They probably just checked the first sentences of the description on your profile ;x, I dunno about them referencing SG in any way here... but who knows, since it's one of those obfuscated messages worded in general terms.
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Strictly speaking, it is. We had a debate (well, several) on whether SteamGifts is a charity site or not, and considering those were in clear large majority who said it is not, then it pretty much makes it a semi-underground key exchange site, which is indeed against Humble Terms of Service.
For US residents and not EU ones, since we can do whatever the fuck we want with our digital game keys, but we are kinda used to them considering US = world.
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Yeah, strictly speaking, using SG could actually violate their TOS or at least how they interpret them/SG (I haven't concerned myself that much with how US law deals with digital purchases or their TOS tbh) and additionally, I don't think they'd go to such lengths as checking every request that thoroughly anyway ;>.
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It seems humble bundle finally starts doing action for those resellers and traders, heard and know of some of them abusing the fact that they do key resets for the more "expensive" games in order to profit more. By no means am i accusing you of it (by the looks you don't even seem to be a trader), just stating it out there
I guess just use the steam key option instead of doing gift links for future giftaways
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Splendid!
The other great thing about Humble Bundle comes with the key restrictions.
You buy a ROW key, but when you give it away it turns out to be a key restricted to your region only. And HB support refuse to help you, 'cause trading/reselling HB keys is a no-no.
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It was always a no-no when it comes to trading and reselling HB keys, the keys were always from the start for personal use only.
Key restriction wise it was always stated when doing gift options or before buying from store
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Yeah, but recently if you buy a ROW key from HB, you get the "[your region] ROW" key, which is only redeemable in your region.
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I'm not sure about that, but if that is true i may have to skip HB as a place to get my ROW keys to do GA then :(
Any recent examples you had?
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I was just writing a reply for you and suddenly was enlighten with understanding.
So in the past ROW keys was redeemable in EU (it's my region) and now ROW keys are unavailable for EU users.
I was misguided by HB support guy who told me that when Canadian user is buying ROW key, he gets "NA ROW' key instead, which is redeemable only in NA region. I guess he does not knew what is he talking about.
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It only depends on the publisher for these sort of scenarios, not the general type of games. One example i think of in your case is the NBA 2K17. Publishers decide where places get region locked. They want you to think its only redeemable only in your region as they do not want you to be tempted to resell it to other regions. Reselling usually only works if its ROW as it has biggest audience and usually keys given are all ROW, just they want you to think otherwise. Less you know the better sort of speak
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ROW activation restrictions vary publisher to publisher (SickTeddyBear offers a detailed explanation of how that works here).
In fairness to the "support guy", NA is almost always the region restriction for Canada or the States (when one exists for them), versus one specific to the individual regions.
Likewise, SG bundle threads usually are quick to pick up on any region restrictions, so you can always just follow those before buying [or dig through SteamDB listings for the games in question].
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Someone from Australia bought me a recent humble bundle, with Saint's Row and such, turned out keys were Australian locked while i am in Europe.
He mailed support, but i stupidly was thinking they wouldnt replace the keys anyway, so i made region lock giveaways for them here, but then day later humble support replaced the keys for european ones, making the keys i gave away invalid and he bailed me out by buying another tier 1.
Sometimes they do help (might all depend on who you get).
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It's not about HB, it's about how the publisher handles the regions since "ROW" is not the same for every publisher. It stands for Rest Of World and after you've set specific regions (such as EU, Asia, South America, etcetera...) every country that doesn't fall in one of these regions is in the ROW region. Do not mistake row for global, I'd advice you to check steam.db for each game you're interested in trading.
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yeah - like to see humble bundle try to enforce anything we in the EU want to do with our keys - as once we have purchased them, the law states that they are ours and we can do what we want with them - as far as I am aware anyway ! - I can give away games to who I want -so the only thing they could do is stop selling keys to the EU in this instance
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Well, technically, it is - you just get warm feelings instead of hard cash :D
I guess they just saw you're making tons of gift-links and their recipents are using tons of different mails - clear signs of using keys in some bigger circles than just-family-and-close-friends.
Unless you clearly wrote in your mail about Steamgifts?
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No, I only stated it was to friends. Never mentioned the site.
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I think they find it suspicious in having too many different "friends"
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I do have quite a few IRL friends and some of them have multiple emails. So how would they know :P
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Well, if for example you gave 50 gifts that went to like 40 different mails, that's not-enough-proof but it does start to look suspicious, so they take out their big "you resale, we don't support you" cannon, just in case.
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This is a good point. That many different claimant emails might come off as suspicious. I wonder if the OP might follow up with an email stating the purpose of SG, that he's giving away gifts and including some screenshots of his HB winners, it's a bit of a privacy grey area showing other users email addresses but being this is communications with support it should be okay. Hopefully they used the same email addresses to redeem the gifts. Furthermore that last line comes off as a very good way to lose a customer, glance at his issue, declare him a reseller and flatly refuse to support him in the future but thanks and have a great day! Oy.
