I don't want to be that guy, but yeah, this is a very well known (and confirmed) fact.
Sadly, as I see, you are not from Europe, so there is not much you can do (you can only try to sue them, which isn't really worth it or you can try threatening them, that you will sue them)
So, next time just use keys.
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I heard about it a while back and have stopped making gift links, but I just thought it was people overexaggerating the situation and they did other things... It wasn't until they finally pretty much confirmed it that I was like what.
I just wonder why give the option at all if they are saying it's against their tos.. just seems odd to say the least.. I didn't get banned or anything, just had this verification stuff, which is massively annoying.. I'm hoping now that they told me I had a warning I can have it removed, probably not but oh well, not like Humble is all that good anymore anyway..
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The problem is that you can give gift-links, as they say, only to your friends, but the term friends is not further defined.
They just kinda use this as an excuse for banning people, who may or may not be traders or some different kind of unwanted customer.
They could ban you at any moment they want, because you agreed to that in their TOS:
"(c) Termination of Service or Access. We may, without prior notice, change the Service; stop facilitating the Service or features of the Service, to you or to users generally; or create usage limits for the Service, including, without limitation, limiting the number of Products you may purchase at any given time or under any given account or set of accounts. We may permanently or temporarily terminate or suspend your access to the Service without notice and liability for any reason, including if in our sole determination you violate any provision of this Agreement, or for no reason. Upon termination for any reason or no reason, you continue to be bound by this Agreement."
Of course, that is illegal (you should have access to products you bought or a refund should be issued), but why should they care, if no one else does.
I wish you good luck with the support team and we can only hope, that they will remove the restriction and won't do anything else.
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Yeah, I agree with some of that. Refusal of service is within their rights if you abuse their ToS, but they shouldn't really be banning accounts completely. You should have access to purchases already made.
EDIT: And to clarify, I am certainly not sticking up for people who sell keys on the grey market and have multiple HB accounts. Those type of people know what they are getting themselves into and know what they are doing is probably going to get them banned.
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If yet nothing happened, everything should be fine.
Although, I would rather suggest you to use keys from now on.
Of course, it's possible, for someone to use gift links for even trading and nothing bad happens to them (and I met some traders like that), but it's just pushing your luck.
NOTE: If you are from Europe, you don't have to worry as much, as threating them with the EU laws seems to solve the problem (Reddit post regarding that)
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Well, there still might be some other things you've done which had raised the flag.
For example:
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why would they allow you to buy the same bundle twice if they were then going to go and be angry about it.. it's the same as offering giftlinks to people and then saying they violate rules which weren't written and they give you the tools to violate..
It's a bundle site, if you buy bundles on a semi regular basis you're going to get numerous copies of the same game.. It's the whole reason they have the Giftlink stuff in the first place.
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It's nothing new I agree and yet at least 5 games I won since November have had gift links from Humble so I'd say it bears repeating since not everyone is aware.
I'm from Europe but I still would rather avoid the complications of having to explain to Humble why their TOS are illegal and all that so I only ever use keys from them.
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Thank you very much for spreading this info, I had no idea! This is definitely a bummer...
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it's not being nervous, it's just making people abreast of a situation which isn't clearly defined.. and letting people who gift games know that HB can and will restrict and ban your account for making gift links to give/trade to people..
I didn't know they would be doing that, but heard rumors,, I just assumed it was something else, like people abusing the referral system, which they also claimed I did,, it just seems like a bunch of nonsense in order to find ways to get classic subscribers gone.. meh, Humble has been crap ever since IGN took over.. oh well what can you do..
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Was not saying you were nervous :) was trying to tell people in EU to not be nervous with gifting stuff to friends.
Most of the flags HB raises are outside of EU where ToS applies and its mostly to key reselers and big traders with 5 HB accounts.
I'm just trying to make people more confortable and less afraid. :) :) we all thank you for the warning though! (altought there's already like 5 discussions about this subject).
Just trying to warn that people being banned are almost always people with like 100 trade topics on steam trades that have been trading for years and multi accounting. This hardly affects 98% of Steam gifts users that give away 5 games a month.
