypical “best man for the job.” I always stress that it applies to women within technology, but also men in HR roles. This is not only related to women. Teams creating different solutions should be diverse in my opinion, because when we have no diverse team, there is a greater risk of implementing bad solutions that may lead to an image or sales crisis. We build those diverse teams to develop and protect the business.

Manoj: What caused the gaming industry to go on this trend where you have such a large number of women who are actually participating, compared to other industries?

Dorota Wrobel: I think it’s the determination that we have.

Manoj: It’s a mindset. Why did that mindset happen in gaming and not in automotive or in some other computer or manufacturing industry? You guys must have done something.

Dorota Wrobel: I think that it’s important to educate people and it’s important to make sure that men support women, not only within an organization, but also at home—your sister, your mother, your wife—and encourage them to speak up. This is very important. But of course, the first thing that you should look at are competences and then gender. Wherever the first point is ticked, then you can go and build a diverse team.

Manoj: Now, have you seen any pushback in the Middle East? I assume you folks do business there with this approach.

Dorota Wrobel: It’s a bit harder.

Manoj: You’re being polite.

Dorota Wrobel: But as I said, it doesn’t mean that it’s not doable. It will just require a bit more time to achieve the same results. However, if I look at myself ten years back, it was hard, but right now you can really be proud. The reward is so awesome that it’s worth going through the obstacles and persisting. Don’t give up.

Manoj: Some time back, we had a recruiter on the show, and she mentioned that in the cybersecurity world—I was surprised to hear this statistic, and this was a couple years ago—she mentioned that women on average get paid 30% more than men in cybersecurity.

Dorota Wrobel: More?

Manoj: More.

Dorota Wrobel: Nice.

Manoj: I didn’t believe it, but then she explained it has to do with competence, because women found it so much harder to break in that they added more qualifications. So when they are applying for it, they have more qualifications than other candidates. So they’re not necessarily getting paid more because they’re women; they’re getting paid because they’re qualified.

Dorota Wrobel: Exactly.

Manoj: That was an interesting statistic. Let’s talk about things that you have set up for the future. I know we’re almost at the end of the show here, but I wanted to give you time for anything that you wanted to plug, things you want to let our audience know about that you’re up to or your company’s up to. Anything you want to share—any events, talks, books, anything you would like to talk about.

Dorota Wrobel: In the first place, I think that I would advise women to always have the courage to speak up. This is something that I am a big advocate for, and this is my first message.

The second interesting thing is that I recently read Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. This is the first book that I will recommend to look at. It is about how hard it is sometimes to make changes, and it suggests appealing not to logic, mathematics, and analytical stuff, but to emotions, and breaking key milestones into centimeter milestones to make sure that you can achieve the final goal.

The second book I would highly recommend… I think we have a culture of accessibility everywhere. I even saw a great Timex watch commercial recently: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,000 unanswered messages.” It’s only a watch commercial, but it’s giving you the idea that concentration, the ability to rest, and time management will be, in my opinion, skills that a person can’t quite handle with the help of technology alone. So in here my advice is also about thinking a bit about this human touch everywhere.

Manoj: That’s fantastic. I have to tell you, Dorota, you have a very unique outlook, and it’s very refreshing.

Dorota Wrobel: Thank you very much.

Manoj: You have said a lot of things that are somewhat deep actually in the course of this interview, and I don’t think anyone can really argue with them. They’re very good opinions. Keep up what you’re doing, because that passion shows and the sincerity comes out on what you’re trying to do and what you’re saying, and it’s important. It’s really nice to hear someone in tech say it’s not all about the tech, it’s about people. Ultimately, it’s about the people, it’s about the experience and delivering that experience, and it’s not a pure technology problem. Technology helps, but it’s not all about that. We have to rethink that other aspects are also very, very important.

Dorota Wrobel: You’re exactly right.

Manoj: You’re exactly right. So glad you shared some things here. It’s been a pleasure. And you know, as you folks grow and things and you have something new to say, please stay in touch. We’d love to have you back and let our audience know about what’s happening in the gaming industry. You’re always welcome.

Dorota Wrobel: Thank you very much, with pleasure.