Quick question I've been wondering about since the announcement: I get the rage over out of stock keys that never get restocked, but why do people leave keys unrevealed for years on end instead of doing something with them?
I'm not judging anybody for this, just trying to understand, because I've always tried to use/get rid of keys as soon as physically possible out of paranoia that they'd expire or something.
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For me it is because I never know if someone from my family/Friends would want a certain game I've got in the past. Or if I still haven't decided myself if I want to play that game or not. Also having a lot of games yet to be played makes me not use the keys right away but only when I got time to play the game
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Going to trade it later, going to gift it later. You are adult, there are sudden changes in life. Time goes by so quickly. "I'll have time to play in a few months". You are subscribed to Choice, and you kinda want 3 games, but you end up with 8. You have a backlog, it turns out that playing Witcher 3 in real adult life takes 6 months, than you promise to start revealing last 6 months worth of keys, but then something comes up. At the same point you have huge fear of missing out, because you can see some historical bundles full of awesome games that never got rebundled again and were expensive ever after, so you keep buying bundles you're going to play. Than more family and health matters come up, and you're out of gaming for 4 more months.
And then BAM, you're 42 years old, and suddenly you have 2 weeks of vacations with no plans whatsoever. It's time to reveal the keys to all them brilliant indies you've been meaning to play for past 2 years!
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Why wouldn't you just take the minute or so it takes to redeem them when you buy them? The life gets in the way reason doesn't really hold up against the lack of time required to do so. If you had time to buy the bundle, you definitely had time to redeem the games. Your total commitment of time and energy is +/- 3 minutes.
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I'm just unsure about some if I want to activate or gift away, don't have the energy to deal with region locks, want to keep it for events.
But since a good while i learned that I need to use that few minutes to at least save the keys for multiple reasons. One of them being I rather trust my own spreadsheet that I have more control over, than the Humble page (with history of banning people for "trading"), and it paid off this time.
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I can only speak for myself but I had been told that keys, once revealed, had a higher chance of getting marked as unused if not activated and getting recycled by devs.
Since there are always games I really don't care about in bundles but I am not making GAs for all of them in case someone I know wants them, they just piled up and here we are.
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I've never heard that myself. The pool of unused keys is the same whether they are revealed or not, so I'm not sure how one would be a larger factor than the other from a developer's perspective. Nor would it seem like a developer would be sharing a batch of Humble keys with other outlets. It would be hard to believe that part of the arrangement isn't Humble being provided with a set of keys generated exclusively to be redeemed via Humble's site.
I can understand why you would make the decision based on what you had heard, but it's an unusual claim. It would be interesting to see what info whoever told you that had that made them feel comfortable making that claim.
Have you considered just looking at who on your friends list have "x" game(s) wishlisted and sending a key their way? Or posting something on your Steam feed when you have extras?
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Sensible.
I don't personally have the same concerns, but tracking your stuff independent of your Humble library is wise.
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Exactly this - you mean get to it, and then things come up. More to the point, it is no one's business what you do with the keys once you buy them. The license you have purchased belong to YOU. Humble has no further right to get involved in how long you keep your key once they take your money. From the moment they take your money they are out of the picture, unless they fail to provide you with the product they promised. The game devs and publishers have no right to cancel the product they supplied to Humble by contract. And for people who like to kibbitz, it's not anyone's business to speculate about why someone held or redeemed their keys. The keys are theirs. They can use them as they see fit, subject to the terms of sale. The end.
Also, there was in fact a period some years back when large numbers of revealed Humble keys became duplicates for a large number of people. I remember it pretty clearly. People who kept the keys hidden were fine, but people who revealed them ended up with duplicated codes. Humble denied anything amiss on their end (though logically it had to be some leak or other problem on their end) and suggested, in that informal vague way they have, that users might want to keep their codes hidden until they were ready to use them. It was only later that they started selling keys they didn't actually own.
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The obvious counter argument is that you are buying keys for licenses for games you don't actually own due to digital rights management. I think it would be very difficult to convince any court that the key for the license for the game you don't actually own is any different than the license itself for the game you don't actually own. They're all temporary by the very nature of them having DRM attached to them. And holding onto the keys for licenses for games you don't actually own, for extended periods of time without redeeming them, does not help anybody's case.
You would really need to invalidate DRM altogether. Which is something people should be be trying to do. But is not currently something people have been able to successfully fight against.
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Humble has no further right to get involved in how long you keep your key once they take your money
THIS! It's like going to a new store and buying something and they're like "hey you have your hands full, here, use our storage, no charge, no time limit, you can come and get your things whenever" so you think cool and you come back and buy more stuff and leave it in storage and then one day, even though you come every week buying stuff, they're like "oh yeah that stuff was old so we just threw everything out"
You couldn't tell your users before that happened? If they sold keys and said you have to reveal it and use it right away, then fine but they didn't, they provided storage space and then all of a sudden it's like "nah it's gone, bye" because they can't be bothered getting enough keys for everyone who bought the product?