The gift link is there to do exactly that, give gifts. Unless he was generating hundreds of them in a short period there should be no issue. I hope it works out for you Ryahn.
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Wow so many BS in one text is hardcore!(In the answer letter from HB)
Reselling impact in no way the game industry as it's a one time thing(after you activated the key it's gone and noone else can use it again).
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Oh, it does. G2A only takes a seemingly small cut of every key sold there, in the volume of few cents to a dollar at worst, yet they still managed to throw around millions as "promotional" and even more as "sponsor" money. If the few-percent fees make a multi-million dollar business, imagine the volume of money going through them. And it is only one key reseller site of the three large ones.
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The point: if reselling is big enough that even small percentages of it generate money to the point where they can just throw millions at random people and events, then it is big enough to actually impact the video game or at least the PC gaming industry.
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If it's big enough, then the devs scammed steam. And if they get the 'payback', then they can only blame themself.
How you throw 1m+ keys around w/o being used? And the dev had profit already by selling them, so what happen with them afterwards(as one time item) doesn't impact him as the real customer remove the key. So the devs scammed themself with short time profit(selling as keys) vs. selling it through steam. And the more people bypass the keys, the more advertisemt it could be for the game itself = potential customers.
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Considering we had devs that flat-out told that they prefer people pirating their game through torrents to seeing them on key seller sites, somehow I doubt that the actual people in the industry share your sentiment about the marketing value.
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They prefer people pirating to key sellers as its sort of a lesser of two evils. You can't control someone and its the best option, they rather a poor kid to download their official game for free rather then spending money on a reseller and giving his hard-earned money to someone that probably doesn't deserve the money with the fact that the reseller probably abused the fact that during sometime the game was given out free / cheaply sold and reselling it to unsuspecting users for quick buck.
Why encourage the behavior of laziness and the scamming of other users just for your own financial benefit?
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they rather a poor kid to download their official game for free rather then spending money on a reseller and giving his hard-earned money to someone that probably doesn't deserve the money with the fact that the reseller probably abused the fact that during sometime the game was given out free / cheaply sold and reselling it to unsuspecting users for quick buck.
The reason is not this heartwarming ooohh, give to the poor while not supporting others - simply that pirating something equals no income. Grey markets carry the chance of selling keys bought with stolen credit cards, and the refunds actually cost money for the developer, while even just supporting grey markets will raise their visibility and the chance, that they'll do the stolen-card trick with anyone's game
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Read that part of HB mail again: "it should also be noted that a majority of resold/obtained games in this arena are purchased with stolen personal information" - that's where the impact is the most significant. Shady resellers are mass-buying keys/bundles using stolen cc and then flip them on g2a, and some time later the store is facing chargebacks. Quite obviously it affects the whole industry, including developers.
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Wow should we now massmurder all austrian people because Hitler existed?
I will highlight your problem: using stolen cc That's illegal behavior and has NOTHING with reselling to do.
'Quite obviously it affects the whole industry, including developers.' Quite obviously thieves are affecting the whole industry.
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It has everything to do with reselling. If there weren't a way for them to resell game keys in bulk, ie G2A, Kinguin, etc, then they wouldn't use the stolen CC to buy games, they'd use them to buy something else they can quickly and easily turn into cash. Your argument is akin to a fence saying "Look, I just sell people the stolen goods, I'm not doing anything wrong. It's the thieves that are causing the problem."
Also, your comparison is ridiculous. Resellers are people who choose to do something. They're not a race, and this isn't racial profiling. If you want to use Hitler as a comparison, then it should be "We should now mass murder all militant white supremacist murderers because Hitler existed?"
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Then disable keypurchases with credit card. Problem solved.
Thieves do all to sell the stolen good. This doesn't mean normal people selling goods are now criminals.
Has nothing to do with the race, but the group. Austrian = group. Reseller = group. So why are all bad of this group because one/few/many/almost all of them? Makes no sense. Criminalising of a whole group for nothing just because of bad people abusing many systems(credit card/key buying etc.)?
Either ban all reseller or leave all alive. Don't pick the cherry out!
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Austrian is a nationality. Not a chosen activity. Austrians and resellers are not equivalent groups.
If devs could ban all people who resold keys, then they would. That's why devs will say they would rather you pirate their game than buy it from G2A or Kinguin or any other non-authorized retailer.
I personally think individual trading and even selling of keys is fine, as long as you've paid for the key from an authorized reseller, but I will never buy a game from G2A or any other gray market, because they profit from ripping off the devs and their customers. Why else would G2A charge their customers for insurance in case the keys they buy turn out to be stolen? They know that a significant portion of the keys that are sold on their service are stolen! And they're making a profit off of that. Why you're defending them is incomprehensible to me.
