I bet it gets confusing when they all have the same name.
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I already admitted I have multiple accounts. I made them everytime they released a bundle with a coupon for a month of Humble Choice or Monthly. I'm not hiding anything by saying 'friends'.
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Either...
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you don't use VPN and Humble knows you are using the same or similar IPs across accounts
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you use VPN and your IPs change so much that they know you are using VPN
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VPN shows so different locations per "person" that they suspect you are trading with other people when Humble follows the link trail
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Humble doesnt think you use VPN but determines a gifting pattern or trading with links
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I'm aware that HB states in the support section that keys can't be traded BUT there's no mention of that in the terms of service. I'm fairly certain they don't have a right to disable the key nor the account.
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You should probably be less certain.
(b) Restrictions. You agree not to engage in any of the following prohibited activities:
(xiv) circumventing Service limitations on the number of Products you may purchase, including, without limitation, creating multiple accounts and purchasing a total number of Products through such multiple accounts which exceed the per-user limitations; or
(xv) except as otherwise specifically set forth in a licensor's end user license agreement, as otherwise agreed upon by a licensor in writing or as otherwise allowed under applicable law, distributing, transmitting, copying (other than re-installing software or files previously purchased by you through the Service on computers, mobile or tablet devices owned by you, or creating backup copies of such software or files for your own personal use) or otherwise exploiting the Products (defined below) in any manner other than for your own private, non-commercial, personal use.
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT HUMBLE BUNDLE HAS THE ABSOLUTE RIGHT IN ITS SOLE DISCRETION, WITHOUT ANY LIABILITY TO YOU OF ANY KIND AND IN ADDITION TO ALL OF ITS OTHER RIGHTS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, IN LAW AND AT EQUITY, TO CANCEL ANY AND ALL DOWNLOAD PAGES, PRODUCT KEYS OR REDEMPTION CODES FOR PRODUCTS YOU HAVE PURCHASED SHOULD HUMBLE BUNDLE DETERMINE IN ITS SOLE DISCRETION THAT YOU HAVE VIOLATED ANY OF THESE RESTRICTIONS.
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but I don't get why they are against the trades? the bundles sell, they get money, no harm done. why give a sht what happens to the key after it's been sold?
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Because they can't get developers/publishers to work with them if they allow traders to undercut their sales on a grey market.
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- they already sold the copy (via bundle) so they got the money for it. It's like you said that car makers would be somehow losing money on used car sales. they don't. they sold it once, they got the money, they don't go after making money for selling that same item once again or complaining that people resell it. same applies to any good ever.
- if they have to problem with the low price, they shouldn't partner with humble (or any similar bundle company) in the first place. that's all.
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That they got some money for it, doesn't mean that they have to agree with a permanent devaluation of their products.
Your "take it or leave it" approach is interesting. You suggest that companies have to accept the consequences of partnering with Humble, but you do mind the "take it or leave it" approach in Humble's TOS about traders. How about "If traders have a problem with their TOS, then don't do business with Humble in the first place"?
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How about "If traders have a problem with their TOS, then don't do business with Humble in the first place"?
but I agree with that. I said in a post below but I'll repeat. I don't defend resellers, I'm not on their side. I agree with humble banning people breaking their ToS. I simply don't understand the "no trade" rule since as I said - sale was finalised, developer recieved their money. I don't know how humble works with devs on putting their games into bundles, buy I assume the devs agree to 1. the money they recieve and 2. the price their game will be sold at.
and in regards of "devaluing products" it's again all the devs fault. you want your product to be seen as valuable and expensive? don't sell it for pennies with a ton of other stuff. even if it ends in a top tier of a bundle and even if resellers were not a thing, people still would think of it as a "$15 game" but rather "$15 divided by the number of games in a bundle game" so you're always losing on percieved valuewhen you enter such a scheme. ppl then see your game and go like "30 bucks?! that's insane it! was for half that money in a bundle!" you go on -50% sale they still go "for that money I got 7 other games in a bundle! I'd rather wait for it to be bundled again"
tl;dr
ToS - good. Resellers - bad. Bad ToS - even worse.