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I thought that "Reveal your Steam key" meant it would show me a key that had already been allocated to my account since I'm 99% sure that's how most of the older bundles work. I didn't realize it actually means that it requests a Steam key because why would anybody think that? I get that they sometimes have a limited amount of keys provided to them, but if they only have 10,000 keys and 12,000 people buy a bundle they should do whatever it takes to get those extra 2,000 keys ASAP. Otherwise they need to specify which games are limited and then mark them as sold out or make the entire bundle itself limited.
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I thought that "Reveal your Steam key" meant it would show me a key that had already been allocated to my account
Ahhh, that makes sense. I don't know/remember if that's how HB ever worked, but you're right, it really should be.
I've just been hearing horror stories ever since I joined SG of keys not working, so I've always worked under the assumption that keys in general were unreliable or expired after a while.
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Exactly. They know how many bundles they sold. If they bought less keys they can:
a) get more keys
b) replace the game by something else
c) refund buyers for a portion of the price.
Fanatical has had bundles in the past that where games were selling out before the bundle ended. They kept the list up to date so that people knew they were not getting the full bundle and could make their decision about whether it mattered or not.
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Going to clean my backlog, found that those are are temporarily exhausted for this product
Autonauts vs PirateBots
Boomerang Fu
Calico
Dreamcast Collection
Family Man
Fashion Police Squad
Golden Light
Just Die Already
LEGO® 2K Drive Awesome Edition
Old World
Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Terraformers
Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
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Adding to that:
A Plague Tale: Requiem
Astral Ascent
Atlas Fallen
Bravery and Greed
Call of Cthulhu
Citizen Sleeper
Darksiders III
Desperados III (which conveniently goes past the three years limit in the next week or so)
Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter
Evan's Remains
Hi-Fi RUSH
Jack Move
Loddlenaut
Moonstone Island
Roboquest
Smile For Me
Soulcalibur VI
Soulstice
Tabletop Playground
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
The Quarry Deluxe
It's really getting ridiculous. The further you go in the bundles, the more keys there are out of stock.
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that's probably happening because everyone is redeeming everything at this moment. lots of people are reporting exausted keys in recent bundles in this thread, which is against their own current tos. looks like humble provoked some sort of caos to shove in some retarded conditions in their tos.
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Yep and every time I get one of those "hey it's all ok now, we have restocked, stop email us" emails, more people have already rushed in and grabbed the few keys they "restocked"... I mean... they know how many keys have been claimed without a stock. Why exactly aren't they restocking the number they need??
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lol for that right? maybe they commit to provide later keys after steam let developers generate more? maybe steam is the bottleneck between the sales and delivery the goods? no one so far brought a plausible justification to this question...
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They knew how many people bought the bundles so it's bizarre. Hi-Fi Rush has been out of stock for ages.
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Not only did they know way back but now they know how many people have been trying to redeem a key.
The restocking should not come in the form of an email that says "hey we dropped a bucket over there, first come first serve". It should be "we're very sorry we are douchebags and you had to wait for months for something you paid for in advance, here is your key, and a coupon to say sorry"
Hi-Fi Rush has been out of stock for ages.
And it has a "redemption date" limit coming up quickly. How are they going to handle this I wonder? Because the key is out of stock but still marked "redeem by June 2025" on my page. Seriously?
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It looks like unredeemed keys from all bundles for Pitiri 1977 were revoked by the publisher. I've tested keys from IG and Groupees.
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I have decided to go through my unrevealed keys on Humble Bundle, and I could find everything, even Desura keys for HIB #2, except:
The Ship: Murder Party | The Ship - Complete Pack
Keys are temporarily exhausted for this product
As soon as we receive more keys, we will add them to this page and send you an email.
I think this key was part of a giveaway on the Humble Store during summer 2018 involving daily logins.
Overall, not too bad.
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I believe that any giveaway keys were just expired after a certain amount of time, which is fair.
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I checked and some of the keys from old bundles as well as new bundles still work while others show as duplicated on Steam and on EA, keys which were revealed (old bundles) long ago as well as unrevealed (new bundles).
So those who made a backup list of keys should try to redeem them, because even if it´s revealed doesn´t mean it works.
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Alan Wake's American Nightmare from Humble Weekly Sale: Alan Wake
Little Inferno from Humble Indie Bundle 8
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box from Humble Origin Bundle (only Steam key, Origin key was good)
Medal of Honor from Humble Origin Bundle (both Steam and Origin keys)
Mirror's Edge from Humble Origin Bundle (both Steam and Origin keys)
Garry's Mod from Humble Jumbo Bundle
Ridge Racer™ Unbounded Bundle from Humble BANDAI NAMCO Bundle
Risen 2: Dark Waters Gold Edition from Humble Deep Silver Bundle 2
Wargame: Red Dragon from October 2017 Monthly
Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition from September 2018 Humble Monthly
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden from April 2019 Humble Monthly
Sonic Mania from October 2019 Humble Monthly
Hello Neighbor from August 2020 Humble Choice
Overcooked! 2 from December 2020 Humble Choice
Superhot: Mind Control Delete from June 2022 Humble Choice
A Plague Tale: Innocence from August 2022 Humble Choice
Just Cause 4: Complete Edition from September 2022 Humble Choice
A Plague Tale: Requiem from July 2024 Humble Choice
High On Life from August 2024 Humble Choice
Astral Ascent from August 2024 Humble Choice
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake from September 2024 Humble Choice
Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand from December 2024 Humble Choice
Crime Boss: Rockay City - First Month Edition from December 2024 Humble Choice
Blasphemous 2 from January 2025 Humble Choice
These are as many as I found, some others worked without issues and others I didn´t try because I already have on Steam so there could be more.
