I suspect that Humble is only reacting strongly (locking accounts, etc.) when the request is for a replacement key. I suspect when such a request comes in they do a cursory search of the user's trading/gifting activity and then decide what to do. Usually, it seems, they decide to simply not offer support to that user. The account locks are puzzling. We still don't have any data on how many there are. And, like in similar situations, I'm not inclined to just believe the forum poster.
As a counter example, I just got a refund at Humble processed very quickly with no muss, even though I'm an active gifter here, and I have also traded on occassion.
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I do honestly have similar example, when I needed a key replacement and it went okay. So I have no clue what happened to them
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I guess gifting keys from their bundles is officially no longer safe, quite a bummer.
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I'm afraid I won't renew my 1-year plan next time... Better stay away from Humble Bundle sooner then being sorry later.
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+1
Mine ends on December, likely won't renew and perhaps switch to a monthly basis to feel "safer" in this climate of uncertainty...
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Not only that,. i have a year plan currently, and it was full price.
Now they're doing promotions where you get free months, and heavily discounted months.
It's unfair to loyal customers to say the least.
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At least we were allowed to keep the Classic plan. But I agree with you that there has been alot of incentives/offers to join, but almost none to stay subscribed.
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Well, the freebies to entice new customers isn't a new disappointment for me, the frequency they are doing it is I suppose ^^
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That's really sad because I'm a monthly subscriber since 2015... But our relationship with Humble Bundle is getting darker and darker... :(
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Agreed, I don't buy many games directly as there aren't many I am interested enough to purchase at full price, bundles are nice especially if you don't have many of them and introduce you to new games.
That said, the direction Humble is going is tragic for the consumer, they have been repeating games in the bundles with increased frequency but only allow us to give them to "friends and family" which is an extremely narrow condition. I don't know how this will go on or what will happen to SG if the crackdown gets worse...I really enjoy the community here and hope this will continue to be viable.
Somewhat silly that SG separated from ST but is still being swept under the same crackdown as their terms for what is not allowed is so broad and anti-consumer.
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Same. Once my annual subscription is up, I'll probably go on a gifting / trading binge with whatever leftover keys I've got and then take my business elsewhere if they lock my account.
For the time being, I won't be buying any other bundles unless I can make use of most of the keys personally.
EDIT - Unless someone knows how to get a partial refund for unused months on an annual subscription...
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you can, but the 2 free months wont be refunded. obvioulsy.
so if you have 5 months left on your 12 month plan, you'd get at most 3 months from them.
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im tired of seeing humble support saying "we cannot condone you trading to people" blah blah
once they get sued a few times and change their ways, i cant wait to message them and be like "why are you condoning something you dont condone?" lmao screw them in the condone hole
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This is the answer I got today from HB. My question was to know if it is ok to gift leftovers on SG.
Thank you for reaching out to us here at Humble Bundle Support. We appreciate your question.
Humble Bundle purchases are for personal use only, and the trading or sale of games bought through Humble Bundle is a violation of our Terms of service; this also includes buying games for giveaways.
In order to support Humble Bundle's mission to be a force for good in the gaming industry, offer amazing deals on bundles, and include great games in Humble Choice, we will continue to enforce our Terms of service.
Can you gift games to friends and family? Of course! Allowing gifting is an important part of Humble Bundle. Though the Terms of service apply to these gifts as well.
TL;DR Gifting Humble games on Steamgifts is forbidden by HB, no matter if key or gift link is involved.
For my part I unsubscribed to all HB newsletters and paused my monthly until there is one with no game I already own (or I simply quit HB).
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Their deals on store isn't even that amazing and they are banning that too?
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My question to HB support was directed towards bundles and gifting games I already own, but they don't seem to make a difference. I can't say for sure on that part.
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But most people on SG is buying bundles and selling leftovers, whilst that the bolded text you posted suggests it's not allowed to buy bundles for that purpose. Maybe that is a loophole?
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If they try to mess with someone from the EU and this person takes them to court, they're ****ed. If a citizen from the EU buys anything digital from IGN, they can do with it however they want: Keeping it, gifting it away, even reselling it. It's a law.
So if they want to "enforce their ToS" and ban accounts from EU customers, their only choice would be: A) Give the customer from the EU either full access to his account or his money back, then close his account or B) Stop selling anything (digital) in the EU.