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So you don't want to buy cheap games in bundles? Easier to just not buy them than try to argue why they should not be sold at all.
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If you look at it from Humble's Perspective, it's a big deal.
If you take 100% charity bundles like Aussie Fire Relief, Yogcast, or Racial Justice... all of those keys have been provided by developers for free to help raise money for worthy causes. People buying them are pretty much making a charity donation in return for some free games. Humble doesn't receive a penny and neither do the publishers. There is usually enough variety in there for most people to get value out of those bundles without the need for trading.
Now you get some greedy twits buying up several of these bundles and selling the more valuable games on the grey market. They're also trading greenhorns out of the games that are worth something and selling those copies too. The developers good will in providing some free keys to Humble has backfired. Now the grey market sites have basically become competitors for their own games.
They will naturally put pressure on Humble to do something about it and you can't really blame them for that.
Having said that... I can totally see how that guy who traded the one game to the mass reseller gets flagged by that association.
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now that's a good point. I kinda see how those charity bundles make a difference for that issue. "kinda", since I still blame devs. you want to make money on a game - don't toss it away for free. simple. not that I'm defending resellers. quite the contrary. I do believe people buying cheap stuff or even worse, taking free stuff to sell it for profit are the worst scum there is. on the other hand I do believe that once I paid for something it's mine to do with however I please. like once I bought a whole bundle but it has a key for a game I already own I'm just supposed to sit on it infinetly? make it go to waste? especially in case of normal bundles that devs get paid for. am I just supposed to pay them for that game twice and just toss another copy away? I'd rather sell that to someone who won't or maybe can't afford to buy the whole bundle and not only make the purchase less of a financial burden for me but also make somebody else happy.
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You are ignoring the fact that to get said product in the super cheap price you agree in advance not to do something with it that may upset the seller.
For example, contests/raffles for wining a car or an apartment usually add a clause saying that you cannot sell it for X years (may vary by location/laws).
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They can write what they want. the question is, is it legal for them to do so ?
Many times the companies were forced to sop illegal moves from their side.
From my side its clear. I pay so i can do whatever i want with the codes.
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It turns out, I'm really dumb.
I actually read the terms of service before posting my comment but I clearly didn't pay enough attention to "in any manner other than for your own private, non-commercial, personal use.".
So thanks for clarifying my mistake :)
There's still one thing bugging me about it though, they claim it's for private personal use and yet they encourage gifting. I wonder how they make the distinction between a gift to a random stranger and a trade.
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They have software that tracks that. Multi-hunter tools, if you like, but also can keep track of how many gifts are being redeemed.
If you gift the link to a friend and they redeem it, not a big deal. Your friend probably isn't redeeming 100s of keys from different Humble users, so there's no red flags. However, if you trade away a gift link to a stranger, they will in all likelihood be a reseller. They WILL have 100s of redeems on every account they create. They'll just make a new account with a new IP once they get caught.
The poor fools who traded with that banned account though...
EDIT: To be honest... after reading some of the comments in this thread... it sounds like the OP has many accounts for the purpose of trading and 3 of them got banned. I could be wrong, but the story sounds silly. "I helped them with purchases..." No one needs help with purchases. If they're gamers, they're likely to be tech savvy enough to make their own purchases.
(Kinda sounds like some excuses I used to get from users as an admin lol. "I signed one up for my brothers, but they never used it.")
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Oh, that makes sense.
I was wondering mostly because I would have assumed that if gifting to strangers was so problematic, there would be tons of users on this site affected, but yeah, it's probably about reselling and multiple accounts.
Thank you for the answer, I was a bit worried.
