A. It's not that I don't see where you're coming from, but it wouldn't be realistic as a business. Assuming valve only wants to sell games at 50 cents and above they'd never issue the keys out if people could turn the charity slider to 100% and give 0 to humble and 0 to devs, then yeah it would be great if these devs would just do that and humble would just survive on money growing on trees but that's never going to be the scenario.

I know we all have our own numbers about how much should be going to charity/devs/humble, but in the end I'm just glad some is going to charity, and I end up with some cool games. I'd also want the devs to earn something for their hard work, so I'd never try and put them at 0, because if I felt they deserved nothing I wouldn't buy their games, that would just be contradictory, and of course humble facilitates this deal that's better than any deal you'd find on said games on steam even at discounted prices, and so I think humble's team is entitled to a portion as well, and you know, if I didn't like humble and wanted to put them at 0(although you can't), I just wouldn't use their service because again that's contradictory.

Unfortunately the big shareholders and ceo's always take their money, chances are the regular employees don't make that much, but I imagine this happens in any capitalist business that has no limits on how much a certain person can make.

B. It's probably because they launch bundles with end dates, rather than launching a bundle letting everyone know there's 50000 keys available for each game or something. Mostly because they know if they oversell they can ask the publishers to request more keys and probably send some of that money as proof of payment, etc. in turn being able to serve a wider audience in the end, rather than cutting it short. As for them having different quantities, I am also guessing but it's probably because of their tier system and how they estimate how many people will buy the $1 tier(F in the chat), tier 2 and the most expensive tier 3.

As for why games from old bundles go out of stock, I have to agree that it's probably a fault in their system, it's probably because they aren't revealed, so wouldn't it be better to just instantly reveal them? My guess is what happens is this is a continuing business for them, and so they request a key from that pool only when a user clicks redeem or show key. They must constantly be looking for new deals so if an old game that was in a bundle once is a deal good enough to do it again, they'll probably do it again, and that's where stuff starts to conflict.

I'm also guessing what happens is they run out of a certain pool key, and while they contact the publishers to get new keys, they have all these unused keys from other bundles from years ago that some users never revealed, so until they order some new keys they use that pool so the customers of the new bundle don't have to wait as long, because technically those users haven't revealed their keys for 3 years. While annoying, technically said users didn't use their product for 1 or 3 years. I'm just thinking their intention is for users to buy the games and redeem them to their accounts. I don't know why they'd want users to keep unredeemed keys for 5 years for instance in their libraries. I understand they provide that as a service, and in a sense you get a working key in the end because it's being drawn from a pool of working keys, rather than giving you instantly revealed keys and 5 years later they might've been used by a bot or whatever, but still I think they want to sell games that are being activated and not just kept unrevealed. I assume they're willing to take the hit on that one because the people upset about that weren't going to activate them on their own accounts 5 years later if they haven't done it 5 years before, so their intention is to probably trade it, sell it, etc. which they don't want. Just saying.

I think store keys are different than bundle keys, I think that's where the pools are different.

"This is like buying a Blu-ray for a movie on Amazon that you couldn't/didn't watch, it's still shiny new and wrapped and years after you've purchased it someone from Amazon comes to your home and takes it back to sell it to another person because they ran out of stock for that product."

I wouldn't say it's the same because it's not like they're fully refusing to try and find you a key, but you'll have to make a ticket. Sure it might take some time and you might not get instant access to it, and that's why license keys suck, but this is the standard nowadays with everything. I'd say this is more like you buying a blu ray from amazon but asking them to hold onto it for 5 years then being upset that 5 years later on the 1 day you want it, they don't have it ready in storage somewhere for you to be instantly available and their supply ran out in the meanwhile, however they still assure you they'll work to getting you a working copy asap. The only differences here are that I'm sure amazon would never give individual customers personal garages to store their products for many years to come at no cost or something, and in this case it's not physical ,but it still occupies some space, it still takes security to prevent some from stealing your key, and of course after 5 years someone could've brute forced it and they'd have to give you a replacement at their cost.

If they ran their business as the regular users want to, they'd operate for 1 bundle and go bankrupt. There are things I can point out that I don't like, like insane ceo/shareholder salaries/payouts/bonuses, but other than that I think they're doing fine. The only solution I could find to this problem, is to tell customers to redeem their keys within 1 week of purchase or something, right? That way they wouldn't have to store them long time and provide the keys on demand(sometimes having no keys ready).

Otherwise, consider the alternative where each key is already there and they don't go through this one pool system where new bundles can use the unused bundles keys. If they still stored them long term, but a user reveals and it's a dupe key after 5 years, can we really say it's humbles fault or at that point it's the users fault for waiting that long when a bot might've brute forced it meanwhile? Is it fair for them to take the loss for dupes 5 years later? I don't know either, but I think they're doing the current system in one of the best ways possible. The way it is right now, if keys for an old bundle are exhausted for being used in a new bundle since they weren't revealed for years, chances are when they get the new keys you don't risk dupe keys, and you get working keys.

It seems that Humble is also acting as a reseller. If you bought Mad Max (for example) in a past Humble bundle and you didn't reveal your key, they sold it to someone else who bought this bundle. That key you bought three years ago is not there anymore.

I agree that people buying to give them for cv is a pretty insignificant amount comparing with those that resell/trade was just mentioning as something I know happens here on sg that hb wouldn't intend. But yeah especially if you can get these in a cheap region globally and then sell at us prices, their profit has to be big.

I mean it might or might not be, it's kinda my guess based on how it all works. Otherwise I don't know where these key selling websites get their keys from. We could say they're stolen keys but I highly doubt that's true, because they don't get invalidated, with the exception of a few revoked keys where most likely it's the dev going crazy or something.

