I see you actually redeemed some keys off May's bundle (and presumably traded them on) so don't chargeback in that case. Last thing I'd check is to see if your payment method has any issues, see if the debited funds are on hold or not on your credit card. Otherwise, it looks like you're out of luck.
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after reading all your posts so far, can you answer:
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Ok, so here is my best guess, which may have already been posted.
Humble can't track where your individual keys go, only a developer can look that up. But they can see where your gift links go. Seeing that you bought monthlies and all the games end up in different countries could be a red flag. I think the bigger possibility is that you traded with people who have a history of reselling humble bundles, and may have already been logged in their system or banned themselves.
Every day more humble keys are given away here, but that's just it--keys. Once you reveal it and give away the key, they can't track that.
Is there anyone here who has created all of their giveaways by gift links only? I wonder if that wouldn't run into a similar problem.
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yes, that seem to be a bad advice.I have seen many trader on barter that do sell in third party marketplaces in high volumes and they only ask you for a link. This may as well compromises your own account if you keep trading with them in gift links.
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Huh, yeah, this is new information to me. I knew there was some monitoring of key resellers, but not that small fry were likely to get flagged. I know a ton of people who trade and split a lot and had never heard of anybody having problems.
It makes me nervous, as I've traded and given away links for years--never in high volume, but with some consistency. I regularly split bundles mostly via gift link swapping. Is this a new effort on Humble's part?
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this is definitely a recent attempt from them, but first time i have seen someone with the same issue is couple years back. So i assume as soon as IGN took over, they implemented these checks etc. I suggest you start trading in keys from now on.
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Its stupid, they lost a customer.
Steam doesnt care for the guys thay are selling access (sharing games) to their accounts on auction platforms. And steam looses a lot this way i think. A guy buys illegally game for cents and needs to download it from steam side.
But ok, thats steam and hb business.
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It's kind of sad that the most "secure" option for everyone involved in a transaction is also the one that might get someone in trouble. I'm almost glad I'm too lazy to do any trading. Being banned for something like this would annoy the hell out of me.
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revealing key and not activating those on your account sounds to me dangerous. They perhaps can't track where it is activated, but they can track if you activated it or not on your personal steam account once linked!
saying that because usually you have your steam account linked to your HB account.
not really hard to get red flagged if you have revealed tons of keys that never end-up activated on your personal steam account. (you have hundreds of keys revealed, but strangely your steam account only have a dozen of games and you ask why HB would go suspicious and would flag you as resseller?!)
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Not really. Humble cannot check if a key is activated or not. I believe only developers or steam themself have the tools to detect that state. Also humble doesn't assign a key to your account unless you actually reveal it so its wise to reveal a key you bought couple years ago so they dont ran out of keys . Also if you are gifted a game and haven't reveal the key, and later when you did and you found they are out of stock or key is exhausted, they will ask you to contact them from the gifters email. I recently found out about that and luckily i trade with my irl friend.
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Can you explain the possible concern with #2? How is using a VPN a potential flag?
I logged into my account once while my VPN was active and HB blocked my attempted purchase. But a few days later I bought a bundle without problem when my VPN was disabled.
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I have no concrete examples about VPN use and being banned, but as you said they block your ability to purchase. This could lead to cooldowns and temporary inability to access your account. If he had said yes, I would have told him to check in a day or two, but in this OP's case it was clearly gift link trading, which has now been strongly established to be cause for banning (multiple worldwide IPs logged when redeeming gift links given in trade)
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Might I ask what happened? I trade a lot of my choice games too and want to try and avoid the same situation.
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i will try to Explain as best as i can.
I trade games on the steamtrades website, using the Gift Link option always.
after buying the May 2020 bundle and activating/trading some games i open the humble bundle website and when trying to log in i get a "account disabled" notification.
So i message the support, after a while they message me back saying i got banned for "Unauthorized secondary distribution of games purchased through Humble Bundle"
I cant activate any of the remaining choices and i want to know if i can cancel the transaction
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Traders are just barred from getting support (if they consider you a trader and something goes wrong they may refuse to help then or in the future), but they only use the ban hammer when they think you have multiple accounts or if you charge back a payment.
At least all the threads I've seen on HB account issues have lead me to believe that's how it works.
