Humble Bundle updated their terms of service on Dec 24, 2024 to state the following:

In some cases due to various reasons, a key may not be available to replenish and in such cases, Humble Bundle may offer the same game on a different platform (“Alternate Keys”) if this is a possibility. In cases where Alternate Keys are not available to replenish, Humble Bundle is not obligated to provide them. Keys, including Alternate Keys, for all games, whether bought in a Bundle, Humble Choice subscription, or individually, must be redeemed within 3 years from the purchase date. Humble Bundle shall not be obligated to provide any keys, including Alternate Keys, to games that are unredeemed within aforementioned timeframe and thus become expired.

People have been reporting that keys over three years old now gives a "no longer available" message, even for keys already revealed. Keys over three years old still work if you've saved them luckily. Always reveal and write down your keys as soon as you buy a bundle or from the store. Unfortunately humble sells bundles now when the keys are already out of stock so we can't do much about that. It does make me question the financial stability of the subsidiary. I wonder if IGN will be shutting them down soon.

Edit: This currently may only affect certain bundles. I've gone through some of my older unrevealed keys and they still work for now. Still, it's better to make a backup of everything in case they do decide to invoke this TOS on everything.

Edit 2: Ran into my first missing key in Humble Jumbo Bundle 11 for Domina. It states "This content has been removed. We apologize for any inconvenience." Apparently this is unrelated to the TOS change and was removed a long time ago.

Edit 3: I can confirm Per Aspera in the Humble Choice February 2022 says
"Oops! This game key is no longer available.
It has been over 3 years since purchase, exceeding our terms of service."

Edit 4: See this thread for additional games that have been removed:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/I8vLk/do-we-have-victims-of-keys-no-longer-available-case-from-humble-bundle-here-not-stock

3 days ago*

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Wow, that sucks. I'm sure glad that some time ago I went through all unrevealed keys (on humble and otherwise) and copied them to a spreadsheet, and have been doing that with every subsequent bundle purchase.

3 days ago
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I have a question:
As stated, also already revealed keys expire. But not if you write them down - or save them locally.
How can HB tell if you did that?

3 days ago
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The keys don't actually expire but humble removes your ability to access the keys in their website. So if you have them in a spreadsheet you are safe for now

3 days ago
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Thank you!
Ok, but these are two different pairs of shoes. :) The effect is the same, true.

3 days ago*
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Not so much as expire, as are shown as expired on the hb page. So if you didn't copy them, you can no longer access them - that's how I understood it.

3 days ago
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I think they just want to remove accountability for unclaimed keys from themselves as a store and put it on the customer instead. "You snooze you lose, we warned you 3 years ahead" sort of thing.

Doesn't actually means all key expire for real if you already took them into a lets say, notepad or excel.

Just that you shouldn't complain to them if that happens.

3 days ago
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Yeah, I think that's the general vibe.

3 days ago
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They could assign the game keys to their customers at the time of purchase, it would be easier for everyone. Instead, they prefer to wait until the customer comes to claim a game key before assigning it to the customer. If this isn't a way for the store to save money on all the forgetful people who don't claim their games, I don't know what is. This new 3-year rule confirms this.

And I even wonder if it's not illegal to not assign the merchandise to the customer at the time of purchase, only to later tell the customer that the paid merchandise is no longer available because they took too long to claim it. There must be some sort of trickery, like you're not buying a game key, but you're buying limited access to a game key.

3 days ago*
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Even if it is not illegal I think in many places you have to honour your sales. So either you provide the item or the cost to attain it from other sources.

3 days ago
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Exactly this is the problem. They tried to save money by not assigning keys to every purchase, and now to avoid taking responsibility for honoring their sales they made up some ridiculous rule that the keys might be good only for 3 years, and they started to remove the keys from your purchase page, I'm sure they still keep them in their DB though.
I hope someone sues them, because now they literally make their own rules, even for past sales that were made under different terms.

3 days ago*
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"You snooze you lose, we warned you 3 years ahead" sort of thing.

That would be cool if they wouldn't hold my 10 months old keys hostage, because they repeatedly fail to restock. What's the guarantee they'll care about them for the next 26 months, and not just rob me off it? Or any key at this point, really. (I miss Teraformers, Soulstice and Fashion Police Squad. Why can't they get more keys from the existing developers of existing games, almost for a year?)