As for the amounts, I mean, in terms of whether they sell, I think they sell really well, you go on some sites you can see some of the sellers have 100k+ keys sold. Is it a hassle to sell them though? I don't know. You just put them on whatever site and wait. It sells, you get paid, it doesn't you don't. That or working a 9-5 somewhere. Imagine you made $13 profit on each bundle you bought. Heck, you sold one bundle a day you at least secured your food for the day. If you can sell like 10 bundles a day, you make min wage for a day in a few states, and you can buy the bundles in what 10 minutes, and list them in 30 minutes maybe and then just wait. As you said it's not guaranteed, but it scales eventually, or it might not. You also gotta be competitive with the market but I get you. It might be worth a lot more in certain parts of the world, maybe not as much in the usa. But if you make $13 a day in a place where $3 is the standard 8 hour shift, you're kinda ballin.

As an example, although it's more about runescape gold farming than buying and reselling things. This is an extreme case of course but I think it applies.
"https://mobilenetworkedcreativity.pubpub.org/pub/wz6zlyhl" - Making more than doctors and lawyers by farming gold in runescape.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2020/5/27/21265613/runescape-is-helping-venezuelans-survive -where min wage at the time was $5 a month. You sold one bundle and you made more than 2.5x monthly income of working a full time min wage job there.

As someone above pointed out as well, if they run out of keys on a game in a new bundle, they'll use the unused keys from an old bundle. This probably happens because it takes forever to get new keys from steam, and it's not them that do it, first they gotta email wb, with game info, with amounts, justify it, etc, then wb has to do the same to valve, then valve has to check and issue, then they give the keys or there's delays, if the keys are sent then wb has to send them back to humble who has to put them back in their pool and send them out to the users. Like that process takes forever, so if certain users haven't redeemed their games for 5 years, it isn't a bad idea to use keys from an available pool to help customers who want the games now.

As for having tiers, it's what gets them the ability to provide higher quality games in certain tiers, or at least, games that are considered more valuable, depending on sales, etc. For said games they can't get a contract to give them as many keys as they would get for a tier1 key, and they don't expect to sell as many t3 as t1's as otherwise t1 wouldn't even exist.

"There is also no doubt that sites like SG and ST actually help drive bundle sales, so assigning blame to giveaways and trading and such doesn't really float."

This is exactly what I'm explaining though. Because people don't buy them with the intention of using them for themselves or close people in their lives, it turns into overbuying. They can't always predict this and they wont make a deal with WB or any publisher/dev by telling them what a great deal it is that their key is gonna end up being traded away for a better deal, or sold on a reseller website(I doubt they care about gifting that much, but that's probably against their contract with the publishers hence why they gotta take action on it oftenly). Part of the way their system works is that when you click reveal you get an unused key from the pool rather than having your key revealed/assigned to you from the start and visible for 5 years, because then it could get stolen a lot easier. This way at least if the key doesn't work because it's been botted, they send it to wb which revokes it, and they give you a new one.

It's not that I'm trying to put the blame on sg users or traders or resellers. That is the problem. SG gifters being a small portion of that but I pointed it out simply because I know even here people buy extra bundles just to give them away for the high cv count. I mean I listed the values above. You can't come close in price for these games if you were to buy them right now from resellers. Like not even close. It's at least 2x, as someone else mentioned above. If you were to buy them on steam you're looking at, idk, like 5x the price maybe?

I posed some of these questions above too, but what if humble instead assigned you a specific key when you bought the order and it didn't work 5 years later, would you feel entitled to an exchange? Would it be their fault if a bot brute forced it in 5 years just sitting there? Or would you contact wb? If this has been a problem for a while, why do users who know this happens not redeem their keys instantly and save them aside?

All I'm trying to explain, while everyone has different impacts on this, I don't think humble or wb are doing it maliciously. Sure their system isn't ideal for everyone. But in that case, I think the impact resellers are making is the worst, although it's probably a job to survive for some. Same for traders, they can take advantage of this, and even on sg people can make others happy by giving a full bundle away or raise their cv. However, steam wont give them unlimited keys anymore, wb or not, for charity or not, and even if this was the case, someone would optimize some site where they buy these bundles and sell these games endlessly for like $1 each or trade them for a tf2 key or something.

Resellers selling on the side doesn't generate wb any new money other than the ridiculously low price they bought the bundle at, and if wb tries to sell their game after the bundle is over for $15, just because they tried to do something nice for gamers and a bit for charity, then why would anyone pay $15 when you can just buy it for $1. Like I'm sure both humble, wb, steam, know some of these keys will end up in the wrong hands, not saying sg users because that's probably the best place they can end up in, but regardless thats not their intention. They wanna sell a deal, have the deal end, make some money, move on. IMO humble should insta reveal keys and not give refunds past a week, and steam should delete unused keys after 3 months, and wb would have nothing to do. More strict system, but people could make their giveaways within a period of time, resellers would have a few months to use their key, etc. This stashing for years thing and expecting it to be there instantly is not right, as none of us paid for the storage, security, warranty for it to work, etc.

or Humble double-books sold copies, over the actual number of on-hand keys, then only count it as a problem when people start to actually claim their keys.

Definitely this. I can confirm that my unrevealed keys for those games in past purchased bundles are also gone (how the flip can you ran out of keys on a bundle I purchased FIVE motherflipping years ago?).

"or Humble double-books sold copies, over the actual number of on-hand keys, then only count it as a problem when people start to actually claim their keys."

This is the truth of the matter.