Unless the owners of this site put this into effect, it's still not allowed. To be honest I doubt it's going to happen anyway.
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The reason seperate keys are disallowed is because the person giving away those keys still has access to the game via the DRM-free or Desura downloads. While I'm sure most people that would put them up would not abuse this, still is one of the big reasons for it.
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Still, those are keys that will be given away in some form or another - whether through medium of a steamgifts giveaway or through steam friends to a (random) friend willing to take the gift, etc. Abuse can be a possibility of course, but I would rather give the benefit of the doubt to most of these giveaways.
Only if this procedure consituted a breach of TOS of the respective Bundles, I would understand SG's stance not to act as a middleman to these breaches. Playing devil's advocate though, I would argue that it's still a lot of games people will not have the opportunity to enjoy.
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Both Indie Royale and Humble Indie Bundles say that all keys are for personal use only (for you or the person you gifted the entire bundle to). You're not allowed to split them up and take some keys yourself and give others away to other people.
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Even if we made them free, we couldn't possibly avoid the spam. One of the major factors in stopping individual keys is to avoid 100 giveaways being created every hour. I'm not kidding, it was more at one point before many of the restrictions were put into effect. First, the Humble Bundle didn't really have any restrictions. Then it was restricted to just 3 copies per giveaway, with restrictions on how many giveaways you could create depending your feedback.
This wasn't enough because people were simply creating one hour giveaways and the front page was taken over for days. This led to further restrictions. Now members can only gift unused giftable URLs. This is to make sure not only do they get the full bundle, but to make sure they do not miss any additional games being added. We received dozens of requests asking how to proceed further because no one could get SpaceChem, because they only received the key for the Bundle, not the link itself. This led to another problem, unless it's a giftable URL, you're technically not supposed to share these links anyway.
Then came the IndieRoyale bundle. It has keys for just about every game inside the bundle, and these games were cheap enough and commonly found elsewhere. So, now members have spare keys for just about everything. Let's say on average the site has about 16,000-20,000 active users per day. That's statistics from a few weeks ago, so it might be more now. If we allow even 100 people to gift 2-3 keys from how many bundles they purchased, you'd never be able to navigate through that mess.
Making them "free" has been suggested before, plenty of times. I could easily search through the forum and give you examples, but trust me. They are there. You will be able to find many threads crying out to either completely remove the Bundles from being submitted at all or restrict them even further. Very rarely do we see people requesting to allow the individual game giveaways, as they create an enormous pile of giveaways, regardless if they even generated points.
I have to agree with the vast majority of members on this site that these giveaways can become overwhelming and difficult to deal with. I occasionally may miss several of them when I have to attend to other issues, only to have 5-6 people PM me complaining about the spam. These people have no idea that they would instead see thirty or forty if we even allowed these giveaways. We tried it before, and we tried tweaking the policy, but this has been the most comfortable for the community so far.
We really do appreciate your input, thanks for the suggestions and your thoughts.
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Thanks for your answer, loko.
I would blindly assume then that there have also been suggestions to have these "free" giveaways show up in a different category (like new/closed/coming up etc) so as to not clutter up the main page, and avoid disgruntled users complaining about the spam?
As a normal user though, I probably cannot fathom the amount of effort that you mods pour into managing this ever growing site, so it's probably easy for me to talk big and ignore the implications and requirements of new measures. At this point I'd like to thank you all again for doing a monumentally great job.
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Your love goes in this box http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/ldUIb/admin-appreciation-thread
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I originally thought that the reason for banning the bundles, or parts of them, was because it was wrong. People would just get them at 1 cent and show their "generosity" to others.
But if the problem is just spam I was about to suggest myself the option for another category.
I for one would rather they be limited so people would not abuse the low price. The spam can be easily solved by using the addon(yes, not everyone uses it).
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Secondary option is: Give your spare keys to people you actually care about.
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From what I have read on the forums, the sole reason is that it ruins the 'economy'
One of the main reasons is that it's against the policies of humblebundle.com and indieroyale.com. The indieroyale people often tweeted that they don't care if you share keys with people, but it's still strictly prohibited according to their terms of use. As long as that is the case, steamgifts.com cannot publicly allow giveaways for spare keys.
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This one is, personally, the most important reason as to why the bundles' official policy should remain as it is now. The site's public and official rules must convey the bundle's own official policy. If not for anything else, to maintain the credibility and status of this community. If anyone wishes to give away their spare keys, I'm sure they can find someone on their friend list willing to take em. If not, just search the Steam forums for someone you feel is worth it. Generosity doesn't really have to stick to S. Gifts.
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Often such policies for smaller sites are made by copy pasting or having "a friend" in law studies. Even if it is correct and reasonably sentenced the site owners and staff should strictly enforce their own laws. If you shout on twitter "Hey do it!" and on the page you have "Don't do it" they should not be surprised.
Besides that, the "law" was made mostly so they could get more money.
I mean second hand selling or in this case giving should in no way be punishable. Basically it's like saying "No you can't buy 2l of milk from the store and give 1 liter to your neighbour" What you have to do is: "Give 1 dollar to your neighbor, let him come to the store and buy the 1 liter for himself". Idiotic.
I don't see how that term of use is in any way harmful to their business or in any way legal and could held up in court.
How can you by law not allow people to gift keys to others?!
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As ever, sorry if similar points have been raised before (and I'd appreciate no scathing/cynical remarks in case it actually has), it's an idea that popped into my head just now at 4 AM, and my brain blocks off any attempt to read heaps of forum posts right now.
So, with the surge of new bundles cropping up every fortnight and the growing prospect of people already owning some of the games offered, we are seeing quite a few 'illicit' giveaways, and with so many people crying foul and rolling their eyes on those who for whatever reasons ignore the FAQ and Forum cautions, it does seems pretty detrimental to the general ambience. I think there should be a better solution to this.
I have a few spare keys myself, and I know I can't create a giveaway - I could at most post the keys into this thread and go 'first come first serve'. But I want to give everyone a chance, and a giveaway would simply be the best option. Now why wouldn't I be allowed to create such a giveaway? From what I have read on the forums, the sole reason is that it ruins the 'economy'; those games, together valued at multiples of the value of the bundle, would yield many more points than what the bundle alone would yield, and entry requirements for single games would be too high etc.
In order to avoid this abundance of points, I suggest that those particular giveaways be made free. So when creating a giveaway, there should be an extra box that should be ticked to signal that a particular game has been part of a bundle. The giveaway would then yield no points for anyone, and would be free to enter to anyone.
It would not entirely solve the issue; some would still not tick that box and enrichen the community with points. But then, mods could, instead of plain deleting those giveaways, simply tick that box themselves, which deletes the points awarded and makes the giveaway free to enter. Might make it a bit easier to manage all those reports?
tl;dr: Giveaways of games that are part of bundles should yield no points, and should be free to enter. Good karma for everyone.
Edit: Another reason these giveaways are not allowed might be to prevent a giveaway flood like the Gish one. Maybe in that case, have a different tab or option in the dropdown (the new/open/closed one) for free giveaways, so as not to clutter up the main giveaway listings?
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