This announcement and change is in response to a recent suggestion.

In the past, we would temporarily remove games from the giveaway list when they were available in a sizeable promotion. For example, another website giving away 10,000 keys, or a game developer distributing free keys for a weekend as part of a marketing campaign. These games would remain disabled until the promotions ended, and then we would add the games back to the giveaway list.

However, as mentioned in the suggestion, attempting to temporarily block these games resulted in a number of issues. This included users posting the games under incorrect names, which lead to a wide range of tickets and suspensions. It also caused some confusion in the community about which games could or could not be given away, resulting in unnecessary conflict between users.

Therefore we're removing the restriction, so that users will now be able to give away these games while the promotions are taking place. Hopefully this will allow the community to run a little smoother, and free up time for us to focus on more important tickets. Keep in mind, these games will still be assigned reduced or no CV when appropriate.

6 years ago

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This is good since there is a lot of people who didn't got the game while it was free and people with spare keys can donate now.

6 years ago
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It was allowed before, but before this update you needed to wait for the end of promotion, where you can grab key for free.

6 years ago
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yes dude

6 years ago
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Thanks. Not everyone have a Humble or IndieGala accounts.

6 years ago
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Yeah... but why not just make an account?

6 years ago
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you may for example live in a restricted country.

6 years ago
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What countries have banned Humble or IndieGala though?
If some game can't be taken in a certain country, then they most likely can't be redeemed on Steam either?
Maybe I'm wrong. Feel free to correct me.

6 years ago
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countries that are prohibited by US payment carriers. And you are wrong indeed - people from such countries cannot purchase anything on Steam, cannot buy anything (and also register account, because why allowing account from country that cannot pay you) from bundlesites, but they can still redeem SteamKeys, because restrictions are on payments, not on 'any contact'. There was a case of SG user who is Syrian. I called him a leecher but I stood corrected. Because of war in his country US govt prohibited any monetary contacts between US and Syria. He got his PayPal account locked down and unable to create new one (PP would not accept syrian bank account nor card), he couldn't buy anything using his cards - guess what country all CCs are processed in? so even if he had CC from Syrian bank he couldn't use it online, because processing (including on sites like Humble or IG) would go through US, so he wouldn't be able to pay for anything online unless ussing local Syrian processing (obviously no western store would accept it). He couldn't create accounts, because if he is from country he cannot pay from no need for account. Before encountering him I've had a strong opinion, that any leecher on SG is a leecher by a choice, because anyone can afford to buy something and give it away. But after that I reworked this statement, it is possible that someone cannot give anything away, it's like 0.01% chance, and not because 'I cannot afford making GA', but there is a chance that someone have no actual way of getting anything to make GA with even if they can afford it.

Obviously it's riddiculously small portion of community (99.99% of leechers leech of their own choice/greed), but after a bit opf research there are a few countries (don't remember all, but besides Syria there was Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan etc) in the world that are completely cut off from western monetary systems because of US transaction bans, and indeed someone from such a country will not be able not only to buy any Steam game but also in most cases even register an account in keystore.

6 years ago
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Ban all them the free games

Ex: Everybody is killing someone. Is the right way to allow it? NO, the right way is condemn them.

This site was better in the past.

6 years ago
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Entendi nada.
What people dying have to do with free games? Yeah, maybe this site was way better in the early days, but what's really wrong with sharing these free keys? I just can't understand how someone should condemn a dumb guy who grab a bread from a free bread chest and give it for free to another dumber guy .

6 years ago
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Só exemplifiquei. Se todo mundo faz o que é errado, não é porque todo mundo está fazendo que o errado deve passar a ser certo.
Se não contar pontos pra conta, sem problemas.
Mas não deveria nem perder tempo respondendo sujeito LV 0 com perfil privado. Deve ser outro com vac ban

6 years ago
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Se o problema é só o LV aqui no site apenas abra um ticket para o suporte que provavelmente eles vão te responder sobre isso, garanto que não é difícil.
E sobre meu perfil, sr LV 4.28 com perfil público, não percebi que tava privado, mas se gente como você acha que eu tenho VAC faço questão de deixar público agora.