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You are correct in principle, but I just don't see anyone doing this. It's takes time and effort and is stressful to bring a court case, even in a small claims court. And HB being a US company would probably make that even more challenging.
If I had my HB account access blocked I'd kick up a stink daily on social media, and attempt to get the press involved. That's because I've never traded, but I have gifted plenty on SG, so would feel massively agreived if they stole all the remaining games I had paid for. But I don't see that happening from anyone else. What I do see is a few habitual traders have a rant on reddit and that's it.
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Humble Bundle's official response:
Relevant clause:
We do not condone trading or reselling keys, but gifting is perfectly fine; we typically recommend gifting to a personal friend or family member, as highlighted in our article. If you are a Humble Partner that has received a key as part of the program, those can be given or raffled away. Raffles can use Humble keys as a reward - just make sure you do not require a form of payment as an entry requirement.
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Hi MDK.
Your answer is a few days old, Saint got the quoted answer just yesterday, if I understood him correctly. Both answers contradict themselves, as is often the case with IGN/Humble Bundle.
Nevertheless, IGN/Humble Bundle is in clear breach of the law if they prohibit gifting or reselling for their EU customers (see this press release of the Court of Justice of the European Union, for example).
So I think we have to get a definite answer through other channels.
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I'm no lawyer.
But AFAIK law is what you answer for in the eyes of the country/police.
While TOS is the rules you agree upon to use a specific site.
So the site may not allow you to do something, even if it's legal by law...
And the site may decide to ban you (prevent you for using it) even if you didn't do anything illegal.
For example, if you use an ad-blocker, or disagree to use cookies.
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Although me myself is also not a lawyer, I know this: Law > ToS. If ToS are against the law, ToS (or single paragraphs thereof) become void.
This applies to the EU. I don't know how it is in other countries or trade zones or else. Nevertheless, if IGN/Humble Bundle want to operate globally, they must abide to local laws. Which means, if they sell anything to a customer from the EU, they are bound to EU laws. Which can be and are quite different from laws in the US, where IGN/Humble Bundle hails from.
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As far as I understand it - laws prohibit things, not allow them.
So you have a law prohibiting killing other people, or even using certain substances on yourself.
But you don't have a law allowing things. There's no law allowing you to breathe, or eat or run.
Anything not prohibited, is allowed.
So if a TOS asks you to murder someone for example, that would not be legal, because it's against the law.
But if TOS asks you not to consume alcohol (to be a member of a private club for example), there is no law prohibiting it. There is no law stating people are allowed to consume alcohol no matter what. There is simply not law prohibiting it (above certain age).
So a TOS can have conditions...
For example. if you win a car in a raffle, the raffle is allowed to stipulate you can't sell the car for example. There is no law preventing you to sell the car, only the contract you signed when you received it.
So you go into a contract with Humble, that says you're allowed to buy games from Humble, as long as you only use them for personal use. Now if you breach that contract, it's understandable that Humble will feel no longer obligated to hold their part of the deal.
Again, not a law, just contract.
Like for example, if you've entered a contract with someone to paint his house, and you haven't finished painting, he can withold payment from you.
You may say it's illegal and call the police - but it's a judicial matter not a legal one.
You would need to sue them in court, and the court will decide if in your specific case, the other side is entitled to withold your pay, or you are entitled to get full payment. Or maybe something in between...
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But if TOS asks you not to consume alcohol (to be a member of a private club for example), there is no law prohibiting it.
Such a TOS is clearly unfair/abusive, because some syrup against cough contains alcohol ; and you may need to use it to avoid spreading dangerous viruses.
Here the law makes a difference between drinking alcohol and being drunk.
Generally speaking, it's 100% not allowed to drink alcohol at work, or when driving in public roads/places.
And it's not allowed to be drunk in many more places : for example, in the supermarket.
But in law, being drunk and drinking alcohol are two different things !
So you are still allowed to drink syrup against cough with alcohol even inside the supermarket providing you are not drinking enough to be drunk. The supermarket manager is not even allowed to ask you to pass an alcohol test ! (I mean, if you're visibly drunk they can call the police, but not ask themselves)
As a footnote, wearing a mask makes all of this quite complicated, but not impossible because you are not breathing when you are drinking.
For example. if you win a car in a raffle, the raffle is allowed to stipulate you can't sell the car for example.
Here you are allowed to sell the car unless you are not the owner ! (providing there's no pledge nor anything alike)
The mean by which you became the owner is irrelevant provided it was legit.