3 days ago
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Especially since it is not hard to create new keys for a digital product and since we paid for them we should be provided with what we paid for.

3 days ago
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Especially since it is not hard to create new keys

I suppose Its hard if you lay off ton of people and all the ones left are unmotivated with thoughts of: "im gonna be next"
Humble having shocked pikachu face rn that they cant do same scale with half of people

Note: I dont actually know how many were laid off but I do know that Humble Games publishings p much 100% laid off and heard social media team got the boot

1 day ago
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It is not up to Humble if the can get new keys it will be upto the pub/dev and if Steam/Valve even allow them to have new keys

1 day ago
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True, but it is up to Humble to only sell what they have. If I only have 5k keys, I can only sell 5k bundles. Anything else is fraud. You are selling sth that you do not have or can guarantee to at least obtain again in a reasonable time frame, but you are still taking the customers money even though you do not deliver the product.

If you as a person would do the same you would land in prison rather quickly.

And when I say it is not that hard to generate new keys I mean that as compared to running out of a physical product that needs to be produced first. Compared to that generating new keys is the click of a button.

1 day ago
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I think the day of the bundle site may be coming to an end.

3 days ago
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I wonder how they will deal with unused annual subs after shutting down choice subscription. I remember when HB switched from classic to choice, 2 euros was on HB site balance with expiration date (useless for people who doesn't buy anything except from bundles)

3 days ago
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As always I find it amazing that there has never been a class action lawsuit against Humble in the US. How can they set an expiry date on game keys they sold when sometimes they fail to deliver them for months or even years on end.

3 days ago
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All of Humble's bundle sales policies are basically based on donations. This is a charity project that aims to create a win-win situation for users, developers, and donation organizations based on the profits. Therefore, legal evidence is needed that IGN has committed fraudulent business or profit-making acts through bundle sales or has made huge profits by refusing to provide keys. And since most people have already purchased bundles and registered the keys to their accounts immediately, the small number of people who have not opened the keys for a long time will only end up in huge legal fees and wasted time if they file a lawsuit.

Legal action is not easy. Even if they file a lawsuit, they will have to prove one by one that Humble deceived consumers and caused financial damage and trouble by not providing keys according to the legal provisions.

Humble also has a history of refusing to provide keys to free games like Meadow and The Ship - Complete Pack. If you start looking at each item one by one, there is a possibility that it will become a big issue that will require you to dig into the entire history of the bundle.

3 days ago*
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I just tried an unrevealed key from 2019 and it revealed fine for me.

3 days ago
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I was able to reveal two Jingle Jam Yogscast bundle games from the same year under Keys & Entitlements.

This makes me wonder if games from a Choice bundle are more likely to have this 3 year thing enforced since they're not directly accessible from the same page?

3 days ago
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Yeah, I just revealed and activated a ten year old key with no problem. Are we sure this "won't let you see it" is an actual thing and in effect now?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea to spreadsheet your unused keys (and the threat of this should be enough motivation to make you do so) but I'm also not sure we're at the "They took muh keyz!" point yet.

3 days ago
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Yeah, I just revealed and activated a ten year old key with no problem.

Please, read the topic, because you genuinely, clearly don't understand it.

They never said they remove keys that are older than 3 years.
They say that they don't have to RESTOCK keys, that are older than 3 years.
And there are quite a few games that are out of stock, it's Humble's modus operandi for years by this point

but I'm also not sure we're at the "They took muh keyz!" point yet.

They literally say that they haven't given you the key you bought, and from now on they don't even have to. And this happens with bundles as they are still running! Imagine you go to the store, buy a box of eggs, and you get half a box, with a promise that you'll get the second half when they find the time and opportunity to find more. But you still pay for the whole box.