I'm really sorry for what happened to you, and I do feel your pain! Just trying to give the rest of the people peace of mind.
Stay safe man!
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suppose them giving you the options to create gifts for friends was never meant to be used by people.. go figure..
it was not meant to be resold or abused, if you gift >50% of you bundles its fair to raise a flag
it sucks that they banned some users and deny access to paid customers, but also bundle secondary distribution is hurting the sales.
as always abusers are hurting the legit customers and Humble as a business cant tell the difference.
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I own 16,000 games on steam,, most of their bundles have at most 1 or 2 games I want... if I only used the games I bought, I would have hundreds if not thousands of extra keys just wasting away..
As for distribution a case could be made that if you buy something it should be yours to do with as you please,, if it bothers them or violates their rules, then they should make all access keys like they've done in the past.. so that one key unlocks the entire bundle on steam, rather then giving individual keys..
If I buy a bundle, use 2 keys for my own account and have 8 additional games I already own, then being that I purchased the bundle, I should have full authority to use the remaining 8 keys in anyway I see fit..
including, gifting, selling, trading, etc etc.. I don't personally sell games but have no issues trading them for cards or other games, with that said, if Humble has an issue with trading or reselling they should by all means sell keys that unlock entire tiers of a bundle, rather then sell them individually.. I mean that's common sense 101..
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you get a bundle for a single game?
but seriously the whole ownership thing is a mirage, we possess nothing. steam could go offline and you cant kiss your library goodbye, same with unused humble keys. can you lend a steam game to friends?
im just playing the devil advocate here, this was a known issue with HB and some EU users threat legal action and got results.
but at the end of the day, they can do what they want
just play it safe, all of SG is with you :)
EDIT: id assume all access key would be problematic/expensive to arrange with steam/publishers
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you can lend your friends your steam games.. it's in a roundabout way.. like my son, plays my steam games on his computer, when i'm at work using friend share or whatever it's called..
Will I buy a bundle for a single game, it depends on the game and the cost of the bundle.. If a game cost 4 dollars on steam and is in a 1.99 bundle with 6 other games, then sure.. that way I got the game and have 5 additional games I can barter with people to get cards for to help boost my profile..
I would give games away on here for a while, but then Devs started to invalidate keys and revoke legally purchased keys and I stopped, no use getting a headache over trying to give something away I don't want or need..
I never implied I have ownership over the games on steam I purchased, nor the ones I buy from Humble, but when I buy steam keys, I own that key which I should then be able to use whoever I see fit..
Like if I buy a pack of Skittles but only eat the green skittles, now i'm left with a bunch of left over skittles, which could be thrown in the trash, or I could find a guy who loves Red skittles and trade him my red's for his greens.. We both win, it didn't cost the candy company anything because I already purchased that pack of candy..
i dislike Gray market sites because I feel they do devalue games, but trading not so much, after all if I buy a key in a bundle, the developer already devalued his game by putting it in the bundle in the first place.. they already were also paid for said game.. So if I want to barter the key I bought for something I'd rather have, then why is that wrong..
My intention with this topic was to let people know that the rumors (they were rumors to me at this point) were true and to be careful with making links.. after all, whether you sell links on gray maket sites, gift them to people on this site or trade them to people on other sites, it all looks to same to humble.. better off just not making links at all..
They've done all unlock/access keys before, i don't know what the issues were but most were games from the same publisher, so possibly that could be why.. How about make it so you have to link your steam account and redeem them that way.. I mean it's only right if they want to stop the trading/selling etc etc.. the burden should fall on them, not the end usre..
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The part where you asked "after all if I buy a key in a bundle, the developer already devalued his game by putting it in the bundle in the first place.. "
That's not necessarily true. When games are bundled for charities like is the case with Humble, they KNOW 100% that the person isn't going to play all 12, or whatever the number is. Let's just take Humble Choice as an example. They try to put games in there to suit every taste, so if you play 2 of them, then you've gotten your 12 dollars value from that bundle. If you play more, that's a bonus. The other games are extras, not necessarily meant to give the person more value by then selling/trading on those keys.
You might disagree with me, and that's okay. But, that there is the intention behind these bundles. They're expecting that we'll play some, maybe give some to a family member or a friend and forget about the rest. Or just activate them on your account and try them out.
