This requires you to link a Steam account to a Playfire account, but it does NOT automatically add the game to that account. This info may not even help ANY of you, but it certainly would have helped me and saved me a LOT of frustration.

You see, I couldn't link my Playfire account to my Steam account. It told me I had already linked that Steam account to a different email. I'm not 100% certain what happened, but my best guess is that I used a throwaway email for a previous GMG promotion. I use throwaways for almost everything I sign up for, because I hate giving out my real email unless it's to a site/service I plan to use repeatedly (which GMG is not, since I have bought a VAST majority of my PC games using TF2 keys as opposed to any real form of money). Anyway, I tried to explain this to their support, I got ONE response that asked me to send my Steam profile URL (which I did) so they could send me the name of the email that was linked to that Steam account. I did mention that this probably wouldn't help (and asked if they could simply UNLINK the two), but welcomed to send it on the off chance that it was a mailinator (disposable email, requires no registration, etc.) or something. This was over 48 hours ago. I have since gotten no response. I know they're probably swamped, but still...

After sending a couple more emails I ultimately decided, "Fuck it. I have an alt account that I put premium TF2 onto. I'll just use that and activate family sharing." 15min or so later, I had turned on family sharing. I linked my alt Steam account to my actual email account (since those promos weren't just a one-time-only thing, I no longer care if they have my real email). It worked. Now, until this point I thought, as I had read on this very forum, that the game would be directly added to my alt Steam account. Wrong! I was emailed a key, which I activated on my main Steam account without issue. If I'd known that was gonna happen, I'd have had the game 2 days ago. :P

tl;dr: I thought the free copy of Xcom would be added directly to the Steam account linked to the Playfire account you used to vote. This was not the case. A key was simply emailed. I'm honestly not sure why they even MADE me link a Steam account.

10 years ago*

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@last phrase : maybe to avoid even more exploit ?

10 years ago
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Puta bida tt.

10 years ago
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I hope you misspelled that on purpose...

10 years ago
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They want to collect your gameplay data to offer specialized deals for you.

10 years ago
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Well...yeah. I mean, how would so many people make XCOM giveaways if the game linked directly to their account and they had no way to pass it to someone else?

10 years ago
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They use playfire in order to reduce the number of explioted keys by traders, but you can get as many keys as steam accounts you have(I have 2, I managed to get 2).
I workaround the email problem by having a live.com account, they let you have something like 10 alias, that solves most problems. So no need for throwaway accounts that I might need in the future.
Also, you can get credit for GMG by getting achievements in Playfire. I used it to buy stuff from them multiple times for free or ridiculously cheap prices.

10 years ago
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I thought it was locked to one per IP address?

10 years ago
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there's literally billions of proxies

10 years ago
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I have dinamic IP, just need to turn the modem off and on again and I have a fresh new IP(many times from the wrong province).

10 years ago
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@OP: As I have asked in the other thread, I am also baffled myself that someone thought that you would have no key but just direct steam account redemption

I mean come on, last year's voting was also exactly the same process, link your account and you get a key...

10 years ago
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I didn't even remember if I used a throwaway email or if there was some other error happening. The only thing I really remembered about last year's was the scramble to get both games (I think that was last year's anyway... Mafia II and Civ V I think it was?).

10 years ago
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yep those 2

10 years ago
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You can use masked emails you know, I am using a mozilla add-on like that myself and if I want someone to stop sending me in a masked email account I just stop forwarding them to my real one. Problem solved.

10 years ago
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i have my playfire account linked with my steam, but i can't claim the key yet...

10 years ago
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ty

10 years ago
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Had the very same problem, pissed me off tbh

10 years ago
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i did everything required ans still no steam key here

10 years ago
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You just missed this one!
Thank for your interest, however, due to huge demand we’ve now run out of game codes!

So its over??