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you also get banned if you keep buying multiple copies of bundles
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If it is true about your activity and disabling account it is a little scary. I dont selling anything, only give it away mostly on SG (in 99,9% or 100% there are games I already have on steam and usually GA them not right away after buy). But I always use gift link for my GA's from HB. Also has some unactivated games to activate later on my account or for games which i already have to give them away later. Would not like if i would be classified by mistake as a trader (not the end of word) and my account banned (much worse). Technically HB treat GA on steamgifts as a trade (which is not), but of course can be interpreted in such way. Especially that almost every winner is a different person with different steam account (the same situation as you would selling).
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it is a trade. you get points in your cv and that gives you an advantage over giveaways
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As i said i know why it can be interpret that way, but for me it is not a trade. Anyway see difference between giving away for a free (points regenerating in time are not a currency) and profit on selling:). Biggest part trade as you said is a CV, but still you can win many things without giving away anything.
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I would suggest providing steam keys for GA rather than gift links. The other banned story I heard several months back was also because the person traded and used gift links, because that's what most people on ST ask for, as a good portion of them are resellers or retraders.
Logically speaking, I'd say that it's much easier for HB to track gift links as these need to be claimed by email, rather than checking where generated steam keys go.
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if you were banned, you should still be able to access your keys. Unless they changed that with the choice system.
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Sorry to hear that. But from what I can see from steam trade account you have traded almost all of January, February, April and May choice games. Since I would guess every game is on a different account they flagged you since it was obvious you are a trader and that is against their ToS
If you do a charge back for May any key you activated might be revoked just a heads up.
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I've always hear it was the opposite. That gift links were the only safe way (because you're purposely making the key a gift), and that giving direct keys to other people could get you in trouble because HB sees non gift keys being used on other accounts than your own.
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I would hope that it was the opposite, I mean some of my purchased games didn't even have a giftlink option and I always felt very nervous about giving the key directly tbh. With the giftlink they have an email attached so if the person does anything shady with the key then I'd hope that is on them an not on me. But damn threads like this one make me paranoid af about clearing out my keys asap haha.
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"But damn threads like this one make me paranoid af about clearing out my keys asap haha."
Same, I tend to only activate new games I bought when I actually want to play them - in case I change my mind about some game and because of backlog. I think the last time I cleared out my accumulated games was also when I saw another banned thread like this one several months back...I have accrued another mound of games in my HB account since then xD
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It would be interesting to hear if the majority of people that have been banned/account disabled are key givers or gift link givers. I suspect it going to be the latter as they are probably more traceable by HB.
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I would think the opposite as the latter half of your sentence would mean that HB has access to information about which steam key activated where and I find that extremely unlikely to be the norm. It should be possible if they have a specific case and contact the devs/steam to investigate but for day-to-day checks.
Now gift links, since these need to be claimed by email address that we give to HB, it would be easier for them to say "this individual activated May choice with X different email addresses, looks suspicious"
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I've noticed that most HB bundles themselves say they're linked to my Steam account, even after recently unlinking it from my HB account. That leaves me wondering what I should even do or if it's even safe at all to give anything from those bundles here.
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I would like to think that HB understands the importance of the gifting system in place.
The only reason I continue to buy bundles despite there never being a bundle I had use for 100%, is because I could gift it here.
Otherwise, I'm not overly concerned with what I feel is low likelihood of losing my account as long as I clear out my buildup of unused keys.
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And you made now a account at sg to post that news here. Why ?
Maybe you have searched for other Threads like this one and the result at all of them are:
"We can't help you with your problem and because you are a absolute stranger for us it will not interest much people."
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i bought annual membership and after 5 6 months my account also disabled and cant access to my future choice games. Basically im scammed by ign.
i didnt purchase any store games, bundles etc just annual membership plan with my own credit card.
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"Hi there,Due to violations, this account has been deactivated and will not be reactivated. Further inquiries regarding this account will not be responded to.
Take care"
Weird thing is, due to my work i dont have much time to gaming, and most of my humble archieve not even revealed. I still got emails from them about "Your this months games are ready".
Better to keep their membership month to month i guess.
Also humble keys are region locked on my country, humble is one of the worst choice for reselling or game keys swap.
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You might want to make a thread over on the Humble Bundle Reddit page, the users over there may be able to provide some advise on the best way to deal with this. I wouldn't calmly sit back and let them steal money like that, they have no right to block you from products you've already paid for unless they refund you at the same time. And if you still cant find a peaceful solution to retrieving your money/property, try and do a chargeback and report them to whatever organization your country uses for consumer protection.