Claiming the keys immediately is the best course of action, but it doesn't work all the time, when even ongoing bundles can lack keys (current monthly is not in danger :D ).
But humble never should have this kind of problem (selling more than what they have), and this just got worse because they just excused themselves, if they fail to solve it within a timeframe.
It's an alarming change, because the proper course of action would have been to limit the keys they can't deliver. Instead they gave themselves a deadline, after which they don't have to care. It's anti consumer, whether we are personally affected or not (and any game can be eventually affected, if they keep up their behaviour)

3 days ago
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https://old.reddit.com/r/humblebundles/comments/1iq35cv/games_and_keys_missing/
If that thread on the currently RUNNING Capcom bundle is true. It points out to really worrying and disgusting pattern of behaviour.

For information:
It has sold "6,207 Sold"
There is no notification of keys not being immediately available.
And it has 20 days left...

Makes you really wonder.

3 days ago
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Ummm... Are you sure YOU read the topic?

"Keys, including Alternate Keys, for all games, whether bought in a Bundle, Humble Choice subscription, or individually, must be redeemed within 3 years from the purchase date. Humble Bundle shall not be obligated to provide any keys, including Alternate Keys, to games that are unredeemed within aforementioned timeframe and thus become expired."

There's a bit more going on than a "RESTOCK" issue. If you're going to get all grumpy, try to at least be correct about whatever it is you're complaining about.

3 days ago
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Ummm... Are you sure YOU read the topic?

Quite, but I made the mistake that I expected everyone to be up to date the topic for the past few days at least as I am, because I feel it's a concerning change from HB. And again, it's absolutely at the "they took muh keyz" part because of the refusal to restock what people bought, as you also mentioned in your comment now, so you got aware of it as well.

Nobody had issues yet with "just old" keys in my knowledge, and people repeatedly miss the part about Humble no longer have to restock keys after 3 years. Which you addressed in your recent comment (and said nothing about in your first... genuinely nothing personal Landhammer, but am I that wrong about assuming you didn't read the topic properly, if you talk about a non-issue in your post, and you mention nothing of the "RESTOCK issue" that you later find problematic? It's just an extra that you talk about it but in a weird way like I didn't spent my entire previous comment on the topic or restocking issue that is a culmination of a years long issue, and I feel that your third paragraph really wasn't written in good faith because of that - even if we ignore the personal jab at the end.

I was talking about the current change of ToS entirely focused on the restock problems its new deadline, as it's the current and active issue, and your original comment neither addressed it, nor proved anything with activating an old key, for two reasons - of which you can also figure out the first if you read the topic beforehand, without any extra information needed:

  • If you got your key, it works, not really surprising. Humble is denying handing out keys, according to new changes (and people posting about it for days by this point), not deactivating them as publishers can. Its extent is questionable yet, because after dealing with the generally better written laws, I'm not entirely sure HB really has standards in logic and formatting of their ToS, also see in second reason:
  • It's questionable, if the second part of a single paragraph of a ToS you quoted (that should be a topic with start and finish) is accurate without quoting the first part of it - about restocking and substituting keys. Again, with that in mind that no "just old" keys were reported as not working, but the "unable to restock" keys are being removed, it's entirely likely that the 3 years limit is solely limited to restocking (from the opening topic of the paragraph), and not general activation. Still an issue, and we still unsure what HB means, other than being happy that they got rid of some of their responsibilities.

You seem to have actually read and/or thought about more (of the quite pressing issue about maybe the biggest bundle seller site), and genuinely that was my goal.
Activating a key you can access does not prove they are refusing to hand out different keys, with no end in sight. Again, it isn't, and wasn't personal, it's about knowing the issue because it very likely will affect Steamgfits heavily, through giveaways, or personally, because of how widespread the "out of stock" issues are. (Happened already well before the autocharge, pushing the incomplete bundle on subscribers at full price)

2 days ago
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Okay, it's obvious this subject is important to you and you think your mission is to educate the masses about it. If that's your goal fine, but it's not a great idea to lead with "OMG did you even read the tuh-pic" and then act indignant about "personal jabs" when you get called out for grumpiness (euphemism for condescension). You're not going to help make everyone "up to date on the topic" if your opening is a disdainful sneer. Contemplate your technique and how it may detract from your message.

