I am in the same situation. I re-read the giveaway info and it wasn't a beta. I even think it's not allowed to gift temporary keys on SteamGifts.
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Same here, will have to contact SG support, as that will now show up as not activated, I guess.
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I won a key in a second GA from this developer and got a Steam notification as well.
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I got this message a few minutes ago too. I won this game on steamgifts 2016 and not sure what I have to do now.
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Submit a ticket to support requesting the game be marked as "not received". Otherwise automatic checks will show that you have won a game, received it but not redeemed it on your account and ban you.
Nevermind, looks like support are working on it and don't want tickets: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/EGOtM/evolvation-revoked-dev-is-responding-in-thread-mod-is-requesting-no-additional-support-tickets#SIETNsz
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+1
critical damage for sgtools redeemed checking...
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Where the keys we're purchased has to be considered as it would be likely they we're not authorised to but i could be wrong. There is more than one possibility that it would be worth looking into.
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Yes, was just about to make a topic on it. Support ticket in the queue. :/
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Mine's from bundle, and that didn't get revoked so maybe it's just that giveaway. (or dev is not done yet with revokes).
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i am on the same situation. Going to open a ticket as well.
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Same thing here. I've sent a ticket support's way but I imagine they are going to be swamped; there were two 5000 key giveaways. That's going to be 10,000 support tickets requesting the game be marked as not received.
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i won that giveaway longtime ago and got my key revoked. i tried a key from Hidden Gems 6 bundle just now and key gave "duplicated" msg so developer deactivated everything propably.i suspect everyone will get this game revoked from his library soon.
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Hi there!
The developer here. I am trying to rebrand the game, have a lot of updates ready etc. But a lot of games are being sold illegally. So i just tried the "ban keys options" but it was a mistake that also some activated keys got banned (Just happened). I want to make it up to you guys. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to fix it?
Honest mistake,
Eric
Update:
- I have setup the mail: steamgiftskey@hyperreuts.com where you are able to request a key.
- I have asked Valve for new keys
-- I have asked Valve to undo the ban - I will contact SG admin if they are able to sent new keys to the winners list,
-- Already in contact with SG
I have developed this game together with one friend and invested nearly all our savings in this game. There is sadly no way that we have the capacity to get near the attention or players that is required for a multiplayer game, unlike the major publishers. With the new updates coming I hope to establish a player base so we are able to play together, which is the intend of the game.
That is also why I did give away 10.000 keys. In order to get a playerbase or people who would love to help an indie to reach some audience and just develop a fun game. It was very sad to see that a major amount was sold illegally. This sucked since our total revenue of our game in all time was never even larger than 100 dollars (Excluding taxes and cuts).
However, it a a quite good game besides there is no player base. That is why I am trying to re-brand the game. The first course of action was to ban the unused games which are being sold illegally. This actually had led to this forum in a couple of seconds. I am deeply sorry that I made a honest mistake and want to fix it immediately. I love the irony that nobody plays the game, however the moment I made a mistake I reach an audience bigger than I have ever got. Thank you all for responding this fast! This gives me the strength to develop further and make even more games, even though I make mistakes.
Love,
Eric
Update 19:45 GMT 30 September 2018:
Done everything I can for now:
- Contacted Valve and SG about the mistake of the ban of the keys
- I am waiting for a response for a fix. I asked steam to un-ban, made sure that SG knows that it was not your fault and you get un-banned
- In the meantime I work on redundant solves (if needed) such as asking Steam for keys to re-give and asking SG to re-give them
Update 04:13 GMT 1 October 2018:
- Valve denied my request of new keys without explanation. Requested again with better explanation...
- Evolvation is whitelisted on SG, this should solve the ban i guess?
Update 19:05 GMT 1 October 2018:
- Still waiting on response of Steam. Request are being denied without explanation. I even requested to make the game completely free for a week so the problem can be solved. I am just an indie which is trying hard. In the mean time my company is getting ruined by getting negative reviews, hateful comments, and bad publicity by pressing (non intentionally) on a single button. I have created a lot new content and made a new marketing strategy for the game to start a new campaign in which I really believe it would work and which I communicated with Steam. It's a pity that the game and my company (and myself) is now being destroyed before I can even try. I doing everything I can.