6 years ago
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Show, vai la sortear uns jogos free agora

6 years ago
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Am sorry for the extra work this gives site admins. But I genuinely think this should be enforced again. Some are actually gifting 10 copies of Amnesia currently free on HB. Can't condone sleeze like this.

6 years ago
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They get 0CV, why does it mater? (If you don't want to see it just hide them or get the game on HB)

EDIT: yeah now that I think about it they could stack up GIVEN count but since that is for SGtools it can be bypassed by more custom rules on there

6 years ago
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Well, if they have multi-accounts for humble, what is stopping them to have multi-accounts here?

6 years ago
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That is up to SG to stop as much as they can, but they can't rly do that all of the time..
(I saw one guy boasting how he and his russian friends have multi-accounts and win game that they don't activate but trade he got perma banned not sure about his friends since he didn't mention them by name)

But again that is not the point here if you ask me

6 years ago
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It's not only sleezy imo, but have now just seen it appear in groups that require certain $ ratios... It may only give 0 CV but will give $35 odd value.

6 years ago
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even more sleazy when there is even one user who stated that they reported somone to the admins, in all of their giveaways for this game (10 in total I think) for spam !!! - why - because the person had the audacity to leave a link to the free game at humble on their giveaways - that made me sad that they think this is spam, when I call it a public service announcement :(

6 years ago
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The funny thing is they spammed me back informing me they were reporting me, ending up in ~24 messages, haha. I don't imagine their report will go anywhere but it was pretty funny.

Would be nice if a similar message could be automatically tacked onto free games so folks out of the loop don't waste all their points and people like me don't feel the need to "spam" ;)

6 years ago
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Well that is just shit if they do it in those groups and those groups don't give 0$ value for it.. But that is for groups to solve if you ask me

6 years ago
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what's the difference if they spam 10 giveaways now or tomorrow when the promo ends?

the most important thing this update issued is people picking wrong games for their giveaways.
unless you would rather have users create "Jackie Chan Presents: Amnesia" and "Amnesia Fortnight 2017" GAs since they will always find a way to conveniently ignore the rules. ^^ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6 years ago
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Allowed giveaways of free games from Humble Store since SteamGifts is official partner , such as https://www.humblebundle.com/store/amnesia-collection?partner=steamgifts

6 years ago
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Can we have a "hide all giveaways for games in promotions, or games that are temporarily free" option?

6 years ago
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You can always hide the games you don't want to see and later un-hide them.
I think that what you are asking might be more work for them for an unnecessary thing

6 years ago
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The amount of games that you'd have to hide would make such a feature worthwhile, besides it shouldn't really inflict more work because it can be implemented by grouping them in a group such as the already existent whitelist/group/invite-only/region-restricted types of groups

6 years ago
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What you say is not the same as GAs for games in promotion..
Sometimes it takes a few days for a game that is in a bundle for the 1st time to be put on the bundled list (at least it used to).
And then again you would have to make another group that would need to be updated every 1h containing a game that is in a bundle currently, and so on. If you ask me a lot of work for the mods in the end (even if it is implemented) that will need to maintain that list, and even now every now and then you get a discussion post about support tickets taking too long.

I understand why you would like this feature, but then again if you want a game you don't want to hide it and if you don't want a game (bundled currently or not) you will hide it. I am guessing other people see it that way as well but who knows..

6 years ago
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Oh yeah, I forgot about the need to manually add the games every time

6 years ago
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I wonder how many tickets you're still getting from people who missed this announcement... bumping to increase awareness :-)

6 years ago
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Bump again.

6 years ago
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Bump for reasons.

6 years ago
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I think this topic needs a bump now.