2 days ago
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that's honestly the shady part.. selling digital goods but still going like "oops, we don't have more keys in store. We will email you if we get new ones".. which from my experience often takes forever. Even for Humble Choice, it can take a long ass time until you actually get your key, if the game in question is in high demand.
It often feels like they are selling keys that they don't even own momentarily.. and that way of conducting business honestly raises questions, to put it mildly.

1 day ago
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holy shit!~!!!

3 days ago
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happy cakeday

3 days ago
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Happy cakeday!

3 days ago
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This is bullshit, we paid for the keys.
They disable keys without warning that were purchased before the new TOS changes.
Is that even legal?

3 days ago*
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Looks like they are begging for a lawsuit...
And no it's not legal unless they specifically mentioned when you bought the bundle that you had a limited time to activate the key.
If you're in the EU you have consumer laws protecting you. Other places, they'll just roll you over with their BS TOS

3 days ago
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I would take that they can at any time go out of business... The activities with recent choice bundles and even some bundles is indicative that they are not planning to honour all purchases. But instead a decent chunk to go unredeemed, thus they are not acquiring sufficient number of keys from publishers to fulfil their promises.

3 days ago
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Dude seriously... i have a lot of unactivated keys from years ago...
*sigh
I guess it is time to clean them out.

3 days ago
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Older then 3 year keys are no longer shown, but previously writen down keys still function?

EZ to answer why:
Humble Bundle wants to save on storage space for the database in which they store the keys. Until now they did store every used key, now they will not.

For unrevealed (unassigned) keys.... they are just jerks. (Typical evil big corpo.)

3 days ago
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“Just jerks”, is that how they call someone who can now sell the same key for the second time?

3 days ago
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I did not wrote "unrevealed (unassigned)" accidently. Keys are not assigned to a user when he pays for the licence, but when he ask for the key to be revealed.

2 days ago*
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Yikes. With college exams in less than 2 weeks I don't have much time to clear my keys.
It's frustrating how much they can get away with things like this :/

Edit: Thank you for the heads up by the way!

3 days ago*
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It sounds like HB's doing this more to the Choice bundles than the others, so try to clear out any Choice bundles from February 2022 or older, then do all your others after exams. I went through and did all my old bundles keys from HB, Fanatical and IndieGala back in November & December and it goes faster than you'd think. Just doing the old Choice bundles shouldn't take you very long. You just need to reveal the keys and save a copy in a spreadsheet or text file immediately, you can redeem them later once you have them.

2 days ago
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This seems illegal in many jurisdictions to me, revoking access to a paid product without delivering it.

3 days ago
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is there a reliable script to reveal all keys? and easily save them or copy them to excel or other storage?

3 days ago
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There's this one, although I haven't used it myself: https://github.com/FailSpy/humble-steam-key-redeemer

I did all of mine manually over a few weeks starting in November. Not related to this change, just fortuitous timing. I worked on it a few hours a day, usually watching some video while doing it and redeemed close to a thousand keys over two weeks. I had 397 HB bundles going back to the very first one they released. It's not hard, just tedious, but the sense of progress once you get going really helps you to keep at it until it's finished.

2 days ago
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I'll take IGN sucks for 1000 Alex.

3 days ago
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While i tend to feel that that this sort of thing is highly problematic, there is another side of the story to be considered outside of the usual take; Bundle keys are generated by publishers and developers, not the bundlesite.

While it would be nice to expect that bundlesites obtained more keys than were sold, thats probably not the case much of the time. Id speculate that they're probably requesting a percentage of expected sales, paying developers, and then refreshing that stock later on as it gets low. If those developers or publishers no longer operate on Steam for one reason or another, they cannot generate new or replacement keys for distribution. But even if those sites did obtain more keys than sales, things go wrong all the time that are outside of a bundlesite's control.

We've seen all kinds of issues with keys over the years from sites selling keys and not paying developers leading to mass revocations. We've seen revocations when developers switch publishers to prevent malicious or under the table key dealing by an old publisher. We've seen numbers of hacked keylists, as well as intentional expiry dates, and both malicious and accidentally revoked keys too. If any of these should happen to keys that a bundlesite had leased or purchased, you could expect that the site could have a hard time replacing them. This is one of the reasons why most bundlesites say that they will only guarantee a key within a certain span of time.