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k, but it's a group within europe.
You contradict yourself you know? Reselling is the same as not buying from authorized reseller. Same as trading them away. So you want again a first buy be customer rule.
I'm not defending G2A, I'm arguing about reselling = bad/must be banned.
Again the argument is about illegal behavior which is inacceptable, but what has it to do with reselling itself(from a legit source either be a private person or a site)?
You throw in authorized, so anything not authorized by the devs is bad?
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I don't think reselling in and of itself is bad. I think the "grey market" that has led to such widespread buying of game keys with stolen CCs is bad. The reason Humble Bundle has these terms in their ToS is because of the gray market, not because of individuals trading or reselling keys.
Hell, a number of devs I've heard talk about it have no problem with individuals trading or reselling keys they don't want from bundles and stuff like that. The problem comes from those who buy 10, 50, 100 or more bundles never intending to play them, but simply to sell them at a higher price for a profit at the expense of the developers. Those are the ones that are most likely to use CC fraud and thus the largest number of purchases are the most likely to end up costing the developer in charge back fees.
Even if they don't, they end up costing the devs legitimate sales by waiting until the bundle sale is over and then reselling the games at a price that gives them 3-4x profit while still severely undercutting the normal price. This does damage the industry, because some of the publicity the game might have garnered from being a part of the bundle gets eaten up by people buying from the resellers that bought bundles en masse instead of from authorized resellers that would give the devs a portion of the profit.
These are the kind of practices that - if they're widespread enough - can cause small studios to close and devs to have to go into other fields instead of being able to make more games. That is bad. That damages the industry. Your initial argument of "reselling doesn't impact the industry" only works if you're talking about individuals reselling keys they don't want from the bundles they've bought, or keys they bought one or two of on super sale and then sell at a small profit. Large scale reselling does major damage to the industry.
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And again you are confusing reseller with thieves/frauding. ' but simply to sell them at a higher price for a profit at the expense of the developers.' The dev already got his money. Anything after this doesn't harm him as the profit is already made from such a key for him.
'This does damage the industry, because some of the publicity the game might have garnered from being a part of the bundle gets eaten up by people buying from the resellers that bought bundles en masse instead of from authorized resellers that would give the devs a portion of the profit. '
Nope. That's totally wrong. He got the money already for this part and what happen with the keys don't impact him except he is a donkey thinking short term profit give him long term profit(=store sell). Sorry HE KNOW this from the begin he give the official reseller the keys for the low price, so he HURT HIMSELF from this on! So it DOESN'T matter if the customer bought it direct in such a sale or later from another reseller as the key was already around and the dev already profited from it.
'These are the kind of practices that - if they're widespread enough - can cause small studios to close and devs to have to go into other fields instead of being able to make more games. That is bad. That damages the industry. Your initial argument of "reselling doesn't impact the industry" only works if you're talking about individuals reselling keys they don't want from the bundles they've bought, or keys they bought one or two of on super sale and then sell at a small profit. Large scale reselling does major damage to the industry.'
Sorry but that's pure BS. If you are close minded and sell a lot of keys for the short time profit and lost therefore the long term profit, it's your own idiocy. And there is noone else to blame.
They control how many keys go into the market and they got for each their money(low from the reseller) and what then happen with the keys until it find a customer doesn't matter.
That's how every market work. Selling it directly to costumer or via dealer. Short term profit vs. long term.
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Bless your heart. I don't engage with people who refuse to acknowledge facts and engage in victim blaming to advance their agenda. So I'm done with this conversation. Have a good life.
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Yup. I like how just because some people who mass trade/gift keys use stolen CC, they treat even a legit customer as if he was a thief too... Such a friendly company!
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You are confusing something there. How does the dev have to pay for credit if it isn't directly selling it? Isn't it a problem of the site using this service? And normally this is dealed with insurance(in case of stolen credit cards) no?
And stolen things are NOT legit.
Same example like a stolen car.
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Neither the buyers, nor the devs are responible for such an action.
Not legit actions harm anyone, so that's a nonsense example.
Oh and in your charge-back, the keys normally get invalid = the buyer didn't get the game, so it's still a possible customer of the dev = making no sense as hruting game industry.
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I know this, but that's NOT a problem of reselling.
That's being part of being SCAMMED by the potential buyer.
The buyer of such a fraud thing are pissed off, but neither the devs or any legit reseller are the problem in such a case.
To TOS already stated: They can write what they want, the law dictate how something is valid, any my law allow me to resell things, therefore making this clause invalid for me.
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You don't need a license to sell a key, as you don't sell the game itself(which would need a distribution licence or whatever). Again: Short time vs. Long time.