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Again, I have 4 accounts for the purposes of redeeming a free month of Humble Choice everytime it comes in a bundle (probably against ToS as well but that's why). My friends are not savvy with trading and preferred me to help them with it. Probably not a good idea in retrospect but I don't understand what benefit I get by saying that I had friends that I helped with trading. If you look at my barter trade history, I always traded for myself and redeemed every game to my account. I don't care about trading for profit.
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Did you refer your friends for the $8 referral bonus, using the same IP?
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No I never utilised the referral bonus, didn't even know it was a thing till recently.
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Okay. Just sounded a little strange is all. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. :P
I wouldn't use this excuse with Humble though, even if it's true. I've admin'd large websites in the past. One of the most common excuses used was "those are my siblings. We have the same IP because we live in the same household." or "That's my brother, he doesn't use his account much, but I helped him set it up so we might have the same registration IP. He logs in from my house sometimes too." They are so used to getting these, that even if there's some truth to it, they'll be like "pfft!" ;)
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Yea I'm not even going to try to talk with Humble because they'll just ignore any excuses haha
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If they have GIFTING, so we should GIFT items away here. We can also GIFT away to some friends on STEAM or other people, we know.
Problem comes, when somebody uses a key & doesn't have that game activated by themselves - as it's a breach of protocol by HB.
& it's "non-commercial" use if we don't SELL the product. I'm not SELLing on G2A or any other platform those products I got from HB.
Even in trading, if I gift someone on STEAM which is my friend some game & he/she GIFTS me - that's not a problem of breaching of protocols.
Also, there are people who buy multiple "bundles", only to trade more or sell more games. Those are the problem, not people who buy 1 bundle for themselves with some 10+ games, only to get 4-6 games for themselves & to GIFT away all others.
So no, I don't see the problem from HB. In any case, HB survives on most of us here who GIFT games here. If they try to close all accounts who GIFT here, they can close 90% of their business. & they know it! 😎
So not concerned at all about it.
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You admit to trading and multiple accounts. Seriously what do you expect?
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I've not heard of these issues until recently. I'm not complaining that they disabled, just warning others I guess. Never traded for profit, just to trade left-overs form bundles. Still against TOS it seems.
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Doesn't matter if its for profit. It's always been against their tos
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Yea, I guess so. Again, not complaining or arguing, but I made this post as a PSA since a lot of people still do it.
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The person you are trading to may be a big time reseller and their IP might have been flagged from previously banned accounts. When they claim your gift-link, all the red flags go off. Your account then becomes dirty by association. That's the risk you take by trading at all.
I doubt swapping a few games among friends who actually want the games for personal use would amount to a ban.
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Yea that's what I think happened and is something I'll avoid in the future.
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People leave a lot of trader traces. It's all in your Steam profile.
"Good trader +rep", "Awesome trader"...
Sum one plus three, we have two.
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Never denied I traded, just stated that it was me trading left-overs for others' left-overs. Didn't know until recently it was against TOS.
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...but HB users arent required to link their Steam account. So HB has no other way of knowing what Steam profile is associated with a HB user unless they MAYBE get access to dev's Steamworks account to get list of everyone who has activated the game through key batches for Humble, but that still requires a way to link HB user to a Steam user.
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So would that mean it's quite difficult for HB to find out where keys went in contrast to gift links? Because Friend 1 had 2 games directly revoked from their account which is not something I've seen others mention in other discussions. I really question what their methodology is to determine who's in the wrong, because it's weird that they disabled Friend 1's account after a single trade. It was their first time purchasing from Humble too, it was a pretty fresh account.
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quite difficult for HB to find out where keys went in contrast to gift links
Pretty much, yes. In all cases I've heard where people are getting their accounts disabled, it was in the use of giftlinks rather than keys. Humble actually promotes the use of giftlinks for gifting purposes, and I've not heard of any that was genuinely only gifting games that has been banned. In all cases (afaik), it has been in the case of trading those giftlinks. There are too many dodgy traders out there, that an innocent (from your perspective) trade flags your account cos you traded with someone who's already flagged.