Pretty much anything could happen at any time when dealing with an online store or service. Accounts could get hacked, databases could become corrupted, websites could get blocked or otherwise taken offline. Any of those could result in the loss of access to anything that was purchased and not claimed. All of those things might make for the argument that revealing keys is in your best interest, but the reality is that there are few guarantees either way. If you reveal a key now and its revoked by the publisher later, you're likely still without the key if the bundlesite is unable or unwilling to replace it. Time is the enemy of all online services.

3 days ago
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Don't sell more bundles than keys you get/order simple

3 days ago
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There is nothing right in not getting full amount of keys once you have sold the bundle. I expect a honest platform to have key reserved for me to reveal whenever I care to do it. Be it instant I buy it, or 10 years later.

And lately HB have failed the instant I buy it part too.

3 days ago
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+1. i don't see a problem if HB requests the amount of keys according to the bundles sold, and lock the said keys to the person who purchased. whether they work or not is another thing, but not having a key for a paying customer is a wrong thing in the first place. it's as if you are paying for nothing.

3 days ago
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yeah, that is the alarming part to me, too.. buying a bundle on humble.. or even the choice offer and they being like "Yeah, we don't have any keys in store, we will mail you as soon as we get any" IMMEDIATELY after the purchase.
So why do you even offer the bundle in the first place? If you don't have the keys in store, huh?

1 day ago
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There are hundreds of examples of businesses and services that do not work like that in the real world, including internet providers, banks, power plants, roadways, and other infrastructure you would consider to be critical to every day life. If everyone decides to make a 'withdrawl' or use the service at the same time, entire service industries crumble.

From website overloading, toilet paper shortages, water shortages, power brownouts, congested roads, even the simple logistics of storing enough money in one location like a bank. Hundreds of industries run on load balancing principles--that not everyone is going to hammer the service/business at the same time.

All of these things are built on maintaining a predictable and steady rate of flow with some room for surges built in, and all of them start to break down when an unexpected event leads to a disruption or an increased usage of them at the same time. When both happen at the same time the results are often catastrophic failures of such services.

3 days ago
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So you would be entirely fine with hotel telling you that: "Sorry, we overbooked" "We might have room available later for your payment come back and check regularly" I mean you might get to stay in the hotel eventually and get what you paid for.

3 days ago
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You did not understand the point of either post i made if you are assuming that i am not in agreement that overselling is problematic. But as i made note of in my first message, even if humble had one key for every purchase made, that still does not account for randomly guessed keys / hacked key lists, publisher revocations, and defunct studios or lack of management for those developer accounts / wholesale connections.

I am simply pointing out how many of these businesses and services tend to actually operate in the real world. Some people seem to be under false assumptions that these problems are always on the distributor, when in fact a number of problems anywhere in the supply chain can cause the endpoint to have problems. Ive worked in multiple places where the demand for products and services has exceeded the capability of providing them, whether thats due to staff not being able to handle a surge, systems going down, a lack of planning to accommodate for multiple failures at once, or panic-induced demand resulting in not enough supply for the people who really need that service or product, versus the ones who are afraid of missing out.

I know that many industries are built on leasing products that are only paid for when inventory is requested and moved. I know this to be both a logistics issue, as well as a cost-savings issue. Over-selling services is deeply ingrained into modern business in the services industry. Similarly I know that Steam keys are generated by valve at the request of developers and publishers, and that this generation is dramatically more limited than it used to be, and that it gets more difficult to guarantee generation as years pass. Even preordered keys are not always properly fulfilled on time due to limitations in the supply chain.

3 days ago
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Selling a service is very different from selling a product. It's extremely simple: if you have 100 keys, don't sell 200 keys. You're trying to compare something that isn't comparable in the slightest. Why do none of your examples include businesses selling more products than they have?

3 days ago
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I didnt think it was necessary to cover every possible example that could be described, but since you brought it up lets consider the case of online retailers; When an item's shipping time changes from its usual 'ships in 1-2 days' to 'ships in 3-5 days' one reason can be that they've run out of stock, whether thats locally in a certain warehouse, or more globally speaking across the company. Perhaps an order has been placed and a shipment might be on its way to the reseller, but its not in the warehouse and thus cant be shipped immediately. In the case of bulk sales, unless theres a change to the regular shipments that they receive of said products, they will continue business as normal taking orders and then fulfilling them as they receive stock, but operate with the obfuscation of inflated shipping times until units are in the warehouse again and all orders have been met.