Like for example, if you've entered a contract with someone to paint his house, and you haven't finished painting, he can withold payment from you.
That's a very (very) wrong idea because the part of the work effectively done needs payment, unless defective to the point someone else can't finish the painting. And that's not a "judicial matter" : it's unfair/abusive to deny someone's salary for the work he did unless you have a real serious reason to do so : that's your task to show you have a reason serious enough (it may be very easy in some situations, harder in others).
Thinking about this situation the way you did is like asking the worker to show he did the work... weird, at least !
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Such a TOS is clearly unfair/abusive
No it's not. Being a member of a private is not a basic human right. There is no law allowing you to become a member of any private club you desire, and forcing them to accept you.
Here you are allowed to sell the car unless you are not the owner
The mean by which you became the owner is irrelevant provided it was legit.
It's irrelevant - I never said it was illegal, i.e. against the law.
I said it was part of the conditions.
You are legally allowed to sell the car.
But then the company which gave you the car for free, can sue you for breach of contract (to the ammount defined in the contract).
For example, where I live there are discounted appartments for poor people, but with the requirement they live in the appartment for at least 5 years, and not sell it.
It doesn't mean it's illegal for them to sell it. But if they do, the company that sold them will demand the amount of the discount be payed back.
Again, nobody is going to "steal" this amount from their bank if they don't pay - they will simply be sued for breach of contract, and ordered by the court to pay.
That's a very (very) wrong idea
it's unfair/abusive
that's your task to show you have a reason serious enough
Again, your personal opinion is irrelevant here.
I'm speaking from a legal stadpoint, not from a moral of right/wrong.
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From a legal standpoint, though, there are laws that limit the requests a ToS can make, the conditions it can impose to an user AND determine the possible countermeasures from companies to abusers. For example, if there's a national law that says that the winner/buyer has the RIGHT to resell the car in a certain condition (in a raffle it's unusual, but it's quite common with sales), the contract with the raffler is simply void, meaning that whoever raffled the car away cannot be reimbursed by the reseller or such. The raffler can probably exclude the winner from the following contests, but cannot "take away" the prize or retaliate in any other way.
HB cannot arbitrarily decide to remove the ability to access purchased keys, no matter what they write in the ToS.
Besides, the other problem is that they SHOULD provide precise guidelines on how an account is marked as a trader, accusations cannot be together shady and legal - and the burden of the proof should also be onto them, too.
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That's exacly what I said.
So if a TOS asks you to murder someone for example, that would not be legal, because it's against the law.
Regarding their ability to remove access to keys, that actually depends if you view the keys as "property" or "service".
Valve for example claims the games you buy are actually provided to you as a service.
So while they cannot take away your property - they can deny you service.
(it's a clever way to circumvent the law)
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It's not the same, as the ToS is not asking to do something against the law (NOT selling the car is what the ToS asks, and that is not against the law per se). But THERE ARE laws that grant rights to consumers (that allow people to do something, to use your words) - they forbid the companies to put some limits in their ToS, if you prefer.
EDIT: yep, EU law should also cover licenses, AFAIK.
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Thanks for the elaborate reply, it's good to know the opinion of someone in the field.
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Thx for clarification. As I tought, it is illegal to lock a user from their acount, well, from their purchases. They either have to pay you back for unused goods or give you the goods you already paid for.
And if they refuse, you can take them to the court, which you will probably win. The question is if you are willing to pay court fees or if the user will pay for it.
The best thing is, in my opinion, that even if they changed their ToS or whatever, they can't just take away your digital posessions and if HB would loose one court, I believe nearly everybody would start suing them for it. We just need somebody who is willing to take the risk.
And I really wonder what their next move would be.
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Being a member of a private is not a basic human right.
Yep, sure, it looks like not being, although if it was the topic and if I was willing to discuss about it I wouldn't be as affirmative as you on this point. But anyway I was not talking about a "private club" (with arbitrary entrance) but about unfair/abusive TOS and I took the supermarket as an example (that's not a "private club") of a place where being drunk is forbidden but where you can for sure drink alcohol in some specific rare circumstances, and where you can go freely after having drink alcohol providing you are not drunk. Even if I quoted that line of yours, my point was about the part outside your parentheses, making the subtle difference between (1) being drunk, (2) drinking alcohol and (3) having drink alcohol before without being drunk now ; which is required to allow people to drink a glass of wine at noon and go to the supermarket in the afternoon without being abusively denied entrance. I'm nearly sure that even halal supermarkets are not allowed to deny entrance to people who drank alcohol before entering providing they're not drunk when they enter ; and I never ever heard about any mosque testing people at entrance (only night clubs, and at the exit), but this is maybe another completely different story that might be off topic here...