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I'm in the same boat here, but my case is worst, i bought games for years, and i have a lot of games from a lot of bundles in my account that some keys are not revealed, i don't know what to do, i have a similar message:
"Hi there,
Thank you for your patience. There appears to be some suspicious activity associated with this account that directly violates our Terms of Service. Further inquiries regarding this account will not be responded to. I apologize for the inconvenience but I hope you have a nice day.
Take care,
-Freya
Humble Bundle"
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Yea, you're certainly not the first person HB has screwed over with their 'suspicious activity' nonsense. If you've let them sit there for years then you really don't have many options as chargeback probably wont be possible. If you're pissed enough and aren't too poor to afford one, you could always hire a lawyer to sue them (but that would be more for revenge then anything as the lawyer would cost you more then the games are probably worth).
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Yeah...i think i will keep it on month to month basis. If i get banned, at least i have all my keys copy pasted somewhere else.
I dont use gift links, keys are anonymous
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i wish i did copy paste to somewhere. I acitvated few on my account most of them was unrevealed. I noticed my account disabled when they anounced two point hospital game. Theme hospital one of my favorite game i tried to login my account to activate it xD
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What's the difference for humble bundle: selling keys, trading keys for other games on steamtrades, giveaway keys on steamgifts?! I gave away 900 keys and humble bundle see that keys bought by me are activated on 800 other steam accounts. If I sold those keys or traded them on steamtrades it will be the same thing, right? So everybody on this site can be banned and get hb account disabled!
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Yea, giftlinks are a trap. Their real purpose is tracking where the keys go.
That said, there are other ways for them to guess whether you've traded/given away keys without using gift links; If you receive multiple copies of a game over different bundles, and reveal more then one key, they may assume you've given away or traded the extras. Also if your Steam account is linked to HB they can see which games you have in your account vs which you've revealed keys for.
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Oh they're fine with you gifting games so long as its with just a small number of friends/family, but if your regularly gifting to new people (which using giftlinks will allow them to know) they assume that means your a trader.
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Once upon a time -when Humble Bundle was still "Humble"- gift links were intended to, huh... facilitate gifts.
Just give your friend a simple link, and they'll get the key in one click, they don't even need to register an account.
But ever since IGN took over, effectively killing the "Humble" part (and leaving the "Bundle" part half-dead), the definition of "gift" changed, to something that not even they fully understand, but that basically boils down to "just do as you want, but if we think you're making profits behind our back, then that means you are doing so, and we won't hear otherwise."
And to them, "making profits" = using keys on any account other than yours, which also includes raffling them to random strangers here, with the excuse that we are "trading" them for CV (nevermind that it offers NO tangible benefits whatsoever).
Since gift links just happen to be veeery convenient to trace "suspicious" gifting activity, they effectively turned into traps.
Basically like Steam with wallet funds, though while on Steam there's a "just use actual money" backup solution, and they don't actually do anything else to your account (and you can still use wallet for yourself), with Humble IGN it's all or nothing.
TL;DR: gift links are but a remnant of the good old days.
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Well, after reading this, I am NEVER trading again. Just gifting what I don't want as keys.
Then again, knowing my luck, I'll get my account disabled for that too.
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No need to go to extremes. But it's not a bad idea to go the key route. If this was such a problem, why aren't there more threads on this? Searching around a bit, every thread I find (outside sg) related to account blocks seem to involve an OP withholding information. We're not seeing massive numbers of people being locked out, so something doesn't quite add up.
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Well, actually, I was fagged as a trader too but recently HB actually helped me change my email access when I had my old gmail account disabled a month ago. And they didn't even mention about being flagged.
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Yeah, I'm a member of three different communities where swapping links is a standard way of doing things (not counting this one). If doing that alone could get you flagged it seems like I'd have heard a lot more about it. That said, I do plan to be a bit more cautious going forward.
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I'm guessing you hit a threshold or maybe gifted every key of a bundle.
All someone has to do is look at your Steam comments and the recipients Steam profile comments.
If the word +Rep trader keeps coming up... Humble might draw a conclusion. Especially if the recipient comments on your page that you're a great trader.
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there is no need to connect steam account to hb, so how they will check if somebody is trader then?