As explained in other threads, the fact that humble only guarantees key delivery for a certain amount of time is nothing new, not on keysites, and not in the retail industry. If you buy a product from a retail store and dont open the box for 4 months and only then realize its defective, many stores will not let you return it and you will have to go to the manufacturer to seek replacement. Assuming its still within the warranty period. For many retail products that period is often somewhere between 90 days and 1 year from the time of purchase. The burden needs to shift to the consumer and not the store that sold it after a certain period of time.

Heres Fanatical's policy which is essentially no different:
https://support.fanatical.com/hc/en-us/articles/207289349-Do-I-have-a-time-limit-for-redeeming-a-key

There are many analogues to this type of constant-flow logistics network / supply chain that (usually) keeps running smoothly until the end of service date for those products when a few accommodations need to be made. Explaining the nuances of retail logistics to internet strangers probably wont get us anywhere, so suffice it to say, retail sales whether they're for digital goods or physical products are not as straight forward as a lot of people seem to think. The whole system relies on a certain level of balance and speculation in order to keep things operating smoothly.

Should they stock keys for every sale made? Yeah that would probably be the ideal outcome for the consumer.
Would prices of bundles increase if they had to purchase keys instead of lease or buy small batches to resell? Count on it..
Would doing so be more expensive, increase 'wastage', and yield less profit for the business? Almost certainly.
Would it solve all of the problems associated with maintaining inventory for 'late claimers?' No, it would not.

3 days ago
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First: enough with the strawmen. I never said you need to give every possible example. I pointed out how none of your examples are comparable. And of course, again, your example is not the same at all. Imagine you buy something online. They take your money. They tell you "it will be shipped at some point." After a month, it still wasn't shipped. You ask what's up, and they go "Sorry, if it isn't shipped within a month, you don't get what you bought."

Even with the other end, your example still doesn't match up. Is the store entering your home to take back the package because you haven't opened it yet? This isn't a case of people trying to "return" their keys. This is a case of people paying for keys which are then taken back by the person that sold it to them.

Explaining the nuances of retail logistics to internet strangers probably wont get us anywhere

This isn't about logistics. This is about a platform selling an item they don't have. This is about a platform suddenly deciding to take said item back for no real reason. I'm not sure why this is so extremely difficult for you to understand. If you buy something, it should be given to you.

You claim Fanatical does the same thing, but it doesn't. It doesn't sell keys it doesn't have. It doesn't go "oh well" because you haven't redeemed the key they haven't yet given you. It actually warns you when a key will expire, rather than claiming it won't, and then in the future expiring it anyways. Are you being paid by HB or something???

2 days ago
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The simple solution is for bundle sites (Humble) to assign a key to a purchase immediately. If they're getting low, they list the amount they have left and end sales of the bundle when keys have run out. And if they get restocked, they start selling the bundle again. Assigning keys to purchases is the primary thing that should already be happening. It shouldn't be dependent on a person revealing a key (although a person should be revealing their keys when they purchase something regardless).

3 days ago
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I agree it would be ideal for the consumer if this were the case, but its not without its problems. Even if a key is assigned to you on purchase, theres no guarantee that it works 10 years down the road due to any of the aforementioned possibilities. And if the developer is no longer around to rectify the issue by regenerating it, you're still out the product. Only that key you purchased and never used now becomes a liability to the place that sold it. Not only did they likely not make much on its sale in the first place, but now they have to deal with the potential of a number of things completely outside their control costing them that sale due to having to refund it. And doing so would cost them far more than any profit they made on it.

Despite how it might seem, keys, and more broadly sales of these games do have an expiry in a number of ways. They become invalid if Steam ceases to be a functioning platform. They essentially become invalid if the servers for that game go offline and it becomes no longer playable as intended. They become pseudo-invalid when Steam no longer supports the OS platform that the game was developed for, or when hardware support has ended. The further on in time you go the more likely you are to run into issues with any purchase. Even ones that were technically fulfilled.