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Gotta avoid using gift links from now on then. Hopefully I don't get disabled for using keys when I have left-over games. Thanks
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Friend 1 redeemed the games from key or giftlink? You used the same card / paypal account to pay for the games?
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Redeem FM20 and Surviving Mars via keys from the bundle, sent some other games via gift link for another trade. Different card.
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A key getting revoked is unusual. I thought they only could do that when someone did a chargeback.
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They get the key directly from Devs and they probably want to stop the spreading of these keys to traders and grey market. The possibility is there.
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To be fair I've never traded games, just cards and other irrelevant items, through Steam's own system, and I have numerous "good trader" posts on my profile.
Take note, Humble! #notalltraders!
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But even that is "non-commercial use", as I GIFT you some game, you GIFT me sthg else. There's no exchange of money here, so it's non-commercial use.
Have traded some games, never denied that (even here). All of them, according to procedure HB has given.
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That's still trade for them and they will probably see that as trader's flags.
I'm not saying that is bad, but with HB hunting down traders that isn't a good +rep to have.
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Well, imagine how much less people they will ban from here & how much everyone here will not be present on HB.
As they not only ban traders, but also gifters if the get some points & get extra access to games (which is what SG is). 🤔
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On the revoking of your friend 1's games... did he get his refund approved before or after they were revoked? Cos if you ask for refund... any games associated with the refund will be gone.
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After they got revoked. He found out about the issues with Humble when he saw the revoke alert, and at the same time his Humble account was disabled.
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Hm that is a strange new and concerning thing then for Humble to do. Either that or his payment method was iffy and Humble thought it's stolen or something similar since you did state he only ever bought once on HB and it was the one that was revoked.
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He had his own credit card that he used for everything else, nothing really iffy about it.
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How much money worth of games did you lose?
When was the last time you traded a gift link?
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The account I had banned actually didn't lose any games, I only bought Humble Indie 21 on that. I bought a few copies of that bundle on three accounts so that me and two friends can get Starbound and the rest of the keys I traded, including on the disabled account. My disabled account last sent gift link maybe more than 1 month ago.
Friend 1 lost all of Humble Racial Justice Bundle (only thing he ever bought from Humble) after trading for 1 game. He redeemed FM20 and Surviving Mars (which got revoked) for himself and traded some of the games from the Bundle for another one. He got a refund though after emailing support.
Friend 2 lost all of Humble Racial Justice Bundle that he didn't trade away or redeem for himself. Nothing got revoked from his Steam account. Didn't email support yet. He traded with gift links recently for several trades. Also only bundle he ever bought.
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It sounds like you got 3 alt accounts banned. Are your 'Friends' not just your alt accounts? Because they sound like alt accounts given they each only bought the one bundle.
Do you still have your main HB account? Ever traded anything on it?
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No, but I did at some point help them with some of the Humble stuff and so they used the same connection so that's probably what flagged it on Humble's side. I have 4 accounts for myself in total and one of my alts was disabled but the other 3, including my main one, are fine so far. I'm not sure if I can expect that to last though. I've traded using all of them before.
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You have four accounts for yourself and you made another two accounts for your friends from the same ip? And you use these accounts for trading (obviously, why else would someone make four accounts) all the time? And then you say you 'bought a few copies of Indie Bundle 21 on each account', which means you probably bought the same bundle 10+ times to trade the contents away? Sorry, I have absolutely zero idea what exactly you complain about here. That kind of excessive trading and key hoarding is exactly what Humble doesn't like and that's completely understandable.
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Should we really respect and admire a corporation's desire to restrict what we do with our purchases? When you buy a Coca-Cola glass from the store and decide to put Pepsi in it, does that mean the store should be able to take it away from us because they want to clamp down on that sort of activity?