Update 15:55 GMT 2 October 2018:
- In bellevue washington it is nearly 9 o clock (steam HQ). I hope they answer soon on all my requests.
Update: 21:54 GMT 2 October 2018:
- Steam just denied my keys again for redistribution
- I've asked them again to if they are not going to give the keys, that they can make the game for free for the upcoming period so everyone can add it to their library if they want.
Update 19:38 GMT 3 October 2018:
- Waiting on update from Steam.
Update: 8:00 GMT 4 October:
- Update from steam, not possible to undo the ban (as expected) but they are going to help explore other solutions.
Update: 11:17 GMT 5 October:
- Waiting on response of Steam, I expect an answer and solution soon (hope today).
- I am currently setting op my booth at the GameCon Firstlook, hope to have a great weekend and promote the new Evolvation
Update: 20:29 GMT 6 October:
Hi there,
I want to resupply everyone with new keys. But unfortunately, it seems that this is not going to happen since Valve denies the key request. When I did giveaway these 10.000 copies, Steam had a different policy for issuing keys. It now seems that they want to restrict supplying keys. https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/18/16167462/valve-steam-keys-limiting-developers
This is very annoying for me and for you. But within these limits I am trying to find a solution. And the fairest thing I can come up with is making the game temporarily free so people are able to add it to their library. so I've suggested this to Steam.
I am currently (again) waiting on a response of Steam. They are very slow in responding, and if responding, it is mostly not specific. I have now specifically requested to make the game temporarily free the next weekend so you are able to add the game to your library.
Hope this helps you. I am doing everything I can within (and out of) the limits and boundaries given to me.
With the kindest regards,
Eric
Update:
17:56 GMT 8 October:
I've had contact with Steam and we decided to make the game temporarily free of now. So you are able to add it to your library. Hopes this helps you guys out and solves the issue. I am losing big time here, but I did this so the issue is being solved. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Feel free to add the game to your library!
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Maybe have some sort of email address where those of us that got our keys revoked could ask for a new one? I had it happen as well.
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Great suggestion! I have setup a mail account: steamgiftskey@hyperreuts.com
Please ask for a key there and i will sent it to you.
Please know that I am just an indie developer which tries to rebrand the game. Just made a mistake.
Hope that this eases the pain.
Kind regards,
Eric
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Good afternoon Eric, a good thing to help things out would be to send attached a picture of the old giveway, in the case of us who won it.
I'm going to send right now with a screenshot of the giveways screen
Have a great day and Farewell.
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You mean you'd use the idea of banning keys and then saying it was an "Accident" to get major publicity. Honestly, indie devs like you are scum.
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Jumping to the worst-case conclusion and assuming the worst of people without corroborating evidence.... Such a way of thinking does not sound like much fun. Regardless, it seems you will get a replacement key and may then continue playing the game (or not).
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idk if it works or not, sent an email and have yet to receive any reply(2 days ago).
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oh i'm sorry, didn't notice that, thanks for the reply ^^, i'll wait patiently then.
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Vavle denied all my keys. So i requested to make the game completely free for a certain amount of time, hope they accept that.
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No worries. I was just wondering if it happened to others. :)
I'll let the others do the suggesting. I'm not well-versed in these kind of stuff.
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Emailing you proof we lost the keys might work, but you'll be getting hammered with messages lol
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How could we provide proof? Most clicked the message away already.
I suppose the best would be send it to all 10K winners... Good luck with that though.
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Maybe a screenshot of this?
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGame/?appid=510840
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Nice... but I'll see if this Valve/CG business works out first. If not that's indeed a proof of adding and being recalled.
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CG/admin of site could handle that, with new batch of keys, just add new keys to site for those who got revoked.
Edit: Another option is to ask Valve to restore, but they don't like fixing your mistakes that much.
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Oeh nice! I will ask the Admin if it is possible. Than I won't have to email everyone.
Also, I will ask Valve.
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You could replace the old keys with a batch of new ones. Support can help you with that. ;)
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Is that possible? I mean they probably can but did they do that already once in the past?
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It has happened before. But dev might just get SG admin to replace keys instead.
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Seems actual Fanatical Bundle purchases got disabled too though, so Valve might be better.