It's then up to you if you want to break the terms of the ToS they've put down and take the risk that goes with it. They are within their rights to refuse further service to you though.
Now in the case of gross abuse. Having multiple Humble Bundle accounts, trading profusely, and the like, I can see that being a major issue and Humble have every right to deal with that accordingly. I do see some complaint threads being made here at times, and to be honest, I sometimes think that people leave out the entire story and tell use the "LITE" version of what really happened. :P
Each person is responsible for their own destiny. :P (The destiny of their Humble account)
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if a developer puts their game into a bundle even a bundle for charity, they went and devalued their game.. Whether it's for charity so they can do a tax write off, or it's a bundle to drum up support for a multiplayer only game, or to get extra exposure, they still devalued their game because they went and put hundreds if not thousands of copies of their game out there for rock bottom prices.. Sure reasons exist to offer in bundles but that doesn't alter it was still devalued and will never be viewed the same again..
After checking out their TOS, they make zero mentions of gifting games being against the rules, outside of them saying games are for your personal use,,
Humble Bundle has no way of knowing if you're trading a game or gifting it to a friend, they can speculate on it, but how can you punish someone for something that you can't prove they did.. This site is about gifting games, creating gift links from Humble bundle which can get them banned. as gifting on this site or just creating a giftlink for your friends on steam, can have the same end result, regardless of what actions they may or may not have taken.. My trading games for cards looks the same to them as someone else gifting their games to a group of their closest personal friends.. or someone else using their giftlinks to sell games on Ebay, amazon or even other gray market sites,, it's all looks the same to them. Why have the option at all, and why issue restrictions when you're giving people the option to create giftlinks in the first place..
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"will never be viewed the same again"
This is only true if you're a trader or a person who only buys bundles. There are lots of those around this community who think the way that you do.
It's not true if you're a person who genuinely wants to play a game and support the devs. You know, I am friends with countless gamers outside of SG and none of them are members here. They're not interested in bundles or the like. They just buy games outright, whether that's in sales or full price the fact is, they buy them from legal stores. Like, I've even offered them some of my spare games for free and they're like "Nah, not interested, I might not play it." I can't give them stuff for free. People like that still exist you know. LOL!
And to be honest, I only ended up here because I was sick, stuck at home looking at the four walls and had nothing better to do. In fact, I kinda rue the day I discovered bundles.
If I really want a game, and it's been previously bundled, I'm still going to buy it. Why should that matter?
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I occasionally get prompted for additional authorization before my purchase is approved. Usually this occurs only when I try to buy more than one copy of a bundle. When that happens, I just ignore the extra steps and allow HB to reimburse me for my canceled purchase. I don't want to draw real-person attention to my account. I buy multiple copies of a bundle to play a multiplayer game with friends and give them the keys. Then I trade the unused keys on SteamTrades or give them away on SteamGifts. I stopped using gift links sometime early last year, but I still get the occasional flag when making duplicate purchases.
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You write it by your own, you are a trader.
And it is know that when you trade a gift link to a flagged account (as example because they bought with a stolen credit card, sold games from HB bundles, had more as one HB account and so on), that your own account is from that moment on the watchlist or get banned.
From all cases that i seen in the past it hit only the, clear, resellers and very big traders.
I don't say that it is in your case the same but i would say they made a good job in the past to hit the right ones with the bans and if you are "unguilty" then is that for you of course very bad but they still have a very high hit percentage in general.
False positives are always possible.
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whether someone is a trader or a gifter, in humbles eyes it's the same thing.. also you trading or giving games to somebody with an Email that has scammed Humble in the past shouldn't be grounds for any action taken against you..
I mean that's like saying someone who lives in your apartment building boring a bowl of sugar from you, then using that sugar to trick an officer into buying it pretending it was Cocaine, would get you in trouble, even though you did nothing wrong..