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No, but when you create several accounts to circumvent buying restrictions you know very well what you are doing and you know very well that this is against their tos. That's completely different from your Coke/Pepsi example. If you want a Coke example then I've got one for you. If there would be some kind of limited special edition coke and they said you can buy only one per household and then this guy would cheat to buy half a dozen to resell them for twice the original price on the black market then it would be close to what this guy is doing.
Personally I trade or gift quite a lot of games when I already have them or don't care about them. My Humble account is almost 10 years old and I never had a problem, even bought a $1 tier bundle twice by accident recently because I didn't notice I bought it a week before already. Didn't even know that was possible.
I would be the first one to be upset if someone with a single account who just gifted a few games to friends (or even traded a few of them, I don't see anything wrong with that if you have valuable games you don't want for your own account) would have his account banned. But when someone posts about this it always turns out he's someone who abuses the system hard to buy bundles in vast numbers to make profit with key reselling. I don't really care about people doing that all that much, but you have absolutely zero reason to complain if your account gets banned if you act like that.
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I don't buy bundles to make profit. I bought 3 copies of that bundle to get Starbound for me, a friend and my sister. I traded away the spares for games that I redeemed straight onto my account. Yea maybe I should've made them buy it themselves but I didn't expect to get flagged for it. Again, not complaining and expecting to be treated differently, I think Humble are within their right to disable the accounts. Look at my history, I never traded for profit, just for games I want: https://barter.vg/u/4ec0/d/
But yes, feel free to criticise my actions because I do believe I deserve some flak for my carelessness.
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he's a sad fish. Having multiple accounts got you banned? Well, thats a sad day for you, I guess!
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I wonder if Humble Bundle would be against Steamgifts if they were more aware of it, technically you are trading games for points that could in turn gain you access to higher level giveaways.
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Once a game is bundled, it's point value is greatly reduced so that shouldn't be a problem.
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They say that it is.
When you make a giveaway, you give a game, people who want to join have to spend points to do so and you get CV in exchange for the game.
HB says that this is trading.
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That's also "non-commercial", no money exchanged. This is more like "betting on game winning". 🤷♂️
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Friend 1, interestingly, had the games they redeemed from the Bundle revoked directly from their Steam account
Just about that, indeed somehow HB has the magical ability to remove one single specific key, something I've never seen any other vendor do. In my case, it was convenient because that was a bundle I wanted a refund for and I had already used one of the keys, so revoking it allowed them to refund everything, but still it shows they appear to have special Steam privileges.
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Yeah, this is the only time I've heard of this happening. It didn't happen to me or Friend 2, and I didn't see it happen to anyone else that posted about it. Maybe they revoked any key that was activated via the Bundle, which included the 2 that he did for himself.
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It didn't happen to me or Friend 2
Since you didn't say (or I missed) how long ago all this happened, if it was very recent the revocations may appear later. I don't remember very well since I was a long time ago, but I think there was maybe about a week between the time they refunded my bundle and the time they revoked the key.
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Yea I'll have to keep a lookout. Interestingly, Friend 1 had theirs revoked at the same time as the account was disabled (or roughly)
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https://www.dictionary.com/browse/friend
I already stated I have multiple accounts for myself, I don't understand why people are so hesitant to believe me about my friends lol
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My friends also wanted to trade left-overs from the bundles for games they were interested in so they made their own accounts
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I interpret that page differently. It seems clear to me that gifting keys is not perfectly acceptable, unless the recipient is a friend or family member (how HB determine that though is anyone's guess). And gifting via SG would violate this rule:
If you've received keys through our Partner program, you are more than welcome to giveaway those keys. However, please keep in mind that you can only do so when there is no cost or barrier to entry in order to receive the key.
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I know HB can't actually determine who is your friend or family member. Really we are all trying to second guess HBs motives. At best SG is a grey area as far as HB gifting is concerned. I'm pretty sure if you need to contact HB support because of an issue gifting on SG then you will be shit out of luck.