But then the company which gave you the car for free, can sue you for breach of contract
Gimme a real world example of such a case please, and I'm quite sure we'll see that either the company didn't really gave the car (like a sort of loan, maybe ?), either it lost its claims and had to pay damages and interests to the winner of the raffle who sold what he owned. In my country, the winners of such raffles are often allowed to take their win (the car) OR to take the money (the value of the car) : so it's nearly like one can sell the car even before owning it !
It doesn't mean it's illegal for them to sell it. But if they do, the company that sold them will demand the amount of the discount be payed back.
And that's clearly written bold black on white in their contract, isn't it ?
AFAIK, there's nothing even remotely like this in HB TOS... so that's out of topic.
I'm speaking from a legal stadpoint, not from a moral of right/wrong.
Here, you cannot legally do what you said : for example, the painter didn't finished painting because someone spill inadvertently his paint bucket ; and so you won't pay him ? Well, cool, then why not spill "inadvertently" the paint bucket yourself, dismiss the painter withholding his payment, then finish the painting ? There's nothing moral there... : the work partially done must be paid because it has been done, unless you (as the employer) have some serious reason to deny, period !
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Gimme a real world example of such a case please
I already did:
For example, where I live there are discounted appartments for poor people, but with the requirement they live in the appartment for at least 5 years, and not sell it.
It doesn't mean it's illegal for them to sell it. But if they do, the company that sold them will demand the amount of the discount be payed back.
Again, nobody is going to "steal" this amount from their bank if they don't pay - they will simply be sued for breach of contract, and ordered by the court to pay.
Regarding the painting example:
It's just an example not a real case. I never said the owner of the house is witholding 100% of the value for painting the house. He can be witholding only the final payment for example. Which may be 25% of the total that was agreed for the job.
So the job was not done in full, but the payment was not done in full either.
And you don't have the tools to determina if 75% of the job was done. Or less than 75%. Or more than 75%.
You can't call the cops and tell them "the house owner did something illegal, he owes me money, arrest him". They''k laugh you off.
You need to open a court case, present your point in court, allow the other side present his point. And in the end the court will decide who is right, and to what extent (you both may be partially right).
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I already did:
No, by "real world example", I intended to mean something like a link to a judgement, or at least a serious press article explaining it with enough details to understand and compare with HB bundled games.
You need to open a court case, present your point in court, allow the other side present his point. And in the end the court will decide who is right, and to what extent (you both may be partially right).
That's what I was saying 1st : you want the worker to show evidence in court that he did the work to get paid for it... weird, at least ! I already answered that... you're wrong in thinking that a work partially done is harmful to you (as the employer) because it wasn't finished, and to open a court case on this topic you'd have to show it's really harmful to you, and to what extent. The typical common counter-examples to what you said are (1) when the painter is called to work on something else more urgent than the painting of your house (and he obviously needs to eat in the meantime) and (2) when the work done is not as perfect as wished but still state of the art (he only had obligation of means when its unfair employer wants to require a result). If the painter calls the cops, they'll tell you to pay the work done because the motive of your withhold isn't serious enough (and we're no more in the XIXth century).
The main problem here is when talking about digital goods such as a game key, the ideas of "partially finished" or "not perfect but still state of the art" are meaningless ; and the comparison between a webstore's TOS and the contract between the painter and its employer is awkward. In fact, one can't oneself interpret the TOS one agreed (because they're not a lawyer) ; and even the webstore shouldn't (because things shall have been clearly written in the first place).
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Sorry for the late reply. Yes, what I posted was received in my mailbox a few hours before my post.
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Based on quotes from HB here on SG and Reddit over the last year, I'd already come to the conclusion that HB consider SG as 'trading' and so was against their ToS. Consequently I've favoured giving leftover keys from other sites, but now I have a massive HB pile of shame to deal with.
What is a shame though, is that I often buy from a HB sale (so not a bundle) to giveaway here - and even that would appear to violate the ToS.
Regardless, the above quote would appear to be further clarification of their position.