The dev scam steam by using keys, so they' can't blame user don't buying it later on steam. No key generate = no scamming themself.
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No it doesn't. A key is NOT the game. It's not the code, nor anything else. It's just a media to get the media.
And how the devs do with selling through keys instead of selling through store! But for steam is the benefit > the lost profit through no store sell. So both get what they want in the end. The same is with resellers. The dev give the key out(for a price) and someone sell it further. In the end the dev got what they want and maybe in the end the key find a customer. A reseller don't generate keys, they get them from the dev(directly or indirectly), so the dev already profit from this and what happened with the key(sold or used) doesn't matter at such a point as the dev is already out of the line. I care about developers, but I don't support such a BS mindset of thinking you can ban trade law just because you want the buyer = consumer.
And without reseller = less industry, because, as already explained every key is generated(and sold) by the dev(therefore already profit) and just need to find a customer using it. After the use as one-time item it can't be resold and therefore the dev can't be cheated about additional customers.
And reselling itself advertise the game a bit, because everyone looking at it think about to buy or not and therefore generate views. So in the end even the dev have to think about if such 'free' advertisement is good enough to have the 'lost profit of store sell' is big enough or the customer service well enough to attract potential customers. As the dev are the only ones generating keys, they control this market full. Because if they don't want to have resellers, they don't generate keys. And if the potential customer don't want to pay the store price or is annoyed about this unflexibel service, they may lost it and therefore made NO profit compared to just selling the key, which can be resold until a customer is found.
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And how it does. Or how does the key pass through for nothing?
Every reseller has its audience - even if just for passing through - and in the end it find a customer.
It's not a fallacy. The dev already got their profit from their beloved reseller. Anything else has no impact on them as the key don't duplicate. So every customer found from this key is a customer from the reseller itself the dev sold the key to. So it doesn't matter if there are 1 or 1857 reseller between this customer and the dev.
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Actually, most of the time it's too difficult and costly to track down which keys went to which transactions because it requires someone going through and checking each individual key against the transactions. From your statements here, you're either ignorant of the realities of game development and sales or a shill for gray market key resellers.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, to quote Lilo and Stitch, educate yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cac0ACHux-Q - Totalbiscuit with an explanation of the G2A/Gearbox partnership and why and how it fell apart. Lots of links to articles about G2A in specific damage to the industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBakPg6x63Q - LevelCapGaming's video about G2A and the problems with it, again with plenty of supporting article links.
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That's a problem of using key generatings and frauding. Blame yourself devs for doing so.
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Riiiiiight. Blame the victims for key resellers defrauding them and costing them money. Gray Market shill confirmed.
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That's a problem of credit cards and database, you can't blame anyone else for such a 'flawed' system except the one doing it and using it.
And for the key the dev already got his money, so the resellers don't hurt him and if it land anywhere(if at all) in one's library, the dev made a customer happy. How many steps between the dev and the end customer was doesn't matter in the case.
And for 'resellers are bad' examples, you should not use illegal things.
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There will never be something called a flawless system, if there is people will complain about freedom and shit like that. Its always only dishonest human beings that purposely try to find a flaw in these systems and abuse it then complain about it being "flawed and i am only trying to make a living :( :( :(" Sure devs alr got his money, resellers just "leeching" devs hardwork and make easy money by selling to public. It promotes laziness and dishonest behavior.
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If you want to blame, then you need to blame the customer as HE is cheating the dev by buying it cheaper(if that's the case). I don't see the reason why a reseller, which lead to the customer, can be blamed for allowing the customer to get what he want.
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Reseller always gets keys cheaper / free / stolen, customer just wasn't aware that it was made cheaper / free / stolen elsewhere and thinks its a good deal and buys. In no way they are thinking they are cheating dev as reseller never does a losing business. It will only be cheating if the keys are stolen and its sold at a price super cheap where the devs never had such massive discounts
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Customer NOW exactly that they are 'cheating' the dev by buying it as key. I mean you even know the steampage of it SEEING the original price.
Reseller profit just from the abusive behavior of devs, who CHEAT steam.
So they can't blame other abusing their method of abusing!
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You can't cheat Steam lol, Steam willingly allowed keys to be given to devs to sell at other places even though they do not earn the money from it as they have some sort of mutual understanding its the devs games and they are allowed to sell it wherever they want even if it does not profit Steam. Steam is more of a host for the games to have a place for users to find them with ease, additionally you can buy from it. Its like a city with all the game companies, Steam earn the profit through tax and sales from inside the city but the goods can also be transported outside and be sold where the money goes directly to the company without going through Steam.
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They cheat steam as steam don't get the profit from selling it. But steam itself pay for the maintenance costs(download server - even it's just a nearly 0 thing for the amount of server total), so the dev don't need this.