And yes there are barriers to SG. You have to have a Steam account with > $100 unbundled games. You can't enter everything - you are limited by points or you are limited by levels.
Almost every single user who made a thread about having their account disabled turned out to be a trader or reseller, which is in direct violation of humbles user agreement.
That is a fair point. Again without knowing how HB makes there determination it gets people anxious that gifting here may be an issue. And I have no sympathy with the OP "I've had three accounts ..." - pretty sure just that is against HBs T&Cs.
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How is Humble supposed to check who my friends are or are not?
I guess they just assume that, if you send gift links to several different "friends" in various different countries, they're not really your friends, and there must be something shady behind. Whether it's true or not, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not their issue once they ban you.
Also on Steam Gifts there are no barriers in place whatsoever
It's debatable, but going by the strictest possible interpretation, you could argue that the registration requirements ($100 of unbundled, non-free games), as well as level/group/invite/whitelist giveaway restrictions, maybe even the points you need to enter giveaways (even though they regenerate) do constitute a "cost or barrier to entry of any kind".
Also, they definitely consider contributor value/levels as a "reward/payment", even though it holds no monetary value whatsoever.
I bet they'd even consider requiring a Humble account to redeem gift links a "barrier", if they needed to.
In short, they assume we register here to gift keys just to raise our levels (as some users definitely do, a few even admitted it), rather than because we want to gift them (or we would only do random key drops, or at least level 0 public giveaways).
Almost every single user who made a thread about having their account disabled turned out to be a trader or reseller, which is in direct violation of Humble's user agreement.
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I don't see how contributor level here should count. You get so few points for bundled games it would be a joke to give things away just for that.
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If you are from the European Union can you researching a bit and try slapping them with "according to law X regarding customers rights etc etc."? That if it breaks any european laws
I remember a few years ago before Steam implemented the option to delete games from your library i wrote them to remove a game and they said they cannot.. After i researched a bit of customer laws sent them a reply "according to law X i have the right to remove the game from my library" and they complied and removed it.
You probably won't get your account back. But removing games from library after you paid them, that sounds illegal in EU. You might get ur money back
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Friend 1 already got an e-mail saying the money will get refunded, but that was only after they e-mailed them. We're from Australia and so our consumer laws should back us up here. Thanks though.
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I assume you and your friends used different credit cards. For your alt accounts, do you use different cards?
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Yes, all friends used different credit cards
For 3 alt accounts I used PayPal, the other I used credit card (one that got banned used PayPal iirc)
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several spare accounts, and still whining about it...
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"The second is that there were times where the same IP was used and so they thought that it was all me and that I bought multiple bundles to trade off."
This is the reason.
You already had multiple accounts (you shouldn't be making new accounts for each purchase). They suspended you for the multi accounts but since you also logged in your friends accounts, they though those are yours too.
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VPN use has become more common and can lead to many people having same IP. Students at schools (when they were open) can have the same IP. Even free public Wi-Fi can have same IP. In our area, IP addresses are dynamic and recycled. If your friends come over, they will have the same IP address. I'll bite that IP could be a flag to investigate, but not evidence to ban.
Maybe some devs are policing this themselves and forcing Humble's hand? They are coders and have access to Steam and user comments...
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That's the first trustworthy thread about Humble Bundle moves against costumers (traders or gifters, doesn't matter). Like I said before, these threads are full of omitted data to validate speakers arguments. Fortunately this one brings the whole picture. Thanks OP, even if it doesn't help directly to understand Humble Bundle.
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I'm trying to be as open as I can, but everyone else still seems to be very sceptical of me. I'm not defending my actions and everyone thinks I'm complaining, but I do think some of this was deserved. A bit unlucky for my friends though, I created a difficult situation for them.
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Beside those, I think the majority is trying to speculate you to try to find a pattern. Most seems to reverse conclusion to understand what is happening in hb end (or beginning).
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You can't take advantage of referal links using multiple accounts with same IP. It's on T&C.