The obvious potential loophole is how one defines 'friends' and 'personal relationships'. If I'm a member of a Steam group of 'gamer friends' is it acceptable to 'gift' games to one? Is there a limit to the size of my group of 'gamer friends'? Or do I have to have met them AFK? How many times; how recently?
trading and reselling keys on the “grey market” has a negative effect on the industry
HB have stated the above as motivation, which is ironic since they literally started the problem by switching to individual keys for bundles to stay relevant in the early bundle site wars. And then providing gift links that guarantee a key has not been redeemed must have been a boon for traders.
But the real motivation is - money. Because traders buy bundles and resell keys on 'grey markets' then game prices do not recover after a bundle. As a consumer, if you missed buying a bundle, but the game you want is cheap elsewhere (i.e. on the 'grey market') - that's most likely where you will buy from. Or wait until the game is massively discounted (>80%) or re-bundled.
There is a possibility that this is being driven by the publisher's and not HB directly. HB rely on, and typically have a reputation for, getting good games into their bundles. That could be in jeopardy if they are not seen actively trying to tackle this situation. In which case if this is a joint effort, then worryingly the publishers (via the developers) may actually be able to see where a key gets redeemed.
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HB have stated the above as motivation, which is ironic since they literally started the problem by switching to individual keys for bundles to stay relevant in the early bundle site wars. And then providing gift links that guarantee a key has not been redeemed must have been a boon for traders.
You're right, but they only started it in response to other sites already doing it (at the time).
Had they not done it, they would have become irrelevant with time, and wouldn't be where they are now. (the leading bundle site)
(I do agree with most of the other things you wrote)
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I had to double check the date on that post - 2 years old and still on point. And very informative.
Yes you are correct that HB weren't the first to give out individual keys. But that just adds weight to what their true motive is - money, rather than altruism. They had to switch to individual keys as (presumably) that's what consumers wanted and anticipated (or actually did) losing custom to other sites. Now there's the threat that publishers (my hypothesis) will stop providing good games for bundles.
While I personally would not miss the key-resellers, I don't have an issue with them, except where keys have been acquired deceptively. Interestingly that article seems to classify reselling bundle keys as 'theft' - no something I agree with.
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I wonder how they would feel if everyone on SG just stopped buying their bundles for a month...
They probably have no idea how many people buy their bundles even though they're only interested in a couple of games only because they get to give away the rest of the games
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There was a discussion about this recently and someone made a qucik calculation of roughly %3 on sg giveaways. So they probably won't notice.
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I wasn't being literal, or organizing a boycott really. I just mean that they think about bundles as a way of making people pay for the same games over and over by just adding a couple of new games in the mix, and we think of bundles as a way to get several games for cheap, so if people who only get their bundles because they get to share the extra games stopped buying them, the bundle system would be over.
And tbh, considering how Humble Choice is going, and how hard they try to stop people from pausing, especially in the past few months, I think they noticed. They probably haven't made the link to people not buying the bundles because they can't trade the extra games anymore.
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Yeah i don't know what they are thinking too. I agree with you but probably trading community shares much higher share than SG. Time will tell if they keep banning people like that i guess.
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You've a good memory. That was my calculation, but I've no idea how to search for a comment I made on SG!
While purchases by users of SG might be small, I wonder how many purchases are by people specifically for trading - an analysis of barter.vg might reveal that.
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I don't think there is a comment search function yet. Just search from the answers you get if you get any from notifications.
Yeah traders are the people probably buys most of the bundles. There are also good amount of resellers and probably reddit traders among barter. It looks like they are hurting their bussiness in the long run.
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That's a good point if they weren't rebundling games over and over. But in their last "bundle" for example, I own everything except Mosaic.
Why would I pay 10 bucks for one game and a bunch of games I already activated?
They just want you to pay for the same games over and over
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Given the "tough guy" stance Humble Bundle has posted related to the issue you can read in this thread, any account can be flagged as problematic and be disabled - meaning you can't buy new bundles or access your paid keys (that you haven't generated and used/wrote down) unused gift-links can be invalidated aswell so key is safer.
It's laughable that they affirm you can give them to "well known friends and family" but how do they prove this? Especially when you are handed a ban, you generally aren't told why and your appeals aren't looked at most of the time.
Duplicate keys - been a customer for 2 years, never had a duplicate key while I generate them fresh before giving away but I'm not sure if sometimes (I would think rare if any) older stored keys can have issues or not.