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They allow you to give the leftovers of your bundles to, close, friends. That friends are not very specific defined and that is bad but they haven't done something till more and more abused the function (with reselling, buying many T1 copies, use "new account offers" many times and so on). So in the end are not HB responsible for the situation now instead the greedy people. And yes it hits now all customers, if they have a lot of friends, but i have no problem with giving a HB key or giftlink away and i don't have fear that i have a negative backlash from it because i am no trader and i don't sell them. I don't like that fact as anyone else, but i understand why a company are forced to protect their business if too much abuse a part of the offer(s).
How they know you don't gave the leftovers to a close friend ?
Let's say you trad it away to someone. This one is happy about the good trade and trade it again away to make a win, that happen one or more times, till it go to a account that are flagged. At that moment they know you traded or sold the giftlink and as soon as that happen they know you give not or not only to, close, friends.
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it says nothing about close friends
it says "If you receive games you do not want or already own, you are free to gift the key to a friend using the regular "Gift to Friend" feature from the Humble Subscriber Hub. This can be found by taking the following steps:"
NO where does it mention they have to be a "close" friend, In fact the whole gifting option mentions zero limitations at all, and it goes against their whole TOS.. So why would someone get punished by gifting a game when it's not specifically stating that it goes against any of their rules. That would be like the cops offers a drug addict drugs, and then arresting them for using them.. Like, sure it's against the rules, but the cops themselves are the ones offering it.. So why then should the person get in trouble for using the services they make available..
You can only create a giftlink once,, it can get traded mulitple times, between multiple parties until one person redeems it.. after that, you can no longer redeem it.. Humble can only tell who redeemed the giftlink, now how many people had access too it... So Im' not sure what you were saying with that one..
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Ok then only "friends".
But how they define that word is still not fully "exposed".
If you think the gifting option is against their TOS then why aren't you happy that it was possible for so many years because they were generous ?
Because some people thought it is a good idea to f... them in the a.. they decided to change it.
I absolutely understand the handling.
And they still allow it in a small ammount as long as no reselling or trading is involved.
SG is seen as a trading place because the gifter get cv for it. That's not good but it is how it is.
Your cop and drug addicts example is bad because undercover cops offer drugs and of course they arresting the drug addicts if they want to buy drugs :-D
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they should be transparent, instead of intentionally keeping that information close to the vest, and picking and choosing when to react and punish people for something that can't be proven.. It's like mods who go and ban someone for one thing, but let others do and say the same thing with no punishment.. You need to be consistent, across the board.
you say Effing them in the A.. you mean by using their service in a way they allow, They have the means to only let people redeem games to their own personal account, but instead choose to give us pages full of individual keys we can create giftlinks for, and then start to restrict and ban based on us taking advantage of features they offer...
That would be called Entrapment, they capture drug dealers not the base level addict, they aren't there giving addicts drugs and selling them small bags of illegal drugs
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No, i spoke about the, clearly not allowed, reselling, the multiaccounting to get nice "new user" offers, using multiple accounts to buy the cheap T1 bundles (and resell them with a win).
Such stuff is not only against their TOS, such stuff harm a company and if too many do it the company are, nearly, forced to change stuff.
And such stuff are the reason that they changed their generous handling with "giving away is allowed and we don't look at it" to "we look closely because more as giving to friends is against our TOS".
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i dont know if humble is going this far, butt here is my guess for what may be happening.
humble knows which steam account your key's usually get activated on so they know your account.
your profile is publicly viewable because it has to be in order to use steamgifts.
everyone who wins one of your giveaways on steamgifts also has a publicly viewable profile.
therefore they could have a bot watching users profiles who go on to "gift" their keys to "random" people who are not on their friendlist
i agree that the humble TOS is not very specific about this, but a workaround could potentially be to simply have people add you to their friendlist on steam before recieving your gift link (not sure if steamgifts TOS allows for this requirement) so that you do not get flagged as you would indeed be giving your game to a "friend" and not just a "random" person everytime.
this is just a guess for how they are flagging people
could anyone confirm if they have gotten in in trouble for gifting games to their steam friends, or is this only for gifting to "random" people
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I don't think they have anything at all in place to check.. they just look at people giving out high volumes of giftlinks and hit them with restrictions, based on zero evidence of any wrong doing on the person's part.. It's pretty much them choosing to restrict people because they buy alot and give alot of stuff they buy away.. Also they have zero way of knowing which account activates what keys, only what email addresses uncover gift links.. So a key should be completely safe since they can't see which account activated it.. In face IIRC unless you link your steam account, they'd have no way of knowing what steam account belonged to which account..