On the other hand Valve works Valve Time :/
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That seems not right, I have only accidentally banned the steamgifts keys. However, I you want you can sent the mail and I will sent you a new key.
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Alright and yeah either way is better than doing that with emails or alike.
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Anywhere we can request a new key or something like that?
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change all the keys with new once on SG, we will get an email saying we have the key to redeem and problem solved
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Send new keys to all Winners is probably the simplest method, this also prevents to let force change the feedback to 'not received'.
Other methods like emails or so would probably be a bit bothersome with 10k Winners.
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Steam gifts provides you the email addresses of all the winners, so you could proactively send the keys to them that way along with a message about what happened.
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I will look into it. I do not think I have all the email addresses due to privacy reasons. I will ask the admin!
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Click here Then click "sent" link on the giveaway, you should see all of the winners addresses.
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You might want to contact Valve to undo that unless you want to deal with Fanatical keys as well. Cause I bought this from Fanatical bundle and it got revoked.
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Oh man, I don't envy you.
Hope it ends up without too much of backlash for you :)
There is hope most people appreciate honesty at least.
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This was posted some messages ago Eric:
stlpaul
Steam gifts provides you the email addresses of all the winners, so you could proactively send the keys to them that way along with a message about what happened.
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Valve can return revoked keys to accounts. You are not the first one who did it. I remember at least one case when developer revoked keys, but after peoples outraged, game was returned to accounts.
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Till this moment Valve states that I cannot be undone. However we will figure something out.
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Valve does not undo the ban
Whoever told you this is lying as their have been instances in the past where they have reversed mass revokation of keys.
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How is your game being sold illegally? I really hope you're referring to stolen or fraudulently purchased keys here.
I can't say much about giveaway keys, but if you're deactivating keys you provided for bundles that people actually paid for (whether activated or not), then its far more likely you're the one doing something illegal and it's absolutely certain you're committing a civil offense.
I'm not well versed in European law at all, but I do know the right of resale is explicitly protected in the EU at least. In the US it's a bit more ambiguous whether the right of resale covers cd-keys and hasn't been well tested in court. Essentially, once you sell those game keys, they're not yours to control anymore and the owner has ever right to sell those keys. It might violate the terms of service for whatever location sold those bundles, but that isn't a matter of illegally and doesn't nullify the destruction of customer property.
Additionally, if you're deactivating any keys that weren't intended for beta testing, stolen or fraudulently purchased then it seems you're actually violating the terms of service when it comes to your Steamworks contract as well. If you refer to the Steamworks documentation under "Banning Keys," it states: "You may ban keys to revoke access from legitimate users (for example, the end of a beta) or to revoke keys that have been stolen or purchased fraudulently. Once a key has been banned, it cannot be unbanned."
You may regret the quantity of keys you've made available, however you are the exclusive source of any keys released into the market and solely responsible for setting the available supply for potential competition. Using Steam's banning feature to reverse regretful business decisions long after the fact would be a clear abuse of power, and it's only possibly thanks to technological controls meant to protect you from legitimate theft.
I know that recently many shady developers have been doing the same and similarly cited grey-market purchases as their justification too, but they are similarly in violation and incredibly massive bags of shit at that.
edit: minor changes made for tense, clarity
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Of course. Did you read mine?
I'm not seeing where that post I'm responding to ever specified what illegal activity they were referring to, or ever clarified whether their intent was to revoke only unactivated giveaway keys or all unactivated key. Hence the word "if" I used where there's ambiguity.
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I think he was trying to deactivate all unredeemed keys, which is still a crummy thing to do to those that either won or bought that key.. Unless he had a way of only deactivating the keys that were "stolen" (whatever that means in this context), what he did was trying to do (even if he was successful, which he was not) was not a very wise decision.
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while this is a bit inconvenient, I understand how much hard work you put into this game, your intentions, and your general dismay at an honest mistake. I hope people see this for what it was, are patient and accepting, and you can get this all sorted out as soon as possible. I wish you all the best success in the future.
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Even if you had only disabled keys that have not yet been activated, you would still be banning plenty of legally purchased keys, including those from the Fanatical (formerly Bundle Stars) Hidden Gems 6 bundle and those that were purchased from Green Man Gaming.