And if it's sold outside, the transport don't have to be done by the one the company hired first.
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Please explain to me how the dev "got his money" for keys they were charged back for - in case you didn't know, a charge back both takes the money away from the dev that they got for the key AND imposes a chargeback fee on them, therefore costing them more money.
I'm not saying "resellers are bad". I'm saying gray market sites like G2A and Kinguin and others that provide havens for fraudulently obtained keys and those that sell them are bad. If you want to trade or even sell your keys on Steam, Steam Trades, Barter.vg, go nuts. But places like G2A are no better than black markets with good publicity.
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That's more a problem with banks and how they handle chargebacks.
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it's how credit cards work - the interchange charges a fee for providing access (around 2% of the charge), and they charge a fee for handling any disputes (around $20 per dispute). Credit Card laws are surprisingly pro-consumer, and if the card was not present at the time of sale, in a dispute the card-owner gets the benefit of the doubt - meaning that the merchant is guilty until proven innocent. Yes, it sucks for the merchant, but could you imagine it being other way around, that if there were inappropriate charges on your card you'd have the burden of proving it wasn't you?
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No. The problem is that the bank charges fees at all for handling transactions that they shouldn't have allowed in the first place.
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so a bank should pre-emptively know when your credit card is stolen?
Bank suspicious activity detection is quite sophisticated, but it's not omniscient
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Pretty much, there should be enough security in place that having just the plastic isn't enough for it to be used, and even if that wasn't the case, their lack of security shouldn't be an excuse to charge people for something that wasn't their fault.
The bank's job is to keep your money safe, and that's what you are charged for monthly and in every transaction. Having punitory charges for third parties getting past the bank's security measures shouldn't enable them to ask for more money.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Let's start at the beginning. It is not consumers getting charged, but merchants. Historically, it was the merchant's responsibility to verify that the card was genuine and the user was legitimate (e.g. ask for I.D.) - had the merchant verified the card and the user, then there would not be a chargeback.
When the card is not physically present, there is a greater chance of fraud, and therefore the merchant who did not require the card is increasing their own risk.
Now, moving into the digital realm, that has not changed much. You may say that security needs to be in place that just having the plastic is not enough - but then, in the digital realm the merchant NEVER even sees the plastic, they just accept the data provided by users.
It is the bank's job to keep your money safe, and that is exactly what they're doing, by easily granting chargebacks. It is not the bank's job to keep the merchant safe, seeing as the merchant is the point of risk.
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Actually to prove you wrong, reselling impacts the economy for the game industry greatly. In order to resell, you usually get the said game at a cheap price usually from bundles. Lets say you bought 1000 of PUBG at 10$ in a bundle from some various site that no one knows, the dev gets 10000$ because they only wanted to earn some quick buck / promote the game . Most store traffic still comes from Steam store though so devs think they won't get hurt much. 1 month later, Steam store comes a whopping 33% discount (all time low as most would think) so they buy. BUT given the grey market are heavily advertised, probably way more then bundle sites, in form of sponsors for the user's favorite Twitch streamer or Youtube Channel. Sites like G2A probably have most traffic other then Steam, these users then will normally check G2A first as its known to be "better" then Steam sales. BUT resellers are smart users, they will undercut Steam Sale just by a bit, probably more if there is competition to beat the Steam sale, so in the end, maybe like 50% or more buy from G2A and all the profits end up in the resellers pocket instead of to the devs therefore causing massive to-be profit lost. This example probably sucks but i think it gets the point across
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Your whole post condradict themself. The devs THEMSELF scammed themself, not the ones 'reselling' it. They generated the keys without knowing how much they are going to get from. You can't blame the user taking advantage of this. Same can be said about examples/gifts coming directly from devs. If they hadn't done it in first place they wouldn't get 'scammed' later. No key = no 'greymarket'. Dev hold the power themself.
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No key = no bundles = no games for you to win = would you like that?
Also keys are made at first with the sole purpose to promote games, everything in this world has to have some sort of promotion otherwise they will never sell. Yes you can't blame the user to not take advantage of this, as said its the user's fault for being greedy and taking advantage despite them clearly knowing the risk involve, what is business without risks? If you want to blame someone, blame it on the resellers greed and not appreciate the trust the devs put into the audience
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Devs can't blame other for producing keys.
So they can't blame resellers.
If I resell my car, I can't be blamed, so why should I for keys? Makes no sense.
The only ones, that can blame this thought is STEAM itself, as the devs bypass the payment for them by producing keys.
And as keys = 0 cent cost(I think), the devs produce any amount of money from them except free giving away.