10 years ago
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No, they lied to you because you're Romanian. See: http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/LKRyY/the-greenmangaming-xcomgoty-scam

10 years ago
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If you were misled somehow into thinking it was directly added to account, where did you think the flood of Xcom GA's on the net came from?

10 years ago
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Honestly? I just thought people were being dumb as usual.

10 years ago
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Hve you received Joystick voting confirmation lately?or any regarding email from GMG to wait for XCOM?

10 years ago
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I received my key via email.

10 years ago
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no no no. I was asking about voting confirmation.the possibility to claim the key should arrive in 24 after that

10 years ago
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My account was linked with Playfire for a while. I voted, no key yet. I just gave up on ever seeing it arrive. Ah well.

10 years ago
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Am well past that "it's gonna take us up to 24 hours" period now. Thanks, GMG. Completely trashed the Playfire rewards system, blocked coupons from being used with credit-only game buys, and now this. XD

10 years ago
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They apparently banned my Playfire account for absolutely no reason, at least I get an Internal Server Error 500 when I try to log in (which is what you get when you are banned as I found out after googling a bit). Never even came close to a program like SAM and didn't write anything on their forums, no idea why. Didn't log in to my account for a few months, but that's hardly a reason.

I assumed that's why I had the 'did you vote yet' site coming up, even after more than 24 hours. In the end I created a new CVG account and linked a new GMG account to a new Steam account. With that setup I got the game key immediately after voting (within 2 seconds). There is definitely something fishy going on there, maybe you are on some kind of weird blacklist as well.

10 years ago
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You never found a way to use Playfire again, did you? Even with new emails, new name, etc and new steam account too, it's over with Playfire, right?
They banned me too, that's how I know. To make things worse, GMG uses the same servers than PF when you want to get to support or contact them somehow, yeah, that's right, if banned in playfire (zendesk or something like that) it's off limits and you're cutout from support, contact and anyway of comunication. You can try their FB, but guess what? they don't answer those either! so you're basically screwed!

Last joke to sum this up: thanks to google cache I was able to read partially their forum, users wanted desperately IP ban, because some other users were spamming and doing bs all the time... and nobody would do anything about it. Now they went overboard, flipped like a switch! they ban you without apparent reason or explanation, cut you like a gangrenous infected part. Nicely done!

Sorry for the rant ppl, needed to share that from a long time...

10 years ago
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Tbh I stopped caring about Playfire, it didn't update my achievements properly and it was too much of a hassle for a few free games. Only found out now that I was banned when I tried to login for the Joystick awards. So I never tried to rejoin.

Personally I assume they have an automated cheat protection system like VAC, with the tiny difference that it doesn't work. The automated system detects that you are cheating for achievements and you get banned for it, even though you never really cheated. For example I remember that some of the achievements I got were only updated when I started or ended the game I was playing, so it looked like I got 5 achievements at exactly the same time. Maybe that's why, it's all just guessing.

I have no idea what they want to achieve with this though. Playfire is an advertising campaign for GMG, they want people to buy some more games from their shop after they spent their Playfire credits. But with this shitty behavior they will achieve the exact opposite. I sometimes looked at GMG for cheap offers (though admittedly I never bought anything from them, now I'm glad I didn't), but now I will certainly never go there again, except for leeching the Joystick award games of course. And I don't even feel bad about it.

10 years ago
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Thanks for that. I did buy games from GMG store, like the Borderlands bundle. Think the other ones were free from Joystick awards and such. What it hurted the most, was that they took my effin-hard-earned 20 US dollars from GMG account, disregarding any at all atempts to contact them. I was saving for a 40-50 ish game there, shouldda known that was a bad idea and just spend it all on shitty cheap games rather to go for the bigger ones.
Someone from a well situated status would think, "mate, 20 us dollars isn't much, you spend that on a burger any day" well, that'd be true in your world, but not mine. I'm not here for the pity nor a beggar, must be hundreds of stories like this one. Doesn't make it better tho. Just pick the pieces and move on.

10 years ago
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