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I don't think HB would bother check people's steam profiles individually, they will do only if you get reported by some people!
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Incase your account is disable and you are monthly subscriber
you should call your bank or go to your paypal to cancel the circuit payment from HB or you will be charge every next month.
I also got account disable on September last year and they still charge my paypal account on October.
And dont use the old payment method on your new account, they will disable the new account as well.
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i got response from HB about this:
'Hey Paul,
Thanks for reaching out to us! My name is Kasey and I'm sorry for the delay in response, we've been a little busy during the past few weeks and are in the process of getting caught back up.
I understand your uncertainty and I can absolutely pass your feedback along to the rest of our team for consideration on how we can make these terms more clear going forward. While we do not outright ban all giveaways, issues such as region restrictions typically can make doing so a bad idea as there is no guarantee that your gift recipient would be able to redeem their key and no ability for us to troubleshoot in those circumstances. Because of this, we typically caution against giveaways, but you are free to do so at your discretion.
Please let me know if you have any other questions or problems and I'd be happy to help. Otherwise, I hope that you have a great rest of your day!
All the best,
-Kasey
Humble Bundle
http://support.humblebundle.com/'
So i think its all about giving away link to person from other region.
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And thats my first mail to them:
'Hello
On Steamgifts page i heard a lot about ppl accounts being suspended cause trading, while they clamiming they only give away games on this site. There were many discussions about how you choose ppl to ban: number of bundle buyed/gift links created, number of gift links given, trading with other traders or just at random. As we all know, you know to where links are going, while you dont know where keys going.
I regulary giving away a games i already own when buying bundle for games i dont have. I dont want to be banned for giving away on this page, but i heard there is no way to complain with you/unban.
So how to not get banned if im not trader but im giving away games to 'random' winners? I dont want to be banned for just creating gift links/sending it to winners on Steamgifts.
I'm writing here cause im really worrying about what is going on with HB/IGN, as many many ppl complaining on forum about getting suspended. Its driving ppl crazy, they are scarred that if they giveaway games they will get suspended for nothing.
If you allow to create giftlinks why you suspend ppl for doing this? How do you 'choose' who's trader and who's not?
I think someone from your party need to go to Steamgifts/reddit and make a thread, just to tell ppl what is going on and why its going on.
I'm HB monthly subscriber for long now, bought sooo many bundles, bought some twice just for gift it on steamgifts(will u ban me for this?). I dont want to lose opportunity to get many good games just because u will mark me as trader 'just because we can'...
Thanks for reply
Paul
'
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I understand your uncertainty and I can absolutely pass your feedback along to the rest of our team for consideration on how we can make these terms more clear going forward.
This is a good response.
Lets see what comes out of it in the future.
Thanks for getting in touch with them regarding this!
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You can just do a chargeback with paypal/your bank. Those 3 months of games you already acquired surely cannot be worth the 9 months of money you lost in case you are worried about losing them by revocation. And if you traded them you can just buy them off cheap somewhere else to give to the one you traded to.
You also need to make sure preauthorization to HB is disabled on whatever payment method you linked because once 9 months have passed... they will charge you the annual despite your account already being disabled.
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Here's a story from me, it dates a few years back.
One month I was not able to redeem Civ6. The key game a strange error message on steam, like not purchasable in your country even though it was 100% row.
So I contacted support and it eventually got elevated.
They told me that I can't redeem civ6 because I was flagged active key trader/reseller.
Why it only affected that one game idk.
I did trade away some dupes. For example Tomb raider which I already owned but I traded away a very low amount of monthly games, like 2 or 3.
They were not giving away any info on how or why I was flagged.
Eventually some other games had issues, too that I couldn't activate with the same error message on steam, like splasher or mafia 3 or one recent example is blasphemous.
Why these specific games, I really don't know.
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It does sound like your keys were region locked. Have you verified that your Steam account country, current residence, and country setting on Humble (it's in your account settings on Humble) are the same. I recall getting an email from Humble in April to confirm location settings.
"Updating your Location will control the following:
Your currency, pricing, wallet credits, and tax rates
Regional assignment of the keys you receive"
I had a dialog with one person who was in the in EU but their country setting on Humble was Brazil so they had several keys that they couldn't redeem because of region locking.
CIV VI, Splasher, and Mafia III were all region locked in their monthly bundles.