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Hi Eric, i know you are busy with this keys problem, but i wanna say that i want to help your game, i gave it a look and i looks really good. I can write an article about it in Vga4a.com or Syriantc.com -- You choose :D
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Hi there Ragido, That is nice to hear and I would love that! However, first I am busy with fixing this problem so I am not able to choose. Maybe you can choose for me?. I'm sure you understand.
With the kindest regards,
Eric
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Syriantc.com is my own site, by i work at Vga4a. The second website is more popular than the first one (as ranking).
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Good idea you guys, send an email to the guy who "accidentally" deletes his game from your library and cant handle the backlash now.... now he wants you email adresses in order to give you free keys...yayyyyy...trustworthy !!!!! ironic
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Hey,
sorry for your situation, thanks for heartattack :) (thought sth happend to my steam acc... )
I wonder if I won it on SG shoud I mail you or SG will re-send new codes?
BTW. we got beta keys?:D
" Your Steam key activation has been revoked by the publisher of the game, because a pre-release beta or test period has ended. The content associated with this Steam key can no longer be used as a result."
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Hey, no I think they where just normal keys (Or maybe in the early access period it is automatically Beta? I am not sure), Steam did sent the message. It is my first time handling keys.
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I think it's sad, that the people with a bad ratio (never gave away a game and stuff) are the one who complain the most...
like they never did something wrong...
I did not win the game but I hope you can fix the problem so you can finaly rebrand your game.
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he seems to have revoked all keys so even unredeemed keys on Hidden Gems will give back a duplicate error message..
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Why steam don't give you more keys for the game? I just don't understand that, maybe because you have already got 10k keys? But you have banned them so is like 0 now..
ps. i've lost the game too
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See my latest update: I think is has to do with a policy change like this: https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/18/16167462/valve-steam-keys-limiting-developers
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This game is currently unavailable in my currency (PLN aka Polish Zloty) so even if it goes free I won't be able to add it to my account. Well, not without somewhat cheating. There are some other currencies without price as well.
Anyways, thank you for trying to sort this out!
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It is unfortunate that things turned out the way they did, but I think your efforts to remedy the situation will at least gain you goodwill from the StaemGifts Community. That is something that may be valuable to you down the road. For example, the next time you are marketing a game, you might try making a giveaway of 50 copies in order to get some reviews and/or feedback. As a whole, the SG Community tends to be helpful and responsive, so they are pretty good at giving useful feedback.
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well, 5k copies given :D 7 reviews :D the dev went mad :D
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Haha, batshit crazy!
Was a honest mistake. Please see my comment above.
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+1
It said it was a beta period when i open my message. It did not say that in the giveaway.
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Same boat here. Apparently I got it somewhere. Didn't see my name in the wins list in the page shown. Don't remember but I did get the message.
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same, steamgifts giveaway not mentioned its temporal giveaway, and cant create such giveaway anyway.
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Do you want the tickets that we made b4 reading this to be deleted Pete? :)
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hey, I'd like to ask - what do we (people who got affected by revocation) need to do atm or next? just wait or?^^
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Thankfully the dev admitted it was a mistake and is actively trying to correct the issue.
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Can I suggest that you just delete the giveaway regardless of what the developer may do? The giveaway creator clearly violated a rule by giving away what appear to be beta keys based on the message I received from Steam.
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Pete is there a chance you could mark all 10K keys as not received till the problem is solved since we are all failing SGtool check cause of this? :(
Or would that auto ban the dev
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I submitted a ticket to steamgifts and asked if maybe they could delete the giveaway, but I am not sure they can do that for a giveaway that happened over a year ago
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I've had a giveaway that was 6 years old deleted by support, it was pretty easy too.
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Anyone else joined this and won before? I just got a notice on Steam that this was revoked. There was no mention it was a beta key or anything. Just weird why this happened after 1.75 yrs.
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/HunmN/civil-war-1862
Edit: Updated description. This can be worked out guys. Don't worry. :)
Edit2:
Statement from the developer
Mod request on tickets
Edit3:
SGtools whitelisting
Edit4 (Oct6):
Now adding dates to edits
Latest dev update
Edit5 (Oct8):
Game is now free on Steam
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