Gift-links are strongly ill-advised now, logically speaking, it seems those would be easier to check than which steam account a key has been registered with, if you consider that when claiming a link, you tell Humble which email address you want to use for it.
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I've been using Humble for the last 4-5 years and have never received a duplicate key. There was one time I couldn't get the key due to them running out of stock, but they had stock the next day.
Their recent posts about gifting and giveaways are just laughable though. They can't go punishing people for using their system in that manner, especially when they're the ones re-bundling games with one or two new-to-bundle games. They encourage giveaways. It's basically entrapment xD
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Do HB will check my account if I bought bundle, revealed keys but they were activated on another account?
If you reveal your keys they cannot (officially) check where you activated these keys. To do this they would need force developer/publisher to hand over access to Steam Developer Console. Why? Becouse only developer/publisher can check where specific key was activated. To know if they do that, one of the IGN partners need to come clean.
And related questions how often humble gives you duplicate keys?
I never had one.
Couple of times I thought to buy bundles from them in order to gift games but wasnt sure if that is ok.
In European Union, you can do with that wherever you fu*king want. You can gift over, throw away, sell etc.
I didnt consider gift links because people have proplems with getting their games in case of bad link.
This whole Giftlink system is privacy violation, it was only made to trace what you do with theirs product. You, as consument agreed by creating at least one gift link to be spied.
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As others have said, HB cannot check whether a certain revealed key was activated on a different account without the developer giving them access to their Steam Developer Console.
If you have linked your Steam account to your Humble Account, theoretically HB could look at the your Steam profile's list of games and determine whether you have a game that you happened to acquire through HB. For that to even be possible, this would require your Steam profile being public.
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For that to even be possible, this would require your Steam profile being public.
No way ! A public profile is not showing which keys you used.
Quick example :
Buy same games multiple times from different stores ; reveal all keys from all stores, then activates only one on your linked steam account.
And then, how would they know what you did and where is the game from ?
...
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they have database, they know what games are on account and if u buy bundle with game u already own, they know it
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You said they know with their database that when buying a game you will activate in the future with a key from another store you already own it before you even decided which key for that game you will use to activate it when you will activate one of the multiple keys you bought?
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im talking about the situation when u already have a game from bundle
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You mean when Peter Pan buys HB a bundle including the game "THIS GAME" and Peter Pan have got "THIS GAME" already activated on his very own Peter Pan's linked Steam public account?
In this situation you described, you see that thanks to their databases, HB is knowingly selling to Peter Pan a game Peter Pan is already owning... Like, you already own a laptop? Let me sell it again to you! Are you okay?
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it's okay if i want it. But IMHO they should lower price if u already own games and cant giveaway
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it's okay if i want it.
No, it's not, even if you want it. Read again : you won't get another laptop.
That's why they give keys regardless of games you own.
But IMHO they should lower price if u already own games and cant giveaway
IMHO, they should use antitrust laws to break apart games stores from games licenses management ; allowing anyone to freely buy game licenses from any store, then play it on any platform thanks to licenses portability allowed by that design : licenses would be tied only to individual people, not to specific platform (which would probably ask for some separate payment to provide you the service, like downloading games, running game servers, and so on...). Also, it would allow anyone to re-sell and/or re-trade games licenses, because licenses management would be independent to the point some editors/studios would even want to give you the same licenses for computers and/or consoles and/or smartphones. Lastly, to support game studios (and taking into account the fact a game license is "eternal" because dematerialized), any license transaction on the second-hand market would require a little fee to be paid to the game devs.
/my 2¢
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No way ! A public profile is not showing which keys you used.
I basically acknowledged that by saying "HB cannot check whether a certain revealed key was activated".
What I did say is that if a profile is public then people (and Humble) can see "your Steam profile's list of games", and that can be used to determine whether you have a game (not a specific key) that you happened to purchase through HB.
And then, how would they know what you did and where is the game from ?
If you buy the same game from different stores and reveal all the keys, then you are right that Humble won't know which one you activated.
Along these lines, maybe Humble only cares about situations where someone doesn't reveal their Humble key but already has the game. When that situation is true, it is easier to conclude (right or wrong) that someone is more likely to gift/trade/sell that game from Humble.
I'm not saying Humble should do this or that I condone it. I'm just laying out what they're capable of observing in terms of Steam and key revealing activity, whether they actually do these things or not.
