TL;DR: I dare giving away HB gift links again.

Story in short: giveaway ended, I went to HB, generated a gift link, added* on the winner page, and sent it.
Winner gets a "Gift key already used!" page.

Longer story: I generated two different keys from two different Capcom bundles, the other one worked fine. And of course I sent different links to the two winnners.

* that part was nice, not so long ago it was not possible to add a gift link to GA-s, only at creation time.


HB support is efficient, at the end they solved 2 issues in 16 days (well they promised reply after 7 days, and they really have not answered earlier)
1) The winner of the gift apparently claimed the page (that was not clear to me until now), just has not received the link for the key-page afterwards. HB ninjas digged it up, and now all worked well
2) I had an other winner, who got a key which could activate in his region (while game was not banned or anything). HB ninjas provided an other one

9 years ago*

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"Gift key already used!" displayed by a freshly generated gift-link, how often have you encountered such issue?

View Results
Never
Once
Rarely
Often

Did you test the link yourself before adding it to the system here? You wouldn't enter your e-mail (since that would redeem it) but it's probably a good idea to simply check it first. The message you described occurs after a gift link is generated and then subsequently redeemed to a specific e-mail address. I'm not going to say that it is impossible for an error to happen, but it is probably unlikely. If anything I'd say it's more easily explained by a giveaway winner lying in attempt to extort a 2nd copy of a game out of someone.

9 years ago*
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Now I think it would have been a good idea to check beforehand, but I have not done that.
Of course a request was sent to HB Support. Page does not estimate fast reply, but I will update the post when anything happens.
Winner has a clean profile (12 activated wins, 2 sent gifts), and according to the poll it might have happened to some other people too (I hope they did not mis-vote for "Yes, I received unusable gift link as winning"). Of course I do not exclude the shady-winner theory, just that is not what I picked to start with.

9 years ago
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I've heard of HB having issues with keys being given out more than once ( one person uses a key, next person a few thousand bundle purchaes later gets same key but gets error message, and I know that HB has done right by them in the past.

Either way, support should easily be able to tell you if the link was redeemed or indeed faulty.

9 years ago
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Apparently winner did not receive the link after claiming, or did not expect to receive such thing. HB support sent me the link at the end, and I gave it to the winner. Everything worked well afterwards.

9 years ago
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Humble Support is fantastic, so don't be too concerned.

But first, assess potential user error:
1: It's easy to accidentally send a gift key to yourself- if you open the gift link directly (rather than right clicking on it and saying copy url) and hit enter at any point, it will send the key to your own e-mail. I've had that happen before.

2: When copastaing, you may have sent the same link twice- did you confirm?
I've had that happen before, as well. >.>

In any case, pretty sure gift keys are generated the first time you try to activate them- there definitely shouldn't be any reason it's messing up.
Double-check that user error isn't a factor, and if you can't find any, just wait for Humble to fix this rather unusual bug.
I've had only exceptional experiences with Humble Support :) [though, since recent layoffs, support is rather delayed. Make sure to reply if they send you an automated message!]

9 years ago
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Thank you, I did not want to write a too long post, but
1) I have not opened the link at all, that is part of my problem now
2) I am absolutely sure about sending different links as GA creator can check the sent links/keys any time on the Winners page

Yes, they sent me an auto-reply asking for Transaction ID. Although I provided it with the original request, I will just send it (and the problematic gift link, etc.) via e-mail too.

9 years ago
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Yes, HB support was efficient (just took some time). Winner missed the "download link" (perhaps did not know such thing should arrive), but HB support (re)sent it to me, and winner got the game at the end.

9 years ago
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Whew, that is a bit of a delay.
Glad it worked out fine :)

And yeah, it's typically something silly like that :D

9 years ago
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Bump for solved

9 years ago
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interesting problem, good hear they resolved this

9 years ago
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