As you can see it doesn´t matter the date or the bundle as some older keys worked or even keys from the same bundles where others were duplicated, but keys which I´ve never revealed were now revealed and worse, some of them are duplicated as shown above.
Not only that but some keys say they can be activated up until some time in 2026. Supposedly you could file a complaint with keys revealed no more than a few weeks BUT, my keys were revealed without my intervention. More on that, when this past month´s Humble Choice´s deadline occured I went and checked February 2022 Humble Choice keys (because of the 3 years TOS change) for a game which keys were unrevealed up to the day before and they were automatically revealed too.
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There haven't been any other reports of unrevealed games being automatically revealed, and many of the games on your list have no other reports of issues. I'd suspect that someone other than you has accessed your humble account.
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That is strange since they send you a verification code every time you try to access. If anyone other than me tried to access they would still need that code for verification. In any case I already opened a ticket with them yesterday so they can see whatever happened.
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Which means you should worry that someone has access to your email, too.
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I guess Humble Bundle would be the least of my worries had someone hacked into my email and I would have probably seen suspicious behaviour in other sites, would´ve been locked out of those or even from the email account itself. No need to be paranoid but cautious.
Nah, I think the answer is simpler and lies within the confines of Humble Bundle´s site. Just need to see when they reply back.
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I redeemed A Plague Tale: Innocence and Just Cause 4 from said bundles now, it looks like something strange is happening with your keys.
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I´m still waiting for Humble to reply, I revealed those keys when a lot of people said they were getting out of stock messages so I thought having them revealed would keep me from having to wait in the event of a restock, little did I know they´d be duplicated when trying to redeem them.
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That one was already known to be revoked:
https://barter.vg/notices/513
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/Dgscb/a-list-of-games-whose-unredeemed-keys-were-revoked/search?page=21#qjr4Dl2
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I got a credit back from Humble ($5) for that because the publisher revoked the unused keys or something (and they had no way of getting more).
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Just store, I did a dry run on a bundle and there's no option to split the payment.
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Something along the lines of: I went to redeem this but it said it's a duplicate. What do I do?
They said this:
"Thanks for reaching out to Humble Bundle Support and Thank you for your patience! I’m sorry to hear there have been issues with receiving keys for your Black Book.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to restock the keys for this specific title. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to secure additional keys from our developer partners. This could be due to licensing issues, changes with the publisher, or other unforeseen circumstances.
We understand this is disappointing news and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment this may cause. Please know that we are always working to provide our customers with the best possible experience and hope to offer more exciting titles and deals in the future.
As an apology, we have credited your account with (USD)$5 (£3.97) in wallet credit (available to be used in the Humble Store)"
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I just saved over 100 game keys, there were many that had "expired" but were unrevealed.
Sucks but that is life, i had enough time to make GA's i guess after purchasing those bundles.
So thanks for the heads-up.
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Humble Bundle updated their terms of service on Dec 24, 2024 to state the following:
In some cases due to various reasons, a key may not be available to replenish and in such cases, Humble Bundle may offer the same game on a different platform (“Alternate Keys”) if this is a possibility. In cases where Alternate Keys are not available to replenish, Humble Bundle is not obligated to provide them. Keys, including Alternate Keys, for all games, whether bought in a Bundle, Humble Choice subscription, or individually, must be redeemed within 3 years from the purchase date. Humble Bundle shall not be obligated to provide any keys, including Alternate Keys, to games that are unredeemed within aforementioned timeframe and thus become expired.
People have been reporting that keys over three years old now gives a "no longer available" message, even for keys already revealed. Keys over three years old still work if you've saved them luckily. Always reveal and write down your keys as soon as you buy a bundle or from the store. Unfortunately humble sells bundles now when the keys are already out of stock so we can't do much about that. It does make me question the financial stability of the subsidiary. I wonder if IGN will be shutting them down soon.
Edit: This currently may only affect certain bundles. I've gone through some of my older unrevealed keys and they still work for now. Still, it's better to make a backup of everything in case they do decide to invoke this TOS on everything.
Edit 2: Ran into my first missing key in Humble Jumbo Bundle 11 for Domina. It states "This content has been removed. We apologize for any inconvenience." Apparently this is unrelated to the TOS change and was removed a long time ago.
Edit 3: I can confirm Per Aspera in the Humble Choice February 2022 says
"Oops! This game key is no longer available.
It has been over 3 years since purchase, exceeding our terms of service."
Edit 4: See this thread for additional games that have been removed:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/I8vLk/do-we-have-victims-of-keys-no-longer-available-case-from-humble-bundle-here-not-stock
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