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I'm just laying out what they're capable of observing in terms of Steam and key revealing activity, whether they actually do these things or not.
Yep, and I am technically capable of sending an e-mail to my President asking him to send nuclear nukes to the moon. :-)
Not an expert, but what you described looks like "profiling" under EU's GDPR, and it can be done only with specific customer's consent... But nobody would agree to be profiled if that's to take future further action against himself ! (I'm not even sure such a consent wouldn't be void...)
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If a system stores any data specific to what I'm describing, beyond linking a Steam account which is optional and user provided, then yes I agree it would be data profiling. If these types of assessments are done manually without storing any extra data, then I would be surprised if GDPR applies since it has to do with data privacy which is different from everything I've described. Theoretically, the only extra piece of data Humble has to store after all this is a flag for whether or not the account is banned.
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Yet I didn't became an expert over the past few hours, I'd say this methodology needs first to profile (agreeing) people to define a behavioral pattern ; then to compare this behavioral pattern manually with each HB user. 1st, that's quite an important amount of work if it cannot be automated which has a non-negligible non-recoverable cost. 2nd, GDPR has to do with data gathering before data privacy (what some people are calling "privacy by design" : don't collect personal data unless explicitly allowed so you don't break anyone's privacy), and that gathering is required to do the manual comparison you're describing... so a user consent is needed first, hence what I wrote.
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The best HB can do is ascertain whether a game you revealed exists on your account. They can't directly check which key you used.
But what if all this is being driven by the publishers themselves - in which case they would know which keys were provided to HB, which Steam accounts the keys were redeemed on, and HB would know who bought which key.
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The best HB can do is ascertain whether a game you revealed exists on your account. They can't directly check which key you used.
Yes, that's what I said.
But what if all this is being driven by the publishers themselves
Then this would mean that either the amount of money they believe they are "losing" because of excessive gifting, mutli-accounts, etc are greater than the effort it takes for them to tie all the below pieces together, or it is part of a longer term effort to curb "lost" sales.
in which case they would know which keys were provided to HB, which Steam accounts the keys were redeemed on, and HB would know who bought which key.
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which Steam accounts the keys were redeemed on
no, devs only see redeem country
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Really? So only Valve have the power then. In that case there should be absolutely no risk using keys for giveaways.
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...unless the key winner activates in a different country than the Humble user and Humble/Dev/Pub does a comparison of Humble user's country versus what Steam says is the redeeming country.
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That would be BS. I give games to a handful of friends who don't live in Ireland. None of my local friends play video games. One of them I met in college, the others I only know online, but know them since the early 00s. Due to the nature of the internet, these people ARE close friends.
So Humble is going to dictate who can be considered a close friend?
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I agree its arbitrary and BS for situations like yours.
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It hit only the ones that SELL HB Games as keys/links or TRADE, openly in big forums and/or with very well known (and flagged) "bad apple" traders.
I seen no one whine that were "only a normal sg user that make from time to time a giveaway with a key from HB".
So the normal user don't need to have panic now.....
They hunt the resellers, the people with many accounts, that grab the 1 months free choice... and all such ones that clearly use HB to have themself a advantage from it.
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In fact, if you really want to remove the gain for HB/IGN, you may have to give all to publisher.
As far as I know, the charity thing could also be a win for HB because of the reduction in taxes (for administration, HB gives to charity, not the end customer). As they say on some support article "You will not be entitled to a tax deduction for contributions made by Humble Bundle to the Orgs."
That being said, I'm unable to find a direct confirmation that HB lowers his taxes with charity donations.
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In current circumstances is still better to not give any tip to IGN directly. Giving to charity is personal choice.
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humble was the best bundle source for me but due to new policies last 2 years it bacame the worst source ever
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That really sucks cause I joined almost 2 months ago and I did 40 giveaways (all from Humble keys) and I can't do anymore without risking my account getting banned/suspended ? =/ Guess from now on I'll buy bundles if the games interest me.
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Why not? Just generate the activation keys and use that instead of gift-links!
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https://mobile.twitter.com/squashpickle/status/1286046803432034304
Here on this page HumbleBundle subreddit moderator asked about giving away games on their subreddit .
I feel like this was not the best thing Humble did, since I buy bundles just for some games and I do not want the rest. I kind of have no clue how to feel about this.
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