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Didn't refer, but actually logged in using same IP to help them with some of the trades. Big mistake and likely lead to some of the problems.
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Yea you're right, I just didn't realise Humble was going to crackdown on it. My mistake of course.
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I had a similar problem because me and my brother lived on the same house, we wanted to buy two separate bundles to play together (each with their respective account) and sent him the referral link.
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I asked this in the other thread but there was no response as of yet, so I'll try my luck here;
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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Yes, you will lose them. That's a given because they are still attached to your account.
If you are not going to redeem a key right away, don't reveal it at all. Gift links can be brute-forced. If you check via google, you will see many instances were people have lost many of their unused keys this way.
If you're going to save them in a spreadsheet anyway, save the actual keys, not gift links.
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FF for this.
My 2 cents for this. If you will give a HB gift link to a 1 person only and he activated the LINK using his steam. This is right thing to do. You must tell the person that your giving that needs to activate the HB gift link and never used it for trading, selling and profiteering because HB can detect if where does the HB Gift Link went through.
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Yea that's a good idea, but I like the idea of just sending keys because they should just activate them straight away on their account anyway
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If they have GIFTING, so we should GIFT items away here. We can also GIFT away to some friends on STEAM or other people, we know.
Problem comes, when somebody uses a key & doesn't have that game activated by themselves - as it's a breach of protocol by HB.
& it's "non-commercial" use if we don't SELL the product. I'm not SELLing on G2A or any other platform those products I got from HB.
Even in trading, if I gift someone on STEAM which is my friend some game & he/she GIFTS me - that's not a problem of breaching of protocols.
Also, there are people who buy multiple "bundles", only to trade more or sell more games. Those are the problem, not people who buy 1 bundle for themselves with some 10+ games, only to get 4-6 games for themselves & to GIFT away all others.
So no, I don't see the problem from HB. In any case, HB survives on most of us here who GIFT games here. If they try to close all accounts who GIFT here, they can close 90% of their business. & they know it! 😎
So not concerned at all about it.
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If they try to close all accounts who GIFT here, they can close 90% of their business. & they know it! 😎
How many games do you think humble sells in a month? :D
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I haven't got into calculating it but my guess was around %5-7. %7 being an awesome bundle :D
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Whatever the size of their business. If somebody bans me from their store, I'm not buying there ANYMORE.
Even now, I'm not buying on HB, as I had bad experience with their support. 😎
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Go with whatever makes you warm and fuzzy inside. :)
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Quick back of the envelope calculation:
Bundles sold in last 5 days: 29,953
| Giveaways in the last 5 days | for: |
|---|---|
| 54 | Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series |
| 186 | Oxenfree |
| 230 | The Walking Dead: 400 Days |
Assuming that users giveaway only 1 of the 4 tier 1 games and keep the rest, then there are at most 4 x 230 = 920 buyers of tier 1. As a percentage of total bundles sold that means at most giveaways here represent 3.1% (920/29953) of bundles sold.
Long, long way from your assumption of "90% of their business".
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Nope, all GAs are listed in the archive, even deleted ones.
I've made some assumptions (as explained above), and obviously I can't count people that have bought the bundle, yet in the future will giveaway at least 1 game. Doing the above calculation again, say 4 weeks after the bundle has finished will probably give a more accurate picture. But my experience is that most giveaways are created shortly after the bundle drops, and the rate diminishes. So I'd still argue that ~3% is maximal.
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"The Walking Dead: 400 Days" was also in Fanatical "Sanctuary Bundle" recently.
And some people may even have it from previous bundles.
So the numbers may be even lower than that.
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Yeah, definitely lower. I inflated the numbers as much as reasonable, and it's still only 3%. It would be interesting to try to get similar stats from barter.vg, but I'll leave that as an exercise for someone.
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Just don't trade with one of those big-time resellers or people that will buy your games with keys. Those guys probably flagged, and this is not the 1st time I hear about this.
