I remember reading somewhere in the rules that Humble wants and expects you to turn it into a gift link if you plan to give it away, and only click redeem to show the key if you plan to use it on your own account. As for the gift link itself, whether you decide to send the winner the gift link or get the key from the gift link yourself and give that to the winner is a different matter so I'm not sure about that.
But yes, technically, you could just redeem it yourself, but give the key away.
At the very least, when you review your Humble library, you can more easily differentiate between keys you've activated yourself and those you've given away via the gift link because it'll have the message about sending the gift link instead of showing the key. So if you like to keep things organized that way, it can be helpful.
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Use the gift method, and then copy paste the link into SteamGifts when making the giveaway - it will recognize it as a key even though it's a gift link. Using a gift link means you have better security since you can see without doubt if it has been claimed and humble bundle support is more likely to help you out if there's any problems with the key.
So basically - use the gift link for better security just in case. Better proof for support if your winner does something bad, better support from humble bundle, better overview in the stats for yourself. It's win/win/win.
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I would (and do) use the humble gift option when gifting on steamgifts. I don't want my account to look like a key reseller. Also, I think humble might remember that you already have redeemed a key, making it more difficult later on if you want to buy or get the game later. I think I had a problem with a Dirt2 giveaway because of that. It wouldn't give me the free game giveaway because it thought I'd already bought the game (one of the few times I'd given away a key instead of a gift link before understanding). Not sure about the latter, but just a guess because something odd was going on and I had to contact support about it.
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Can you just copy and paste the key that you got when clicking redeem on steam or do you have to gift it?
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