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Others can't produce keys, only devs, devs that produce keys usually only want to sell it somewhere else, do some promotion and maybe give away some. The terms and conditions for these keys are that they are not to be resold, pretty sure most devs will cover that, except for the dishonest ones. Its the users that abuse this trust given from devs that are making this grey business bloom, you can't blame devs and publishers try to shut down the resellers now. Keys cost money btw (for Steam to generate), they take up Steam server space which can snowball till lots. For devs probably free to produce but Steam is also trying to cut down the limit to where devs can freely ask for keys in order to cut this business off
If you want to blame steam, sure, where will you store your games then? GOG? Most devs won't even want to give up a copy of DRM free to audiences.
Also reselling of car doesn't make any sense, cars are always bound to be used and even if they aren't, they cost money to produce so reselling a new car won't really make much of a difference to compete with the car producers. Which in turn will make the price of your used car to be significantly lowered in price, it will never compare / affect the cost of a newly made operational car. WIll you buy a used car for the price of a new one? No right? Keys that can be used are always "new"
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And? You can write in your TOS anything, but the law dictate how a TOS is handled(and therefore can be invalid).
I can resell anything and no TOS can speak against this.
Server space? What a shit is that? As they would just rent/buy a server for a lame database!.
I don't blame anyone, just that devs think, that a key they generate has to be used by first person given to.
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Yes i agree you can write anything, but these are written in a way to protect the person its meant to be intended for in case of others abusing it. Sure you can resell anything and wont get in trouble with the law, but all these are made for the public in a simple word of trust. Keys were meant for personal use,maybe not for first person given to but definitely not for resell purposes, these are built from trust but humans just want to find a way to corrupt the system. Its the disgusting fact that human nature are fueled by greed and envy that causes these things to be made in the first place, trust simply can't save the world
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Either you ban all reselling, so the first customer NEED to use it - even in your example it's a site like G2A, or noone need to use it after buy. One side or the other, but you can't pick the cherry out as you want.
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Like you said, you can't ban reselling, lots of business counts on reselling, imported goods and exported goods etc. Doesn't mean that the person getting the key doesn't use = resell, the person can give it to the friends and family and so on. Sounds familiar? You are using a site that provides game keys but its not reselling, its called kindness of gifting and people abuse it. I don't say you can pick the cherry as i want to as corruption will always exist, there is always good as there is evil. You can't eliminate both sides completely, all you can do is thin the herd which is what the devs, publishers, steam are actively trying to do for the case of these keys. Sure they can cancel keys completely, where will you get your games then? Direct from Steam only? People crave flexibility and convenience so you can't eliminate that, unless you want gaming business to die out. Lesser places to sell = lesser traffic = Lesser potential sales = lesser prospect in games developing = This is not a valid job to feed my family. And like i said you can't eliminate anything completely, so there will be always those who do it for free and as a hobby which means probably wayyyyy lesser games (doesn't mean they will be good games just because you have the passion), but would you want that?
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Reseller are no (potential) customers. So they don't hurt.
The customer, who get the key from them and using it, got it from the dev, because the key is generated by them. So the only thing dev can blame is that said customer didn't buy it in the steam store for the (maybe) higher price. But then they scammed themself with the step of generating the key in first place. So the donkey is the dev, not the reseller or the customer. But yeah it's easier to blame anyone else instead of thinking it through.
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So the only thing dev can blame is that said customer didn't buy it in the steam store for the (maybe) higher price. But then they scammed themself with the step of generating the key in first place.
Like i said, generating keys are made solely for the purpose to sell it somewhere else and advertisement, never it was meant for other users to resell. Resellers are just abusing the fact that the generated keys are sold it cheaper in other areas and selling it off as a "all time low" discount to those oblivious to the fact that its been cheaper on official retailers. Those extra profit made by resellers could have been dev's hard earned money. They hurt because it encourages the unsuspecting users to buy from grey market where things are not as they always seem instead of the official places. Yeah sure, there are some games that do not generate keys at all and sold solely on Steam, but have any of those games seen any success near the key generating ones (obviously compare those that are decently good)? If so name me an example. Otherwise, key generating is a staple for the profit for dev's as it allows them to sell more areas, its only due to dishonest users trying to abuse the fact that this is a practice and scam the users just trying to save money just because its a dollar cheaper then Steam. Its basically the same as corruption, money laundering, stuff along those lines even though its not illegal yet.
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Then the dev should stop selling keys. Period. They know those can be given to anyone and they already got their money from(if sold to G2A etc.). They can't blame anyone else for 'potential higher profit lost' doing so. But those devs need to be blamed by steam! They cheat them by generating the keys.
And the more people the key pass, the more 'advertisement' it is.
As said: Donkey behavior.