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I used to think like you OP until it happened to me too. I thought maybe it was affecting mass resellers or people with duplicate accounts, but nope, just pure stupidity on HB's behalf. The gifting feature should just be disabled if they're just going to haphazardly make judgement calls on what they think people are using it for without being transparent.
I'm sure the cheerleaders will argue about that there's merit in their approach, but at the end of the day, 1 key was paid for and only 1 person gets to redeem it, it shouldn't matter who that is. If I buy a bundle of gift cards, it shouldn't matter if I later give those to my friends to use. But a digital platform gives companies this control now and so here we are.
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that's what i'm saying, how can they offer us an option with very vague definition, then claim it violates their TOS, when their TOS say every game is for your personal use.. So giving us the option to make them into gifts and give them to people, then after the fact saying, hey well, yeah you can't do that because we think you're violating our TOS makes no sense..
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Because their TOS allows cancelling/suspending accounts at anytime and if they were to have clear policies on how much people could gift before warning or suspension, then they'd be held accountable if they'd ever deviate, and lastly people would gift link right up to whatever limit is imposed which HB would not want.
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Something to keep in mind: if you have games laying around (like, in a spreadsheet to keep track of all of your stuff, like I do) where you've already generated gift links...put the link in a browser and go ahead and claim the game yourself. Then, once you have the key, just put that into your spreadsheet. Since the keys themselves can't really be tracked, you'll solve the issue even for games for which you've already generated a gift link.
I've never been a key trader, nor sold HB keys on the gray market, but given how they've been behaving at HB as of late, I don't want to falsely get thrown into HB jail. So, any older games that I purchased, I'm resolving the gift links into keys before gifting them to friends.
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if they've restricted my account for good, with declining all my cards, then I guess i'll have to make a new account and never create gift links with it,,, then add them to the file I already have,, I didn't want to do that before hand because of how convenient and time saving it is to just use Humble and type in the name of the game.. might stop buying any games from them aside from the monthly anyway, since their normal bundles haven't really been anything great lately anyway, and the lack of transparency is stupid
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I think that would be the best way to go.. as HB. has been complete garbage in terms of support.. Put in a ticket with them almost 20 days ago about this issue got the random run around I talked about here, and now that everything i'm using is getting declined, they haven't responded to the last support message I put in going on 10 days at this point.. Think it might be time to just create a new account or something, as it's obvious that whatever issue they are having with me won't be cleared up via support. I used to think Humble support was bad, now it's ridiculous.. waiting over 10 days for them to get back to me..
Ever since they got with IGN they have gone down the crapper,, I guess I shouldn't be shocked about it..
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I dont think this is necessarily a question of IGN vs no IGN, as much as people love to point fingers at it
Companies are not your friend, period. Even with HB, the main idea always was to make profit, even when wrapped in some noble goal
Not that I endorse or support their, lets say it, abysmal policies toward gifting but I think its safe to say that they probably were pressured by developers as well to step up their game to try and put a stop on the reseller market of HB keys (which sadly also had and probably will still have collateral damages in the process).
Not to mention that the support part is often the part which gets the least amount of attention/ gets outsourced
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Lots of people already know this but I was on the fence about whether or not I believed it.. Creating and giving out giftlinks from HB can get your account restricted and eventually shut down..
for a bit of backstory the last year or so I've been getting any new purchases verified from Humble bundle any time I buy them... I'd have to give my phone number, enter a code, then wait 24 - 48 hours, my purchase would be cancelled and I'd have to make it again and repeat the process until it may or may not go through..
After numerous emails with them today they finally said I had a warning on my account from secondary distribution of games.. I assume they mean my gifting and trading of games.. So I'd say if you're still creating Giftlinks I'd stop doing that or else you'll be in the same boat as me..
So just figured I'd let people know incase they still create giftlinks,, I suppose them giving you the options to create gifts for friends was never meant to be used by people.. go figure..
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