So, I've seen some people lately complaining about how people are "breaking groupees TOS" by giving away individual keys. And they even say they reported people for it.

So, I asked the actual staff from the site, and here is their response.

The TOS there are just to prevent the resale of the keys on other site. Giving away the keys yourself to someone is completely ok.

So, I was thinking we could make a list of what indie bundles actually allow or not the giving away of individual keys to other people.
If anyone knows the situation on IndieRoyale and IndieGala, do say so I can edit this post.

Allowed:

  • Groupees(Be Mine and Build a Bundle)-Source

-Indie Gala

-Indie Face Kick

Not allowed:

-Humble Indie Bundles

-Indie Royale-Source- Question 4

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It's not allowed with Indie Royale.

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They are quite hypocritical about it though. If they really wanted to prevent key-sharing they'd do as Humble Bundle does (ie. one key for the whole bundle).

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That's... not what "hypocritical" means.

They specifically forbid the sharing of keys for games you already have. The fact that you get Steam keys for individual games means it's possible to give away part of the bundle, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to. After all, they also often include DRM-free versions of the game, which you could upload somewhere and share with the entire world, but you're clearly not allowed to do that.

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You can add Indie Face Kick to the allowed list; they flat out encouraged it in their first bundle. I can't cite anything official on it, but if it's any difference, the "gifts" you purchased weren't gifts at all, but a new set of keys. It looked like this (to save some ninja time, all of those were used).

You can also add the Royales to the Not Allowed list, because of Q4 in here. A tweet also said that Bundle In A Box is discouraging it too, but I'm too lazy to check their TOS so it's up to someone else...

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Do even Indie Face Kick give steam keys anymore? Well, I will put it on the allowed list regardless.

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Well, they announced once that the latest one was the last one they did. But then later on, GATT said that they removed the organizers of the bundles, but it wasn't sure from their wording if that means new bundles with new organizing or no more bundles at all. Then again, it can change by time, but their first 2 bundles are good to go for sure.

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Well they gave up on doing bundles. Not surprising with their lackluster sales.

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Another question would be if the bundle doesn't allow people to give away keys from the bundles they bought, what should those people do with extra keys they already have on their Steam library?

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I'd like to add my data points to this, quotes from answers I got from the bundle creators.

Indie Gala: "You can gift your keys as long as you don't sell it."

Humble Bundle: "Please consider your bundle a “unit” and not to share copies of the games or Steam keys from it. If you’d like to give a copy of the games away, we have a system in place that allows you to buy a gift key from www.humblebundle.com so your friends can have access to direct downloads as well as any Steam or other keys we have included."

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I don't understand why people have to complain about somebody giving something away. I could understand if they were trying to resell the keys but come on. Do people really have to be crybabies about somebody else doing something nice for other people.

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nothing. they aren't rich enough to try to sue you, little alone find a way to see what you did (or not).

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You will be HAUNTED!

OooooOOOoOoOOOoooooOOOooohhhh.

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Allowed or not according to TOS of sites, we are allowed to put on SG because SG is not under TOS of these bundle sellers.

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Not to mention, most devs would rather see their game be played than go to waste or rot forever in a backlog.

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I'm pretty sure cg said somewhere that people should be following the guidelines for the sites where the keys came from. I.E., no gifting of individual HiB keys because they don't want you to.

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Nope. He said "please review that bundle's terms of service to ensure you have permission to do so," which is entirely different from "don't violate ToS of bundles"

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In case anyone wants a clarification on Humble's perspective on the subject.

Matthew
NOV 13, 2012 | 01:03PM PST

Hey Michael,

Thans for bringing this to our attention. I’ll pass it on to the rest of the team for a response. You’re correct in that splitting up the bundle in any way is against our Terms of Service, however we simply don’t have the resources to prevent giveaways such as on this site.

I’m so sorry about the inconvenience!

Thank you for your support,
Matthew
Support Ninja
Humble Bundle

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SO that means we are allowed to giveaway Humble Bundles?

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No, not technically. He just said that if you DO, however, they cannot do anything about it.

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He said it's against the terms of service, which is a contract you accept when you buy the Humble Bundle. Humble Bundle doesn't have enough lawyers to prevent you from giving it away though, so they can't stop you from breaking your promise and cheating them.

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Just curious, as I haven't followed this discussion before.
Has anyone brought up the fact that this TOS is not legal in EU, and that anyone in EU can do whatever they want with the keys they bought?

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Yes, people keep saying that all over the place.

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Yes, you are right about the ToS and the EU but it is still not right to do something that you said you wouldn't do. BTW you don't buy the keys, you buy the right to play the game. When you give the key away you are not allowed to use the DRM-free version of the game, else this is pirating. So the ToS have nothing to do with this and SteamGifts can have their own rules on what is allowed and not allowed.

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Well obviously. I never mentioned anything about steamgifts, this was just a general observation ;)

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If they have a minimum for steam keys, Im pretty sure it qualifies it as selling the keys.

Also, there is NOTHING during the purchase that shows you the TOS and that you have to agree to them. So it completely invalid, at least in the EU.

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i love all those lawyers on the internet. Btw how is the "Steam has to allow me to resell the games I bought" front.

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I think you have me mistaken for someone else. I never claimed to be a lawyer. I do have some knowledge of european trade laws, but I'm not going into a large discussion of that here. So there's no need for a negative tone here, and I never, not even once, said that steam should allow us to resell our games. Not that I would mind though, but it would be such a good idea.

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Closed 12 years ago by BernardoOne.