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Sure they can cancel keys completely, where will you get your games then? Direct from Steam only? People crave flexibility and convenience so you can't eliminate that, unless you want gaming business to die out. Lesser places to sell = lesser traffic = Lesser potential sales = lesser prospect in games developing = This is not a valid job to feed my family. And like i said you can't eliminate anything completely, so there will be always those who do it for free and as a hobby which means probably wayyyyy lesser games (doesn't mean they will be good games just because you have the passion), but would you want that?
Reselling was never an acceptable thing unless its sanction by the creator itself. WHICH IS WHY official retailers exist
Grey markets is there to take a slice of the pie by taking advantage of any possible flaws from the system which in turn tempts and encourage users to be dishonest in business dealings.
At the end of the day, one simple word trust. Resellers just abuse it
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So I need to go to every goddamn car manufacturer to get the approval to sell my car? No!
So why should a reseller need this? The customer is doing this dishonest behavior because no cheating customer(=direct buying via steam) = no reseller.
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I believe you will still have to go through some process to market your car out if you want to sell it. Not every car manufacturer, obviously you only go to your respective car manufacturer of the car (obviously you dont need to but just stating since you said every). Honda doesn't care about Toyota and other respective cases, lol.
Also no reseller = no customer buying from reseller. It works vice versa but in this case, its reseller thats the cause even though its not the root cause. You don't see customers demanding resellers to sell to them, it was resellers that see the potential abuse of the market thats why there is this issue
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Nope if I sell my car I don't have to contact the manufacturer. I just sell it.
No reseller = no customer. Keys don't increase in size, so those bought are out of the system.
And it's better to have a customer(even through reseller) as not to have it in first place. Because if the customer really would want the game, he would buy it from steam direct. But if he only bought it from the reseller 'because cheap', then he is a customer made by the reseller. So if the reseller hadn't the key bought before(and therefore the dev profit) there would be no customer generated. And those knowing the game 'but want to buy cheap', cheat the dev, but they cheated themself with the key generating(=cheating steam for the profit due storesell). So or so, either blame the customer(want the key cheap) or blame yourself dev(for generating the key) and selling it for short term profit(and get less money as with a storebuy).
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Maybe HB is counting on people buying all bundles with any game they want to own? If folks can trade what they don't want from one bundle (that they buy) for the games from another bundle (that they didn't buy), HB certainly takes in less money.
But gift links strongly undermine that position.
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And what would have happened if such a person didn't have bought it in first place, because it contains keys for games he didn't want and wouldn't be allowed to trade/sell?
I would think twice about to buy a bundle containing things I don't need/want just because it contains things I want. No I would either wait or refuse at all(if there is no chance to get just what I want) to buy. And with that NOONE would be helped.
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From their point of view, they probably just check that your keys have not been activated in your account, so I don't blame them for jumping to that conclusion. But even that way, I wouldn't say that SG is a key trading site. Most GAs have enough entries to be consider just that - a giveaway.
(Although I've seen some groups here that pretend to be GA groups but are key trading groups because most of their GAs ends with 1 participant or the with exact amount of winners and copies. However, that is those group's fault, not the admin's)
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HB explicitly have "gift" option in their UI. Screenshot it, outline it with freehand drawn red circle (very important step!) and send it back to them as reply. It is not really their business who your friends are when you are giving stuff away.
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No, but Humble has always been very clear that they don't offer support for trading. But, put that aside for a moment.
One of the major elements of gift links is that they transfer the ownership [of the product] to the giftee, thus transferring support rights as well. Thus, even functionally speaking, Humble can no longer offer support [for the original owner] when trading if you're using their system "correctly". Likewise, while they may give you one or two revocations if you pull the "I accidentally activated on the wrong account" card, if it becomes apparent that you're misusing the system, they can't be faulted for cutting off support in that regard.
If there actually is an issue with the gift links themselves, then yes, that's a problem they need to address. Past that, there's no basis in either their policies or mechanics that should indicate they have any responsibility to address gift issues [when such is reported by the original owner].
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I'd be glad if it were that way, but IT ISN'T. I once won here on SG a game from bundle that had hidden region restriction - i.e. there were no original restriction in bundle itself, but entire bundle automagically binds to first region where you activate first link. Support reply to me was "get bundle owner to contact with us and even then we won't promise you anything". I believe ticket is still open almost after a year.
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That's correct, yes. The effective ownership transferred to you, as I noted it would, but at that point you now have ownership of a region-restricted copy. Only the purchaser can handle region-restriction limitations, in large part because usually Humble's only available response for region restrictions is revocation and refund of the entire purchase. There's absolutely no contradiction to what I described above- support is for getting the current owner a working key of the type that was purchased (or for resolving other purchasing issues), not for changing one version of a game to another. That distinction in purchase format is something to "thank" the publishers involved in region restricting for, and not something Humble can typically do anything about.
