I never create gift links, always reveal the key, UNLESS I give away the gift link immediately after creating it, e.g. in a trade. numerous people have reported that their gift links didn't work or were claimed by someone, after they created them and didnt pass them on for days/weeks/months.
as for limited available games that HB give away where you have a deadline to redeem, I would assume gift links won't work after the deadline expires. here also the trick is to reveal the key and store it in a txt or excel file on your computer, otherwise the key vanishes, after the deadline.
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So that's good to know, but I'm specifically referring to "Limited Availability" where there are X number of keys remaining and NOT a time based deadline, but then a gift link is generated at a time when keys are definitely remaining. Do you agree with JustArchi that a gift link does not reserve such a key?
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possibly, not sure when they ever had a limited availability for games they give away, but if they run out of keys and you try to reveal it, you get notifyed, and they will likely restock keys. if you try a gift link, possibly also, possibly not, but I don't know.
I once had the case that I bought a game in their store, and they wouldn't have a key for it so a pop up messeage came up saying the will restock or something. I had to wait about 5 days untill it was restocked though. I would asume the same would have happened if I created a gift link, since i bought it in their store.
just avoid gift links unless you give them to somebody who will claim them on the same day.
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no the keys never expire. they just remove the key from your account so you can't access it any longer, even if you revealed it, but the key should still work afterwards.
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Do Humble Bundle "Limited Availability" games reserve/claim a key when you generate a gift link? Does purchasing the bundle claim a Limited Availability key even before making a gift link using Gift to a friend?
History proved that neither of those are correct. Gift link or an option to reveal a key does not guarantee anything and in fact asks HB to generate a new key out of the batch they have, so no, you should always generate keys if you want to be on the safe side.
Also see this.
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Your linked comment is a logical rebuttal of gift links. Is it safe to say though that the "history" of gift links is that in general they just are not totally reliable or consistently work, as opposed to them just outright never working in specific circumstances like a Limited Availability game in a bundle?
You may be interested to learn about a result of my experiment with a bundle that had a "Limited Availability" game which had X number of keys remaining and otherwise did not have timed redemption: I bought a bundle with a game that had X keys remaining, then I generated a gift link while keys were still remaining, then AFTER no keys were remaining this gift link was used successfully to generate a key.
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I bought a bundle with a game that had X keys remaining, then I generated a gift link while keys were still remaining, then AFTER no keys were remaining this gift link was used successfully to generate a key.
That only proves that HB in this specific case didn't go full moron and refrained from digging itself a deeper grave, instead took into account how much they managed to "sell" to people and didn't oversell.
You could find the same case in the past where HB didn't act like that and they were forced to refund people the products that they legally bought, or people found out that their non-redeemed keys suddenly "ran out". This proves that in this specific case they did dig a grave deeper, and did oversell.
The truth is in-between, if you prefer to count that for this specific purchase HB won't screw you up, then you're more than welcome to do so, I prefer to be safe, not just assume that I'm going to be safe and run into problems if suddenly my assumptions turns out to be wrong. Considering that you can't lose anything by redeeming a key, I see keeping gifts as potentially troublesome for you in the future. Does it have to bite you in the back? No, it doesn't have to, you could even state with high confidence that it won't, but it could regardless - it happened in the past.
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Not sure about the questions you ask, but just a side note - be aware, that if the sub you bought can have region lock, you will (likely?) get key for the region your linked steam account is in. Had faced this issue few times with humble bundle and never saw anywhere that they state about key not being ROW. This site (sg) punishes gifters which fail to provide a working key for the winner, and there is no way whatsoever to find out if key/gift link is region locked or not.
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Good to know. Wouldn't it be possible to detect region restriction by clicking the "Gift a friend" link once, seeing if you get a warning for region locks, then just hit cancel? That way if you get a region warning then you know for sure where the key definitely won't work? I recognize that gift option may not be available for all items in subs or bundles. I also recognize that HB can still be stupid and restrict region regardless, although I personally haven't noticed it because I only buy for/from US region.
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I'm really not sure how this whole thing works. I didn't see any warnings and faced exactly situation I described above. Humble bundle support didn't help either. So what i'm doing now is, before creating a giveaway, i'm checking steamdb if the game i'm about to give away could have region restrictions. And if it could, I creare region locked giveaway just to be safe.
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That's a great use of SteamDB! I wish Enhanced Steam browser plugin/extension would embed region info on store pages, but I don't recall ever seeing that when I use the plugin.
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The posts here for the Humble Monthly bundles are generally packed full of region-lock information. Just look for a recent one and read the top section.
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Thanks, I'll be sure to review the posts about bundles in the Deals forum as a way to watch for region locks
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Hello Steam Gifters - I'm new here, but not new to gifting or trading, as I've done that on Reddit. Your site seems more like a legit community and all the search & rep systems are SO much easier to handle :D
I had questions that I couldn't find the answer to here or elsewhere, but I will close this post if it is already answered:
Do Humble Bundle "Limited Availability" games reserve/claim a key when you generate a gift link? Does purchasing the bundle claim a Limited Availability key even before making a gift link using Gift to a friend? Obviously "Reveal your Steam key" will claim and reveal a key, but we all know that gift links are often preferred for giveaways & trades so you seem more legit and less like a key faker.
And a secondary question: What risks are there for any gift link to go inactive or stop working over time? I was gifted a game recently using a gift link, and it resulted in an error like "ALREADY REDEEMED This gift has already been redeemed. Please use our Order Resender, if you are looking for the key.", so the gifter had to contact HB support to fix it and claimed that this was a problem that happened for another gift they sent someone else.
Thanks in advance!
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