I think it sucks to have time frames in place for redemptions, but i can more than understand why that might be the case and have outlined a number of them that are entirely beyond the seller's control. At some point the burden of responsibility for that key needs to transfer to the purchaser to relieve the seller of an infinitely growing debt of obligation and risk that may be outside of their control. As long as the developer and publisher agreements are fresh and still being supported, getting replacement keys is usually a non-issue or a minor inconvenience. But it comes down to being a matter of time, regardless of whether we're dealing with overselling, or 1:1 fulfillment.

3 days ago
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Me personally, I've long expected Valve and the devs/pubs dealing with Valve to give keys an expiration date. And I don't really understand why people sit on keys. Especially people here on SG where the solution for having extra keys is super obvious. Make giveaways. But such is life, lol.

3 days ago
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Hmm but isn't the problem at hand "Humble does not even assign a key to you", not "Humble won't guarantee the key assigned to you will work after 3 years"? You don't even get an invalid key should the situation you describe arise where the devs/publisher whatever revoked the key.

If they really want to get rid of the obligation, then they could get rid of the redeem option and just straight up reveal the keys for buyers and also have the 3 years expiration clause, but they don't...instead they have this "key out of stock" situation and still want to have the 3 years expiration.

2 days ago
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Yes, the complaint does largely stem around overselling of stock, although there are perhaps more complexities than just that involved as i had tried to explain in a number of posts. Its not my favorite method by any means, but overselling is a very common practice in a number of sectors, and no its certainly not the most directly pro consumer option. It does however allow many businesses to operate fairly seamlessly, and many likely wouldnt function, or perhaps be willing to offer some services without being able to do so, broadly speaking. All i can really say is that this is a surprisingly complex topic and worthy of much deeper discussion, but trying to relay that message and share a bit of insight into the workings of similar markets has been surprisingly difficult and left me without much energy to continue that pursuit.

2 days ago
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Thanks for this warning.
I already reveal and keep my keys elsewhere.

3 days ago
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I thought that was a sure fire way to get dupe key.
Revealing without activating right away I mean. Have you had a lot of problems with dupe keys when you actually end up activating or giving them away?

3 days ago
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3 days ago*
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Some developers or publishers do bad things...
Like resell unused keys. Or give them to giveaways.

3 days ago
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I have seen things like that happen so I assumed it was not a safe practice but since leaving them unrevealed doesn't guarantee anything, I guess I'll have to since I don't want to add another 100 games to my library without knowing if I want to play them or not.

3 days ago
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Activated in account is the safest place for keys... Join us game collectors...

3 days ago
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Heh I already find my treasure trove unmanageable but I'm going to go down my list and activate those I know I want to play and store the rest in a safe place I guess.
And then I'll never buy from Humble again.

3 days ago
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The only time this happened, it was by a big-name developer and a very famous game and it wasn't an unactivated nor hidden key.
It was an activated key on my own account.
Luckily it affected many others, so we -separately- messaged the old email receipt to them and it was sorted a couple of weeks later.
I particularly remember the Steam Support member be an absolute condescending douche when I tried to figure out why I got a THIS GAME HAS BEEN REVOKED but later a different support member apologized for the previous one's reply.

3 days ago
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3 days ago
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No, but they can track which keys are activated and then provide those keys to multiple places.

And sites like HB just silently replace unrevealed keys in some cases.

3 days ago
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I guess I'd seen people warn that unused revealed keys were resold. I assumed it was standard practice.
I guess it's better than losing them for sure.

3 days ago
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No problems so far and it's been years.
I'm very careful: As soon as I gift a key to a friend or set up a GA here, I strike-through the key and keep it. Once the friend or GA recipient confirms they activated it, I remove the key from my sheet.

3 days ago
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That's good to know, thank you. I'd head stories about unused revealed keys being resold by publishers but I guess it's not standard practice and it's better than losing them for sure or to activate games I don't want to play just to not leave them to A**hole Bundle.

3 days ago
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I agree. Better safe than sorry.

Edit to add:
Just to be clear: the oldest keys I have are never older than a year ago. I cannot speak for keys older than that.