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I did check and of course this is what hey first suspected. However, I know what an error message for locked regions looks like, and this was different. They then confirmed I was flagged for trading/selling with no further explanation whatsoever
Edit: More info. This is exactly what I see when I try to activate one of the mentioned keys (also with the empty box that does not list any package/gamename):
https://i.imgur.com/BTEvMEd.png
As far as I understand, you should normally only see this when the "AllowPurchaseFromRestrictedCountries" Flag is set to NO, like here: https://steamdb.info/sub/15216/
However, for example Blasphemous does not have any package with this flag set to NO.
So that error message should never pop up with this game, it does for me however.
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So whenever I get a new bundle I activate all the games I don't have and immediately turn the ones I don't want/need into gift links, I then copy and paste those gift links into a note pad for easier access.
My question is; if my account gets disabled/deleted/suspended or something, will those gift-links I own still be valid? Like if I were to give them to someone, would they still work?
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I saw this question in another thread at some point, so apologizes if that was you and you were already answered, but no, your gift links will be invalid and as good as gone as long as your account remains disabled.
It is best to keep pure Steam keys, but not just because of your account possibly getting disabled, but because keys in gift links aren't actually guaranteed. Humble Bundle collects a finite number of keys, and if you keep a gift link or unrevealed key for a long time, they may no longer have a key for you to redeem, though this is rare (but not unheard of).
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Idk, i had put down some gift links before i was disabled in my spreadsheet and am still able to access them. Same as unrevealed keys. Though no longer have access to the ones i didnt copy though of course.
But i did have one unrevealed key that was no longer available so duno hoe it works cos everything else in my doc still seems to still be fine for now
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Agree with this one (in the USA)
Since when are we not allowed to trade or gift our unwanted copies of games from bundles? I paid money for these codes, theyre mne to use how I see fit as long as I don't sell them for money. Theres literally nothing illegal about trading people stuff
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OP is in Brazil. I don't think citizens in that country have the same legal rights as EU, but I don't know for certain. You are right that sending a comment like the one you just posted to HB support will get them to unblock your account if you're an EU resident.
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There was a time when some bundles contain one free month of humble choice. So I make an new account, and gifted to it, then activated a the free month. So basically got plusz 9-12 games for free that I gifted, traded or sold. If they ban the new account, I don't really care, cuz I never use that account afterwards. I did this with once every bundle, cuz I don't care much. But somebody did this multiple times. So I can understand why humble dialed back.
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well at first I just asked about termination, got reply, that was quite rude as no way to explain or anything
"Thank you for writing in. 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. Due to these violations, this account has been deactivated and will not be reactivated. Further inquiries regarding this account will not be responded to."
sent new mail under workplace mail, explaining situation, will see if anybody answers... :(
EDIT: last mail got forwarded to a specialist for additional assistance (may be fancy name, but will see, all I asked was atleast to ability to withdraw products I bought)
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You might also want to try mentioning your local laws.
I had an issue with HB refusing to validate one of my purchases even after validation my phone number (which in itself is an abuse, on a side note), I wrote them with the exact law articles related to the case (in my country, there are laws against refusing to sell without a damn good reason) and it worked.
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Too many bundles? how many? like you constantly bought 2 of the same bundles everytime a new bundle came out before the banhammer?
Also did you constantly create and send gift links to people before getting banned? from other people anecdotes that's usually the most common way for people to get banned.
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Not sure if it would be worth making a PSA about it again, so I'll just mention it here: it's probably a top idea to always reveal your HB keys and store them yourself, for 2 reasons :
1) protection against what happened to you where HB just decides to nuke your account, but also
2) protection against cases where HB oversells keys are runs out of stock (as keys are NOT reserved before your reveal them - and yes, the case where I was never able to reveal a key happened to me once)
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Keys are not attributed until they are revealed, so nothing to revoke as far as unrevealed keys are concerned.
About revealed keys, hard to guess... IMO, I don't think they'd go as far as to revoke them, as that would be pretty tedious, not to mention that would probably give solid grounds for refund requests at the payment processor and/or for actions with Valve (as publishers are not supposed to abuse the key revocation features). But you never know with the HB smart-asses...
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Recently my HB account got disabled, probably because i was flagged as a trader, as far as i know i can't undo this ban, but i wanna know i i can cancel the transaction on my credit card since i didn't redeem all my keys for May 2020 Humble Choice
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