Current giveaway on HumbleBundle does not give beta or guess pass. It allows people to activate full game, which will stay on account after 20th December 2018. So it's not valid reason to create tickets.

As keys expire on 20th and won't activate game anymore, creators should refrain from making giveaways few days prior to that date. Or creating giveaways that end on 20th or later.

Winner still has 7 days to activate win. So giveaway which ends near keys expiry date (e.g. 18th or 19th December) may end up with not received feedback.

5 years ago
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What expires is the promotion, the time to copy the key, not the key. Steam keys don't expire.

5 years ago
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They changed something on HB end? I thought they deactivate not activated keys, to prevent them from being re-sold later.

5 years ago
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They changed something on HB end?

No, they didn't. While there has been at least one case where publishers have deactivated keys afterwards (Company of Heroes), most Humble freebies still work.

If you read carefully you'll see the Humble warning message about keys "vanishing" only strongly implies keys will be revoked. It never explicitly says so. It only says those keys will vanish from your Humble key list.

5 years ago
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For the most part what you said is true though there were a few others like Meadow and Glass Masquerade that had the unused keys deactivated as well.

5 years ago
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Yeah, those (and Braveland) were the 3 I wasn't sure about because that was that one promotion where Humble majorly dropped the ball and ran out of keys ~2 hours after the games could be claimed.

Braveland was the only one from that promotion I managed to get and I used that one immediately.

5 years ago
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Not sure that is correct Blade since I know a few people who got "dupe" keys when they tried to activate them after said date.. I think MSKOTOR is correct in saying they are invalid keys after said date

5 years ago
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Company of Heroes ?

5 years ago
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Not CoH but another game but I forgot what it was to be honest since Humble does "a lot" of this free keys GAs now.
And it says redemption date for me so that can mean redeeming on steam as well as redeeming (getting a key to you account on HB) so not sure what to say.

5 years ago
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Unused Glass masquerade (I think it was this one, it was like 3 games in a 1 month period) and some others were revoked after the deadline
So there's no way to know which will and which won't work after the deadline.

5 years ago
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I had A Hat in Time - Seal the Deal DLC registering as a dupe key (I am 101% sure I did not use it as I got the DLC on Steam for free as well) when I tried to give it to a friend a week after the end of its free promotion.

5 years ago
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I think this is handled on a by game basis (so the anwer might be different for every freebie) but afaik COH was the only one who actually deactivated their keys after the promotion was over.

If we find somebody who doesn't have Homefront yet we can test it out for science if the keys are still good. At least they still were mid-April 2018 which was quite a while after the Humble promotion.

5 years ago
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I don't have Homefront, but it's also not game for me. So I wouldn't keep it on my account. I want to keep my library small.

But I can ask on SG discord, if you'd be fine with that? There may be someone that doesn't own this game yet.

5 years ago
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But I can ask on SG discord, if you'd be fine with that?

Sure, that's cool for me. Only problem is I'm a little bit busy today so I'd have to give you the key upfront. (if nobody on SG discord wants it you can just drop it in the orphan keys threads)

Otherwise I'll just ask in the orphan keys thread if somebody wants to test a Homefront key in the next couple of days ;)

5 years ago
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I can test it f-for science!

5 years ago
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Done ;) I've sent you a message.

5 years ago
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Worked <3

View attached image.
5 years ago
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Cool. Good to know. Enjoy :D

5 years ago
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So looks like it's game-by-game based.

Still, there is no saying how LEGO will behave till we pass 20th December :D

5 years ago
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I don't have Homefront. I can also test it, if you want.

5 years ago
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Done ;) I've sent you a message.

5 years ago
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And.... It worked. The key activated

5 years ago
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Hello. Any key left for testing?

5 years ago
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You're in luck. One more key left then the Homefront is pacified :D

Hang on ;)

5 years ago
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Done ;)


Sorry guys. That was the last one.

5 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

5 years ago
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