3 days ago*
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Anyone know a way to test if old revealed keys are active still or have already been redeemed. Have some list with old keys recorded but recording keeping and time make me sus the are still valid keys

3 days ago
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As long as the publishers didn't revoke the keys all of them should be fine, Humble can't revoke keys they can just refuse to deliver them.

3 days ago
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This is taking a lot of time to open all the gift links I have saved and send the key to my e-mail.
Even captcha tests keep coming up.

Is there any easier / faster way to get the key if you've created a gift link?

3 days ago
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Great, now this:
"Your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. For more details visit our help page."

And just noticed I have 300 gift links. This is going to be hell.

3 days ago*
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2 days ago
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You gotta love Humble. Basically they have been running into too many "out of stock" support tickets so instead of giving people what they paid for at their own expense, they ninja-add a line in their already BS TOS that they think will help give themselves a pass.
To be legal, this should have been:

  • announced by email to all users and not discreetly added to TOS
  • given a time frame
  • NOT be done retroactively but for the keys sold from the date the policy is "in effect"

Time to go activate games I guess. And to cancel my monthly sub that's been inactive for months anyway.

3 days ago
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Edit 2: Ran into my first missing key in Humble Jumbo Bundle 11 for Domina. It states "This content has been removed. We apologize for any inconvenience."

That has nothing to do with the actual situation (ToS change). Back in the days of COVID the developer made some bad choices in PR and Humble decided that his behavior was unacceptable and that his content should be removed from the bundle, it didn't matter it you had revealed your key or not. The developer never asked for this or revoked the Humble keys, the keys Humble hide from their customers were perfectly working codes.

I don't remember right now but there are a couple more examples of Humble silently removing things from bundles in the past, including a DRM-free download for the source code of a game.

3 days ago
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Thank you for the details and the warning. Pretty lame that they are making Gift URLs expire after 3 years, but at least we are aware now.

3 days ago
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3 days ago
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I have a bunch where I created gift links. Anyone knows if keys are allocated when creating giftlinks?

3 days ago
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They arent. Keys are only allocated when the person who uses the gift link clicks reveal key.

3 days ago
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Ok, I revealed all of my ~80 gift links, most far more than 3 years old.
Only for 2 of them I did not receive a key:
Autonauts vs Piratebots (from Sept 2023 Choice) and
Company of Heroes™ 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
I don't exactly know what bundle this was from, but it might have been from December 2015 Monthly.
For both I get the message:

Keys are temporarily exhausted for this product
As soon as we receive more keys, we will add them to this page and send you an email.

It seems that originally humble actually had 1 key per game for every purchase allocated to that purchase (as you would expect).
At least for choice they obviously have less keys than they sell bumdles (at least for some games).
Just always reveal your keys asap after purchase.

3 days ago
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Hi,

My case too, I got 300 gift links. Having a lot a trouble opening them all, the Captcha test comes up for each gift link I redeem.
Did you face the same problem?

It's going to take over one day like this.

2 days ago
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as a rough estimation, in every 4 links I had to solve one captcha.

1 day ago
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I get a captcha for every link, it's my third day doing this. Very bad.

What browser are you using?

19 hours ago
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Do you have a VPN or something like Adblock/Noscript? Captcha is more frequent and more difficult in these cases.

17 hours ago
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Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I use the Brave browser but today tried a fresh install of Chrome and yes, a lot less captcha tests.

EDIT: Seems like after 50 links, it's starting again to ask for a captcha check for each one. Maybe I should pause for a day or so.

15 hours ago*
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I went through all 30+ gift links I had (mostly very old ones, as it was a long ago that I switched to revealing and storing steam keys) and all but one were fine. For The Guild II Complete it said it was already redeemed. Well, maybe it was, but I didn't find anything about it.

2 days ago
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It's definitely from the December 2015 Monthly bundle and the message isn't due to the TOS change directly. I tried to redeem that key and the Company of Heroes 2 – The Western Front Armies: US Forces DLC from the same bundle back in November or early December and ran into the same problem. Nice to see that HB has decided that now they simply don't have to provide me those keys, even though I TRIED to redeem them before the TOS change.

2 days ago
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