To emphasize that: It isn't a matter for Humble Support to begin with, it's a matter for the original purchaser (to be more aware of when sending games). [For future reference, region restrictions for Humble are based on the purchaser's region of purchase, and are determined at point of payment, not during any later key activations. There's absolutely no way the latter scenario could be possible, as the keys are generated during the purchase, and can't be modified afterward, except through manual support intervention. That, in turn, is only available for fixing broken keys, as the publishers who set the region restrictions appear to (understandably, considering the intent of such restrictions) actively prohibit Humble from making individual key replacements.] Likewise, I really hope you're not indicating that you let the giveaway sit for a year just due to a region restriction issue, instead of allowing the GA creator to delete and remake with the appropriate restrictions. That'd be tacky and wasteful, at best.
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You can just reveal the key and exchange that instead of the gift link, right?
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You can't reveal the key once you've generated the gift link.
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Also, i think that you can´t reveal the key if you already have it in your steam library.
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You can, but you get a warning before (saying you won't be able to gift the game if you reveal the key)
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Pretty sure you can follow the gift link yourself though. At least a while back that was possible
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You can redeem the gift link yourself and then get the key from there :)
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They certainly have some problems with gift links.
I generated one last month for one of the games in the monthly, and last week when I tried to redeem it said it was already used. I've read other people having the same problem.
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I've had 3 or 4 GLs hacked. unrevealed keys and even revealed ones were safe.
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Yeah, I used to store all the keys that I intended to put here on steamgifts as gift links. Later I found out that all gift links were already activated, but my "normal" keys were fine. Support said that I should be more careful with my account, since they thought was compromised (it wasn't). Regardless, they restored all the gift links to keys, so I didn't lose anything,
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You especially! I've informed the proper authorities of your misbehavior, be ashamed and go to the corner - now. >:[
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That sounds more like a strange form of addiction and we maybe could plead insanity, which in turn might get you out scot-free... congratulations, you successfully gamed the system :>!
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From my point of view about the email, I think that you bought more than 1 copies frequently which make them thought that you are a reseller.
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Humble is right (if you're not from Europe), and you've a clickbait title up there :)
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technically sg is gifting, not trading.
they even offer GIFT LINKS, what the hell do they expect?
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So... you cannot gift the keys that you bought with YOUR OWN money?.
Well, you can buy keys in other bundle pages and donate the other part to charity too (like humble bundle but without giving money to the police of what it´s yours...). This is getting really dark and disturbing. First the gifts in steam, and now the keys? facepalm
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It's not just Humble, other sites will also not offer support if you even mention SG in your ticket.
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So I updated the thread with the response from them. Looks like it's going to be a tough road ahead.
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Ouch! Maybe you should wait until Dana's shift is over. :D
Keep fighting and good luck!
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The response is a copy/paste response.
July 28, spanish user: https://www.elotrolado.net/viewtopic.php?p=1744163231
In this case, a gift link mysteriously revealed (only one DLC), but not by the user.
But the 2nd response was different (not Dana)
Hello there,
The previous response was written by a member of our fraud team. I cannot go into the details of our fraud team's investigations, but I can assure you that no unfounded claims would be made by them. Ultimately, it was determined that your key was not stolen and that you are involved in the trading and selling of keys. As a result, the key for Resident Evil 5: Untold Stories will not be reset.
Thank you,
-Patrick
Humble Bundle
http://support.humblebundle.com/
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If so, they didn't take a closer look at ur account, not at all. I suggest you send them a support email again, and this time you clearly state that you do giveaway games on this site as well as to your friends and i believe if mentioned, they will surely check sg out and hopefully they will consider looking into it and sort it out for you. Good luck anyway.
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If I remember well, they don't have SG in their whitelists... when/since they refused partnership with SG.
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then they are aware of what happens on sg, that people usually giveaway. No idea how that can be considered as trading/reselling since the individual that gives away gains nothing ( by nothing i mean money, since reselling meaning you sell it to someone else for profit in this case ) other than some level to join more giveaways etc. And not to mention, i believe a large portion of their sale comes from steamgifts since people mass giveaway their bundled games often around here, if anything , people who sees this thread will only get discouraged by their action.
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Of course, they get more profits from gifters. Like for any other stores, actually.
I am not going to argue on the trading aspect, but I think they just can't commercially and officially have SG as partners, and at the same time tells to publishers they prohibite all usages that aren't purely personnal.
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Since when giving away keys is considered "trading"? Yeah, I understand when it says "for personal use only". Or maybe the part of leveling up the contributor level would be considered "trading" in this case?
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Giving away in closed group with ratio check can be considered as trading.
Also, giving away to strangers can't be considered as personal use.
Similarly, some of giveaways are even used for promotional purposes for youtube channel, community groups, etc.
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I had an issue with a few of my links not working after being generated. So I sent them an email stating I was trying to gift them to a friend. This is what I got in return.
Update
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