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I've had three accounts that I know of now get disabled by Humble Bundle. One of mine and two of my friends had theirs disabled (I'll name them Friend 1 and Friend 2). Friend 1 only did ONE trade and that was enough. I just wanted to write here as a PSA so everyone knows that they're cracking down on trading. As I've seen on other posts, the hypothesis is that they're able to track where gift links are sent, and so I would recommend that everyone stop using them for trading or gifting. In all three cases we used gift links for most trades. On my other accounts I redeemed the rest of the games and saved them as keys so hopefully I'll still have these.
Friend 1, interestingly, had the games they redeemed from the Bundle revoked directly from their Steam account (only 2 games, and those were from the recent Humble Racial Justice Bundle). That's pretty scary. Me and Friend 2 haven't had that problem. Friend 1 was successful in getting a refund, so if anyone has had any problems I would recommend writing an email and requesting one from them. If it doesn't work, contact your bank. I wouldn't bother trying to convince them to re-enable your account, they always write the same generic message about breaking their TOS. Hopefully me and Friend 2 can also get refunds too.
It's a shame that they're cracking down on this, especially when me and my friends were not trading for profit, just looking to trade left-overs for others' left-overs. I don't know if they're able to track whether or not anyone trades keys, and if anyone has any knowledge about that, let me know. If so, then I might stop trading using Humble altogether.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I have multiple Humble accounts (due to free Humble Choice/Monthly coupons), but my friends are separate to me and only had one. I just didn't know if they wanted me to name them or not.
EDIT 2: As a user pointed out, Humble could've flagged my friends' accounts alongside mine for using the same IP address as I had helped them with some of their trading. So I would also be careful of having multiple accounts on the same wifi/IP because Humble could think you were buying multiple bundles for yourself which is also against TOS.
EDIT 3: So I have two theories for what happened to sum everything up. One is that the fact that we used gift links, which Humble can trace, and they saw we sent them to traders that they have also flagged. The second is that there were times where the same IP was used and so they thought that it was all me and that I bought multiple bundles to trade off.
EDIT 4: So many people are thinking that I'm saying that this was undeserved and that's not entirely true. Yes, I thought what I did was innocent in essence but stupid in retrospect. There's no reason for Humble to discern me and my friends from other for-profit sellers, especially when the same IP was used. Again, everytime I bought a bundle, it was for myself or someone I knew, and my 2 friends recently got the Humble Racial Justice Bundle for themselves and asked me to help them with trading away the games they don't want (they have 0 experience with this sort of thing). Again, please learn to separate MY 4 accounts to Friend 1 and Friend 2, I'm not hiding anything by insisting on their existence. I keep seeing it pop up in the comments and it's a bit annoying.
Are Humble justified in their actions? Yes, absolutely. Having multiple accounts logged in on the same IP and sending gift-links to resellers was foolish.
Were my actions innocent in nature? Yes, I believe so. I wanted to help my friends get the games they wanted, and I wanted to get games I wanted, with left-overs bundle keys. I actually don't think this is something wrong and something that Humble should punish, BUT they were justified in doing it because there's no way for them to differentiate me from other for-profit traders.
Did I expect any consequences? No, I wasn't aware that they cared about this sort of thing. Again, my mistake, and it's not a defense for my actions.
What did I want to achieve by making this post? I wanted to tell people to be careful. Don't have multiple accounts (or, if you do, avoid using the same IP). Also, don't send gift-links anymore if you're engaging with any sort of trading. Redeem all the games as keys and save them somewhere as soon as you buy a Humble Bundle. Maybe even if you're sending a game to a friend you can still be careful by just sending a key. If you have a problem with me wanting to trade left-over games for other games that I want to play, then that's fine. But that was all there is to it behind my actions.
Also, Humble has the power to revoke keys directly from your Steam account and so I would be extra careful now. And it was also scummy they didn't tell my friend they did that and didn't refund their money without being contacted first.
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